Show Notes

Kayla: Welcome back to The Designer Practice Podcast, and I’m your host, Kayla Das.

As a therapist, there are many written and unwritten expectations that are instilled as early as our post-secondary education. However, as you enter the field and try to find yourself as a therapist, some of these expectations may not jive with you as a therapist, and you may find yourself feeling stuck.

The dilemma is, do you keep following these expectations or unlearn them so you can find your own professional identity?

Well, in today’s episode, Alison McCleary and Jordan Pickell share how unlearning the blank slate can help you reclaim your professional identity after grad school.

Hi ladies. Welcome to the show. I’m so glad to have you here today.

Alison: Thanks for having us.

Jordan: Excited to be here.

Kayla: Before we dive into today’s episode, please introduce yourself, where you’re from, and tell us a little bit about you and both of your practice journeys.

Alison: Sure. I’m Alison McCleary. I’m from northern BC and that has informed a lot of my work. I have a master’s in clinical counseling. That’s where Jordan and I met, was doing our master’s together. And I also have a doctorate in clinical psychology. So I’m in the process of becoming a registered psychologist.

Right now, I’m doing therapy in my own little practice and I’m also an approved clinical supervisor. So, I do work with students sometimes and newer clinicians. And then we have Edge of the Couch, which maybe we’ll talk about afterwards. But that’s a little bit about me.

Jordan: And then I’m Jordan Pickell, as you said, and I am located on Unceded Coast Salish territory, also known as Vancouver Canada.

And I’m from the United States, but then came here for grad school. I have my private practice. I also am an approved a clinical supervisor, so I love working with folks in consultation. And then, yeah, I work mostly with relational trauma and I also do a lot of writing. I’m currently writing a book about enmeshment which I’m really excited about.

But right now in this role today, we are co-hosts of Edge of the Couch, which is a podcast for emerging therapists, deep thinking therapists to actually talk about the messier parts of the work that you don’t really talk about in grad school. So, I think this conversation very much fits with the way that we show up in our own podcast.

Kayla: I love that and I’m so glad you are both here today. And Jordan, side note, I’m also writing my own book, but it’s on passive income, so it’s not therapy related.

Jordan: Congratulations. Yeah, that’s very exciting.

Kayla: Thank you. But same with you. It’s definitely a big feat to be writing a book.

So, for context of this episode, when we talk about unlearning the blank slate, what does that mean?

 Jordan: So, when we think about the beginning of modern psychology with Freud. I’m sure many of you know, the idea was that the therapist’s role, or in this case, the psychoanalyst’s role, is to be a blank slate. So, you don’t offer your feelings, your thoughts, your opinions, your humanness. It really is very short. You don’t show up much at all in terms of taking up space as a human being. And the idea of the blank slate is that therapists are meant to be neutral, objective, almost invisible in the room as a full human being.

And while there’s value in stepping back, we have moved back from this extreme version of neutrality, but the version that we do currently live with is still very limiting that folks maybe overthink the ways in which they show up in the room and trying to take out their identities, their experiences, the way that they move through the world, the way that they talk, the way that they interact with people, their personalities, trying to take that away from the therapy room. So instead of neutrality, this idea of neutrality because it doesn’t exist, it’s about being more intentional and showing up more fully because Alison and I believe that we can connect on a deeper level when we are showing up as our full selves.

Alison: We hear it from listeners of the podcast all the time, that there is uncertainty about post-graduation, how to actually be with clients because there’s these very specific messages, which I know we’re gonna get into of how to be in the therapy room that is really about kind of shrinking our personalities and not showing too much of ourselves.

So then new clinicians enter the field and they start seeing clients and the imposter syndrome explodes because they think, ah, I don’t know how to keep pretending to be this like cookie cutter of a person. And I feel like I have to actually hide parts of myself and the harder that clinicians are trying to be one version of a type of therapist. The further away they get from what feels authentic imposter syndrome really goes wild in that type of space. And we hear it from our listeners all the time that they are in that new phase of being a clinician. And they’re trying to figure out what parts of what I learned at school do I want to hold onto, and what parts do I now need to kind of shed in order to show up authentically with my clients.

Kayla: That makes complete sense. And there’s actually a few things that I’m thinking of. First of all, it’s like you’re performing, you’re performing to be someone that you’re not. And like you said, doesn’t feel authentic in the therapy room or just in general. The other side of it, and this is especially important in the modern world, I often hear my coaching clients say to me is AI going to take over therapy?

