The Practice of Therapy

Gordon Brewer
Okay, Danielle, if you want to do a little blurb.

Danielle Branche
Sure. So I'm Daniel branch Brown. I am the owner and founder of branches of life therapy in Baltimore, Maryland. It's been a while since I've been on the podcast, but I'm very excited to be invited back to the practice of therapy, I really appreciate being involved in this way of educating and exploring the field. So yeah, thank you for having me.

Gordon Brewer
Perfect. I'm gonna pause a second. Well, hello, everyone, and welcome again to the podcasts. And I'm so happy to have back with me on the podcast. Daniel, branch Brown. Hi, Danielle.

Danielle Branche
Hey, how are you?

Gordon Brewer
It's good to have you back. And I, we were chatting ahead of time, I can't remember quite when it was, but it's probably been at least a year or so since we were we last chatted. Yeah. But I'm looking forward to our conversation today just about just all the stuff about being a therapist, and you know, what, what all that entails. But if for folks that don't know you, why don't you tell folks a little more about yourself and how you've landed where you've landed? Sure.

Danielle Branche
So I've been very real with people these days about my realized station as I like, unpacked and started doing well not started but continued some pretty deep like inner child work and things like that, that I realized my initial choice to become a therapist was quite a codependent one. And I've also realized that I'm not alone in that decision, right? That a lot of us come to the decision to be therapists and be helpers and healers, out of spaces of pain, right out of a need to find healing for ourselves right out of some gap or some, you know, wound right that we have either experienced or seen or whatever, right. And so I really, truly have been real with myself and the people around me about that fact, right, that I grew up in Baltimore City, right? Single mom, not seeing very many healthy relationships around me, right? Not really. feeling like I was witnessing a whole lot of thriving in my community, just in general, right, as a black woman, you know, being raised by single mom, and I think there was this part of me, right, that was like, I want to help people, I need to be a part of the fixing the saving the healing, right, that whatever language you want to want to use, right. And so as I've done a lot of my work, I my passion has always been couples work and relationships, work recognizing that our attachments, our connections, right, our experiences, and our relationships are a huge part of what makes us who we are, what makes up our worldview. And, you know, so it's always been a value of mine. But as I've done my healing work and, um, you know, really been focusing on my own, like personal alignment, and like codependent no more, right? Hashtag read them. As I've gotten into a space where, really I am wanting to do and I am doing less of the like therapy, you know, fee for service style of showing up for the community and for the field of mental health and more, taking a holistic approach to healing, right, recognizing that healing while being wellness, right? Is it goes so beyond the therapy room, right, that we can show up for 15 minutes every single week for the rest of our lives and not change a thing. Right? If we're not being intentional about applying those things to our everyday lives and figuring out how to translate right what we're getting from the therapy, the therapy space into wellness. So a lot of what I'm doing right now is workshops, trainings, community education, community events, just to as the world I think And as communities are destigmatize and therapy, trying to take it a little bit further, and D stigmatizing wellness as a whole, right? So we're doing like crafting corners where we're doing series is like beating for self care. Right? We're, we're tapping into our creativity and showing people that self care and like showing up for yourself does not have to always be this like, big, intense, deep jargony thing, right? That sometimes you can just make a bracelet, and feel really mindful. And never I select that process, right. And I do that with a group of people who are talking about wellness, and family and love and spirituality. And so, I've, I really, I think, got into a space of maybe like less pressure, like less of the shirt statements of what my presence in the mental health field is supposed to look like. Right? Right. So we've been doing movement therapy classes, which is very much helping folks to, and honestly, I'm getting a lot out of it too, right? To really connect to the mind body connection, right? Recognizing that regulating our nervous systems and like feeling empowered and safe, when within our physical selves is a huge part of emotional, mental, spiritual, relational wellness, right that, like, if I don't feel comfortable and safe and empowered in my own body, me showing up for a partner. I mean, that's gonna be hard, right, like, so anyway, doing a lot of this, like in from the inside out style of helping folks create safety and space. Alignment.

