The Practice of Therapy

Well, hello everyone. And welcome again to the practice of therapy podcast. And I'm so happy for you to get to know today. Susan Orenstein, Susan. Welcome. Thank you. I'm excited to be here and talk to you. Well, one of the things, a kind of a fun fact, when I started, uh, talking to Susan, as I realized she is, uh, her office is located in my hometown on the same street that I grew up on.

So how weird is that? So, yeah, so that's just a. Also connection there. So, Susan, uh, again, happy to have you with me and why don't I start with everyone? Why don't you tell folks a little bit about your private practice journey and how you've kind of landed where you've landed? I've been in practice since 1998.

I've stopped counting the years. And I remember when I joined a group practice initially and, um, the psychologist she took me on who was. Since passed away was really brilliant and saying, you need to have a specialty, you need to have something that makes you distinct. And, um, so I had two specialties at that time.

One was helping, uh, young adults through the transition. To college. And then the other specialty was couples counseling. And I just love, I love the work. I love these specialties, which are really are about helping people through transitions, helping people evolve, um, and go through a journey. And so the last few years I've been focusing more on, more on helping individuals going through divorce.

To help them through the journey, through the transition. And it kind of covers all the things that I've been learning about in my counseling practice. You get to touch upon, um, um, mood issues, coping grief loss, and, uh, you get to talk about sex. You get to talk about relationships, you get to talk about people's childhood, their past, their present and their future dreams.

So I feel like this specialty is wonderful in that it lets me help people. Um, In a really holistic way. Right. Right. And what, uh, what I love is the fact that you've kind of taken your niche and kind of expanded it outside the therapy room. You'll want to talk about that process, uh, just with you started a podcast and also, uh, are doing some courses and that sort of thing.

Sure I would love to. So I want my work to be accessible to more people. Um, and so I developed a podcast it's called after the first marriage. And right now I have a free e-course that goes with that. I'm developing a lot of content. Because I particularly love, I love continuing it. I, I love podcasts. I love going online and looking at a worksheet, doing some reading, joining groups.

So, so, um, there's so many ways that people can heal outside of the therapy room and, and I wanted to be a part of somebody developing those things for, for our clients. Yes. Yes. And so what, uh, what have you learned so far in this process? Good question. What have I learned so far? Um, well, to, to be a podcast or in, to write a course, pushes me in a way that's a little different than the therapist role, because I think in the therapist role, I learned not to say too much about myself.

I mean, I do share some, um, but in some ways it's more conventional when I do counseling. Whereas when I have a podcast. I get to bring more of myself in, I get to think about who interests me? Who do I want to learn from, what am I reading? Uh, who do I want to interview? Um, I get to create fun materials with color and content.

So it's, what am I learning? I'm learning that there are parts of me that I can bring into this process. Um, In ways that expand my ability to be a therapist. Yes. Uh, you know, what's interesting about that is, um, right before we, we got a line here to, to record. I was doing some, um, was working with another therapist I doing, uh, um, I'm an AMFT approved supervisor in one of the part, parts of that process is that for other people that want to become supervisors, they do their supervision of supervision.

And so we were, we were just talking about that whole topic of, um, the person of the therapist and bringing. You know, B being able to bring, uh, being able to do some self-disclosure, um, in the therapy room and just really, um, the effectiveness of that with working with clients and that it, I think it gives you more credibility when they can hear from a therapist that they've gone through.

Similar struggles. Um, yeah. Yeah. So Gordon, I hear that you're doing supervision. I know you have a podcast too. I think just after, I don't know about you, but after I've been doing this work for as many years as I have. It's fun just to shake it up and to feel like I need to learn something and I can have a learning curve.

So it's fun. It's fun to learn about social media. I actually, to be honest, I really have not been involved in it myself. And so I'm learning about that too. Right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you want to say more about that in terms of just shaking things up and, and really kind of taking some non-conventional routes to working with people and how you're doing your work.

Sure. Um, I think like right now there are support groups. There are podcasts. Some of them are run by late people. Um, I want to be able to bring. Some of the professional skills that I have and some of the research to these formats and to shake it up, meaning, um, to bring these out to the public in, in ways that maybe the public hasn't seen before.

So what I really want to do is just tear down the stigma. That's still attached to being a therapy client. Yeah. You know, I want to normalize these processes for people because. Almost everybody cares about healthy relationships and to get skills and to learn about this and to make it approachable and accessible to people is really important to me.

And so I can do that through, you know, things that are free for people like podcasts, social media. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, so, yeah. And it sounds like, um, you know, I agree with podcasting. I think it's just really dumb. A way to reach people in a. It's such a much more personal media than say blogging or are, you know, kind of written material and that you get a sense of kind of connecting with the person on the other end, even though you're just listening to a recording of something, it's just, I think people make that connection.

