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Episode 7: Called to...Our Clinical Niche
16 Plays1 month ago
What in the world is a clinical niche? What is the relationship of the niche to power, oppression, and ownership? We discuss this in detail.
Reminder: As usual, this episode is not meant for tiny ears.
Reminder 2: We recorded our first few episodes in batches, so our time context may not align with release dates.
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Music: Calypsonian by Eshi Era (Standard License) Check out their Artist Profile here: Eshi Era
Until next time. REST easy.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Launch
00:00:20
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Welcome back to Called to Healing. I'm Blanca. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist in the state of Nevada.
00:00:28
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I'm Dr. Ksera Dyette I'm a licensed clinical psychologist located in the state of Massachusetts. ah We are both in the U.S. and we are settlers on Turtle Island and we pay our respect to our ancestors ah who have stewarded this land for generations, both past and present.
00:00:50
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
So as we're recording this episode... The show is finally out. So we're recording today is in May 12th, 2025.
Fears and Identity in Podcasting
00:01:01
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And i wanted to spend a quick moment with you, Blanca, talking about how you feel about the episode being out. You know, when we first recorded in January, we were anticipating a lot of things and many things have happened since then.
00:01:18
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And when we say things, we mean political things.
00:01:23
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And yeah, I just wanted to do a pulse check about that. And it doesn't have to be that specifically, but just how are you feeling?
00:01:31
Blanca Torres, LMFT
oh man and there's so many ways for me to answer that question so i think i'll just Answer both. How am I feeling about the podcast? I'm excited. um There's still a little bit of fear, but as Audre Lorde said, there's always going to be fear. So i'm this is a bridge. This is not her direct quote. quote quote um You're going to be afraid either way. So you might as well speak up.
Impact of Political Climate on Identity
00:01:58
Blanca Torres, LMFT
So, I mean, to answer a question ah about the podcast, I'm feeling good. I'm feeling excited. There's a little bit of fear about the exposure, but I think that that is just kind of part of the process.
00:02:13
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um But I'm feeling okay. I'm feeling pretty grounded about it. In terms of the world at large, um or specifically what's happening today,
00:02:25
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um it's a struggle. I'm struggling. um There's a lot of fear there too. um I contain privilege and oppression, of course, multiple intersections of those.
00:02:42
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And the reality is like a lot of immigrant communities are being target right targeted right now. And though I'm not an immigrant, my parents are. And In the eyes of American yt soupremacy and colonialism, I look like an immigrant.
00:03:00
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And so I'm supposed to travel to California. and even though I'm only going from Nevada, i actually was worried that my new passport wasn't going to come in time.
00:03:13
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And it's because I'm just genuinely worried that if I get pulled over, depending on who that person is and how they're feeling that day, they may or may not decide to ask me for my quote unquote papers.
00:03:29
Blanca Torres, LMFT
So part of me sometimes feels like this fear is...
00:03:37
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Part of me wants to gaslight myself into saying this fear isn't real. It's not about me, but it is. It it really is. And how many American citizens or how many people who are just...
00:03:51
Blanca Torres, LMFT
you know, living their life, haven't been forcibly grabbed from the street or from their homes um by eyece agents. So no one is safe and I'm terrified.
00:04:04
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And I'm doing my best to take care of myself to show up for myself and for my clients and take it one day at a time. um So how are you doing?
00:04:18
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah, I think like when we were when we started recording and, you know, we've talked about we've checked in every week, pulse checking with one another when we've recorded, like I felt okay.
00:04:33
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
for a while, like, steady, very much like, this is not any different from the life I've always lived. And when I first came to this country, like, fears of deportation was just like a thing that I lived with as a young child all the way up throughout schooling until I got my citizenship.
00:05:01
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And...
00:05:05
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I think I spent a lot of time trying to convince people that the things that they thought wouldn't happen could and would happen. and there's a bit of like, yeah, like I've been saying this for years, years.
00:05:26
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I, and this is not one of those things that I enjoy being right about either.
00:05:31
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Of course.
00:05:32
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Um, and I think I told you that like, and for some people, this may seem really silly, but for me, Like I had my meltdown when they were like, we're not going to test milk anymore.
00:05:45
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Oh my God.
00:05:47
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And that was because I was just like, you know, just little things are holding me together this point.
00:05:55
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Steady things that I can rely on, like maybe not getting poisoned by my food. And
00:06:03
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
it just felt like, okay, this is a lot. Like this is too much. And yeah, You know, maybe for someone, they're like, why did it take that? And it's like, well, you know, everybody's different. um But in the background, I've had worries about my own family.
00:06:16
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And even like, even though I'm very excited about our podcast, I'm worried about
00:06:23
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
it as a sort of an existing entity at this time and what the implications of its existence might be for me and people I care about.
00:06:36
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And
00:06:40
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Like having conversations with folks about like, okay, like I need you to be thinking about what would happen to me if X, right?
00:06:47
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right.
00:06:47
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Like what,
00:06:47
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right.
Podcast Purpose and Naivety Concerns
00:06:48
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
and and and making sure that they understand that these are very serious conversations that I'm not saying it in jest in any way.
00:06:57
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Like I'm like, I need to know. that you will help me. Right.
00:07:04
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
So I'm both very excited about our podcast and like worried. And I think, as you said, like I'd be I'd be afraid either way because the track record of my career and what I've always done publicly is not something that I can erase either.
00:07:23
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
So that's kind of where I am right now.
00:07:28
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Um, and I, I worried when I was editing our first episode, I'm like, Ooh, are we going to sound like super naive?
00:07:41
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Uh, and I don't think we did, but you know, we even said like, there's no way to know. And then there's also ways in which some of this has been a part of our lived experience for a long time.
00:07:53
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Um, but certainly a lot has changed since we recorded that first episode.
00:07:57
Blanca Torres, LMFT
yeah
00:07:59
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah. So here we are.
00:08:02
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Here we are. What is it? We're showing up despite it to spite it.
00:08:06
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Despite it, yes, we are, we are.
00:08:07
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah.
00:08:10
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And um I still remain dedicated to the reason that I want, the reasons that I wanted to do this, among which was having these kinds of conversations, but also contextualizing these conversations within our field because, you know, despite everything that's going on you and I are still showing up for people every day.
00:08:32
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
in our capacity as clinicians and consultants.
00:08:38
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And there are other people who are still doing that too.
00:08:41
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yes.
00:08:42
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And they also need this. And that's how I'm grounding and anchoring myself. And who knows, you know, maybe this may become obsolete.
