Episode 118 Transcript: Career Pivots — It’s Never Too Late to Become a Therapist
Elisabeth LaMotte:
From the National Association of Social Workers, this is Social Work Talks, and I'm your host, Elizabeth Lamotte. And I am really looking forward to today's conversation with Karey Swartwout, Dr. Brook Stroud and Dan Duane. We are titling the episode of this podcast, It's Never Too Late, and the reason for that title is we are sitting down with three very successful professionals who made the decision mid-career and midlife to pivot and train to become a therapist, which for all of them meant going back to school in midlife. So, Karey is a very well-known and popular and respected chef. Dan is a gifted and very successful writer who's written many books including Caught Inside and How to Cook like a Man. And Brooke is a fearless political organizer and journalist. Karey, Dan and Brooke, welcome to Social Work Talks. Thank you so much for joining us. I do think it's really important to point out as we're getting started that all three of you were steeped in very successful careers when you decided to make this change. Karey, you have started very popular catering companies and restaurants. Dan, you have written more books than I can name. You have published in the most prestigious publications. Brooke, your tireless political organizing is legendary in the DC area and beyond. So can you walk us through the catalyst as you see it, each of you, for how you decided to make this change?
Daniel Duane:
Well, the catalyst for, there were a number of different threads in my making this change, but let's say one way of thinking about it is that I was, a lot of my writing was as sort of an adventure sports journalist like I did. I would go on climbing trips and surfing trips, and so I had this whole side of my life that was out there in the world having great adventures and writing about them. But I had this other side of my life, which was being in therapy all the time, and I mean for a long time. And I had a great long-term therapy with a psychoanalyst that just was a wonderful relationship and helped me go through very difficult times in very emotionally successful ways and grow in great ways. And over the years in that therapy, I had found myself at times sitting there in this guy's office thinking, man, you have a cool job. This is really neat what you get to do.
And maybe I was idealizing it a little bit, but it really looked great to me talking about life's big questions and all of that. Another thing that was going on is that as my journalism became more serious, I found myself really drawn to the part of journalism that is bearing witness, that is asking people about their lives, asking you hear about people's lives and the job of being present and really listening and authentic curiosity started to feel like an incredibly important piece of that to me. And then there was the death of the magazine industry. That was another piece of it. This industry that I'd worked in for a long time started, well, it's been crumbling for as long as I worked in it, so there was that piece of it too. So one day I just kind of woke up and I don't know, the truth is my daughter was home from college one day talking about majors and my wife said, God, honey, if you could go back to college and major and just study one thing for two years, wouldn't that be amazing? What would you study? And I said, nothing, I'm too tired. I'm too old and tired. And then I said, no, I know what I do. I'd become a therapist. And it just sort of popped out of me. And sometimes you have to listen to these inner when these things just kind of come spontaneously from within. I dunno. I feel like they're telling you something, the inner voice is speaking. So that's my answer. Thank you.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
I feel the same way Dan. And I would say, I think a lot of people look back and feel like their experience in therapy is the most meaningful, most important training you get, which may be a separate conversation. I also happen to think that you're a natural therapist for sure. There's several pieces I want to ask you about. But Karey, could you tell us what led you to make this decision?
Karey Swartwout:
It is interesting to think about the journey and I think as humans, this field is just, obviously everyone has a piece in it. So it's just, I think everyone, and probably all four of us throughout our lives, there has been some time whether when we were little or whether we were in college or whether we were in our thirties and forties where we just learned so much about other people and navigating challenges, navigating catastrophes. And so I think this is just such an amazing field for anyone who is midlife because it's just by the time you've gotten to this age, you've figured out a lot of stuff that you didn't know in your twenties.