Gordon Brewer
One of the things that occurs to me, as you're saying, all of that is what you I think what you've landed on is something that's been on my radar, especially over the last year or two, and that is the healing power of community. Yeah. And that, you know, when we're going through tough stuff, and we learned this, you know, the silver lining to COVID, has been the fact that when we get isolated where don't do well, you know, when we get disconnected from people, when disconnected from our community, or people that we feel safe with, and all of that sort of thing. That's when things can really take a nosedive. For us, I'm thinking emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, all of that, all that sort of thing. And so I think, I think you, you've, you're, you're doing something that is, is really pretty brilliant, in that I like that term of the Inside Out of really looking at what is it that, you know, recognizing as a person that is a therapist to help her, all of that sort of thing? Recognizing, okay, what I need is no different than what other people so how can I? How can I help them with that?

Danielle Branche
Mm hmm. Yes, that's exactly yes. That's exactly the space that we are coming from right then. This the style of training of like, blank slate, and like, somehow I'm supposed to leave my human self at the door when I come into the therapy room, but also, I'm supposed to know everything. There's just like, very unrealistic expectations, floating around that, that really creates a lot of shame, I think for a lot of us, because it's inevitable that we won't live up to those expectations. Like it just is inevitable, right?

Gordon Brewer
Yeah, I'm with you. I will say an amen here, because that's exactly the kind of stuff that I've been thinking a lot about, in recent years is that in particularly my work with people doing supervision with people that are in the middle, you know, going through the licensure stuff, what, what we get trained in our graduate programs and all that sort of thing, the whole thing about the blank slate I've kind of figured out that's not always so helpful to people. I think there's, there's a lot of therapy and a lot of healing that can occur by a little more self disclosure about sharing, okay, you know, I understand what you're going through because I've gone through the same thing. And this is, this is what I found works for me. And doing that in a therapeutic setting. And being able to get people to feel safe and be able to share things in a safe place is just is just huge in my mind. Yeah, yeah. And

Danielle Branche
I think research has shown that the relationship between helper and like person who is showing up to help themselves is one of the number one key components to growth and change and safety. And so like, connecting human to human, we know is the key to success, but then somehow in our training that gets lost, right? And in the sort of practice of therapy, and so Oh, look at that I use.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah, just gave me a free plug there. That's good. That's good.

Danielle Branche
Yeah. So that's what we're doing. Like, that's really what we are focusing our energy and attention on and like, really just creating safe space and programming for clinicians specifically to begin to learn what that means for them in the field, right, like to really acknowledge, like, own respect their experience of that, and then begin to build from there, right, not just sitting in it and soaking in it and like being mad about it, right, like being mad about it, and then making a choice about what that means moving forward. Yeah, right. What does alignment look like? What does really freeing up your human self to be a part of the process look like? Right,

Gordon Brewer
right. Yeah. I love that concept you were talking about just with doing like crafting and that kind of thing? I don't, I don't have it on right now. But one of the things that I started doing recently, and I get my friends tease me about it, but I started doing those paracord bracelets. Yeah, those survival bracelets and stuff like that. And yeah, it's just there's something about it, just working with your hands, and being able to create something that is just healing. And I think that doing that in the context of a community, where you're both kind of working on the same things, but then you're having these deep, meaningful conversations about what's going on in your life. And that sort of thing. I'm reminded of least, you know, I think about probably our grandparents and that sort of thing. And with it being summertime it as we're recording this, just thinking about sitting on my grandmother's porch, and breaking things, you know, from the garden, you know, just, you know, green beans and are doing something along those lines, you know, just and then just having those conversations. Absolutely, yeah.