00:08:53
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I have no idea.
Exploring Niches in Mental Health
00:08:55
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
But for now it isn't. And therefore today we're talking about our clinical niche. and persona and what that even means and how our cultural identities are wrapped up in that conversation.
00:09:14
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
So Blanca, what is our shared understanding of like what a niche is and where do we start?
00:09:20
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Well, I mean, I think we should start with the colonial definition. And our old friend, Merriam Webster, defines a niche as a place, employment, status, or activity for which a person or thing is best fitted.
00:09:39
Blanca Torres, LMFT
For example, she finally found her niche. also defined as a habitat supplying the factors necessary for the existence of an organism or species.
00:09:52
Blanca Torres, LMFT
The ecological role of an organism. Organism. Ah, orgasm.
00:10:00
Blanca Torres, LMFT
It's also defined as the ecological role of an organism in a community, especially in regard to food consumption. And then finally, ah specialized market.
00:10:13
Blanca Torres, LMFT
So that's what our friend Merriam Webster defines niche as. What do you think about when you think of the concept of a niche when it comes to ah practicing within mental health?
00:10:25
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um I mean, I think about two different parts of it. I think about niche as partly population. So the groups of people that you work with, like you usually would specialize in working with a certain population and relatedly.
00:10:43
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
what kinds of interventions you specialize in for working with that population. And when you had, like when we were um trying to choose which definitions we wanted to use and look at, ah you had said that one of the ones that you read kind of stuck out to you.
00:11:04
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
ah Which one was it?
00:11:06
Blanca Torres, LMFT
The habitat supplying the factors necessary for the existence of an organism or species.
00:11:13
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah, why that one?
00:11:16
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Well, I think before I answer that, I want to say if someone, based on what you said, if someone were to come up to me and say, Blanca, what is your niche? I would immediately say women of color who identify as feminists.
00:11:33
Blanca Torres, LMFT
That's how I would define my niche. So considering that and like, I'm sorry, maybe this is too woo woo or I'm
00:11:45
Blanca Torres, LMFT
reading too much into it, but I just think about a habitat supplying the factors necessary for the existence of an organism or species.
Indigenous Healing Practices in Modern Therapy
00:11:55
Blanca Torres, LMFT
So I think about my clients who've had therapists before who maybe weren't culture culturally aligned, which you don't necessarily have to be, but then also didn't have the cultural humility to support my these clients and their lived experience. And I think about how they've come to me and, you know, maybe I didn't pathologize the fact that not every detail of their personal life is readily available to their parents in order to live a happy full life, right?
00:12:26
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Maybe about clients who have difficult relationships with their parents and would love to be able to cut them off, but due to cultural expectations, they can't.
00:12:41
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And I've made space for that. And so again, maybe I'm just speaking too highly of it all, but it speaks to me to hear ah habitat giving an organism what they need to survive.
00:12:59
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um So that's why I liked that one.
00:13:00
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah.
00:13:03
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah. I mean, and when you said it, like what stood out to me was that ecological piece, right? Like the the niche referring to the role that a species plays in its environment.
00:13:17
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And then specifically the way in which colonization interferes with that process, right?
00:13:25
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Say more.
00:13:26
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Like that, that leads and and again, we're speaking ecologically, right? But like, colonization, like when another if another species invades, right, when a new species colonizes an area, it can interrupt or shift, right?
00:13:46
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
what the niche has established um and they have to find the way to establish themselves in new conditions or maybe they die out and they don't survive, right? There's a lot of layers ah to what happens. And, you know, i forgive me ecologists if you're listening and you're like, girl,
00:14:04
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
You have butchered this, but this is how I have understood it. But connecting sort of that same concept, this requires some brain work, okay? And I'm doing it in real time. Connecting that same concept to our field, you know, what I was talking about with you when we were thinking about this conversation was, like, Western psychology, Western ideas of mental health, and the way in which it's done exactly that.
00:14:34
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
right deemed certain interventions as more helpful or less helpful for certain groups of people, and things that were known to be indigenous healing practices and very helpful for communities were shunned.
00:14:51
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
But then once research says it's legitimate... it's okay. And even as a student, that was something that I was always attuned to just like sort of the repackaging of these concepts and the way in which that repackaging is meant to serve this like Western and industrial, you know, individualized folks and shun other groups of people for things that have existed for centuries.
00:15:26
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah. So that's that's kind of what jumped out at me when I was thinking about this. Especially, like, the thing, somebody's like, I'm still lost, I'm thinking about, like, mindfulness practice, for example.
00:15:39
Blanca Torres, LMFT
right
00:15:40
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right? Like, that's a really good example of, like, something that could would have been seen as, you know, um not legitimate until Jon Kabat-Zinn and other folks doing research said that.
00:15:54
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right. And you brought up other practices, right, that are sort of in a similar space.
00:16:00
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah. Thinking of like the how psychedelic assisted therapy is a big thing that's happening right now. And and it is very effective and great that research is being done. But lot of a lot of communities have already been doing this work
Financial and Professional Barriers in Therapy
00:16:22
Blanca Torres, LMFT
An amount of time, like I can't, thousands of years ah more, right?
00:16:25
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um
00:16:26
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Thinking about indigenous healers in Peru and ayahuasca practices or aren't there peyote ceremonies with indigenous communities in um colonial United States, right?
00:16:43
Blanca Torres, LMFT
or the big one that I'm thinking lately is somatics. Somatics is everywhere now.
00:16:49
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Everywhere all the time, my Pilates and yoga studio that I go to is doing a nervous system ah workshop for $45 a head. And like, no, thank you. I'm not signing up for that. Or, you know, um healing bowls, breath work, all of these like indigenous practices now being co-opted by the capitalistic definition of therapy, we are, we're taking these indigenous practices, we're whitewashing them, and then we're selling them back to our communities. um
00:17:34
Blanca Torres, LMFT
So, I mean, I definitely think it's a problem across the board in mental health practices.
00:17:41
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah. And when we talk about this, we're not setting ourselves outside of this conversation in any way, right? Like we were taught interventions.
00:17:52
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
We go to trainings on said interventions or even and work with working with certain groups of people.
00:18:00
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And
00:18:03
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
even though I've been accessing a lot more decolonized teachings and spaces, still, Right. Even like there's still so many ways in which I can't totally extract myself from the reality that this is because I can never claim to know 100 percent the healing practice of another group of people.
