In this episode, Dr. Dana McNeil speaks about her specialty in working with relationships and the importance of normalizing therapy for couple’s therapy in our society. Couple’s therapy is a great way to learn how to navigate any relationship, not just romantic partnerships. We need to give people the tools to have productive conflicts with others in society. Unfortunately, Covid has increased both domestic violence and substance misuse. Tune in as we chat about group practice tips, starting a podcast, and how to work with different types of clients.
Meet Dr. Dana McNeil
Dr. Dana McNeil is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and is the founder of The Relationship Place, a group practice located in San Diego, California. Dr. Dana’s practice specializes in couples’ therapy and utilizes an evidence-based type of couples’ therapy known as the Gottman Method. Dr. Dana is a Certified Gottman Therapist and Bringing Home Baby instructor. She works with all kinds of relationship issues from pre-marital counseling, dealing with the aftermath of extramarital affairs, partners working through addiction recovery, the military deployed families, parents of special needs children, LGBTQ, and polyamorous clients.
Dr. Dana has been featured on many relationship podcasts and in publications such as the Business Insider, Authority Magazine, Bustle, Parade, Oprah Living, Martha Stewart Living, Ladders, Reader’s Digest, AARP, and is the resident relationship expert on the Cox Communications show “I Do.”
Learning About Relationships: Should All Couples Go To Therapy?
Dr. Dana wants to try to normalize the need to go to couples therapy earlier, that it’s a good experience, that it’s something all couples should be doing. Plus, she wants to ensure that clients know that the therapists are approachable and not judgmental. When many couples see a therapist, it’s their last resort; either this will save their relationship, or they are going to break up. The average couple waits six years before they go to therapy. Regardless of what happens in your relationship, you will have other relationships. Therapy will help you learn how to talk to your boss, coworkers, siblings, and any other relationship.
Conflict Is Natural and Inevitable, We Need To Normalize It
We don’t necessarily do a good enough job in society, normalizing that we’re supposed to have conflict. It’s important to note that conflict is natural and inevitable. Everyone will not view the world the same way, so there will be conflict. Unfortunately, people don’t have the tools to have that conflict. Couples therapy is such in its infancy still. Unfortunately, many couples are so much more damaged than we have tools to help them with. Domestic violence has been up 30% since Covid, and substance misuse is up 300%. Couples are wounded and damaged, yet we have few tools to use as a couple’s therapist.
Emerging Themes In Behavioral Health and Private Practice
Dr. Dana is speaking at UCLA at an Emerging Themes in Behavioral Health Conference. She will be talking about working with different populations. Therapists are not just dealing with opposite-sex partners. Most of the research with couples therapists was based on couples in a married relationship who wanted to avoid divorce. When research was done, therapists weren’t working with clients identifying as consensual non-monogamy. Therapists need to have conversations about how they will work with different clients. Otherwise, you will be using outdated tools that don’t relate to all of your clients.
Group Practice Tips – Remember, You Are The Boss
You have to be ready to work with many different personalities who may not get your vision when running a group practice. At the end of the day, you’re the boss. It has to be your vision and what makes sense to you. If nobody gets your vision, you have to follow your intuition. You’re the bottom line; you shouldn’t be doing it if it doesn’t make sense. As a group practice, you have to be clear about your own expectations of people and set those early on. Also, you need to be direct and set healthy boundaries with your clinicians.
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Okay. Hi, I'm Dr. Dana McNeil. I'm here on Gordon's podcast super excited to connect with him talking about all things couples training, putting yourself out there. And I've been asked, we last chatted.
Let's do that again. It broke up on us. So if you don't
mind, okay. Yeah, make sure my microphones close enough. Okay. Hi, I'm Dr. Dana McNeil. I'm excited to be on Gordon's podcast and revisit, reconnect catch up on what I've been doing in my practice, how I've been marketing myself as a couples therapist, the trainings I've been working on and just what I've been up to since we last chatted.
Well, hello, folks, and welcome again to the podcast. And I'm so glad to have back on the podcast, Dr. Dana Beale. Hi, David.
Hi, Gordon.
Yes, it's good to have you here again, and we were just kind of catching up before we hit record. But, Dana, for the folks that might not be as familiar with you. Why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself and how you've landed where you've landed?
Oh, geez. I am a owner of a group practice in San Diego, California. It's called the relationship place. We have two locations. We have about 10 clinicians right now we specialize in the Gottman method. I'm a certified Gottman therapist, and everybody that comes to work for me wants to work in that niche within a niche of working with couples therapy. That's my dog Windsor in the background, he decided to make an appearance squeaking it up for us. And I'm also starting a new podcast, I'm going to be featured in a documentary about the art of couples therapy, I've working on some individual branding for myself, I just have a lot of irons in the fire right now.