And the answer is no. And the reason is because you are not a robot. However, in the past we’ve always been kind of taught to be that robot for that neutrality. And what an AI cannot replicate is your humanity is you showing up in that room and being a true person that doesn’t just know the information but can feel the feelings, experience what’s happening in the room, read the body language that no AI could, and have that personality that is you. And being a blank slate, performing or pretending that you are not in the room is kind of making it feel like that you’re trying to be an AI.

Alison: That’s a really, really valuable point. I think that is, so our bread and butter like at edge of the couch is like the relational part of the work where you are being a real person and your client is a real person, and you are two real people sharing a space and sharing experiences. That is where the really beautiful therapeutic work comes up.

And you’re right, like we learn skills and the skills are valuable and they are important. And we think that there are ways to take those very concrete skills we learn at school and like marry them and infuse them into who you already are as a person and that that’s going to be like the sweet spot of the therapy that you do with your clients.

Kayla: Absolutely. So why should therapists unlearn after spending so many years working towards and graduating from their graduate degrees?

Jordan: We are learning what we’re taught. We are unlearning the blank slate in the sense that recognizing that the blank slate is a myth because the reality is no matter how much you try, we are always bringing parts of ourselves into the room. And when we pretend that we’re completely neutral, we’re staying in disconnection with clients, we lose out on so many opportunities for deeper connection.

And I think we can also unconsciously reinforce harmful power dynamics. I mean, we could go off on a tangent about the idea of political neutrality, but it actually is important that we do take stances because therapy is, like you were saying, therapy is relational. And so rather than trying to erase ourselves we are thinking about how do we thoughtfully and ethically take up space in the session.

Also, role modeling for clients. Permission giving that we are both showing up in our fuller selves here. And that that is also like so important in valuable and we’re reflecting that back.

In my work I’m also thinking about emotions. We’re not trying to get too neutral. We’re talking about expression of emotions, and so I think the blank slate also tips us in that direction, and that’s the opposite of what I’m trying to do as a therapist.

Alison: I love all of that. I totally agree with everything Jordan is saying there. There can be real harm done to clients when we aim for neutrality over a real reaction. Even in things like, you know, a client sharing something, maybe a disclosure that is really significant for them. And if we sit there as like this kind of porcelain doll and we never acknowledge how we are impacted by what we hear, how we are impacted by that, that thing may have happened to our client when they were a child. I think we do a disservice to the relationship and we can cause harm.

Also, I think people misinterpret when we talk about like not being a blank slate, we are not saying like, you have to self-disclose like so much to your clients. You have to tell them every personal detail about your life. That’s really not what we’re talking about. We are growth therapeutic self-disclosure when it feels purposeful and relational.

But actually, we just mean, even things like saying, wow, my feelings would really be hurt if that happened to me. Like that is not a personal self-disclosure. It’s not like this biographical detail about us, but it’s allowing us to be present in the room. And again, it can be such a beautiful tool for clients.

So we’re not saying like, unlearning the blank slate equals you have to share every single thing with your clients, but instead that you are allowed to, like, we are gonna get into it even like be comfortable, like be physically comfortable. In the space, wear clothes that feel both professional. And like you, you know, you don’t feel like you’re putting on a costume. Be able to use words that fit in your vocabulary and maybe share with a client if they say, oh, I just watched this. You can say like, oh, I watched that too. Like, what did you think? That there’s just this realness in it, but maybe I’ve already gone into like some of the messaging that we get. But I think that harm can happen, and that self-disclosure is not the only thing that we’re talking about here.

Kayla: You know, I totally appreciate those clarifications because yeah, I mean, there’s a balance between self-disclosure. And I’ve mentioned this so many times on the podcast, and one of the reasons I went into private practice was because my therapist, said to me and she kind of self-disclosed, I was experiencing workplace burnout. And her statement was, that’s why I went into private practice. And that was all she said.

And I was like, huh, I spent like two weeks thinking about it and I’m like, I could go into private practice, I could have my own business. Right. And I never even really thought about it before that. Now, years previously I kind of did, but not in recent time. I even said to her a while later, this changed my whole trajectory on life. And it’s why I am where I am today. And it’s because she was human. It’s one specific statement. But it was the most impactful thing in my whole therapy relationship with her. It was not any specific therapeutic modality. It was not any specific worksheet. It was her being human and making me think of, huh, I could do this too.