00:18:28
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um But what I can know is the way in which the field has tried to dictate what is legitimate and what is not. And um I'm going off on a slight tangent here for a second, but I was thinking about this, like, even with respect to coaching recently, because I was I posted something on my Instagram, um my the antiableist doc Instagram about how one of the things that I had to overcome or struggle with and still grapple with is like the looking down upon.
00:19:03
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
of coaches by mental health practitioners. And I've really had to interrogate them like, wait a minute. Like I had that feeling too. Like I have been the person who was disparaged quote life coaches.
00:19:13
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah.
00:19:17
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I've been the person who said like business coaches are more legitimate than life coaches and like never interrogated until more recent years why it was that I was led to believe that any of those things were true statements.
00:19:32
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And why is it that we have to see ourselves as somehow like a scarce commodity when everyone can benefit from different types of healing and intervention practices?
00:19:47
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And what is it about the mental health field that benefits from me believing that other types of healing and interventions are less than?
00:19:58
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Gatekeeping.
00:19:59
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Well, of course, but like it's money,
00:20:00
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yep.
00:20:05
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
ah right? Money and oppression, money and oppression. ah And i I had, I had shame about it because I was like, oh, you're now doing this thing like other. And and I know for a fact that there are other mental health practitioners who still think coaches are like less than right.
00:20:25
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
But we're doing different things.
00:20:27
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right. And there's room for all of it.
00:20:29
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And right. And like the idea of a mental health crisis should not exist if we believe, right, that there are many different ways that people can access support and all of it could be legitimate.
Evolving Niches and Success Measures
00:20:53
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
So just been a thought I've been having and I know I i took it somewhere, yeah. yeah
00:20:59
Blanca Torres, LMFT
But it's all related. And if you think about it, yeah this is how your niche changed.
00:21:06
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yes. Yeah.
00:21:08
Blanca Torres, LMFT
you it's We're still talking about your niche. It's just an evolved niche, right? Right now, again, if I'm going to answer off the top of my head, I work with women of color who identify as feminists.
00:21:21
Blanca Torres, LMFT
That niche might change. at any point in the next couple of years or months and, or even as I shift my practice from in-person to online only, which is happening this month. Yay!
00:21:33
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yay.
00:21:34
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um
00:21:35
Blanca Torres, LMFT
That's a change in the niche. And I do think, you know, when we're indoctrinated
00:21:46
Blanca Torres, LMFT
by mental health practitioner programs, therapy counseling programs, um, we leave with a very specific idea of what it means to be successful in this work.
00:22:02
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And we're talking about having an office and then, and not even just having an office, but having an office that you don't share with anyone else. That's yours alone. So you can decorate it however you want.
00:22:13
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And then it's maybe becoming a supervisor. And then maybe it's teaching classes or maybe it's getting your doctorate. Like, well, in my case, specifically because I come from a background in, of a, I'm a mental health practitioner on a master's level.
00:22:29
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I'm seeing some of my peers now look into PhD or PsyD other kind of doctorate programs. And those are measures of success for them.
00:22:40
Blanca Torres, LMFT
it doesn't have to be a measure of success for absolutely everyone. i forgot where I was going with all of this, but all of it to say that the ah These beliefs about coaches versus therapists, master's level therapists versus doctorate level therapists, and are you a supervisor or not, and do you have an online presence or not.
00:23:03
Blanca Torres, LMFT
ah It's just all the stuff we were indoctrinated with in our training.
00:23:11
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah.
00:23:11
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Oh, and which certificates you have. and and And why are you trained in EMDR but don't have a certificate in EMDR? Because I don't have $5,000 to keep doing what I'm doing already. So why do I need the certificate?
00:23:27
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Anyway.
Therapist Pressures and Client Care
00:23:27
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yes. Yeah, yeah. It's a money sink. It's a huge money sink for people to leave feeling less than so that they keep spending their money
00:23:40
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Because they continue to feel less than. And by the way, I'm not saying that people should not be... And I want to be careful about how i say this, but like I think it's important to be trained appropriately, whatever that means, right?
00:24:00
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I'm not even necessarily saying that within a colonial frame. To be trained appropriately to work with different groups of people. Right. Like, I don't think anybody should be out here believing that they can serve everyone.
00:24:13
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
and And because I do think that that does a disservice to folks and we can like get into that a little bit more um and what I mean by that.
00:24:23
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
But I do think that there is a way in which.
00:24:29
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
The model serves to feed into feelings of inadequacy. um And make you feel like you don't have enough to be able to do X, whatever that is.
00:24:46
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And, right now, know you mentioned it, like I am... I mean, I do psychological testing in my practice still with um primarily neurodivergent folks across um age range um and trauma-focused evals, ah but the other sort of client shift where it's less therapy and more coaching is working specifically with clinicians of color who want liberatory practices.
00:25:13
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And what i I'm seeing over and over and over again with the folks that I speak to is that there's something that they feel needs to happen before they can have their practice. Or they have their practice, but they somehow believe that they're the reason they don't have clients.
00:25:31
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And if they just had more training, that would somehow solve this issue. And when really what I tend to see is a proliferation of feelings of deep inadequacy.
00:25:43
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Largely connected to the field. And the way they were trained or even what other professionals said to them.
00:25:51
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
That's the work that we're doing. And the marketing and the belief change, like that's like the comma, right? Like it's included in the work that I'm doing, but that's not the bulk of the work.
00:26:04
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And it's so, and that's, that leads back to why I wanted to do the podcast because it's like, it blows my mind, like the level of trauma. And even listening back to when I talked about my grad school experience, I was like, damn, that was like messed up. It was really messed up.
00:26:24
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
ah
00:26:24
Blanca Torres, LMFT
yeah
00:26:25
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I wasn't even aware as I, like I've known intellectually for a long time, but to drop back into it and then to listen to it.
00:26:34
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Sometimes our endless pursuit of certain certifications is is about that feeling of inadequacy.
00:26:39
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And feeling like you have to serve everyone and do it well. When in reality, i don't feel a need to compete with any other therapist out there.
00:26:53
Blanca Torres, LMFT
they are so there the need is so great and there's not enough of us to fill the gaps. So I don't feel, I really don't feel the need. And it was highlighted for me actually last week because I had a call with a potential client and they were well aligned in every way.
00:27:11
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And one of the things they really wanted to work on was their OCD. And that is just not one of my strong suits. And I could sit here and judge myself for it.
00:27:23
Blanca Torres, LMFT
But the reality is, is I don't have to be the therapist for absolutely everyone. And I had plenty of referrals ready to go for that person. And that person was shocked.
00:27:36
Blanca Torres, LMFT
They were like, oh my God, that is amazing. i None of the other therapists I talked to offered me referrals for people who might be an even better fit. I'm like, why do I want to take your money?