It's an exciting time for you, Dana. Yeah, I love that. So yeah, so one of the things that, you know, we were kind of chatting about before we started recording is is the fact that you've been able to kind of put yourself out there in a lot of different kind of arenas. I mean, certainly, running a group practice is a big is a big endeavor in and of itself. But also just you're speaking engagements and your your trainings, and really kind of establishing yourself as an expert across a lot of places.
That's the goal. Sometimes I feel very much impostor syndrome about the expert part, but I love I want to change the face of couples therapy. I mean, that's sort of the overarching reach. And all of this is I, I think we need to have more conversations about the need for couples therapy, we're doing a great job, like getting our own individual mental health under control and making it a priority and getting our appointments scheduled. But there's still so much stigma about going to couples therapy, and there's this sense from all of the clients that are like, we're broken, this is the last resort, this is what we have to do. If this doesn't work, we're gonna get divorced, that's so much pressure on the relationship. And it puts pressure on us as therapists, because we think we have to save the couples, because they're treating it as if this is the last stop. And so I want to try to normalize the need to go to couples therapy earlier, that it's a good experience, that it's something we should be doing and that the people that you're working with are approachable and not judgmental.
Right. Right. Yeah. And that's, that's my own experience, too, with, you know, as a couples therapist myself is just think people feel the pressure of you know, either, either we're gonna make this work, this is our last resort. And, you know, we're just going to be able, in order to be able to kind of check the box and say, Oh, we've tried everything kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah.
What's the checking box, you're already like, so the average couple weeks, six years before they come to therapy, your box is pretty closed up. It's got some boards across it, it's got locks on it, you're shut down, you're like, prove to me that this works versus coming in with like, Oh, my God, I'm so excited to learn some tools before we get ourselves in trouble.
Right. Right. Yeah. And I think, you know, for those of us that work with couples and individuals, I would say probably, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say probably 98% of the problems that people have are relational. I mean, it's, it involves, you know, their partner or their people they're in relationship with and so, yeah,
absolutely. We're i One of the ways I try to convince my couples to stay and commit is, regardless of what happens in your relationship, you're going to have relationships, right and you're the common denominator in all of them. So even if you're learning how to talk to your boss your coworkers, your siblings, somebody in the grocery store, this is an investment in yourself. And so kind of helping them come at it from that perspective versus like, We've got to save this relationship seems to be a little helpful.
Right, right. Yeah, no, I think that I think that helps with by being able to get out kind of a different message about, you know, coming to therapy, particularly couples therapy as it being more about a sharpening the saw, rather than being about fixing what is broken. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I love that.
I don't think we necessarily do a good enough job in society normalizing that we're supposed to have conflict, that it's natural that it's inevitable. They're not the same people. They don't view the world the same way. They don't have the same family of origin. They don't have the same expectations. Of course, you have to have conflict, and we have no tools. So why would you not come to get some?
Right, right. Yeah. So I know that you have done you've been doing a lot of trainings and, you know, working with the Gottman Institute, and that sort of like, Tell tell folks a little more about all of that work.
Yeah, I mean, for me, being a Gottman certified therapist, that's just like the high holy ground, right that you get to like, rub elbows with the Gottman Institute. So it feels very exciting and very much like a an achievement. For me, I've been writing quite a few blogs for them. And I just this month, did a training on working with explosive couples. And it was a very good turnout. Apparently, I heard it was the biggest turnout that they've had for one of their webinars to date. So that just means that we need more training, right? Couples Therapy is such an in its infancy still, right. And we we're I read a statistic recently that the couples are so much more damaged than we actually have tools to help them with, right that there's, you know, domestic violence is up 30%. Since COVID, substance misuse is up 300% and pornography use is up. Our couples are so wounded and so damaged. And they've been even more traumatized by COVID. And yet we have so very little tools to use as couples therapists that there's such a hunger for us to find more things that we can do in the therapy room with our clients. And so I'm excited to be part of that conversation.
Yes, yes. And I know that you've got an event coming up in in April, I believe,
I am speaking at UCLA at emerging behaviors. It's a conference about I'm going to be talking about working with different populations, right, because we therapists are not just dealing with opposite sex partners. And most of the research that's come to work with couples therapist was based on couples who were in a married relationship and wanted to avoid divorce. Right. That's all of the you know, we didn't have so many different kinds of populations. We weren't working with clients that were identifying as consensual non monogamy, or we're wanting to know how to navigate the different things that were coming up in relationships for couples who are not just opposite sex, there's different stigmas, there's different cultural impacts, there's different needs that your clients are going to have in their relationships. And so we need to start having a conversation about how are we going to work with those clients. We can't just handle their tools, like the Gottman method and be like this will be fine. No, no, we have to actually look at if we're using EFT if we're using a model, whatever we're using, does it still work for the population that we're asking to apply it? Or are we just using outdated tools that don't have any relevancy to all of our clients?