Danielle Branche
Yeah. I mean, it's definitely been just an eye opening experience, right. Recognizing the importance of community, I think it's almost like I found out that we were complicating the process of healing. Like almost, it's almost as if we weren't trusting the fact that our brains and our bodies want to healed like our brains, and our bodies want freedom for us. And they like, our natural processes, like the regulation of the nervous system, and all these sorts of things. And we were built, sir, growth and healing and survival and evolution and all these things. And sometimes we just have to get out of our own way and just create space that feels connecting, right? Like, if we can just simplify, sometimes at least sometimes, right? The process, then our bodies and our brains can be free to do that healing work by connecting with other people that feel safe.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah. So yeah, so we talked about this a little bit. But what if you don't mind sharing? What were some of the catalysts for you of changing the way you're thinking about how we do therapy and that sort of thing?

Danielle Branche
Yeah, I think I think for a while, I felt burnt out. Right. So I've been doing therapy for 10 years. And I think maybe in 2019 2020, like when the pandemic started and things like that, I really started to feel the burnout setting in and as I like, unpacked it and did my own therapy with my therapist and journaled and all these sorts of things. Greetings, I really realized that I was not burnt out I was misaligned, because every time I will take a break, and I will come back to it, I will be burned out again, within like a month or something. Right. And that's when, you know, like this is this is not about needing a break. This is not about, oh, I need to take better care of myself in order for this to like, feel better. No, this is because the this thing like this way of showing up feels misaligned with me and like, my, like, my beliefs and my values and, and my identity and all these different things. And so I started processing why, like, what is this misalignment? Like, where is it coming from? And that's when I really started to realize how many should statements were wrapped up in it, right? Like how many things I were I was doing, you know, because I felt like that's what I was supposed to be doing. Right? Or that's how I was supposed to be doing it right? Or that's when I was supposed to do like, so I just I was able to once I assessed the fact that it was a misalignment and where it was coming from, I really started to recognize that, man, there are some gaps, right? Like, there are some things that we're not as a community doing well, I'm always right in terms of like our teaching and holding space for ourselves and for like the actual community of helpers and healers. Then, like, you were saying this earlier, Gordon, I started doing supervision. And then it was affirmed. And it was like, Oh, snap. I'm not the only one that's like feeling these things is not just an individual experience. For me, this is happening in our field, right. And I realized just like the repetition, I was hearing myself over and over again in my supervisees. And I was like, Oh, this is like our problem. Yeah. And so that really was like professionally, some of the catalyst type stuff. But then, on a personal level, I spoke to you about this, Gordon, I lost my grandmother a couple of years back. And I think the what, what grief does to your brain. And at least, you know, my personal experience of it. It blew the walls out on so many of my frameworks. And like paradigms, like so many of my like, Should statements and boxes that I've been carrying it like, It challenged so many of those because of just like the unique experience that grief brings here. And so I think I like that it almost was like a season where I began to give myself permission to challenge where I really started to. Another piece of this is I remember in one of my therapy sessions where we were processing this grief of my grandmother cuz I my husband and I we brought her in for in home hospice. And I mean, it really was one of the hardest seasons of my life. And so I was processing this with my therapist. And we were talking about like the gifts that I got from my grandmother called her Nana, right? So gifts from mana. And one of the things that she used to say to me all the time was Girl, please, like my grandmother was so I don't want to say nonchalant, but like, what's the language I'm looking for? Like outside of the boxes, like she, like, I thought I remember when she was here. I really, in many ways thought my grandma was kind of weird and kind of spotty. Like she was very like spunky and like, like, I think again before I used to see it as maybe like aggression or like, no filter, maybe like no filter, right? And so as I like processed and like began to embody some of those attributes for myself. I'm just starting to realize, like maybe some of the spaces in her evolution that she had gotten to that I was not right is detaching from should statements detaching from rigidity of systems that were not built for you detaching from narratives that are not helpful, but actually harmful and repressing, right. So anyway, I began using some of that self talk from that gift that I got from my Nana, which is like when I find myself in some sort of overthinking spirally shame filled thing, my girl please, please Yeah, sort of given myself the realization, that is, life goes so much beyond and it's so much bigger than any of the things in the stuff in the bullshit and the short statements and all these things, right. So anyway, so it was like a dual experience of like professional, like burnout misalignment and unpacking of the stuff, right and seeing myself and so many of my supervisees and some of the struggles that they have had in our field. And then, you know, having that experience of grief and loss and, and allowing that experience to really honestly, it sounds so dramatic, and I don't care, right. But to really transform the way that I like see things and life and boxes and structures. Yes, yes. It statements essentially.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah. As you as you were talking about all that, Danielle, one of the things that just came to mind for me, and just thinking about how we do things in our world, and just how most of us were trained in graduate school, and that sort of thing. We're, we're kind of, we're kind of given this idea that this whole imposter syndrome idea would come out of graduate school thinking, Oh, we're not good enough. Yeah, we're not, we're not qualified enough yet. And you've got to do all the jump through all these hoops, and you got to do all these things. And then we'll let you know, when you're when you're good enough. Or, you know, you're good until you have this certification or that certification. Or, you know, this many years of experience, you know, and I think I think it just feeds into this whole, all of the should statements, and all of that sort of thing that you're talking about. And the truth of the matter is, is that I think anybody that, you know, I'm not saying that we don't need training, and I'm not saying that we don't need to understand how the how the human mind works, and how all of those kinds of things, but a person's ability to help others is there. And, and don't cut yourself short on your effectiveness by thinking you should do this, or you ought to do that. Or once once somebody rubber stamps you with a certain certain, you know, credential or whatever, then you then you're free to, to actually help people. You know, I don't know if that's getting yet what's your no?