00:27:49
Blanca Torres, LMFT
and your time, and your energy, if I know someone else can be better suited for you. I don't have to be everyone's therapist, the perfect therapist for everybody. And I did tell this person, we could do great work around several of these domains that you're talking about.
00:28:07
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And the OCD is going to intersect with all of these. And that is going to be a big part that's going to be missed by me. And I could go on PESI,
00:28:19
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I could go on any other continuing education website and get trained up on this stuff. And I think I will because it is information I want. But there we go again, having to spend a additional money to to what?
00:28:41
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Be the perfect therapist for absolutely every person that calls me? ah I don't think so.
00:28:45
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah.
00:28:46
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I'm tired.
00:28:47
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah. And it's not, it's not possible. It's not possible. And this is, and it it i it may not even be responsible.
00:28:57
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right.
00:28:58
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And this is a conversation that I had with my old therapist, um if he's listening. um Love him to death. ah And by the time we ended, the conversations that we were having was like, I think that you were great for X, Y, and Z. And now I'm at a point where I need this.
00:29:18
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And you've clearly told me that like, you cannot offer that. And and i think because of the relationship and the importance of the relationship, he struggled to be the one to say, okay, it's time.
Niches and Client Care
00:29:36
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
i i kind of had to be the person to be like, it's time. And that was really hard because I think that we are responsible.
00:29:45
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
We, the person with the most power in this arrangement, are responsible for being clear about that. And there have been times where I've noticed it even when I'm working with someone and things change.
00:30:01
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I'm like, you know, i think that what you need right now is different than what I can provide. And I know that that might be very hard to hear because of the relationship. And also it's not fair for me to keep working with you, knowing that you deserve something else.
00:30:20
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right.
00:30:21
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Um, and, you know, you'll hear these people keep some folks in treatment for like ever, and there's no movement. Right.
00:30:33
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Um, and I know we've like, we're sort of dancing around this, but like, I think in some ways we're sort of answering this question of like, why, why might, why niches might be important. Um,
00:30:45
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um And we've talked about like the power implications of even just the idea of a niche, but you know, like what makes it important to you?
00:30:54
Blanca Torres, LMFT
To have a niche.
00:30:56
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah.
00:31:04
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I think part of it, and and again, I'm thinking through this in real time also. So for some grace, um as I kind of have this half-baked thought, but I think having a niche is important to me because part of it, it allows me to show up as I am.
00:31:28
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And I don't know if this is better suited for a different episode maybe on like clinical persona.
00:31:34
Blanca Torres, LMFT
But I just like, I like being who I am. Of course, you know, there's certain boundaries adhere. Of course, there's, you know, my best friend isn't going to get therapist Blanca.
00:31:48
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And my clients aren't going to get best friend Blanca. But they both Blanca. Blanca. They just do. And I do feel like having the niche I have gives me space for that.
00:32:06
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Again, I don't know that this is the perfect thought, but that's that's the thought that comes up for me. What about you?
00:32:14
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah, for me, i think it was a combination of both being called, you know, if we're going back to just like even the reason for our show title being what it is, feeling called to work with certain groups of people.
00:32:31
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And those groups of people unsurprisingly happened to be my people, as we say, right?
00:32:37
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right.
00:32:38
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Like I was working with immigrant folks, neurodivergent folks, queer folks, ah with the overlapping um feature, for lack of a better word, of complex trauma.
00:32:52
Blanca Torres, LMFT
right
00:32:53
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right. Like that, that's where I live and hang out. And I think as I i talked about, um just like the call to like go to school for this is that I felt like accessing this information gave me like a certain understanding of my own experiences, especially as an immigrant, um, black queer woman,
00:33:22
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um That it helped me metabolize things that I don't know I otherwise would have. And in the metabolization of that, I was like, what would it be like if other folx like me could have that?
00:33:42
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right.
00:33:42
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
What would it be like for their therapist to be thinking systemically, for their assessor to be thinking systemically, um and about the ways in which identity and systems plays such a huge role in our mental well-being?
00:34:02
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And that's kind of, sorry, that's why, like, that's kind of where, like, my niche came from.
00:34:02
Blanca Torres, LMFT
a hundred percent.
00:34:09
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And within that, I had certain interventions that I were trained in, some which I held on to, some which I discarded, depending on what I noticed.
00:34:22
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um For example, discarded trauma-focused CBT Um, because I found, especially with my complex trauma population, progressive muscle relaxation was actually super activating, especially, especially for sexual trauma.
00:34:39
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I was like, Ooh, I don't know if anybody really thought about this. And I saw it like with a couple of different clients. And then I was like, nevermind. And so then for me, it became like with my kiddos, like more play therapy and then conversations about how do you make sure play therapy is explained as a legitimate intervention to parents and cognitive processing therapy, but like narrative work, you know? And so um I know I'm speaking in a lot of jumbly terms and, you know, some of our listeners may or may not be familiar with that language, but long story short,
00:35:13
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um I think the biggest thing that I gained was that like systems piece, identity piece. Yeah.
00:35:22
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah. and And, you know, everything you've been saying has reminded me of There's a practitioner in social media. She used to have a business called The Healing Strategy. I believe she's shifted out of that.
00:35:36
Blanca Torres, LMFT
ah Josie something. But she i used to follow her very closely while I was still in my grad program because I was so excited about the work she was doing. And I'll never forget she once said that your niche more or less is an unhealed version of you.
00:35:57
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um which i do I do wonder how much that plays a role.
00:36:00
Blanca Torres, LMFT
and And unhealed, you know, we don't have to get into all the semantics, of but a past version of you. And I have two very specific experiences with therapists that have come up in thinking about this. I had a therapist that was an older white woman And I was talking about some experiences of racism. And she said, why is everything about race for you?
00:36:28
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
oof
00:36:28
Blanca Torres, LMFT
She didn't say, I hear you. She didn't give space to my feelings my even or cognitive process, even nothing. She just immediately was like, why is everything about race for you?
00:36:45
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And then another one, the dismissiveness
00:36:45
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
The aggression. That's just. Yes, it's such an aggressive statement.
00:36:53
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I don't think I saw her after that. I think that was the last one. um And then i had an experience with an older therapist of color. um And it was specifically at a time in my life where i was experiencing a lot of relational trauma um with the men I was dating.
00:37:14
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And she said, oh, you know, you need to read this book. And it's called Why Men Love Bitches.
00:37:22
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
No way.
