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Being Well Podcast: So You Want to Be a Therapist?
July 31, 2023

Over the last 10 years interest in therapy has boomed, and with the greater demand for therapists more people than ever are considering pursuing a career in mental health. On today’s episode of the Being Well Podcast, Forrest speaks to five therapists and therapists-in-training to learn the lessons they wish they’d known when they started.

About our Guests: Rick Hanson is a psychologist, Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, New York Times best-selling author, and frequent guest on Being Well.

Lori Gottlieb is a practicing therapist in Los Angeles, and is the author of the bestseller Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.

Terry Real is a longtime clinician, the founder of the Relational Life Institute, and bestselling author of a number of books including Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship.

Elizabeth Ferreira is an associate somatic psychotherapist working in the San Francisco Bay Area. If you’d like to work with Elizabeth, you can reach out to her through her website or Instagram.

Taylor Banfield is a graduate student in the PsyD program at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California. 

Key Topics:

  • 0:00: Intro
  • 2:15: Rick Hanson
  • 5:05: Key traits of good therapists
  • 17:50: Questions a prospective therapist might not think to ask
  • 25:00: Self-employement, emotional regulation, and boundaries
  • 27:45: Efficacy, complacency, and respecting the craft
  • 31:45: Lori Gottlieb
  • 35:20: Emotional intimacy and human connection
  • 38:50: Modalities 
  • 40:50: Vulnerability, uncertainty, and making mistakes
  • 48:10: Terry Real
  • 52:45: Learning how to heal yourself first
  • 55:35: What therapy is actually like
  • 59:30: Messiness
  • 1:03:15: Elizabeth Ferreira
  • 1:06:35: Somatics, and being yourself
  • 1:11:50: How to suffer with someone, then let it move through you
  • 1:16:45: Awareness and the bravery of owning what’s in the room
  • 1:21:15: Chaos and loving yourself
  • 1:27:45: Taylor Banfield
  • 1:34:00: Sitting with a client for the first time
  • 1:37:45: Choosing a specific career path
  • 1:39:10: Boundaries
  • 1:43:15: Recap

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