But growing up, my mom was actually an LPC, she counseled and her second husband, she counseled sex offenders and rapist at the Texas State Prison in Huntsville, which was fascinating. And he had his doctorate and he was a death row counselor for the Texas State Prison. So it was just fascinating to hear all of those stories and their challenges, but also their just grit in really helping these clients. So I kind of grew up in that environment. But then the second best training, aside from getting your master's I think is working in the restaurant industry because you are just growing up. I've worked in restaurants in high school while I was living in New York for a little bit, I worked at Sardis, which was fascinating. Started my catering business in London, catering for hedge funds and private equity. And that was a whole nother field of ecology and then ending up in Rockport and opening up a restaurant as well.
And I think the constant theme that I've seen is that everyone has just a primal need to be taken care of, period. And so it came to me a few years ago and I've seen my friend Brooke here who has gone through the journey as well, but I felt a need, a desire to grow more in this area of what makes people tick. And so I decided to dive in. I'll be finishing up in December. So it's just a neat journey and like Dan said, it's like if you could do anything in the world and study anything in your later years of life, mid to later years, this is it.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
How did your mother respond when you decided to join her profession?
Karey Swartwout:
Well, unfortunately, so she passed away. Both my mom and dad passed away 20 17, 20 19. But my older sister, yeah, but I know that she is wherever she is looking at me going, I knew you were going to do that. I knew you fought me all the way, Karey, but I knew you were going to do that. But my older sister is, my older sister is a school psychologist up in Austin, so you can kind of think that it may be my dad was a geophysicist, so it wasn't counseling at all. But I think it's just something that it was thinking about how people think and just that exposure and that being in the house and being in the conversation, it feels so natural to be entering this field now.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
And Brooke, what about you? How did you come to this decision?
Brooke Stroud:
I studied psychology in undergrad and that was my passion and my pleasure and intention to go into that field. I happened to volunteer on the Clinton Gore campaign of 92 him, and it turned into a full-time job where I stayed for seven years and had a variety of roles. And then I met my husband and we moved overseas to London. While as I arrived, I studied, I got my master's degree at the London School of Economics in social psychology. And the intention there was to become a writer about groups of people. My interest in politics and my role, my vantage from having been in politics sort of opened my eyes to what policy can do to affect people's lives and what people's lives are like, groups of people and how policy can affect them. So that was my goal. I had three kids while I was in London and raised them to keep myself engaged in the world. I did start writing for Time Magazine as a freelance journalist, and then we decided as a family to move back to the United States about 10 years later. And just prior to returning, my father died in a car accident and it was throttling to my heart and soul and our whole family.
And it took me a pretty good year and a half to both get settled, help my family get settled in Washington DC but also enter therapy to process the traumatic loss of my dad. And I think that that really created some soul searching about what was important to me at the time, where I wanted to go with my life, how I wanted to use my gifts and talents and interests and energy. And I ended up having a conversation with my, well, it was an internal conversation. I was having lunch with my mom and my dad's best friend about a block away from where I am right now actually. And I was sitting watching the two of them talk about their work and had this sort of flashbulb moment, as we call it, this sort of revelation, that if I pursued a degree in psychology that I could have a cool 25 years if I was anything like the two of them. And I felt really hopeful and excited and went home and literally got on the phone and dialed around town to all the universities within a hour radius of me. Yeah.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Well you are the farthest along of everyone in this group. You've gotten a doctorate, you're in private practice. Has it lived up to your visions and expectations of what you were looking for by making this transition?
Brooke Stroud:
Yes, enormously. And it's really surpassed what I had imagined at the time. I feel very fulfilled, which was really what I was seeking. I felt like I had a lot to give and I felt that I wasn't fulfilling that sort of fulfilling myself. I feel I have an amazing sort rhythm of life, if you will. And so my work just is the centerpiece of how I live my life and I have incredible relationships with the people I work with. I feel like I'm always learning more and expanding. I think in this work you are learning more about yourself, but you're also learning more technique, exploring, reading. So the journey is not over, thankfully.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Especially as a therapist, there's so many branches of social work, which is my degree and the theme of this podcast. But as a therapist, I do think we are so well poised to get better at it as we get older, which is also why it's so interesting to explore the stage at which you're starting this process. Dan and Karey, what would you say about learning, being in school now at this stage of your life? What stands out to you or what is that like for you? Can you each say something about that? Whoever wants to go first,
Karey Swartwout:
I can go first because as Brooke was talking, I was thinking exactly what she was saying as far as just being well poised at this, having decades under your belt and I'm doing mine, I finish up in December with Pepperdine. I'm about to start my third practicum term. So I've been doing my practicum for the last six months. And I, there's just so much benefit to, because I have started businesses because I have an entrepreneurial background, and I live in a very rural area of south Texas, and I'm doing my online program with Pepperdine University, which is out in Malibu near, I think Dan's out in California. So I can't wait to go to graduation. That's going to be fun. But because of Texas and because of our mental health, I mean, I think we're bottom of the barrel as far as access to resources. And so you can imagine what the internship finding process was like. It was.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
How did you do that?