00:37:23
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I swear to God. And of course, of course, I was immediately like, no.
00:37:24
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
No way.
Systemic Influences and Decolonization
00:37:30
Blanca Torres, LMFT
But I was like in my mid-ish 20s. So was like, okay, whatever. She's a professional. Maybe let me just read this.
00:37:42
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And I couldn't get past like the first chapter or so.
00:37:48
Blanca Torres, LMFT
It was conflating men to animals and using sex as a bait for them to get them to behave the way you want them to. And if you give them sex too soon, it's just blah.
00:38:00
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Oh, God.
00:38:01
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And so I think about those two experiences. And now I think about the fact that I'm telling you I work with primarily women of color who are feminists. Tell me how my niche is not a past version of me.
00:38:13
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Mm-hmm.
00:38:14
Blanca Torres, LMFT
right? Women of color making their way through their professional experiences, their romantic life, dealing with, if they're bicultural, dealing with the conflicting cultural expectations of their home culture versus a larger culture that they live in in the United States.
00:38:32
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um Maybe who want to date men and have been very harmed by men and are continuing to be harmed by patriarchy at large and making space for the fact that I love men and men hurt me.
00:38:48
Blanca Torres, LMFT
So anyway, a little bit, I think we got, I got a little bit aside, but there we go There's my niche right there.
00:38:50
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah. no that, no, that's totally related. and I, I know we said we wouldn't get into the semantics, but I don't love the world unhealed either.
00:39:02
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Cause I think that that just, it's pathologizing and i get the implication, right?
00:39:08
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yes.
00:39:10
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I get the implication. um I think it it could account for the fact that, like, we're constantly shifting in and out of certain parts of our identity at various times.
00:39:21
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um But what absolutely resonates with me about that is that, like, my coaching is absolutely a result of experiences that I've had and watching other people and not wanting them to have to deal with those same things.
Fair Compensation and Economic Challenges
00:39:40
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um Specifically, like even, I think I mentioned, I can't remember, but like I was talking to an early career professional recently who's working on a large group practice, very similar to my initial setup and,
00:39:54
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I asked her, like, how much she got paid per hour, and she told me $50. And she thought that that was fine, didn't think anything of it. And I looked back, and and these documents triggered the hell out of me. I looked back at my old um offer letter for that group practice, and they were paying me, out of psychology grad school, $34,000 year.
00:40:24
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
34,000. And at least when to start, that seemed okay.
00:40:30
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah.
00:40:32
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And then their raise when I got licensed would be 38,000. Right?
00:40:37
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Wow.
00:40:37
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
right Total, total. So not on top of.
00:40:40
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And for context, and for context, I think that when you hear
00:40:42
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yes.
00:40:46
Blanca Torres, LMFT
$30 to $50 an hour, considering we live in a world where minimum wage in some states is about $7 an hour, and you're hearing us talk a like $50 an hour isn't enough, there's two very important things you need to understand.
00:41:01
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Well, three. One, no one makes enough, period. We need to raise the wage.
00:41:06
Blanca Torres, LMFT
A $15 minimum wage, which we've been fighting for for over 10 years now, 15 years, obsolete. obsolete
00:41:14
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right.
00:41:16
Blanca Torres, LMFT
$30 minimum wage. I mean, and that's coming from zero research. So I actually probably believe it should be more, but let's just say like the 15 that we're fighting for is obsolete at this point.
00:41:27
Blanca Torres, LMFT
The second thing that's important to clarify is that therapists aren't working 40 hours a week, client direct client.
00:41:34
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right.
00:41:34
Blanca Torres, LMFT
So when someone says they're making $30 an hour, that's to face with a client.
00:41:34
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right.
00:41:39
Blanca Torres, LMFT
face to face with a client
00:41:41
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
right
00:41:42
Blanca Torres, LMFT
which depending on the therapist could be anywhere from 15 hours a week to 25 or 30. So it's not like we're talking about making $50 an hour working, getting a salary of 40 hours a week.
00:41:56
Blanca Torres, LMFT
We're talking, that is not enough to live off of. And I think frequently about the agency I work at and I have some conflicting feelings about their values, but I make the most amount of money there. And I would love to be able to work at a place with values that more directly align with mine.
00:42:16
Blanca Torres, LMFT
But I don't have a husband and I don't have anyone's backup salary to pay the mortgage. I have to pay my mortgage. I have to pay my way in life. And so just a little bit of context there that I i know what it sounds like to say $50 an hour isn't enough when people maybe are making eight, seven or eight.
00:42:37
Blanca Torres, LMFT
But $50 an hour, 15 hours a week is not enough.
00:42:42
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah, and I mean, i think, I don't know named all three contexts, but also loans, by the way.
00:42:48
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Oh, and oh, that one too. Yeah. Oh, yes. The other context was yes. Education, student loans.
00:42:51
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah.
00:42:53
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah.
00:42:53
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
ah Yeah, yeah. And, you know, whenever whenever people say like, well, especially the people who critique, you know, well, they should have found a way to pay for a school.
00:43:05
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I love to encourage those people to think about the fact that we are fighting with each other about this versus fighting for the real problem, which is that actually education access isn't free and accessible to all.
00:43:19
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right. that That's the problem here. And that the person that you're criticizing for maybe having student loan debts is your doctor or your therapist. And without which they would not have been able to access those things. And why is it set up that way? Right.
00:43:35
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And there's, you know, paying for your benefits and all of these other things that happen.
00:43:38
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right. And so there's like a lot of layers to this. And so um I appreciate you adding the context and I don't want to, I don't, don't want to feel like I'm asking for too much, like to be able to live.
00:43:54
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I don't think anybody should feel that way.
00:43:55
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right.
00:43:56
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right. um Because like, Yeah, it's skill. But anyway, um i think all of that is in the reason why I had brought this up is because i was going to say that like practices like that take advantage of you not knowing what is a livable amount of money commensurate with the experience that you have, the amount of school that you went
00:44:27
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
you know, the years of schooling that you did and the amount of debt that you might be in in order to access that schooling to do what? To serve people, right? To be a so health service professional.
00:44:40
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And so, like, i i don't, I bring that up because I'm like, I was being taken advantage of.
00:44:47
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right.
00:44:48
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
This other young Black woman is also being taken advantage of. And what would it be like for these practices to try to imagine from the start something that is way more equitable?
Authenticity and Matching Client Needs
00:45:08
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And it is possible. It is possible. um But I think because they know people don't want to do certain things, like handle their own billing and all of these different things, right? That like they could also say, we don't really need to tell them how much we get off the top.
