Intentional Therapist: Putting You In Your Schedule

How often do you take time to reflect on your beliefs and the ways they might be influencing your self-care?  If you’re like most female mental health therapists, you’re likely so busy tending to your professional and personal roles and responsibilities that this hasn’t even crossed your mind.  Yet, the reality is many of us may be unknowingly buying into beliefs that could be sabotaging our self-...

As a mental health professional, you undoubtedly know the significant role our relationships can have on our overall well-being.  In fact, it’s probably something you discuss with most, if not all your clients at some point during therapy.  But how often do you take the same time and care to reflect on your own relationships with others?  In today’s episode we revisit the connection pillar of our...

Have you ever thought of documentation as a form of self-care?  Of course, probably not!  We know that more likely, documentation often feels like a time-consuming, mentally draining task that takes away from the work you truly care about.  But we are here to try to convince you that documentation can actually be a key part of our self-care.  Yes, you heard that right.  There are ways to turn this...

How often do you think of values when you think about self-care?  If you’re like many of us, probably not very often or at all.  Yet the reality is our values can play a huge role in our self-care, whether we think about them or not.  In this week's episode we explore three important ways values are related to self-care.   And although most of the time connecting with our values is truly a va...

Do you ever find yourself wondering why self-care seems to come so easily for some of your colleagues or why you and your colleagues struggle in different ways with self-care? Or maybe you’ve been disappointed with the “one-size fits” all self-care messages you’ve been fed. If so, you’re not alone. In today’s episode, we’re diving into the topic of individual differences. As female mental health c...

We’re about to explore something that may surprise you—your brain’s survival instincts are still influencing how you approach self-care, and they might be working against you. Have you ever wondered why saying "no" feels impossible or why you can't seem to prioritize yourself no matter how hard you try? What if the answer lies in how our brains are wired for survival, and how that w...

Ever feel like you’re always giving—whether it’s to your clients, your family, or even strangers on the street—and somehow your own needs get pushed aside? You're not alone. In fact, this might be part of a much bigger issue that’s rigged against women when it comes to self-care. If you're a female therapist, juggling the demands of your clients, family, and personal well-being, this epi...

Do you often find yourself working hard, yet questioning your abilities, feeling like you’re just pretending to be competent, waiting to be found out? If you’re a female therapist wrestling with imposter syndrome and the pressures of a lingering student mindset, you’re not alone, and this episode is for you. We’ll explore how these internal struggles can impact your self-care and professional fulf...

Have you ever felt the weight of your clients' struggles lingering long after your sessions end? Spent evenings and weekends fretting over whether you used the right interventions, or should have tried something different?  We sure have, and we know we aren’t alone in this.  That’s why in this episode, we’re shining a light on the hazards of the mental health profession—those challenges that...

When was the last time you felt truly in control of your schedule? Or had a day when your to-do list didn’t just overflow with everyone else’s needs, leaving yours at the bottom? If self-care feels like just another item you’re not quite managing to cross off, you’re not alone – and that’s exactly why we created this podcast. In this first episode, we’re introducing a game-changing approach to sel...

Ever feel like there’s just never enough time in the day? You’re juggling client sessions, family responsibilities, and maybe even a little bit of a social life—if you’re lucky. And yet, somehow, taking care of yourself always falls to the bottom of the list. Sound familiar? In today’s episode, we’re breaking down the toxic time messages that keep us stuck in this endless cycle of overwhelm. We’re...

Self-care shouldn’t be another task on your to-do list!  Hosted by Dr. Karen Dyck and Dr. Melissa Tiessen, clinical psychologists, founders of Intentional Therapist, and self-care advocates, this podcast is for female mental health therapists who are ready to redefine self-care.    Connect with Melissa & Karen at Intentional Therapist: https://www.intentionaltherapist.ca/   |  intentional@inte...

As regular listeners know, we are (still!) in the process of working on a new format for our podcast which we hope to share in the very near future. So please stay tuned! Until then, we are continuing to go into our podcast archives to replay some past episodes that we feel deserve a repeat performance. This month we are re-sharing another one of our favourite podcast interviews, where we discuss...