Karey Swartwout:
I did what every entrepreneur does, and I made my own. So I went to the local and there's a tremendous need in our area, high poverty, lots of need in the local school district and with the local families. And I have a very close relationship with the school district. So I went to them and presented the plan, Googled it, chat, GPT. It was not around or it was, but I wasn't privy to it. But that would've been very helpful, how to create a practicum internship at a local, rural south Texas district. And in my schoolwork with my classes is so fascinating because I am in these classes with a lot, the majority of my classmates, and I don't know how it is for you, Dan, and probably similar actually for Brooke with her doctorate program, but the majority, although the doctorate program, you probably had maybe more that were in their thirties and forties.
But for my program, I have a lot of, I call them nuggets, my little nuggets, my little classmate nuggets who are in their twenties, 26, 27, and that was me. Yes. So we're going around talking about all the things and each class is different. And you go through psychopathology and you go through different types of theories and you go through different types of, the last class we just finished was trauma and different things. And having lived a life with the knowledge of death and grief and living through Hurricane Harvey down here, living through covid, living through a divorce or remarriage or stepchildren or the birth of a child, it's a lot that you cannot get from a textbook. You have to go through it. It's been a learning process for me to be patient with some of the discussions because I would really, I almost feel like, and I just thought of it now, that there needs to be some level of certification or something that is for 45 and up. Because when you've gotten to that age, we are dealing with things like, I would love for us to talk more about elderly parents, loss, midlife, career loss, ageism, menopause. Menopause. My God. And for the poor men that have to deal with all the things, with their own stuff with the menopause and menopause, I mean, I dunno what you call it for me, but could be menopause. Menopause. You heard it here first.
So if anybody writes a Brene Brown, if you're listening, that started with us. Okay. But it's just been, and Dan I know has a lot more to say about it, but just the golden, platinum, nuclear level of knowledge that you get after the age of 45, it's not being studied, it's not being shared, it's not being researched as much as it should. And so I think that's, if I was looking for a program, and also you're just going to get what you get out of it. I know for a lot of my classes, I have asked a lot of questions that you can just see the look of the eyes glaze over in the classmates. They have no idea what you're talking about.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Dan, has that happened to you?
Daniel Duane:
Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. I feel like a space alien in a lot of my classes.
Karey Swartwout:
Totally, totally.
Daniel Duane:
I mean, to the degree sometimes it's actually kind of embarrassing. I'll ask a question. And the truth is a lot of my instructors are a lot younger than I am
Karey Swartwout:
Exactly
Daniel Duane:
A lot younger. And I'll ask some question and it's like, I should probably just shut up. I shouldn't talk in this class.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Well, what else would you say about what it's like to be learning psychological theory and how to apply it now as a clinician, Dan, at this stage of your life.
Daniel Duane:
Life, at this stage of life? Well, that's a really interesting question because, and I guess it's something I've thought about a lot because I don't know, by the time you get to our age, and I'm 56, so by the time you get to our age and you've been through all the things, Karey's talking about love and loss and love again and lose again, and big successes and painful failures and all of the, just being humbled by life and odd by life, just all those things you develop. There's sort of two things that you develop your own, just sort of an intuitive learned sense of the human heart and the human mind, just what it feels like to be a person. And then you also have a sense of who you are. You have a shaped identity. I don't mean we all know ourselves all the way inside and out or anything like that.