00:45:25
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right.
00:45:25
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right. um And so people in in these practices get stuck seeing a lot of different folks that they don't necessarily want to see. i know that was certainly something that happened to me but like I kind of had a pretty strong sense of the kind of people that I wanted to see, the kind of niche that I wanted to have.
00:45:43
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um But I was greatly restricted by the way this practice was set up um and told like, you just need to wait. and like be here for a little while.
00:45:55
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And it is totally a way to feed burnout, to not let people define where they feel most comfortable working and with who.
00:46:09
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And you mentioned like authentic self. That's a part of it, you know, and and again, as you said, like maybe that's a little bit more like what your persona is, but I don't think those things are separate, right?
00:46:22
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
That like even the systems that I use to understand and conceptualize the minds of people and their lives is very much influenced by my own identity and what I've come to understand about what I was taught and what I needed to unlearn and relearn and I'm still learning.
00:46:47
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
So.
00:46:50
Blanca Torres, LMFT
It's quite a journey. I mean, it never stops, right? Like I'm sure our niches will continue to evolve as we continue um to work and grow.
00:47:01
Blanca Torres, LMFT
i do think this conversation has been amazing. i don't even think we've had to use our little prepared questions as much.
00:47:05
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
yeah
00:47:07
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Everything's just come out naturally. But there is one in particular that I really want us to talk about. And that's, um did you feel any pressure to serve outside of your niches or your niche?
00:47:20
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, I think that's exactly what I was just saying, right?
00:47:20
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And from who, yeah. yeah
00:47:24
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Which is that, like, when I was not working for myself, there was a lot of pressure, not only to work outside of my niche, but also to not be allowed to do certain things that I wanted to be able to do.
00:47:40
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Like, I wanted to be able to do testing with certain groups of people. And I was told that, like, our neuropsychologists do this. So you can't do that. And I'm like, but wait, I'm not trying to do neuropsychological testing batteries, even though I was trained to do that.
00:47:58
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
It was just cognitive testing, which all psychologists are trained to do, right? Or even using more therapeutic assessment interventions, um like with my assessments, which I'm now finally getting to do.
00:48:14
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Um, but like, for sure, both like what I was allowed to do and who I was allowed to work with. I was even told, cause you know, I've always worked with, um, autistic folks.
00:48:26
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Um, one of my intakes, the kid had a meltdown, you know, this happens, tore up my office threw his shoe, you know, i had no problem with,
00:48:40
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Like seeing the kid again.
Practice Policies and Personal Boundaries
00:48:41
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I was told by the practice because the administrative assistant told them what happened that I couldn't see this kid again.
00:48:54
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And they were like, we just don't want to accept that liability.
00:48:59
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Wow.
00:49:01
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah.
00:49:02
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And what was the liability?
00:49:03
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And. Yeah.
00:49:04
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I apologize.
00:49:04
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah.
00:49:05
Blanca Torres, LMFT
What was the liability exactly?
00:49:08
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
To me, none, right? To them, kid having a meltdown in an office, we can't see them in our practice. And I'm just like, so why do you even want to say you're a practice who works with kids?
00:49:22
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right. Right.
00:49:23
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right? Like, I remember I had another kid who was just struggling to transition out of my office. We were having a Lego argument. Right? He wanted to take some Legos home and he just kind staked out on the floor and would not get up.
00:49:40
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I had like other, you know, therapists being like, you need to get him out of this area. And I'm like, what do you want me to do? Like the intervention and is happening right here, right here.
00:49:53
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And so, you know, eventually we worked it out, but like, those were the kinds of things that would happen. And I'm like the discrimination that occurs just to like, certain diagnostic populations, but especially for children is wild.
00:50:07
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I'm just like, you have no business as ah as a, as a practice saying that your clinicians work with this population. If you are going to discriminate against autistic kids for being themselves.
00:50:21
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right.
00:50:22
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And so when I started working for myself, um, like I was able to work with those kiddos, you know, and yeah, like still stuffed a whole roll of toilet paper and my toilet and other things and like things that happen that they happen and we work it out.
00:50:38
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
But like I was perfectly fine with that.
00:50:43
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
But the group practice was deciding what I should or shouldn't do. And so, yeah, I definitely was like prevented from working with certain groups of people or even doing certain interventions.
00:50:55
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah.
00:50:55
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
What about you?
00:50:56
Blanca Torres, LMFT
God, I mean, several. I think first I was told this isn't quite directly related to my niche, but, um The director of my program said I wouldn't be a good therapist to white people because of my focus in social justice.
00:51:15
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And so I'm just like, do you realize what you are saying about white people here? But of course not. Then I think about a time, which is ironic, where I got an evaluation in school.
00:51:31
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I had someone who I believed as a student was potentially personality disordered, and potentially ah pedophile. And I sought supervision about these things, got all the support that I needed, allegedly, to manage this.
00:51:50
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And then my evaluation that semester came around. And I was given a four out of four for utilizing supervision because I did... would utilize the shit out of supervision. I'm feeling like this...
00:52:06
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I'm thinking this, how do I take that and support the client? And then in that same exact evaluation, i was marked a one out of four for recognizing how my identities show up in the room.
00:52:24
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Which this is a little bit long winded, but I'm like, how do you? OK, I either utilize supervision well. And if I do, then isn't that because I am aware of my identities and how I'm showing up like you can't.
00:52:37
Blanca Torres, LMFT
That doesn't make any sense to me. But I was told that my identities as a feminist and that my identities as a Latina were impacting people.
00:52:50
Blanca Torres, LMFT
negatively how I show up and see clients. And it was specifically because this person that I thought was potentially a pedophile and potentially personality disordered was a Latino man.
00:53:03
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um so there was that. And then I think just on a macro level, I feel like I get on another level, I get a lot of flack for being a marriage and family therapist who doesn't want to work with families or couples or kids.
00:53:17
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Um, I love children. i think I respect children. They deserve the best care. i am not that person. I'm not the right therapist for that.
00:53:30
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I think couples work is great. It's not for me. It's just not for me.
00:53:34
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah.
00:53:35
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um I tried it under supervision. i gave it a shot and it was just not for me. And that's okay. So that pressure is is absolutely there.
00:53:46
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And and i always get emails. Are you sure? Can you take this teen? No, I can't take this teen. I am not the appropriate therapist for this teen. No matter what. It's just not. it's And that's okay.
00:53:59
Blanca Torres, LMFT
But the yeah, though those are usually the pressures I have. But yeah.