Um, It, and I'm curious and feel free to share as much, or as little as you want to just kind of how you landed on this niche of divorce. Um, and having, you know, an up, you know, just self-disclosed do, I've been previously married, um, um, you know, to my former wife and then, uh, married now to my wife for over 25 years.

But, um, having gone through a previous marriage. Kind of understand the pain of that say yeah, a little interesting. And what made me a little bit, um, hesitant to come up with what is my niche? Because I love these clients in my private practice. So I've always loved working with couples. I always love working with any kind of relationship issues.

Um, so professionally some of my very favorite clients have been people who. I feel like they'd been kicked to the curb. They are so down, they can not get their head up and they are so grateful to have therapy and to have someone believe in them and to have someone help them kind of do a post-mortem and say what happened?

Let's let's, let's figure this out so that this doesn't happen again. And you can regain your self esteem and you can gain some tools for intimacy in the future. So really some of my very favorite clients have been people going through divorce. But what I was about, what I started to say is how I was hesitant to turn this into a podcast because I am happily married and I've been, I got married at 24, my husband and I started dating at 21 and it's been, it's been beautiful.

Um, we haven't had any threats to divorce, we haven't been divorced. Um, so I can't say, I know, I can't say I know personally what divorce is, but what I can say is that I. Have never taken him for granted. And he has never taken me for granted and all the tools that I've learned with the couples that I work with in the trainings.

I'd not do I apply in my marriage and I think, thank goodness. Thank goodness. I can see what's going on. And I know how to push pause here. I know how to go back to him and tell him what I need and, and how would I possibly know that if I didn't have all the training and skills, I didn't see that from my parents.

I, I think most. I think what we know from the literature is it's about 50% of people who grow up with secure attachment, where they have parents who have been attuned and, um, and they see that kind of family. So, so for the many, many other people out there, uh, thank goodness we can learn these things and we can see these things.

So I wanted to be able to give, give that to people. Right, right. Yeah. And I think it's, uh, yeah. You know, one of the things is, is that, uh, I know in my work couples as well, I'm a marriage and family therapist. And so I, you know, I would say over half, my practice is couples work. And, you know, as I like to tell folks is, you know, neither, neither one of you came with an instruction manual on how to, how to communicate with each other.

And like you said, um, You know, even though we might come from, from healthy families that doesn't necessarily make guarantee a healthy marriage. And so being able to communicate that, so, um, yeah, there's so much misinformation out there, so there'd be. Hugely popular bestsellers. Like men, men are from Mars.

Women are from Venus that, that have a few good points in them, but mostly carry a lot of misinformation. And so I want to make sure that people, and there's a lot of science now out there from John Gottman, from my mentor, Stan Tatkin, about what really are the ingredients for healthy relationships, whether you're getting divorced and you want to make sure you learn next time, or you want to make your marriage work.

So I want to be one of those people who is. Um, get providing outreach so people can get the correct information. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's great. That's great. So what, yeah, this might, this is a very broad question, but what sort of themes do you see that come up with people, uh, in the work that you do? Um, what, what are, what are some of the themes that you feel like people struggle with the most.

And, and that's, that's a great question. Cause I think, I think there are things and I, and I've done a little research too. Um, if, if I'm seeing somebody going through divorce who didn't choose divorce, they were the one that was left. Um, then those kinds of folks are often very wounded have, uh, uh, hurt self-esteem depression.

Um, anxiety questioning their attractiveness, questioning their desirability. I I've seen people really, really on the floor with crushing self-doubt self-doubt and, um, low self-esteem. Um, sometimes with, with those people who have been the ones that have been left, they have revenge fantasies. They're angry, they're bitter.

So sometimes I see the coping mechanism is. To shut down. And sometimes it's, I'm in a fight back and I'm going to have, have these revenge fantasies and get into a lot of conflict. And a lot of times people are just hurting so badly. They're looking for ways to numb themselves. So they might start drinking heavily, um, eating more, um, turning to, uh, relationships that aren't good for them ways to know numb their feelings.

So those are the common issues that I see. Um, when it's somebody who's actually the one initiating the divorce. Um, and I don't think I see quite as many of those as the people who were, were not choosing it, the people initiate it. Sometimes there's a lot of guilt and shame. Um, and sometimes there's just, how do I help my children give me some skills and tools so that I do this, right?

