Love, Happiness, and Success For Therapists

If you don’t have a clear answer to the question, “What kind of therapist am I?”, your work may feel harder than it needs to be. Discovering your niche as a therapist isn’t about branding or boxing yourself in. It’s about professional clarity, clinical confidence, and building a practice that feels focused rather than scattered. Many therapists default to being generalists, especially early in the...

Perinatal mental health is one of the most important clinical issues therapists encounter and one of the most frequently overlooked. When a client is pregnant or newly postpartum, distress is often minimized as “just part of the transition,” even when something more serious is happening beneath the surface. If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re asking the right questions, or worried you might be...

If you’re a therapist who uses acceptance commitment therapy with clients but quietly struggles to apply those same principles to your own life or practice, this conversation is for you. Acceptance commitment therapy offers powerful tools for values-based living, psychological flexibility, and sustainable change, yet many therapists find it surprisingly hard to turn that wisdom inward. In this epi...

If you’ve ever noticed this work starting to feel heavier, flatter, or more draining than it used to, this is for you. “Why therapists need to grow too” is a question many clinicians never stop to ask, even though the answer is often at the heart of burnout, boredom, and long-term career dissatisfaction. When growth slows, even deeply meaningful work can begin to feel exhausting. This week on Love...

Clinical hypnosis may be the closest thing we have to an “easy button” for helping clients follow through on the changes they want to make. This time of year, therapists and coaches see a surge of motivated clients. They're setting big goals for the new year, dreaming about who they want to become, and walking into sessions full of intention. But what happens next is all too familiar: action stall...

If you’re a therapist who’s quietly thinking, “I cannot do 30 more years of back-to-back sessions… but I don’t know what else is possible,” you are so not alone. Also, you have tons of transferable skills and deep knowledge that could be deployed to help not just individuals, but organizations flourish and thrive. Most therapists are never exposed to organizational consulting or executive coaching...

Holidays can bring up a lot - gratitude, tenderness, loneliness, longing. It’s a season that puts belonging under a spotlight. That’s why this felt like the right time to bring back this conversation about A Home Within and the impact of being one steady, caring adult in the life of a young person who hasn’t had that before. Many young people in foster care grow up without one consistent adult who...

How can psychedelic-assisted therapy create deep, lasting transformation where conventional treatments only manage symptoms? Psychiatrist and integrative medicine pioneer Dr. Scott Shannon joins me to talk about how this emerging field is reshaping what’s possible for healing, not just for our clients, but for the future of mental health care itself. Dr. Shannon shares his decades of work explorin...

Therapists hold the power to transform not only individual lives but the systems that shape mental health care itself. In this episode, I’m joined by Gino Titus-Luciano, a licensed mental health counselor, nationally certified counselor, and the CEO of Kokua Mental Health & Wellness Group. As president of the Hawaii Counselors Association, Gino has spent years advocating for systemic change in men...

Your client’s mood might be shaped as much by their gut and their screen as by their thoughts. We talk so much about emotions, attachment, and insight in therapy - but what if physiology and media are quietly steering the wheel? In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Tatyana El-Kour, a psychologist and registered dietitian who studies how media and technology shape our everyday choices. Together, we’r...

This episode originally aired on May 21, 2025 (Episode 67), and I’m bringing it back because it changes the way we treat our clients’ mental health diagnoses. Metabolic psychiatry invites us to look beyond the mind - to the brain, the body, and the biological energy systems that make healing possible. I’m joined by Nicole Laurent, a licensed mental health counselor, founder of the Brain Fog Recove...

Are you a therapist struggling to figure out how to run a business? Valid! Most of us became therapists to help people, not to run a business. But, ironically, close to 50% of therapists are doing exactly that. If you’re in private practice without an entrepreneurial mindset, it’s easy to get overwhelmed, overworked, and wonder if this was a terrible idea. Help is here: We’re getting advice from a...

