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10. Called to…Conferences, Training, & Certs Oh My!
12 Plays22 days ago
In this episode, we talk about how professional training is like an MLM and the ways in which entry into the mental health field is gatekept monetarily. As always, we share personal experiences and stories. As a reminder, episodes are recorded in advance and may not align with current time context.
Mentions in this Episode
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Additional Notes
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Music: Calypsonian by Eshi Era (Standard License) Check out their Artist Profile here: Eshi Era
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Transcript
Introduction and Land Acknowledgement
00:00:19
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Hello everybody! Welcome back! Hi Blanca!
00:00:25
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Hi, Ksera
00:00:27
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
For those of you who are new, I'm Ksera Dyette My pronouns are she, her, and my colonial introduction is that I'm a licensed clinical psychologist located in Massachusetts.
00:00:38
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And
00:00:40
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I'm Blanca, pronouns are she, her, and I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist in the state of Nevada.
00:00:46
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yes, and we, as we always do, acknowledge that we are both settlers on Turtle Island, and we pay respect to our elders who have stewarded this land for generations, both past and present.
Reflections on Travel Privilege and Anxiety
00:01:02
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
We're going to briefly check in with each other um to see where we are. i think... This week, I'm in an okay enough space.
00:01:17
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I've had the privilege, it is a privilege, to have traveled recently within the U.S. s at least, and to go to and from and make it safely back without any issues.
00:01:33
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
ah That's usually top of mind for me these days, and I'm just grateful that I could do that knowing that that kind of luxury or even thinking or space is just not something that is possible um for other communities or is being actively taken away from other communities.
00:01:56
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
So that's kind of the space that I'm in. What about you, Blanca?
00:01:59
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Pretty similar. I also got to travel a little bit. I did go international and there was a lot of anxiety around it, but it went fine for me, which again, speaks to a lot of the privileges I hold.
Emotional Impact of Current Events
00:02:14
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um And yeah, surviving, i keep, when people ask me, how you doing? I'm like, well, personally, I'm okay. I'm doing well.
00:02:20
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:02:21
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Outside of that, not so much. um And I was just telling
00:02:25
Blanca Torres, LMFT
a friend yesterday, like I feel, you know, whether I try to avoid social media, avoid the news, I am a therapist with clients that are very aligned. So it doesn't matter how much I avoid it. I still am talking about, is it even politics anymore? Is it just...
00:02:46
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Whatever it is. um a lot. And I find myself on the verge of tears most days, every day. um But luckily, I'm able to find like grounding and support and stuff like that.
00:02:58
Blanca Torres, LMFT
So I'm doing well, despite it.
00:03:01
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah. I'd say relatively speaking the same.
Contextualizing History and Current Events
00:03:05
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
was talking to my mom about this yesterday, actually. And I was saying to her that like, on my recent trip, I did a lot of like, history diving, ah the place that I went.
00:03:20
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And It's so important. I mean, that's why like literature is being taken away from us. It's so important to know history because you can just see not only the parallel of things, but the repeat of things, but also it really just contextualizes history.
00:03:40
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
the moment in a lot of ways. And I think that's just important to do as well. um
Podcast's Role in Contextualization
00:03:49
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I mean, that's something that we do on this podcast too, as we're exploring certain issues.
00:03:55
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
But yeah, um I think for me, like continuing to ground myself and like the stories of other folks and is an important thing to continue to do.
00:04:07
Blanca Torres, LMFT
yeah
00:04:09
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah.
00:04:09
Blanca Torres, LMFT
exactly
00:04:10
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah. So that's where we are. And we do this contextualizing because because we're talking about other things, they're not separate from all of the stuff that's going on.
00:04:21
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um It just so happens that podcast episodes have topics because it helps to ground the listener. And today we're to be talking about conferences, training, certifications.
Mental Health Training and Certification
00:04:34
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And um for those who are listening who are mental health professionals or in training, you know that we have continuing education and various forms of education that are a part of being in the field.
00:04:48
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um and maintaining licensure as well as expertise. And there's a lot of that that may be about money. There's a lot of that that is about gatekeeping and issues of wytness
00:05:04
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
But then there's also parts of it that... are the personal experiences of what it's like to be two folks of the global majority moving in and out of some of these spaces.
00:05:15
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And if you've listened to our other episodes, you know we've talked about the fact that we do think that good training is important, but it's also important to interrogate the training that you're receiving.
00:05:26
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
ah So please don't think that like this interrogation that we're going to be doing is saying that all training is terrible. It's not the message here.
Critique of Professional Training
00:05:34
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
It's really just that interrogating conversation So Blanca, where are you coming to this conversation from?
00:05:45
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
What is your relationship to this, just generally speaking?
00:05:49
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I mean, generally everything. um We started talking about this particular ah topic um because I think we've both had a lot of really... Well, I guess I can't speak for you. I've had several...
00:06:04
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um painful, I mean, guess straight up violent experience experiences um in trainings and things like that. I'm also, ah and all my CEUs are due for this year in a couple of months. So I've been you know ensuring I'm catching up on those and I've been attending ah trainings here and there. And so I think it's just kind of top of mind maybe all of the time.
00:06:32
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um I think when we originally were coming up with topics, um I always tell the joke that being a therapist is an MLM because you graduate um allegedly with all the training and then you're like, well, what about training on this? And what about training on that? And what about a certification?
00:06:53
Blanca Torres, LMFT
You don't want to just be trained in EFT. You want to have a certification um and just kind of talking about um the money grubbing of it all.
00:07:07
Blanca Torres, LMFT
So those are kind of um the different things that I'm bringing to the conversation.
00:07:12
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah, I'd say I have some similar things as well as bringing to the conversation the experience of being a facilitator of training as well um and working with people who...
00:07:28
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
were not as aligned as I thought they were and witnessing not only the harm of that to others, but also the experience of what it's like not being supported by your own co-facilitator.
00:07:45
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um That was really hard for me. Um, and so more than ever, especially as I'm thinking of putting together like a quarterly, um, liberation circle for therapists, I'm like, okay, what does it mean to screen people, uh, into or out of these spaces because of my awareness of that harm?
00:08:11
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right. Um, and, So I'd say like all of the things that you said, plus that experience of also being facilitator of training.
00:08:24
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
As we try to do, like we're kind of loosely structuring this conversation just to ground both ourselves, but also you as listeners.