As you may already know, we are in the process of working on a new format for our podcast which we hope to share in the very near future.  So please stay tuned!  Until then, we are continuing to go into our podcast archives to replay some past episodes that we feel deserve a repeat performance.  This month we are re-sharing one of our favourite podcast interviews, which was with Tabitha Carvan, th...

As we shared last month, we are busily working on a new format for our podcast which we’re planning on unveiling in the next few months.  Until then, we’re continuing to go into our podcast archives and resharing episodes on topics we thought warrant a repeat performance.   So with that in mind, this month we are resharing our podcast interview with Linzy Bonham on the important topic of finances....

We are very excited to share that we are in the process of reformatting our podcast!  We are aiming to launch the new format in the coming months, and in the meantime we will be sure to share more updates as well as we would love to get your feedback.  So please stay tuned for more details! In the meantime, we decided to go into our Thrivival 101 archives to share a replay of our most popular epis...

Many women at some point in their careers will experience the major milestone of becoming a mother. It's a life-changing experience, yet how often do we talk about how this transition impacts our work? In this month's episode of Thrivival 101 we were so pleased to speak with Lori Mihalich-Levin and Arianna Taboada about the work they do to help parents thrive in both their parenting and...

As clinicians we’re familiar with the concept and importance of resilience but how many of us actually think about resiliency for ourselves?  In this episode we speak with award winning workplace mental health expert and psychologist, Dr. Marie-Helene Pelletier about her recent book The Resilience Plan: A Strategic Approach to Optimizing Your Work Performance and Mental Health .  Marie-Helene expl...

In this special podcast episode, we, Dr. Melissa Tiessen and Dr. Karen Dyck, dedicate our discussion to what is perhaps our favourite 'C' from our 4 C's model of self-care—Courage.  We provide a quick overview of our 4 C’s model of self-care and why Courage is the C that we like discussing the most, as well as why we view it as the essential fuel that helps to move us from thinking...

Listening to the wisdom of our body is an essential component of self-care, yet how often do we truly embrace this?  Do we even know what that would look like? In this episode we speak with Courtney Amo, Dr. Julie Beaulac, and Casey Bergland, the authors of the book entitled The Mind Body Way: The Embodied Leader’s Path to Resilience, Connection, and Purpose . Our guests use the term “leader” in a...

As clinicians we often speak with our clients about the importance of boundaries but how often do we actually apply that same wisdom to our own self-care?   In this episode we speak with psychologist Kim Long about the incredibly important yet uncomfortable topic of boundaries.  Kim shares some of the common misconceptions about boundaries, some of the reasons why this is so hard for female clinic...

As female mental health clinicians we receive multiple messages or “scripts” through our socialization as women and mental health clinicians about things like professionalism, productivity, caregiving and even what it means to be a “good therapist” and a “good woman.”  And the reality is, these messages come from systems that are based in a western, capitalist, patriarchal society.  In this episod...

In this long overdue episode, we, Dr. Karen Dyck and Dr. Melissa Tiessen, discuss the factors that led us to start Intentional Therapist and begin hosting this podcast, Thrivival 101.  We also explain why we believe self-care is a four-letter word, share how we are redefining self-care, and how our 4 C’s framework - Connection, Compassion, Courage, and Creativity - can help female clinicians (rega...

In this episode we connect with Dr. Stephanie Grunewald, psychologist, coach, and entrepreneur, to learn more about her RESET model and how she helps her clients achieve a life and business aligned in purpose.  Stephanie shares some of the common traps impacting ambitious women and how her own experience of connecting with her values resulted in her making the very intentional decision against exp...

For those of you who are familiar with Intentional Therapist and the 4 C’s model of self-care you know our Connection pillar includes not only connecting with others but also connecting with our own values.  For many people, faith and spirituality are important values that we often don't talk enough about.  In this episode we speak with Whitney Owens about the ways she incorporates faith into...