Danielle Branche
Yeah, 100% No, 100%, you're reminded me of, I didn't see your training. Um, and one of the participants, she said, she made a realisation, or made a point that like really go over what you're saying, where we're, we're maybe the only field or at least one of the only fields that in order to feel good enough. We are like spending ridiculous amounts of money on training and certifications, and then not even like to make more money. It's not like, Oh, I'm getting this certification. And then my, my pay will increase. No, I'm getting their certification just to feel like I'm good at just like, I'm good enough for this part of me, right, like, like most fields, you you go for the search so that you can like go up in the ranks, right, like you spend this money to, to niche down or like to clarify your your your role, so that you can like go into this other position with more money or whatever right to go up. That's not what it's like for us. We do that in order to feel like we're just good enough with well.

Gordon Brewer
The truth of the matter is, is that, you know, I probably get some some kickback on this, but I think that our, our clients could really couldn't care less whether we have those certifications or not, they just want a real person in front of them, that understands what they're going through, and can be there for them and be real with them and be genuine with them and offer them some sort of way to to move through whatever it is that they're that they're going through.

Danielle Branche
Really, absolutely. I completely agree. Right. And just like you said earlier, it's not as if these things don't matter. Right. But But I think we make those decisions out of a place of imposter syndrome, instead of out of a place of like genuine passion. Last time it does, like right desire to do that particular thing.

Gordon Brewer
Right, right. Yeah. Well, well, Danielle, I've got to be aware of our time and your time. And, you know, I think we could have this conversation all day long. Yeah, this is, this is great, great and meaningful stuff. And kudos to you for, you know, in ways standing up to, you know, conventional way of thinking of things. And let's figure out how to do this differently.

Danielle Branche
Yeah, thank you so much, Gordon, for hanging out.

Gordon Brewer
And I hope we can do this again, tell folks how they can get in touch with you and find out more about your work and what you have to offer.

Danielle Branche
Yeah, thank you. So we have an Instagram page where we are, you know, given out content and sharing with you what we're doing that is branches.of dot Life dot LLC. All right. And then we have a YouTube channel called the human behind the therapist, that we actually just launched this year, and we're feeling really good and excited about and people are responding well to. Alright, so that's the human behind the therapist. And then we also have our tic tac page, which is the same as the Instagram page, which is branches out of that life dot LLC, and then our website at WWW dot branches of life. therapy.com.

Gordon Brewer
Awesome. Awesome. I will have the links here in the show notes in the show summary for people to get to that easily and Yeah, and so, Danielle is so good to reconnect with you and I will hopefully have another conversation here soon.

Danielle Branche
Yes, yes.

Gordon Brewer
Take care, you'd say