Financial Costs of Professional Spaces
00:08:34
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um But the first thing that we want to talk about is just like the cost of the cost of belonging and what that means. And I think it's also important to say as we have this conversation that like I'm in the field of psychology, which is far less racially and ethnically diverse than the field of social work. I think that's just also important to put that frame around these things and that what the trainings are that are offered and how that looks is also, there are similarities, but there are some differences as well.
00:09:05
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
So I just want to put that pin in there. But what has been your experience just with like the money aspect of pursuing training, continuing education conferences and so on? Like, what has it been like to negotiate like what you can or cannot pay for and those kinds of things?
00:09:28
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Well, I mean, the the first thing first thing first things first is that they're just massively expensive. And and i so I struggle with it because I do know you're a facilitator of some of these spaces.
00:09:41
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And I do think people need to be paid for their expertise. But, you know, we have to do um something around like 40 to 50 continuing education credits every two years.
00:09:56
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And one training with up to 15 of those, maybe, maybe close to half of them is going to cost you two to $3,000, um, which is a, a ton of money.
00:10:15
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah, it's just been a ton of money. I'm sorry I'm i'm losing my train here, but um I feel like I have been kind of lucky in this space because I've had the ability to prioritize train the trainings I need in order to continue the requirements of my license.
00:10:32
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um But they've been pretty expensive. um And of course, you can't just do any training. There certain topics you have to fulfill and some of them have to be interactive and some of them not.
00:10:45
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Um, now I will say one added privilege point here, other than having, of course, the funds to be able to prioritize the ones that I want to do is that since I've become a therapist, um, a lot of these things have been moved to online.
00:11:04
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Um, so i don't have to worry about the cost of travel and stuff like that. So i would definitely be curious about what your experience was with that, especially as a newer clinician, But yeah, I mean, ah to to recontextualize there, my very first client as a student was in May 2020.
00:11:21
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um So ever since then, I've been able to access pretty pricey trainings um that didn't require me to travel.
Accessing Conferences via Volunteering and Scholarships
00:11:30
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah, um definitely. I mean, i first started accessing these things as a student.
00:11:36
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
So though that was like my first like, oh, volunteer for conferences. I did a lot of volunteering for different kinds of conferences. um because they would either waive registration or provide a free room, or some places offered scholarships.
00:11:51
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I applied for those scholarships. Some places have those for early career professionals. um Some of them had, like, diversity-based scholarships. I have applied for just about all of the money I could get my hands on.
00:12:05
Blanca Torres, LMFT
yeah
00:12:05
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Um... And I tried to share that knowledge with other people around me as well. But I noticed a distinctive drop off in conference attendance once we graduated.
00:12:19
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
So people who would normally go to these things or people who I even, because of them, I went to these conferences in the first place just completely disappeared from the milieu.
00:12:31
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Oh, interesting.
00:12:32
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah. And there's a lot of different layers to that. Like some of it is cost, but some of it was also gender based stuff. Cause well, like some of the, a lot of the people who I looked up to, who I was interested in, like who sort of pulled me into some of these spaces were women.
00:12:52
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Um, and they just disappeared and the men were still there years later. right And I, I'd watch these men like bring their families to conferences, but I didn't see women doing the same thing.
00:13:07
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And the one time we had like a conversation, even within that conference about sort of the impact of, starting families and things like that and the sacrifices that women tend to make that conversation wasn't satisfying either um because it felt like the communication was you couldn't have both and and some cases maybe some people didn't want both but i also felt like
00:13:39
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
women just disappeared from the space once we graduated. And sometimes I wonder, um and the one particular conference I'm speaking about, i eventually also joined the board of the organization.
00:13:55
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um and so that helped with costs as well. and I know that I probably would be able to access significantly less if I hadn't been in a position like that. And that wasn't the reason why I joined the board, but That's a privilege as well.
00:14:10
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um When I'm thinking about how much the conference would actually cost me if I wasn't in that position. um So there was a lot of different things that I said. But but we talk about cost even on our board all the time.
00:14:29
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Like, what does it mean to have a financially viable organization? What does it actually look like? Who are we paying and why are we paying them this much? Um,
00:14:41
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And for the first time, we piloted what other orgs are have been doing for years now, a more values-based pricing model that's about what you can pay versus what we want you to pay.
00:14:56
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um And there was a lot of trepidation about that. But it actually has been perfectly fine. And so it's interesting to think about the cost of these things relative to our people actually thinking about more liberation oriented models of access that would actually still be financially viable.
00:15:16
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right.
00:15:20
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right. um So, yeah, there's I mean, we're talking about capitalism and all of this as well, or organizations are just used to doing things the way they've always been used to doing them.
00:15:28
Blanca Torres, LMFT
right
00:15:34
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um But yeah, it's I said a lot of things. I don't know.
00:15:39
Blanca Torres, LMFT
No, but it's great because I love that you have all of these different perspectives because I don't. And I was actually thinking while you were talking, I have not been to a single conference as a therapist.
00:15:49
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And that's because I used to go to them all the time in my former career.
00:15:53
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And I'll be frank, I didn't find them useful then. And part of me feels like... Not that there isn't utility in them, but the cost is really high for me beyond that of the financial cost, right? Like the socializing is way too much for me.
00:16:11
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I have a hard time focusing when so much is going on around me. The days are so long. um And the masking, I really, what I'm talking about is the masking demands are just way too fucking high for me.
00:16:25
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um So I haven't been to one as a therapist and there's not even one that I'm really all that interested in going to.
Weighing Conference Attendance Costs and Benefits
00:16:32
Blanca Torres, LMFT
When there's something in particular I want to be trained on, I seek out that particular training versus waiting for a conference. So um I love that you have all of these, we have all of these perspectives going in um to this conversation.
00:16:46
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah, no, you're absolutely 100% on with like just the other demands as well. I mean, being a board member and being in a position where I am highly visible.
00:16:57
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I keep finding myself in these positions.
00:17:01
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um i'm There's a lot of being on.
00:17:04
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah.
00:17:05
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I am very aware of feeling exhausted by the end of that. i think I've masked less as time has gone on. I'm just like, take it as you will. And some people have been pissed about that.
00:17:19
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um But I'm like, well, if I'm going to be here and if I'm going to be a part of like pushing for the change that I want to see, I also want to show up as myself.