Alison: Such a great example. It’s such a great example of these small things can really make ripples. I know when I was in my program and I was maybe in my practicums and my first, you know, doing my masters, I would’ve felt so scared to share something like that. I would’ve thought that that was like very against the rules and now a decade later. I’m like, great, lay it more of that, like, you know, bring more of that into the space. But it’s funny how that evolved and took a long time to get there.

Kayla: Absolutely. So how can written or unwritten expectations from grad school impact a new therapist confidence when entering the field?

Jordan: Graduate school gives you the foundation. So, we do learn the basics in what is empathy? What are some of these specific modalities? How do you understand change? And then there are some parts of it, which I do think are important but rigid, is that we were taught, I don’t know what your grad school looked like, Kayla. But for us, we had to learn how to sit. I joke about this all the time. They, we were given an acronym, SOLER– Allison’s laughing because I talk about it all the time. But it’s sitting, open, leaning, eye contact, and relaxed.

And we always made this joke in grad school, right? How can you be this rigid? Then at the end relax into it. And I think that post-graduation, that that’s almost a good metaphor for what we’re trying to do is yes, you learn how to sit to be open. Body language is important. We want to show that we’re listening. But if you sit with one leg up or you sit cross-legged. Some therapists, especially early grads, might actually think that they’re doing something wrong. That they’re doing something bad. They’re doing something secret. And that’s not just the example with sitting. But the self-disclosing.

I self-disclose, but because I see that as a bad thing, because I was taught, neutrality is king. Now I’m not going to talk about it with my supervisor. Now I’m going to keep it to myself. And that’s this hidden thing that then it becomes unexamined and it’s less intentional. And so, I think we are hoping to find this middle place where people can hold the knowledge and the skills that they got from grad school and show up in a way that lacks shame and is more real and full and that there are eyes on it that we do have supervisors and peers that we can talk to about the work that are in it with us. I think that that keeps us accountable to making sure that we’re doing right by our clients.

Kayla: I agree with you on that. And I even think of even my BSW, not even just my graduate, and when we’re thinking of some of these unwritten rules. Really what I’m thinking is like, don’t use social media. And then as a business coach myself, I’m working with the private practice owners that are like, I need to advertise my practice, but I’m not allowed to be on social media.

And I mean, I do recall in our classes that, you know, you shouldn’t be on social media at all. Like that was kind of the discourse that was being shared. Now, to be fair, that was a good few years ago that I completed that degree, but that also shows that, whether it’s now or whether it’s back then.

Some of these things are outdated and not realistic for certain elements and where you work. Now, maybe, not having social media might be realistic for somebody. But you know, that is also quite isolating. Just not to even have a personal social media, as a human being. But if you are running a private practice and you are trying to advertise your services, not having a business page could make or break whether you get a client, and then also impacts your livelihood. And also, unfortunately, prevents clients from being able to find therapists, which is why we’re out here. We want to help people.

Alison: It’s a perfect little plug for just today, our episode about, therapists on social media dropped. So, if anyone listening is interested in hearing our thoughts over there, we totally agree. Therapists deserve to show up in all the different types of spaces.

I would even say some of the messaging that we heard, which was maybe more implicit than explicit, but the discourse still exists. Like talk about discourse online. You still hear discourse around like, should therapists grab Kleenex for the client? Should therapists yawn? What does yawning mean? And it’s like, wow, the messaging has become so warped that now even like our biological needs are being framed as like inappropriate or distracting to the client.

And I can remember early sessions where I was trying to like swallow yawns because I thought that yawning was so inappropriate. And I remember a client saying to me like, you can just yawn. I hope you know that. Like she could tell how hard I was trying to not yawn. And while I think that some clients are going to have different reactions to you yawning, you know, I think how we frame that is like, wow. Grist for the mill. A conversation to have about like, you want me to not yawn and I can’t always help that.

Even things like if I’m going to like pee my pants, like I’m going to have to be like, I need to go to the bathroom. Which as a new grad, I would’ve thought that that was like the worst possible thing I could do. But when I remember that I’m a human being, I live in a body and my clients have capacity to be okay with the fact that I’m a person who has needs that it all feels less scary.