00:54:04
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Well, relatedly, i mean, this circles back to the earlier conversation, but I don't think we've said this explicitly. Like, the other importance of this is managing harm.
00:54:15
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
right? Like, that the importance of me knowing that I cannot nor should not work with everyone is also about making sure that I'm not, like, engaging in intentional harm of folks and, like, or unintentional, I guess, however you want to put it. this like And I'm not saying that I still haven't harmed people,
00:54:39
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
right um There so many things that happen because therapy, clinical work is like this messed up version of a relationship, right? Where you're using the self in order to like engage in healing processes, right? But like, anyway, there's like a whole lot of different multi-layers to that, right? But like, I say messed up because the way in which we're trained does not really properly acknowledge all of these different layers and factors.
00:55:06
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um But You forcing yourself to work with families when you know that that doesn't feel right for you or isn't where you feel most skilled or however you would fill it out is important because they deserve a therapist and who is not only willing and to show up for them and able to and feels well-trained enough to do so. Like, all of these things have to be true, right?
00:55:36
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Just like I work with, like, in historically, i've I've worked with, like, panic disorder and social phobia, especially with my kiddos. um But OCD, as you mentioned earlier, is not...
00:55:49
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
it's not my area of expertise. And when that has come up with those folks, I've referred out or adjunctive, like I'm still working with them, but they might see somebody specifically for that. Or, you know, maybe there's an issue that comes up, like substance use, for example.
00:56:07
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Like I do a lot of those evaluations, but I don't feel equipped necessarily to work with that in treatment. And so I think like, I'm just stringing this person along is what it feels like if I'm to just say, okay, like I know that I'm not the one for you, but I keep seeing you every week anyway when you deserve something different, right?
00:56:31
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah.
00:56:31
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um Anyway, that's just a really long way of saying that I think niches at least on the positive side help to keep us conscious about the kind of care that people deserve to have.
00:56:45
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah.
Advice for Emerging Therapists
00:56:46
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And I do want to say too, right? Like this isn't necessarily mean that if you don't have a niche, that that's wrong. Some people are generalists.
00:56:58
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah. And they have their reasons for that. And I have no problem with that. I personally don't consider myself a generalist. um And I also don't believe in ownership of clients, right? I remember as a student therapist in a community setting, so not seeing clients in school, but still seeing clients as a student outside of school.
00:57:27
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I had a client whom I loved, I adored. And they had trauma that was not appropriate for the skill level I was at.
00:57:39
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And so I was again doing the adjunct with another therapist. And then that therapist came to me and she was, I could tell she was panicked because she wanted to suggest that she take that client full time.
00:57:53
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And she was so panicked that she, that I was going to feel like I was taking, she was taking that client from me. And I was like, no, no, no, no no I want my client to have the best care possible.
00:58:08
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And it is not ah about me that it's not me. Right. And I remember the relief on her face. And I think that that happens Because people do have this ownership or like it has to be me or I have to work with this person or this person. I can't refer them out just because I'm not an expert in this.
00:58:29
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I don't know. But I'll never forget the panic and and in the relief on her face when I was like, yeah, I think that's okay. I think i think you would do great work with her. Absolutely.
00:58:39
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Can I have one more session with her just to say goodbye? and that was it.
00:58:44
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
yeah Well, I'm glad you underscored that example, though, because I think that like and and this is just me. um So, you know, for folks who are listening, I'm not saying that Blanca necessarily shares this opinion in its entirety.
00:58:58
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right. But for me, and i would add a comma to it's OK to be a generalist.
00:59:06
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um It is not OK to be an ah unconscious generalist.
00:59:12
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I don't think it's okay to be unconscious anything. I think that yeah we need to be intentional in every choice that we make about who we're working with and why, and be able to acknowledge the limitations of that.
00:59:32
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And that's, you know, we've said that in different ways, but I want to state that explicitly. Because the reason I brought up my old therapist was that like at the end of the day, he kind of was more of a generalist.
00:59:43
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Mm-hmm.
00:59:44
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I still love him, but he struggled to say when that was not enough for me.
00:59:50
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:59:51
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I had to be the one to say this is not enough for me. And i think. who says that? Who says what?
01:00:02
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
You know, we could probably have a whole conversation just about that, right? What is whose responsibility? But I think that like, you know, when you're, even if it's as decolonized as it can get the setup of your practice, the the client, the patient might often, not always, right?
01:00:24
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Might often feel like,
01:00:28
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
they'd have the harder time saying like, this isn't working for me.
01:00:33
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Just because the relationship becomes so important, you become so interwoven into someone's life.
01:00:42
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And sometimes I think clinicians have a hard time saying the the hard thing because it feels hard for them.
01:00:52
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And it is not about us. And you said that already, right? But like, it is not about us. And I think like the dangers of niches and personas is the the ownership piece that ends up feeling personal and maybe gets in the way of us making really important decisions.
01:01:12
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah, agreed.
01:01:14
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah. So Blanca.
01:01:17
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah. We're doing an advicey question, right, for, you know, folks who maybe are ah emerging professionals or maybe even, like, haven't thought about this.
01:01:31
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And hopefully this conversation has helped people think about this on different layers. But, like, what advice... would you give to like emerging um BIPOC practitioners who haven't thought about this at all?
01:01:44
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
They're trying to find it. They're trying to redefine it. Or maybe folks who've had their practice for a while and they're like, I really never thought about this. Like, you know, any thoughts?
01:01:55
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah, I think the first one that comes to mind is don't rush it. You don't have to figure it out tomorrow. Don't rush it.
01:02:07
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And then the second thing I might say, and God, why am I thinking about qualifying this as if though as if I'm not, if I can't speak to it, I might suggest that tuning into yourself and like your different sessions and seeing what work feels the best, what work sits with your soul, with your person, even maybe somatically.
01:02:40
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And maybe just keep a brainstorming paper, journal, whatever, and keep note of that. Right? Which sessions do you walk away feeling the most full from?
01:02:55
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And I'm not saying that and this means the easiest sessions. I feel like I've been able to identify my niche in my hardest sessions, my heaviest sessions.
01:03:09
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Because despite how difficult it is or despite how heavy it is, I'm walking away feeling like I did something for that client or that client got somewhere important in that session.
01:03:23
Blanca Torres, LMFT
However you want to qualify that for yourself. But I think just just tune in to your spirit, to your somatics too and see what's moving you and and I think make note of that.
01:03:37
Blanca Torres, LMFT
What about you?
01:03:38
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I would definitely second that, especially because when I had more ah space to think in my practice, which required me to set it up a certain way, right?