00:17:34
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Mm-mm.
00:17:34
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
That's come with a lot of costs.
00:17:36
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I'm not saying that hasn't been without costs or even um professional pushback. um But I'm just over. I'm like, i we're um we're not even that old, but I'm like, I'm 35 years old I've been doing this for like eight years or whatever.
Training Perspectives: Western vs. Non-Western
00:17:57
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I've done a lot. I've seen a lot and nobody has time for it. Like nobody has time for it.
00:18:04
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And like, gosh, how much did like the people that I serve lose as a result of the amount of time it had to take me to like unlearn all of the stuff that gets reinforced in these spaces. Right. Like,
00:18:23
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I just, don't want to say mourn per se, but was just so much lost time.
00:18:32
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um so I can definitely resonate with what you said about like the difficulty of even finding spaces that you would even want to spend that time or energy in because of everything that goes along with it.
00:18:48
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And we, I mean, I'll say, I'll speak for myself, but like, I don't know much about what this looks like in like non-Western spaces.
00:18:58
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um But I do know what it's been like to enter sort of liberation oriented, decolonizing spaces and see totally different models um for how trainings are run and how these work and models that are done and executed well.
00:19:17
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I think that that's something that I um i should sort of underscore because you and I talk about this, like not all these spaces that look like they are built for us are for us.
00:19:23
Blanca Torres, LMFT
yeah
00:19:32
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah.
00:19:36
Blanca Torres, LMFT
which we'll Which we'll get into. I've got a real doozy for us.
00:19:38
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah. Yeah.
00:19:40
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um A couple real doozies about this for us um as we move along.
00:19:43
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
yeah
00:19:45
Blanca Torres, LMFT
But yeah.
00:19:46
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
But yeah, I mean, we're starting like sort of that demographics conversation, right? Like, who is in the room? Why are you why are we even desiring spaces that look a little bit more like, oh, maybe we belong here, right?
Barriers in Professional Licensure
00:20:01
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I think the obvious thing, at least from my perspective, and I'll say this, like, psychology as a field is very wyt. It always has been. It's not changing fast enough.
00:20:14
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um And our licensure exam remains a massive barrier to entry doesn't even correspond to our actual training.
00:20:27
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um I don't care if the test publishers hear this, it's a money making machine that has nothing to do with our skills as a professional, because there are plenty of people who pass that exam who should not be therapists.
00:20:41
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
we said
00:20:41
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right.
00:20:42
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I've said it here. Right. And so um it's a gatekeeping tool. It's a gatekeeping tool.
00:20:50
Blanca Torres, LMFT
right
00:20:51
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And so many clinicians of color who've gone through the graduate training to be psychologists end up giving up at that stage. I've seen it happen. um And it's really frustrating and it's very sad. And so all of this to say that that means that who is training us, who is writing the books, most of these people are wyt.
00:21:18
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yes.
00:21:19
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
ah They don't look like me. And that means that the training that I received looks a certain way and the ah thought that um the things that I was taught to think sound a certain way.
00:21:35
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
So that's the perspective I'm bringing. How about you, Blanca?
00:21:41
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I mean, it's the same, right? Like most of the trainings are led by older wyt folks who've been in the field for forever. um They don't necessarily what what I found is I found I've tried many times to join.
00:21:57
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I've joined trainings I'm like super excited about. Gestalt is one. Somatic work is another one. um even EFT for a little bit.
00:22:08
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And i was so excited to be in these spaces because I'm like, oh, finally, this is the therapy modality I've been waiting for. This is the one that's going to help me do the work I want to do with the people I want to do it with. And, um,
00:22:21
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And then they ultimately all fall short, right? I'll have questions about how it applies to, you know, BIPOC folks or this that or the other, and they just don't have the answers, right? So it's really the same thing. It's the it's the same people, the same gatekeepers of our field that are leading these trainings that don't have the praxis.
00:22:43
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Is that the right cut word? Whatever it is, they don't have the, they they use the buzzwords, right? but they don't have anything behind it.
00:22:53
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right. And it always ended up getting harmed.
00:22:56
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Um, but yeah, I think that's the perspective I'm coming in with.
00:23:01
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um Yeah, I mean, what you were just talking about with the buzzwords made me think about like
00:23:11
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
the difference between inviting diversity and centering diversity. um
00:23:17
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
that We've talked in previous episodes about how this was true in our training itself, like becoming clinicians, but that is also true in these spaces as well.
00:23:29
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And in my experience, I've seen diversity become like a tack on slide.
00:23:36
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yes.
00:23:37
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Rather, than is something that exists throughout a presentation and also thinks about the audience members as diverse people. um So what I mean by that is it reminds me of like a situation at a conference where the person had a lot of experience working with autistic folks.
00:23:57
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um And undoubtedly, i don't think like had a harmful thought in her body about that population, but she was still using like incredibly outdated, ah hurtful language that we've evolved from since then.
00:24:16
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right.
00:24:17
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And when confronted about it by someone, um, didn't respond well to the feedback and took it as like they were being attacked.
00:24:28
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And, the person who was giving them the feedback was an autistic person.
00:24:34
Blanca Torres, LMFT
oh my gosh.
00:24:34
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right. And so, and then that person ended up feeling upset because they were like, Oh, did I do something wrong? Like, I understand that they like know a lot, but like also it felt very upsetting to me. And like, if we can't share what it's like to have these experiences, like it doesn't feel safe for me to go into these spaces.
00:24:56
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And, um That person, thankfully, has since then has grown in how they are addressing feedback. um But that might have been the last time that person ever came to a conference.
00:25:12
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
right? If they had nobody else who they knew were supportive or thought like them or anything like that, that might have been the last time you had them there, right? And i think about like the way in which we have a way of talking about clinical issues as if they may not apply or identities as if they may not apply to people who are in the room or we don't even include them at all.
00:25:35
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Mm hmm.
00:25:39
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah.
00:25:40
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Like, And so they'll say like, oh, we talk about diverse issues, blah, blah, blah. But like, really, there's no showing that's true.
00:25:51
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I don't know if you've seen similar things or i don't know what your experience has been like with that tension between those two things.
Failures in Promised Diversity Training
00:26:01
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I think for me, again, because I just haven't been to conferences as a therapist, like mine, again, are specific to like these major trainings and, um, You're right. While you were talking, I had that thought. Like, there's not this person talking about autism as if there's not psychologists in the room who probably have autism, right? And, like, how often that happens to all sorts of intersections.