Kayla: I agree with all of that and I actually think about when I was pregnant with my daughter. When you’re pregnant, you know, just FYI, for anyone who doesn’t know you pee a lot. And I actually had to tell some of my clients like, I am sorry, but I need to put you on hold for a few minutes so I can use the washroom. And I even thought about some of this discourse. I’m like, am I allowed to go to bathroom? Am I am allowed to be human? And I am going to promise all of you. That they were like, of course, like there was no negative response to that. And I will say that a lot of my clients had absolutely no knowledge that I was pregnant at this time. But they knew I was a human who had to use the washroom.

Alison: Yeah. I think another thing that the blank slate learning does is it also makes us think that our clients can’t handle us as real people. And what I have found is that actually they can, they have huge capacity for the fact that we are just people too. In fact, that is part of the validation that comes in the work is like, oh, therapists aren’t some like built different, better type of person who doesn’t have weird family stuff and sometimes have to go to the bathroom. In fact, like, oh, we’re both just in it as people. So, the blank slate is a huge disservice to clinicians, but it is also a huge disservice to our clients.

Kayla: Absolutely. So what might the process of unlearning look like? Also, are there any areas of practice that we may have learned in grad school that we shouldn’t unlearn?

Jordan: There’s always the foundation, right, in terms of empathy and attunement and some of those. Modalities and skills like those micro skills in showing up with people.

But we are talking about a fundamental reorientation to the work where it is more human and relational. I think for us at Edge of the couch, part of what we’re talking about in unlearning it’s twofold. One is understanding ourselves as people more so that we can more fully embody our values, our ways of moving through the world and relating.

And then on a second level, trying to change this idea that we are in competition with each other because I think the idea of a blank slate means that we’re all the same. And if we’re all the same, then we’re competing for the same clients. But knowing we actually are different. We offer different things. That we’re trying to match make, therapists and client so that we can look at our peers and our colleagues and refer to each other. We can have eyeballs on our work and say, we each value our ways of working and our own values, and it’s so helpful to have this community where supervisors, peer therapist, friend, colleagues, can share their perspective on maybe a client or a theme that’s coming up in our work. Let’s say group supervision can be really helpful and that takes away some of the loneliness that for a lot of us in private practice, we experience that it takes away some of the imposter syndrome that a lot of us, especially early career therapists feel and then just gets people, more clients and better fit clients because you are embodying your values and your way of working more upfront versus something that is really buried underneath this veneer of neutrality.

Alison: I would say too, like our message is certainly not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Like we believe that there are things that we learn at school that are really valuable, like Jordan was saying. Even just the theoretical frameworks, like understanding the mechanisms of change that have been described in theory and written about understanding research, having a pretty good understanding of how to combat misinformation when we hear it, like there are some really valuable things that we learn in our programs.

If we have any of the edge of the coach listeners here, they’re going to have heard this from me a million times, but when it comes to supervision, I have a metaphor that I use that I think is also valuable here, which is that it’s kind of like shopping at winners. I think we hear a lot of messages in school, and some of them we have to temporarily kind of wear. We understand that people have to jump through hoops to graduate, and often we are jumping through hoops where we are diminishing our personality. We are doing exactly what our supervisors ask because we have to graduate.

But once we’re out, we can kind of go, okay. What are the things that I learned that feel really good still, that are still working, that feel like they fit with how I want to be? What are some of the foundational underpinnings that I want to stay up with? I loved learning about IFS, for example, and I want to keep that in my work or understanding CBT has really helped me in X, Y, Z. But these other pieces I’m noticing as I’m doing the work, like they’re just not feeling as good. They’re not fitting in how I’m showing up with my clients. So this is an invitation to kind of let those things go.

And it doesn’t have to be, I mean, it’s okay if people look back at their master’s programs and go like, I hated that. I want to like close that door. But it can also be softer and gentler than that, where it’s like, oh, I’m going to kind of let this balloon go because it doesn’t fit anymore and it can float away and go back. And I am going to gently get more in alignment with how I want to be in the space.

Kayla: I love that. And I also think too, that in school we learn a lot about theory. But there’s still so much left to learn after you finish your graduate degree, you learn about yourself. You learn about additional skills. You learn about so much more when you are out in the world.

And I think we always talk about self-reflexivity in our practices, and that also includes reflecting on what you learned, what serves me, what serves my clients, what doesn’t. And I come from a social work perspective, just like systems, there are still systems, even in our own social work realm that may require some adaptation or some changes.