Yes, I love that. I love that. You know, one of one of the things I know that, you know, again, what, whenever I do a podcast episode, I go back and re familiarize myself with people and what they're working on in their work. And I know one of the things that you kind of mentioned in for that workshop that's coming up is, you know, how do we get around kind of our own biases therapist? I think that's, that's a tough one. For a lot of us. Just understanding and getting our head around things like polyamorous relationships and those kinds of things.
I struggle with that a little bit, because I guess maybe the way I view it is it's not my relationships. So why do I have to be invested in it? Because I'm not experiencing it as much that we can't get our heads around it. It's going farther back like I don't agree with it. I don't think it works. I don't see value in it. Oh, this is not going to work out. That's not my space to hold a therapist. It's not my relationship. It's not my bedroom. It's not my life. And so I I guess I struggle with that, because I don't know why we would hold that perspective that we have to agree with something before we can help our clients.
Right. Right. That's, that is some excellent truth there. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. So to change gears a little bit, not not that I'm avoiding the subject by any means. But one of the things that I'm that's going through my head, Dana, is that there might be folks out there that are thinking, oh, I want to be like Dr. Dana McNeil when I grow up and do the things that she's doing. So how do people get started in doing the kinds of things that you're doing at the level that you're doing them?
Be crazy, don't sleep depend on lots of coffee? Have, you know, have a passion to like change the world? I don't, you know, this was a second career for me. So I was in the corporate world before doing something completely different. And I just came to this place in life. I was 40. And I'm like, Okay, this is the halfway point. Is this what I want the rest of my life to look like? You know, am I going to be okay? When hopefully knock on wood, I get to 90 and I'm like, What did my life account for? What's the purpose that I showed up for and it wasn't what I was doing. That was a means to an end, it wasn't what spoke to my soul. So if you find something, that's your passion, you just got to, you know, Wayne Gretzky said, You're gonna, you'll lose every shot that you don't take. So take all the shots, there's, you're never gonna regret that you tried to do something that you that you're you care about it, that you're passionate about it, that it drives you that it moves you forward. And so I just, I'm not scared to get rejected. I'm not scared to have somebody say, You're crazy. What do you know about this? Why would I have you involved in this? Okay, you know, it's a compliment that I admired you and wanted to be involved in your trainings or in your, you know, your webinar? I? I don't, I don't have a personality that takes offense by people rejecting me, unfortunately, fortunately, or unfortunately.
Right. And I think that's, that's something that I think a lot of us struggle with at times. And is that whole imposter syndrome of thinking that we don't, we don't have what it takes to kind of put ourselves out there or put ourselves at a, at a level that we observe and others. And I think you're exactly right, you have to, you know, the other thing about it is, is failure is really a learning opportunity.
I tell all of my new clinicians that I 100% remember all of the lessons that I learned when I screwed up in session, and I don't forget those and I don't make those again, and those were valuable, that pain that I'm having for a day or two or a week later, is so invaluable, because you don't do that again.
Right. Right. Yeah. And so I think you're exactly right, being able to put yourself out there, and being able to just kind of be willing to make those mistakes, and whether it's in the clinical side, or the business side of things. So what what would be some of the big things that you've learned about running a group practice that maybe some tidbits for folks out there thinking about group practice,
you have to be ready to work with a lot of different personalities who may not get your vision, and that's okay. Right? At the end of the day, I'm the boss, it has to be my vision, it has to be what makes sense to me, yes, I can take my clinicians into consideration, I can, you know, try to explain it to them and hopes that they buy into it, and they believe in it, and they see it. But even if they don't, even if nobody gets your vision of what you want to do in your group practice, you have to follow your intuition, you have to follow that whispering that your soul has, because you're at the end of the day, you're the bottom line. And if it doesn't make sense to you, you shouldn't be doing it.
Right. Right. Yeah. And I think that's the that's so true. And that you have to really, I think, as a group practice, you have to really kind of be clear about your own expectations of people and of being able to kind of set those early on.
And I think you need to be direct and you need to set very healthy boundaries with your clinician, so many of my colleagues that have group practices they want to make sure that everybody likes them and that everybody's okay with them and that's not how this works unfortunately, because it's just human nature that if you give someone the the impression that you're okay with something even if you're not, they're going to push up against your boundary and if you're not avoiding taking it personally, just like oh, look, they're doing them interesting. Okay, let me direct you back to where we need to go with love with kindness with the compliment sandwich, right? But you have to be willing to correct and be direct and your clinicians? Well, they may not like it in the moment, but they will respect you. And that's important. Right?