00:26:26
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I was specifically thinking of this. um'm I'm not going to say the organization, but I'll say the modality, and that's gestalt. You know, i was so excited about um starting that training. They talked on their website long. And was still a student when I did this training.
00:26:42
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um They talked all on their website about how the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion and how they're moving towards that. And one of the way they one of the ways they were doing that is offering BIPOC scholarships, which I signed up for one, got in online.
00:26:59
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um And then in the first weekend of the training was, I don don't remember, I only ended up going to one weekend, so it must have been one, maybe two. The white older wyt male um leading it, who I believe is a leader in the psychology field.
00:27:17
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I don't remember how it came about or what, but he basically says that if a person of color is refusing to see a wyt therapist, then they're avoiding something inside themselves and that they need to deal with that first.
00:27:35
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Um, and
00:27:39
Blanca Torres, LMFT
If that wasn't harmful enough, it was actually a wyt woman who was speaking up about it because I had decided I'm like, I'm just going to show up and get the info. I'm not going to fight. I'm not going to fight. um But she was treated so poorly to the point that she left the training that I then couldn't stay quiet.
00:27:54
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And I was like, no, I have a problem with what you said, too. Blah, blah, blah. Whole thing. But. but
00:28:02
Blanca Torres, LMFT
This is what we're talking about, right? Where they're inviting diversity into the space, but don't have the capacity to center the BIPOC experience.
00:28:14
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And I think what was even more hurtful to me about that experience is that there was a another person in the room. There's many diverse, or there's many people, the global majority in the room, but one Latina specifically who was very, I think, upset with me because of the mess I was making in the training.
00:28:32
Blanca Torres, LMFT
who was like, well, when do I get to pull my people of color card? um
00:28:38
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
What!?
00:28:38
Blanca Torres, LMFT
who And I think at that point I was like, okay, I'm not coming back to this. And I asked for my money back.
00:28:45
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
ah
00:28:45
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um But I don't know if it connects exactly to the way, to what you were saying. I guess it really does. But again, like you have this person or this organization opening up this space to BIPOC people, to people who normally aren't granted access to the space because of the cost, and then did nothing to tailor the curriculum or to train the facilitators into managing this.
00:29:10
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And I'm just remembering that someone in the training was like, hey, Blanca, I just want you to know this other facilitator really cares about this and is working on this if you want to email her. And I remember responding, well, thank you for the resource, but shouldn't the facilitator who said the racist thing be the one reaching out to her, not me?
00:29:28
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right.
00:29:29
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And I never got a response back.
00:29:31
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
ah ahha Yeah. Yeah. There's no accountability. And then there's and if there is the attempt to, quote, open the space.
00:29:43
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
There is no readiness for unlearning and no readiness for messiness.
00:29:51
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I said this before in a previous episode, I think one of the hardest things about really approaching these trainings with intention
Handling Power and Oppression in Training
00:30:01
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
is being open to the feeling of shame or whatever that arises when someone has pointed out that you've messed up and correcting in the moment.
00:30:10
Blanca Torres, LMFT
right
00:30:15
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
and repairing in the moment and not doubling down because you're feeling defensive, right? Like you're allowed to feel defensive. You're allowed to have all of those feelings, right? The message is not that you're not a person.
00:30:33
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah.
00:30:33
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
It's how do you shift? Cause I've been in that position before and I'm like, Ooh, yeah, you're right. Like, and I hold that it doesn't feel very good.
00:30:45
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And think, okay, like, what is it to be in service to this person right now? What is it to respond to this person from a place of openness that, like, I really want to...
00:30:57
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
repair and take in your feedback. Right. And I don't see enough of that in these spaces and it gets opened up and wounds get ripped up and all of that. And and then it's just a mess.
00:31:13
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
It's just a mess.
00:31:14
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And so i think for me, like that was part of my desire to try to find spaces that would be more aligned, um including 2020, just as like a being confronted with the already known deficiencies of the field to handle societal unrest and racial trauma and all of that.
00:31:41
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Like all the things that I knew, but all of the things that I wasn't trained in any way to integrate or think about in my work. Like all of that together culminated to be like, i and need something different.
00:31:53
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Like um even in
Exhaustion from Harmful Professional Spaces
00:31:55
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
the one-off trainings, I know you said you don't go to conferences, but like even on the one-off trainings, people will just say stuff. And I'm just like,
00:32:03
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Absolutely.
00:32:07
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And it's exhausting because you have, but the thing is you have to sit through it because you need a certain number of ethics and a certain number of this and a certain number of that. And I don't know, have found that I can't afford to be picky anymore. And it's kind of sad because keep taking, going back to your example from that doctor talking about autism and how an autistic person probably just isn't going to go back.
00:32:33
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I haven't touched Gestalt since then.
00:32:35
Blanca Torres, LMFT
and it's something that I really wanted.
00:32:38
Blanca Torres, LMFT
ah haven't even, i haven't even gone back to it and touched it. and And now it's making me realize like, I have to cut off parts of myself in order to participate in these spaces because i need them. I need the credit hours.
00:32:53
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I think continuing education is important, but I also can't,
00:33:00
Blanca Torres, LMFT
bleed myself dry every single time trying to be seen and heard and have my clients seen in these spaces because they're just really not um what have you done to kind of find more aligned spaces how did you do that how'd you manage that
00:33:19
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I feel like it was when I started my professional Instagram journey. to be honest. um Because then I was like finding other professionals who were connected to resources.
00:33:37
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And that's when I found out about inclusive therapists um and IDHA, which I apologize.
00:33:47
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I can't remember the entire acronym off the top of my head, but we'll put it in the show notes. um And I was like, oh, like, this is so different this feels so good and also wow i there's so much that i've been wanting to unpack within myself about my training that i had no idea how to begin to do um and this is still an ongoing journey by the way like we're not speaking as if we've arrived when we talk about this stuff um
00:34:22
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
but I'm in a completely different place. And so I think it was like that, like finding other people during COVID, honestly, who were trying to carve out spaces that were like, how do we continue to create healing and work with people divorced from these, divorced from, or more aware of the way in which power and subjugation and systems impact the people that we work with.