Self-reflexivity on yourself as well as reflexivity on what you’ve learned can really help you determine what do I want to take? What do I want to leave, and what serves me and my future clients?

So, you both have a webinar that you’d like to share. Can you tell us a little bit about what it is and how it can help listeners?

Jordan: We’ve run this workshop several times over the last five years and we finally, finally made it into a webinar. It’s called Growing Into Your Own as a Therapist.

And during that webinar we talk about the blank slate and then learning the blank slate. We talk about understanding your values, being able to think about how you want to show up, what kinds of conversations and ways of working light you up, what makes you feel most engaged? And to lean into those things, what makes you, you, and then how do you bring that into your practice? Because that makes the practice come alive. That makes you come alive. I think it protects you from burnout. It brings you into connection with other people and makes you a better therapist. So, to toot our own horns, I do think it’s such a valuable webinar. It’s such valuable content. And every time Alison and I run it, we also hone our own practices and get clear on the language that we use to talk about our work. So, to engage in the webinar and then to revisit it even six months later or something, I think could be so important for folks just again, for their own sustainability in this work, their own meaning in their life purpose, but also to serve clients better.

Alison: The great thing about the webinar too is that it’s appropriate for people at various levels of their training. We’ve had people join when it’s been a live workshop who haven’t started their grad programs yet, and it’s kind of like this way to prep yourself a bit for the messages you’re going to get and how to have fortitude against, I’m not going to strip away my personality.

We’ve had people join when they’re in their first year, so they’re like deep in the theory space. We have lots of people join who are in practicums, and then we have people join who are post-graduation, and who have been maybe therapists for several years. But because the journey of figuring out who and how we are as therapists never really ends. We don’t land on something and then stop there.

It’s appropriate as a space to come back to, no matter kind of where you are in becoming a therapist journey. And it’s packed full of activities, so we’re not just kind of talking at people for the whole hour we’re inviting people to walk through the activities with us, and it ends with an activity that we call elevator pitch, which is how to help clinicians talk about their work as if they had only two or three minutes to tell people about it. Where they aren’t gonna use jargon and they aren’t going to just list their values, but more like refined and valuable and relational info that they would share with potential clients.

So there’s lots of concrete takeaways which is a really cool thing. We’ve also tagged onto the end because of course it was live when we recorded it, but we did tag on common questions that we get at the end ’cause when the workshop is live, we always add a q and a. And so in the webinar we also included some of the big questions that we get a lot, just so that people kind of get a sense of the type of conversations that we’re having and get a bit of insight into our thoughts about various things.

Kayla: Amazing. I also know you both have a podcast. You’ve mentioned it here in this episode. So, can you tell us a little bit about your podcast, what it’s all about, and how listeners can tune in?

Jordan: Edge of the Couch is our podcast for therapists, especially those in early career. We have walked alongside folks from before they even applied through graduate school and are into a few years of practice. That’s how long we’ve been doing the podcast.

And we talk about things that we wish we had known or were taught that we wish these conversations were happening when we were in grad school, like what actually works in the therapy room, in these really nuanced ways. How do you navigate the emotional side of being a therapist that, again, is maybe too messy or uncomfortable or controversial to bring up at in school or even in supervision.

So we’re hoping to carve out a space to be able to have those conversations and to help these folks feel like they are not alone, because some of these listeners were in an online program. Some of these listeners are in only virtual practice like me. And to be able to be a fly on the wall of these kinds of conversations, makes the work feel more juicy and alive than just the textbooks and the neutrality that we’re given. It’s more about what is it actually like to be as a therapist, and how do we do good relational work?

Kayla: So, to sign up for Alison and Jordan’s growing into your own as a therapist webinar, check out patreon.com/edgeofthecouch.

Also to tune into Edge of the Couch Podcast, head to edgeofthecouch.com.

Or you can simply scroll down to the show notes and click on the link.

Allison, Jordan, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today to discuss how to reclaim your professional identity after grad school.

Jordan: Thank you so much. It was so fun.

Alison: Yeah, this has been a pleasure.

Kayla: And thank you everyone for tuning into today’s episode, and I hope you join me again soon on the Designer Practice Podcast.

Until next time, bye for now.

Credits & Disclaimers

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