Because maybe I've seen a ugly divorce. I don't want that. So people who are wanting to be proactive, which is. Was wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. And I think that's, um, you know, having worked with a few, few people that have been in that same situation, um, where just, uh, their, their partner left them just kind of out of the blue or just unawares or, uh, they didn't really see the warning signs so to speak.

Uh, there's a lot of self-blame that happens. Um, you know, Again, and working through that and the grief, the grief of it all as well. Um, yeah, so Gordon, here's a, there's a third category. That's really tricky for me and probably for a lot of therapists and that's people who really want to divorce, but they feel like they can't quite, I would say estate because possibly financial issues or, um, possibly they're afraid that if they leave in there, they're there.

Partner the co-parent is, um, not capable in some way. Maybe has addiction or is narcissistic or something like that. They're really worried about the wellbeing of their child. I think those are the trickiest saddest, so sad. Those situations. They're almost like hostages.

Excuse me. We'll pause that though. Or I coughed, I thought I had ear buds, so, so yeah, so to switch gears a little bit, um, and just thinking about how you've really kind of expanded your. Practice outside the therapy room of really trying to reach a broader audience or a broader client base. So to speak through your podcast and the courses that you you started, what would, um, what would be some advice that you'd give other therapists that maybe are thinking about that, or thinking about expanding there?

Practices in that way. Um, I would say find some issues and populations, some topics that fascinate you that you want to learn about no matter what, and so that you can't go wrong, like whatever you build or don't build is kind of secondary to make sure that you are just becoming more of an expert in enjoying the, enjoying the information that you're learning about.

Because I think that fuels our, our energy and helps us from. Getting burnt out in, in our profession. So then that will be step one is, learn, educate yourself, do some research, do some reading, do some online training, or now it's COVID so it would have to probably be online training and then have somebody that you can talk to talk this through.

Um, maybe have a colleague who is also brainstorming because it really helps to have somebody else listen to you and, and bounce some ideas back and forth. Right, right. I know we had talked about a part of your process. Um, um, in starting the podcast is you had worked with our, our mutual friend, Joe Sanok and, and did, did some work with him.

And I, I would echo that. I mean, just with, um, anything that we. We do within private practice. I think it's always important to have, uh, a set of trusted peers and colleagues that you can bounce stuff off of and be able to share that information with, to be able to help you kind of. Flush through the details of it all and come up with a plan, right.

Oh, and I have one more thing actually. So like, like we're doing now when I talk with them and when I'm in dialogue, it helps me think of something else for sure. But I just did a training for, um, some colleagues and I think that's really helpful too, because you. You can kind of see in, in lifetime what interests people, what their questions are.

You can, you can find out your blind spots. And so I think being able to offer a continuing ed to peers is a really valuable way to get some more expertise in your, in your specialty. Um, and then other than that, I would say it's trial and error because if somebody says that won't work or this will work well, we don't know.

We really don't know. So you have to kind of put yourself out there and keeping willing to. To tweak and change and edit and that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think what you said earlier too, I think is so true is being able to follow those things that you're passionate about. Um, because. You know, again, people hear from me all the time and I sound like a broken record here, but you got to start with your why, um, why you want to do anything that, whether it's in private, whether you want to go into private practice to begin with or whatever direction you take.

Uh, and I think, um, I think what I love about what you're doing Susan is the fact that you've taken the, um, You know, being able to offer a therapy, you know, one-to-one, which is the traditional way of providing therapy, you know, in the context of the therapy room and as it were, right, actually, as we're recording this, where there we're in the middle of the, the COVID pandemic and you know, so most, all of us are online now in terms of, you know, doing sessions in this way.

But. But being able to take it that one-to-one to the one to many, I think as a way of just really kind of expanding your reach, not only your reach, but also diversifying your income in that way. Right. So, well, Susan, I know I want to be respectful of your time and I'm so glad we got to have this conversation today.

Tell folks how they can get in touch with you. If they want to learn more about what you're doing. Sure. So I have a website after the first marriage.com and you can see my podcasts there. Uh, people can sign up for a free eCourse there and you can email me love to hear from, from people. Like I said, I grow I'm learning and growing as I get feedback.

So I definitely want input and, uh, Thank you. Thank you for inviting me today, Gordon. Yes. And so glad you were with us and we'll have links to all of this in the show notes and the show summary so people can access it. Uh, Uh, quickly again. So, uh, tell, uh, tell my, be sure and tell my hometown. Hello. So I'm glad to glad to get to that a lovely town it's growing and it's lovely.

So we'll say hi to Cary, North Carolina for you. Yes. Yes. It's a big shout out for Carrie. So, uh, well thanks Susan for being on the podcast and I'm sure we'll talk again. I hope so. My pleasure Gordon.