Questioning the Licensure Process
00:34:54
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And that's not new, right? Like liberation psychology was like born out of power and subjugation struggle. um But I think more people began to think and talk about it, at least here,
00:35:13
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
in you know in the U.S. it was more widely proliferated but of course with proliferation comes challenges which we've we've kind of spotlighted a couple of times we are gonna get there um but I don't want to lose the thread of something that you said Blanca which is because you're like I need these CEs right and i I feel like underneath the need is like the pressure, right? Like, because we both introduce ourselves as like licensed professionals, right?
00:35:53
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And that in and of itself is a choice that we make every episode that we even talk about, right? But like the license itself is so fraught, right?
00:36:06
Blanca Torres, LMFT
right
00:36:07
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
It's so fraught and people have talked a lot about what is it like to divest, to think about divesting from licensure altogether. um Is it really a need?
00:36:22
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
it is if you want to take insurance. um You could be pre-licensed, but that does limit you. so, um and so
00:36:32
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And that comes with its own costs as well, like ongoing supervision and renewing your intern license or your pre-licensed license.
00:36:38
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Exactly. Yes, yes. And all of those things just create more barriers.
00:36:48
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And so some people have completely hung up calling themselves a psychologist, calling themselves a social worker, and and they just choose whatever they want to call themselves and they go and they do their work.
00:36:59
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right. And I think spend a lot of time thinking about what would it mean to divest? What would that mean?
00:37:11
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
What would that look like? um Because right now, the message is still in all ways. You need to be licensed to be credible. And I have mixed feelings.
00:37:23
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And this is my own struggle happening out loud, right? Because we have what's-her-face who's like, I'm an ADHD coach, the one who fell in love with her her psychiatrist, right?
00:37:30
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Which face?
00:37:34
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Oh! Yes, the ADHD coach.
00:37:38
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yes. ah
00:37:40
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
That whole thing. Like, forget the ah rest of the story about her basically being a stalker, but like, she was saying she's a coach.
00:37:54
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
and And I was just like, and and this kind of taps into what I talked about, I think in um maybe two or three episodes ago, but I was like, yeah, like I was led to believe that coaches are less than because it does buy into the certain model that we have about legitimacy that also isn't separate from capitalism.
00:38:16
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And it is also true that I know that there are people out there saying they do some certain things that they don't have the training for and are causing harm.
00:38:28
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And there licensed professionals also causing harm, right?
00:38:31
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right.
00:38:32
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
So it's like,
00:38:32
Blanca Torres, LMFT
So where's the line?
00:38:33
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah. It's like, what is the line? Where is where are we in the soup? um So really I'm just wrestling with this pressure, the pressure to to get certifications, the pressure, the pressure to keep licensed or get licensed. Like I, yeah, I'm having an, I know I haven't fully metabolized this. I don't know. What do you think Blanca?
00:39:00
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Well, I mean, i struggle I struggle with it just as much. Like, do I think I need a license to do what I'm doing? No. Do I think I could cause a lot of harm if I didn't have one, if I wasn't keeping up with the education, if I didn't have the training? Yeah.
00:39:17
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right? um So i i am adding nothing to this because i don't know. I genuinely don't know where that line is. I think about like, okay, if I gave up my license,
00:39:30
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I could do a lot of different things I can't do. And then I'm like, well, but then I would give up all my insurance clients. And then what about clients who are rightfully because of cases
00:39:40
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Like, again, what are what is she being called colloquially on TikTok? Do we do we know just like the lady who fell in with her psychiatrist?
00:39:47
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah.
00:39:48
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah. The lady who fell in love her psychiatrist. Like people are going to hear that she's an the ADHD coach and and have rightful um second thoughts about working with someone unlicensed.
00:40:01
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I don't know. It's not pretty. i I really think you can be.
00:40:07
Blanca Torres, LMFT
help i mean, healing looks so many different ways, and I don't think you need a license to heal. And at the same time, man, are there people out there who don't have the credentials?
00:40:20
Blanca Torres, LMFT
that are causing a lot of harm. But so are people with credentials that are, I'm telling you, you can just edit this whole piece out because I said nothing you didn't say.
00:40:24
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right. That's what I mean. It's...
00:40:30
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um Because yes. And I think it just goes back to complexity theory, right? Like this is a complex problem that isn't going to have a simple answer.
00:40:42
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And I think there's room for a lot of it. There's room, I think there's room for licensed folks, unlicensed folks, coaches, therapists, practitioners of all kinds. There's room for all of it. And I think that's the fundamental, the fundamental thing.
00:40:57
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah. i
00:41:01
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I kind of almost don't want to edit it.
00:41:05
Blanca Torres, LMFT
No, don't. I,
00:41:06
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
We'll see what I decide. But like I almost don't want to because I i do want the listeners to understand that like true interrogation of this particular issue is not neat.
00:41:20
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Because i have heard other you know um other licensed professionals in psychology respond to this issue unequivocally saying, like, yeah, and she's not licensed.
00:41:35
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And so... you know, and I'm like, I, yeah yeah, I get it. I get where that comes from. I'm not even criticizing them. I get where that comes from. And also y'all keep leaving out the percentage of us who went through the training, who did the things, who are out in these streets causing harm. Right. And so like, I think really the message here is like,
00:42:04
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
if you think it's just super simple or somebody's presenting it to you as it's totally simple, then they're not interrogating it.
Reimagining Accessible Education
00:42:13
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right.
00:42:14
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right.
00:42:15
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And going back to what we were saying about even like trainings needing to center, right. Like we're centering the reality that people might hear this and be like, well why can't you come down on it one way or another? Right. Like somebody is going to have that thought, but as soon as we start to say like, it is unequivocally this, we're completely cutting out part of the argument that we haven't even said yet, which is like, what would it be like for people to be able to train in the field without having to be licensed?
00:42:58
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Okay, ah stick with me for a second. They can still access the trainings. It's affordable. Like all of these things, they can specialize, et cetera, but it's not being gatekept by institutions that are actually just money-making machines for a license that does not correspond directly to experience.
00:43:23
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Like what would it be like to imagine, again, education that is freely accessible, like it is in some places in the world, right?
00:43:36
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Like where our learning isn't completely tied up in capitalism.
00:43:46
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I'm dreaming, obviously, here, because that's not the system that we're in but I do want to push myself to think about what would it look like for this to be different?