That was, I was doing a consult with someone yesterday, and that was really kind of the whole theme of it is that he was had an employee that was really pushing their boundaries with him of being able to trying to renegotiate different things. So well, so and so does it this way, so and so does it that way? And, you know, kind of the bottom line was, is that okay, you know, this is the way I do it. You know, this is your, you know, you can choose to stay or go? Yeah,
really not taking it personally, that people are asking for their needs. Just because I don't agree with them, doesn't mean that that's not still their need. And I don't have to get up in my head about like, how dare they ask that for me? Don't they know this? And don't? I don't know what they know, or what they don't know, I can just be really clear on what I'm willing to do and what I'm not willing to do.
Right? Right. Again, going full circle back. That's part of the whole relationship dynamic as well.
Which is really an invaluable trait of being a couples therapist. I mean, just as we're direct with our clinicians, we need to be equally direct with our clients about what's not working for them. And it not asking the other partner, not to take it personally. Easier said than done. But we're modeling for them what healthy boundaries are like and being direct and asking the hard questions and tolerating big emotions?
Yes, yes. So yeah, this is this is, I think, at the heart of being running your group practice, you really have to treat it almost like you would in in a marriage relationship or a committed relationship, you're the same way.
And learning what everybody's style is, and you know, doing your best to try to help them communicate in a style that makes sense for them, but not losing yourself in the process.
Right. Right. So Dana, to change gears again, I know one of the things that's coming up for you, is a new podcast. So say, tell us about that.
slightly terrified, because look who I have as a model. I want to aspire to be like you and I grew up in my podcast world. And it's just in the infancy we're bringing it together. I think the working title title right now is the D spot. excellent relationships with Dr. Dana, something along those lines. And it's just a celebration and conversation about relationships, all forms of relationships, what makes them work? Why do they seem more attractive to these partners? What what are the challenges? What are the things that they've made work? I think we're all curious about what relationships look like inside of the relationship. So I'm hoping to have like really candid conversations about, okay, you're on a throttle and you have a baby? How does that work? Talk to me about that. So those curious questions that we have, but then also with maybe that little clinical spin to like, help normalize some of the things that are coming up for them in relationships?
Yes, yes. And I think that's gonna really strike a chord for people because I think, you know, a theme that I've heard on this podcast and just talking with other clinicians and, and such, is being able to give people space to be vulnerable, in the context of hearing from other people that oh, they're struggling with the same thing. And we, I know, in a few few episodes back, and I think I've mentioned her twice now on different episodes, my good friend and colleague, Dr. Stacy Lanier, is therapist in Nashville. And Stacy and I were had an episode where we talked about when therapists are a hot mess. It was the title of the of that, that particular episode. But really, I think one of the things too, is for therapists to be able to kind of share a little bit of their own struggles in that, yeah, life is messy. Life is hard. And we struggle with it, too.
Yeah, of course. And we also need to start normalizing things that are outside of our comfort zone. Because once we know more than we can stop being judgmental, or put the walls down and just have honest conversations about relationships. We all want them. We all know that they're complicated, and we're so scared of like, actually being real about what's happening in them because we're afraid that other people are going to be like, oh, something's totally wrong with you guys. You need to get therapy versus like, we went to therapy so we can be comfortable with our relationship.
Right, right. Yeah. I think it's going to be xx a success. I hope so. Yes, yes. Well, Dana, I want to be respectful of your time. And I know that there's so much we can talk about. Tell folks more about how they can get in touch with you and ask for questions and that sort of thing.
Sure. And you can contact us a couple of ways, you can always contact me on my own individual website, which is Dana mcneil.com. My group practice is SD relationship place.com. And then we also have a website called therapy getaway, where we do intensives and couples who want to come spend a weekend with us in San Diego and work through some tricky relationships and really roll up their sleeves and get in there. And we have some ways to contact us as well. And we can give you all of our social links on your your notes there on the
absolutely, they'll be there so well Dana, I'm so glad we got to reconnect and I hope that we'll be able to meet in person someday.
I would love that. I'm gonna give you a big old hug now that COVID would allow me to do so.
Yes. I'm always always open for hugs. So
right. Yes, always great, Gordon. i Boy, there's so much thank you. Thank you
Being transparent… Some of the resources below use affiliate links which simply means we receive a commission if you purchase using the links, at no extra cost to you. Thanks for using the links!
Dr. Dana McNeil’s Resources
Dr. Dana’s Website
The Relationship Place
Emerging Themes in Behavioral Health
Dr. Dana McNeil & Nancy Ryan | Getting Confident For Succesful Couple’s Practices | TPOT 142
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