01:03:49
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
That's the liberation work. That is when I was able to identify exactly what you're talking about, which is that we're not talking about good as a label here, right?
01:04:04
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
We're talking about the sense that the the work is aligned work and your body feels that. It feels it. um It's not draining work because hard doesn't necessarily mean draining. And I mean like draining my spirit. i don't mean like energy, right? Because the work that we do, there is energy involved. There's energy expenditure. Like we can't escape that.
01:04:30
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Um, and there were just, I remember there were just some folks that it just felt not great to sit with. And I was like, that's because this just isn't these, like, these are not my people.
01:04:45
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
These are not my people. um And that's not to say there's something wrong with the person. It's that i am not for everybody.
01:04:57
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I need to be able to suss out what that looks like and feels like. So yeah, I think that that is a great... way to think about this for sure.
01:05:10
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And relatedly, you know, somebody is like, well, if I don't know, like, how do I market myself? Like, and I'm, you know, I'm putting that in air quotes if you're listening because like marketing, capitalism, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's really like communicating, right?
01:05:26
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um About you being tuned into who you are and what your values are. is just as important. Like, um especially when I think about like, intersectional feminists, right? That's how we see ourselves and we talk about ourselves. And like, you know, I've written that on my website in the past when I was doing more therapy work for that group of people. And I've had people say, like, I'm so glad you said this, like, this is why I want to work with you. And so understanding like your values
01:05:58
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And how that informs your work and how you and that you communicate that to people, right? Like, I personally feel like if you're going to bother to list yourself online in any way, shape, or form, like, if people don't know where your values are at, like, that that's an automatic no for me. Because when I'm looking for for therapists for folks, I'm trying to get a sense of where the values are because I want to make sure that I'm not sending this person into, like, significant harm's way.
01:06:28
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Agreed. And i i have always thought that one of the reasons that I've had a successful practice is I make, there's no mystery about where my values lie on any of my profiles.
01:06:46
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I think specifically all my profiles say that I'm an intersectional feminist that believes systems of re oppression have an impact on our lived experience. That is very fucking clear.
01:06:56
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yes.
01:06:58
Blanca Torres, LMFT
who I am and how I show up. And i I think that's why I've had the thriving practice that I've had.
Conclusion and Moments of Joy
01:07:08
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yes. And similarly, I think on mine, I had i had previously like you know written that I'm like, I don't believe in blank slate. And that as like a very easily identifiable Black person, like I don't have the privilege. Yeah.
01:07:23
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
of being blank in any way. Right. And so ignoring those attributions, this just doesn't make any sense. Like even just for who I am as a person.
01:07:34
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah.
01:07:35
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah.
01:07:35
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I think we have another episode there about blank slates.
01:07:40
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Maybe our personas. I don't know. and' know.
01:07:43
Blanca Torres, LMFT
ah Oh yeah. It could go in there for sure.
01:07:44
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
We'll see. So yeah,
01:07:45
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah.
01:07:46
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
we see so I think we're at the end of the conversation, the meat of the conversation. and so where are we, Blanca?
01:07:58
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I think it's time for our moment of joy and breathing. So.
01:08:02
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah.
01:08:03
Blanca Torres, LMFT
If you feel so called, please join us in taking a deep breath in through your nose
01:08:13
Blanca Torres, LMFT
and out through your mouth slowly, almost like you're breathing through a straw. And if you do find breathing a little activating, please just feel free to put your hand over your heart.
01:08:27
Blanca Torres, LMFT
No pressure to sit here with us in this. All right. So, Ksera What are a couple moments of joy or thriving for you this week?
01:08:38
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
My moment of joy rollerblading
01:08:45
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um for the second time this season. um Last week I went and I fell leaving my apartment complex And it was a glorious fall that was witnessed by a cyclist.
01:09:00
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And yesterday I just felt more in my element. I mean, I rollerbladed a lot as a kid. um But I had techno music playing in my like pocket in my leggings as I'm going. And I was just weaving around and I felt like the flow the flow state that I always got when I was able when I was still physically able to run um and it just felt good it just felt good to be with my body in that way um yesterday so that's a big one and um I stopped at a local bookstore this afternoon before our recording
01:09:37
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um and got, I'm turning around because I wanted to see it. I got this um mutual aid building solidarity ah during this crisis and the next um book, just to think a little bit more about mutual aid work and, you know, structuring that. And I mean, I have other folks that I work with who do that, but I thought it would be good for me to be cogitating in that space right now as I'm trying to Settle my soul into things that will help me stay in community.
01:10:10
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah, I love that. And I think maybe we should do a book club on Patreon.
01:10:18
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
my gosh. Eventually.
01:10:21
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yes, eventually. Eventually.
01:10:24
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
We need the patrons. Come on, join us. If y'all want that, let us know.
01:10:27
Blanca Torres, LMFT
and Yeah.
01:10:28
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um yeah. What about you?
01:10:31
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Let's see. Joy and thriving for me this week. Um... Well, I guess a little bit more muted maybe, but I had vertigo last week and I've been having some of the lingering nausea if I move my head around too much, but that's getting a lot better. This is, I feel a lot better. And so that that's my thriving this week.
01:10:57
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um And then... I think, oh, I'm also going to the Ventura County Strawberry Festival this week, which I'm really excited about.
01:11:08
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um I love strawberries. I love strawberries. And I want to go to the Strawberry Festival. um So I'm doing that this week ah with some much needed time off.
01:11:20
Blanca Torres, LMFT
So those are my joys.
01:11:21
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah. You reminded me, sorry. You reminded me that I haven't even looked at the Strawberry Festival's calendar yet. And that was something that I had plotted out. I went to four Strawberry Festivals last year. yeah.
01:11:35
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah, I'm very excited.
01:11:36
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I'm very excited. I'm going to come back looking like a strawberry. um It's going to be a little bit cooler than I wanted because it's right by the beach, but that's okay. There's still open water, which is very healing.
01:11:48
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Are we going to share a picture with your pat with our patrons? Of you with the strawberries?
01:11:52
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Sure. Yeah, absolutely. i would love to do that. Oh, I love that. Yeah, we'll do that.
01:11:58
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah.
01:11:59
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
01:12:00
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Well, enjoy the Strawberry Festival, and I look forward to our next conversation. i hope the listeners are as well, and we'll see you for our next episode.
01:12:16
Blanca Torres, LMFT
See you next time.
01:12:16
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
All right. Bye.
01:12:18
Blanca Torres, LMFT
bye