00:44:02
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
What would it look like for the people who
00:44:07
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
can work with folks well to be able to access the things that they want to, to be better at what they're doing, you know?
00:44:20
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And what it would do is it would increase access and it would be incredible. But the thing about it is that what these people, the gatekeepers are worried about is like, if all of this is available for free, then anyone could do it. And then there's more competition.
00:44:34
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Not everybody wants to do this.
00:44:36
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
No.
00:44:39
Blanca Torres, LMFT
One of my best friends yesterday, when we were talking about the impact, she was like, I don't know how you do it. How do you all do it? I was like, some of us stop.
00:44:46
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Mm-hmm.
00:44:47
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Some of us just stop doing it because it's not sustainable in some ways.
00:44:47
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Mm-hmm.
00:44:52
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I do not know how I'm going to. I do not know what the next five years are is going to look like in my professional space. But what they're afraid of is like that they're just going to have all this competition. And if anyone can do it, everyone can do it.
00:45:05
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Not everybody wants this.
00:45:07
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
No, absolutely not. Right. Like, and this goes back to our conversation about what does informed consent really look like to be a clinician? Right.
00:45:17
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Like, If there was a way to really do that fully, not everybody would do this. I promise you that. And some people go all the way through their training and then they just stop because they're like, oh, I did not realize that I didn't want to do this.
00:45:34
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right. And so, yeah, I mean, and the the competition piece directly involved. you know, interwoven with the money piece and the capitalism piece, right? And the, if we see it as we're scarce commodities, then,
00:45:53
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
gosh there's just so much here, right? Like,
00:45:55
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah.
00:45:56
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
we we impose those systems on ourselves and how we think about our relationship to other professionals and creating referral networks and all of these things. And most of us, once we get in here, we realize, oh, like, there are not enough people for us to refer to.
00:46:13
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Because we can't take everybody, nor should we. And then you have all of the reimbursement issues and layers and all of that stuff. But anyway, like, Yes.
00:46:27
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Capitalism.
00:46:29
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Capitalism. I swear to God, that's where we come back to.
00:46:32
Blanca Torres, LMFT
yeah if we always do but like to come back to it because i think it's all related but i think we got lost in our idea of like licensing versus not and um i'm thinking about moving into our our notes here on um bipoc only trainings have you experienced those what has that been like for you
00:46:50
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:46:56
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Oh, man.
BIPOC-Only Training Spaces and Challenges
00:46:58
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah, I mean, we we've highlighted a couple of times the reasons that we have wanted to access spaces that were BIPOC only or folks of the global majority because of all of these layers, um particularly how issues related to diversity are handled.
00:47:21
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I think it was a combination of many things for me, like both these experiences of speaking up in largely white training spaces and just watching the blank stares or the blank stares, but then the people who come up to you after to talk to you about how much they appreciated what you said, but I'm just like, where were the ovaries to say it during the training?
00:47:54
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Like, I am so sick of the people who want to back me up later. Like, I literally don't care about you. um And just the way certain topics just didn't include other things that I wanted to hear about.
00:48:07
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I think that's why I both wanted to access these other spaces, but also ended up becoming a trainer in some of these issues, because I was like, fine.
00:48:18
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I'm not finding it. I'm going to create it. um And so that's kind of how I entered this. um Particularly, for a long time, I wanted to um be trained as a psychoanalyst.
00:48:35
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I've since abandoned that for a myriad of reasons, notwithstanding just the deep, deep issues related to race ah that psychoanalysis itself has, um which is its own conversation.
00:48:52
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um But it was in psychoanalytic spaces that I felt like I had really experienced the most harm. And it was folks creating analytic spaces that were for folks of color, which is where this whole journey kind of started for me.
00:49:12
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um And I was a participant first before facilitating. And it was often the case that people would enter these spaces at different points of their identity development journey.
00:49:30
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um And I would experience that
00:49:37
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
in some really hurtful, harmful ways.
00:49:43
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um
00:49:47
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
and think like that compounded by all of the repeat experiences prior made accessing those spaces kind of challenging for me and they weren't all like that but that's kind of where it started um so really not until after well after grad school what about you
00:50:08
Blanca Torres, LMFT
well first I just love that you weren't finding those spaces so you were like fuck this I'm gonna create it I wasn't finding those spaces so I was like fuck this I'll just read the book laughing laughing laughing
00:50:24
Blanca Torres, LMFT
ah
00:50:25
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I just wrote the chapter too last year.
00:50:29
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Very different approaches. um
00:50:31
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yes.
00:50:32
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I mean, yeah, of course, I've i've sought out as many BIPOC only trainings as I could to various degrees of success. My EMDR training was BIPOC only and it was an incredible experience.
00:50:47
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um Incredible experience. It was US based, so I don't know if that is part of what made it a good experience and I guess I'll explain it a little bit why, but then I've had terrible ones.
00:51:00
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Like, um, I did a BIPOC only somatic training. Um, do we care? Should I get into the details? We don't have to. How do you, what do you think?
00:51:11
Blanca Torres, LMFT
you think it's worth sharing?
00:51:11
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
up to you.
00:51:12
Blanca Torres, LMFT
You were there.
00:51:14
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I mean, it's up to you.
00:51:15
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Okay. And by you were there, I mean, i was live texting you while it was happening.
00:51:19
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yes. but but
00:51:20
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Um,
00:51:21
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I think we've mentioned it on a prior episode.
00:51:24
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Oh, we have. So then I'll just make it brief.
00:51:26
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Mm-hmm.
00:51:26
Blanca Torres, LMFT
It was a BIPOC only space where a wyt woman decided to sign up um and she was saying she is a person of color because she's from South Africa. But then also like in some spaces she was calling herself wyts wyt. in other spaces she was calling herself Peruvian.
00:51:43
Blanca Torres, LMFT
and And so she was just giving really mixed information. No one would have told her she wasn't, like no one would have said, leave, you're white, if she just shut her mouth. But she didn't in a small group with me. She said, i'm I'm wyt I'm the occupier and it's been really hard to hear you all talk about occupiers
00:52:01
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um And of course, I had a nervous system reaction, and I was made to be the problem. I was told the problem was my nervous system reaction, not the violation. And they tried to make me settle my nervous system in front of this woman.