Relationships are breaking under the weight of political differences, and more clients are bringing these divides into the therapy room. So what do we do when values-based conflict becomes the problem in the relationship - and the therapist is part of the system too? In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Bill Doherty: Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota, creator of the discernment couns...

I’ll be honest with you. I’ve had moments in my own career where I sat with that quiet, terrifying thought: I don’t know if I want to be a therapist anymore. If you’ve ever felt that, you know how disorienting it is. You’ve invested so much of yourself into this path, and suddenly the work that once gave you meaning begins to feel heavy, lonely, or even incompatible with who you are becoming. That...

Therapists, it’s not a “maybe” to prioritize self-care - it’s part of our JOB! We can’t be of service to others (or have this be a sustainable career path) if we don’t. In this episode, we’re getting real about what self-care for counselors actually means in practice. Not the Instagram version but the deep daily practices that keep  you grounded, present, and well enough to keep showing up for oth...

Can we really change our personalities? Dr. Dan Siegel says “NO” but also that nobody needs to. We can help our clients heal, grow, and unleash the fullest of their potential by helping them lean into who and what they really ARE. Crazy but true: We therapists are not taught how to work with personality in therapy. Unless you have a “personality disordered” individual (as we used to call it back i...

This episode first aired on December 4, 2024 (Episode 44). We’re revisiting it because many therapists continue to experiment with coaching without realizing the risks. What begins as a way to broaden your work can expose you and your clients to real vulnerabilities if you’re not equipped with the right training. In this episode, I unpack the differences between therapy and coaching, the pitfalls...

What would happen to your clients if you died tomorrow? The New York Times recently highlighted just how devastating it can be when a therapist falls ill or dies without a plan in place. Clients are left confused, abandoned, and without the closure they deserve. It’s a hard question, but one every therapist has an ethical obligation to face. Psychologist Dr. Robyn Miller—Founder of TheraClosure, t...

This episode first aired on January 31, 2024 (Episode 3). We’re revisiting it because deciding when to let a client go is one of the most nuanced — and often unspoken — challenges therapists face. The reflections in this conversation are just as relevant today as they were when it was first released, offering guidance, perspective, and a reminder that you’re not navigating these decisions alone. H...

Toxic mental health internships are quietly breaking down early career therapists before their careers even begin. In this episode, I’m talking with my brilliant friend and colleague Dr. Ambra Born about one of the hardest, least-discussed realities in our profession: what happens when training programs don’t protect their students. We’re opening up about what it’s like to feel overworked, underpa...

This episode originally aired on February 14, 2024 (Episode 5), and we’re bringing it back because ghosting is one of those challenges every therapist encounters at some point in their career. It’s an important conversation worth revisiting, both for the insight it offers and the reminder that you’re not alone in navigating it. Have you ever been ghosted by a therapy client? This unfortunate exper...

Ever notice how this work changes you in ways you never saw coming? I’m not just talking about your skills in the therapy room. I mean how it rewires your social life, shapes your relationships, and even shifts the way you see the world. In this episode of Love, Happiness, and Success for Therapists, I’m getting real about the pros and cons of being a therapist, from the hilarious moments (like wh...

Is your therapy practice future-ready… or are your AI tools quietly writing your client notes — and maybe rewriting your ethics policy, too? If you’re a therapist trying to make sense of what the heck is going on with AI in our field right now, this episode is for you. Whether you’re using AI daily, avoiding it like a bad EHR platform, or somewhere in between, you need to hear this conversation. I...

This one is SO important... we're doing it again. After originally posting this episode earlier in the year, I've had so many messages from therapist colleagues about how helpful and important this info was, I wanted to put it back at the top. Additionally, I have created a free cheat sheet with the changes that I made to my own disclosure statement after recording this interview (because I too, l...

Ever wondered how a coach with zero credentials is charging triple what you make—and people are lining up to pay them?! It's enough to make any seasoned, licensed, ethics-loving therapist want to throw their DSM across the room. In this juicy episode of Love, Happiness & Success for Therapists, I’m pulling back the curtain on why life coaching income so often leaves therapist rates in the dust.  C...