00:52:17
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I never received any sort of apology. i just ended up leaving the training. And the reason why I brought up the US-based versus not is that this was global. And I do want to make space for the fact that BIPOC only is a different context in the world at large because we're part of the global majority.
00:52:39
Blanca Torres, LMFT
right? And so it does mean something different to people of color from other countries to see that. So I just, I don't, I don't want, I just want to note that difference that that does matter.
00:52:53
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And it was still a really deeply unsafe space that really, it broke my heart. and And it was one of the things that just kind of led to a lot of internalizations for me. Like, am I the problem? Why do I keep going to the spaces and then end up leaving? What am I doing? Why do I keep doing this? Right.
00:53:11
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I had a lovely conversation with my therapist about how I was mad at myself for having trauma responses.
00:53:16
Blanca Torres, LMFT
So ever since then, I've just kind of decided like this was a premium training, too. It was going to cost me $10,000 over two years. to complete this certificate.
00:53:28
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And after that harm, I was like, you know what? Forget this. I found another organization. I did it in six months. It wasn't BIPOC only, but look at what happened into the other space. So like with anything else, I've just decided I'll get the information I need and I will find a way to adapt it to the people that I work with because these people are never going to have the answers that I'm seeking.
00:53:53
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um But yeah, that's my experience my experience in those BIPOC only spaces. And again, very different reactions. Ksera like, I'm going to make them. And I was like, I'm going to leave.
00:54:04
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
yeah
00:54:07
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Mm-hmm.
00:54:07
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah. Well, I think what I appreciate you about you highlighting like the difference of that space is that there are so many people who grasp onto wanting to do this kind of work and they don't do it with intention.
00:54:24
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
right And experienced facilitators may have set that whole thing up a very different way
Reimagining Inclusive Training Spaces
00:54:34
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
because like i don't have any business saying that I can fully comment on the context of folks who live in other places outside of the U.S.,
00:54:48
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right And even in my role in an organization that I'm in, I've said this too, I'm like, in an ideal world, we would just have a more like an international ish arm of this group, this this part of the group that I'm in, and being intentionally vague here.
00:55:05
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um So that those folks can talk about and center their experiences in a way that I literally cannot. Right. And that I recognize and name that some of the choices and decisions I've made are very U.S. centric, very Western.
00:55:22
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um And think like. I imagine that going so differently if it was actually being run by folks who understood that they cannot nor should not account for all contexts if they don't actually understand that context and how to apply it to the different people accessing certain training.
00:55:45
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right.
00:55:50
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um And I don't think that means it can't be done, but I do think a lot of these spaces popped up because we needed them and we wanted them, but they were put together without a lot of intention.
00:56:06
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um There's a lot of like, okay, we can do this now, right? And DEI and DEIB is everywhere. And um I recognize, even as I say that, that my own reaction to this by creating things is also in a similar vein, right?
00:56:29
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I tried to do my homework. Like, really um getting myself trained, making sure that I was working with other people who could check me, um constantly, constantly, constantly interrogating myself.
00:56:46
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I don't want to say that, like, other people don't do that. That's not the message. I just think it's not it's not how a lot of these spaces were approached.
00:56:57
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right. I also had the thought too while you were talking.
00:57:02
Blanca Torres, LMFT
But what I was thinking while you were talking is like part of it is because
00:57:09
Blanca Torres, LMFT
what's happening is people are taking an oppressive space and saying, how do we make it look non-subjugating But they're not actually changing the subjugating context.
00:57:18
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Mm-hmm.
00:57:21
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And so it kind of goes with that whole like, We don't need to rebuild. We need to burn it down.
00:57:28
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um huh
00:57:28
Blanca Torres, LMFT
but Like, we don't need to remodel. It needs to be burnt down.
00:57:32
Blanca Torres, LMFT
You know? So, I don't know. i think that's kind of a half-baked thought. But what I'm getting at is, like, we're trying to take wyt dominant spaces and make them diverse rather than taking down wyt dominant spaces.
00:57:45
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Right. And really the message there is that like these spaces wouldn't even bring in the same clinical theory.
00:57:57
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
it wouldn't right like if if it's truly being burnt down and we're just building something totally new and rooted in liberation the dsm wouldn't be in those spaces right like icd mental health diagnos like they wouldn't be in those spaces at all and that's it's own another conversation right but like
00:58:11
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right. Yeah.
00:58:24
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
what we're talking about truly cannot be addressed without realizing that even the things that we use in our field
00:58:38
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
do not capture most of the people at least that you and I serve.
00:58:44
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right.
00:58:46
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um but maybe not, ah maybe also the people who we don't serve, right? like Like there's so much of um society that is caught up in these systems of subjugation And of course there's intersectionality in terms of privilege and how much people experience and so on. But like, as soon as we start parsing, we're missing the point that these systems aren't good for any of us.
00:59:12
Blanca Torres, LMFT
right
00:59:12
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um except for the very few 1% that they benefit. But yeah, so i think like,
00:59:23
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
i was thinking about that experience that I mentioned about being a facilitator. and I realized that I couldn't really remember all the details of it and what happened to me.
00:59:35
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um I know that something that I said to the group was experienced as anti-Semitic. um And this is an analytic space.
00:59:49
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And no matter how many times I tried to explain, like it just like it was received that way and I was not at all backed up by my co-facilitator. um and It was awful.
01:00:05
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
It was really, truly awful. And that was the last one that I did. and I was like, I got to exit this space. And like, they tried to do repair with me and all of that. And I was like, you weren't there when it mattered most.
01:00:23
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And you're a part of the group of people who had this concern. And here was a chance to sort of hold the dialectic and center and talk and process.
01:00:34
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And you just left me. And that was so aggressive. It was so aggressive. um And that was when I was just like, okay, like, we're done with this.
01:00:51
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um trying to create this in these spaces is not for me.
01:00:56
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
So that's just going right back to what you said, right? Like, I was like, no, I just got to... do something totally different. Like, it can't be here. It's not going to be here. um And some of the local analytic folks have tried to recruit me to teach again. And I said, no, they didn't want to pay me.
01:01:17
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And there was like the pick your brain aspect of it.
01:01:20
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I'm like, get out of here. like you cannot.
01:01:24
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And I get... And I know this connects to the capitalism piece, but like there is also like an expectation that like folks of color will just give their labor for free where they will offer to pay wyt people.
01:01:40
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um And that and of itself was problematic. And we could have a whole conversation just about like payment for services on another episode. um But I definitely had to just enter other spaces where like it was a total reimagining and and not at all connected to these systems that I was a part of.
01:01:59
Blanca Torres, LMFT
yeah yeah and i feel like that's kind of what i've been noticing is happening um
01:02:09
Blanca Torres, LMFT
with folks we share intersections with is we're just like recognizing that fight isn't worth it And we're creating our own spaces in our own fight, right? Like not, I want to clarify, I don't mean that the fight's not worth it. The fight is very worth it.
01:02:29
Blanca Torres, LMFT
And like, you can't, like, I think what I said at the beginning is you can't keep bleeding yourself dry for the sake of getting people who refuse to see or hear you to see or hear you.
01:02:41
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Right. What's the Instagram post that goes around every once in a while? You're not ah you're not required to continue to argue with people who are committed to misunderstanding you.
01:02:50
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yes.
01:02:50
Blanca Torres, LMFT
They don't want to. They want to give themselves their pat on the back, their cookie for saying DEI and for having some people folks of color here and there.
01:03:01
Blanca Torres, LMFT
but they don't want to actually change their thoughts. They don't want to actually change their behaviors. They don't want to actually internalize anything related to this. Then, okay, then, then, then, then you go, you go have your, your little space that you make yourself feel better, you know, go through the motions and the rest of us will move through liberation in other ways.
01:03:26
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Yeah. And I think like a key point to ah that I want to underscore what you said is like, I can't keep showing up to spaces being the only one willing to put everything out there.
01:03:41
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
to engage in collective healing across intersections. And I'm not saying that that's true for all things. I wanna be clear.
01:03:49
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I just very carefully negotiate my energy because I'm like, if I'm here being like, you know what? I'm willing to hear everything you might wanna say, but you're not, that just isn't worth it to me.
01:04:05
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And like, as soon as I pick that up and I'm like, okay, now you're throwing labels at me. And you're not even hearing what I like, forget it. Right. And so I've definitely been more choosy.
01:04:18
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Um, and I think I used to be more hungry for more of these spaces, but I've just gotten like more selective.
01:04:29
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And like I said, like work together with folks to create certain things. Like even this podcast, right. This podcast is one of those endeavors.
01:04:38
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Um, as well as, like I said, partnering with friends of mine to like write the chapters in the books and you know really sort of digest the scholarship and receive wisdom from other people who are offering it in community. And um it's just changed. I think it's changed in direct relation to how much harm I've experienced in these spaces.
01:05:04
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
So this is not a neat conversation. It was never going to be. Things are never that here.
01:05:13
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
ah But we want to sort of leave you with some things to reflect as you're thinking about this topic, which is like, what would truly liberatory professional spaces look like?
01:05:27
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Like if you deeply had to interrogate that, especially considering some of the parts of this conversation where we're like, hey, like this isn't cut and dry. What would that look like? And we would love to hear it from you. So please email us or you can even DM us on Instagram.
01:05:45
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And we also want you to think about interrogating like where you have in your healing journey or your journey as a healer. sought out legitimacy from these systems that don't see your full humanity, that don't see who you are.
01:06:03
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Because these are the questions that we need to constantly ask ourselves as we move in and out of these spaces. So with that said, we're going to transition to our bodies for a moment, which who I need.
01:06:19
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Absolutely.
01:06:21
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
So whatever you're feeling right now, tense, inspired, grieving, rageful, invigorated, it's all okay.
01:06:32
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Just let it be. You don't need to fix anything. Just pause.
01:06:40
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Now bring your focus to one small point inside of you, your heartbeat.
01:06:47
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
You don't have to feel it right away. Just notice somewhere deep inside your heart is still beating. Steady, quiet, working for you.
01:07:04
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
If you feel restlessness or tension, just let it be. Let your heartbeat be your anchor.
01:07:13
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
A quiet rhythm beneath the noise.
01:07:18
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
You are safe to pause. You're allowed to feel what you feel. And underneath it all, your heart keeps going, strong and steady.
01:07:30
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Stay with that rhythm for just a moment longer. And when you're ready, gently come back to us for our moment of joy and thriving.
01:07:43
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Blanca, what is your a moment of joy and thriving this week?
01:07:49
Blanca Torres, LMFT
I think I'm not going to get, I'm not going to tell the specifics, but I know the next step in my journey, not professionally, but personally, and I'm very excited about it. I'm sure I will update when there's something to update, but I'm just feeling really good and centered and hopeful about what's next for me personally.
01:08:10
Blanca Torres, LMFT
um And then just a fun thing, I'm finally getting my second nose ring redone. If you're not watching, you're just listening, I just showed off. I used to have two, one fell off in Jamaica, and eight months later, I'm finally going to go get it re-pierced.
01:08:27
Blanca Torres, LMFT
What about you, Ksera? Yeah.
01:08:29
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um My moment of joy and thriving, I did mention at the top of the show that I traveled recently and that was really nice for me because i was sick a lot the last year and was only more recently cleared to travel ah back in June and um and I worry constantly about getting sick in addition to getting disappeared. And it was just really nice to do that.
01:09:02
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
um And important because the work that we do is really hard. And i um know for my clients and the people that I serve that getting to do that is good for them as well.
01:09:18
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Yeah.
01:09:18
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
because I feel ready to get back into that because our students are starting. I'm going to be supervising as I usually am in the fall and spring.
01:09:29
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
And so I feel good about that. um And what else? I got a new plant. I got an Alocacia back there. Her name is Aaliyah. She's been engaging in all sorts of drama since I did a little bit of transplant.
01:09:47
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
I'm like, why did I get this plant? Because I already knew what I was signing up for, but we'll see how it goes.
01:09:54
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Oh, I love it.
01:09:56
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
so that's my moment of joy and thriving so ah we look forward to you joining us for the next episode if you've still been with us every episode we are so happy to have you here just want to remind you that we do have a patreon as usual it's in our show notes so sign up because the more there bodies of you ah the more we can do And the more a we can offer. And as a reminder, at one of our patron levels, you get discounts off of some of our services.
01:10:29
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
So we hope to see you over there if you are a healer like us. Until next time. take care, everybody.
01:10:40
Blanca Torres, LMFT
Bye, everybody. Thank you.
01:10:41
Ksera Dyette, Psy.D. (she/her)
Bye.