We're still mysteries to ourselves, but you have an adult identity. You really are somebody. And one of the things that's been a little peculiar for me is that, and I feel like I'm starting to come out the other side of this, but in entering the profession, I could feel in sort of starting the schooling and doing the other things, one does, you start listening to podcasts and immersing yourself in the discourse of the profession. And what is it like? What are therapists even you start sort of imagining yourself, who will I be as a therapist anyway? And particularly when I was just taking the classes, so before I started practicum, there's this kind of daydreaming quality, and I could feel how much every profession has a kind of professional persona or identity that you guys might remember from Tom Wolfe's the right stuff. There was that thing in it that the voice of Chuck Yeager, the test pilot became the voice of all American airline pilots. So every time you hear an American airline PIs, so if you look down to the left there, that would be Mono Lake. And then on the other side, that's Yosemite National Park. You're hearing somebody doing an impression,
Karey Swartwout:
When I was cooking, I was Julia Child. For sure. Folks should take the bed then you trying.
Daniel Duane:
Totally. That's exactly what I'm talking about. So as I enter into this one at my age, I can feel that if I were 22 doing this or 24 starting school, I'd be just looking around like, oh, I'm going to shape an adult self as a therapist. What will my adult self be like? Let's look around at therapist. I should probably imprint on one and I should imprint on one and be like, oh, I'll be the puppy imprinting on that big dog over there. I'll try to be like that. But that ain't happening at this age. So there's this kind of different negotiation you go through of how do I bring the person that I already am? How do I bring the life that I've already led to this work? And then I just recently started practicum, so I just started seeing clients. And then that piece of it has been another wake up call in the most exciting way, in the sense that I think for the last year, just out of a lack of imagination, I was thinking I'd be, when I'm having these thoughts, what will my life as a therapist be like?
I think I probably just because I'm a middle-aged white dude, I just pictured myself talking to middle-aged white dudes about the meaning of life. And that's what I had done in therapy and really liked, and I, oh, that'll be cool. And maybe some teenage boys, because I remember being a teenage boy and I really dig teenage, I dunno, like that state. I dunno, okay, but maybe that would be true in private practice, but in agency work, this is not what's happening. And so I start agency work and there's that spin the wheel of life quality to it of let's just spin the roulette wheel and see what two souls get matched to have a conversation. And this person, my very first client pops up and it's just someone who's so profoundly unlike me, and yet they're in trouble. They're really in pain, they're really suffering, and they've gone, they've mustered the courage to reach out to a nonprofit community mental health agency and say, can you, I need someone to talk to.
Can someone I'm really in trouble? And it's not so much that I'm appearing on their screen, it's that some pixelated version of this physionomy is getting reproduced on their screen and some aching heart is looking at that face on a screen wanting help. And this needs to happen really fast. Some kind of connection and service and care and empathy. And suddenly all those ideas about, I'll be like a middle aged white dude talking to middle aged white dudes about the meaning of life just that was gone in the first 30 seconds of my first client as I found that experience of, I just found it so thrilling and so fascinating. And that has happened again and again. None of my clients are just outwardly anything like me. But of course there are these other parts of our common humanity that we connect with each other through. And you sort of discover you have all these, who knows what part of your heart is going to overlap and connect with, who knows what part of that person's heart or who knows what part of their journey in the world is going to resonate with your journey in the world. And so anyway, there's some thoughts on what it's been like for me being in school.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
So a few things, Dan. First of all, it is so clear listening that even if it's your very first client, that person is super fortunate to be working with you. And second, it occurs to me listening that we're highlighting something indirectly about social work training that is unusual and distinct from other fields. Because in the field of social work, there is a general ethos that folks start out learning about advocacy, learning about client services, and therefore it takes more time until we find ourselves as social workers in that therapist chair. So I do want to just take a moment to really credit the social work profession here, because I think it therefore helps us create much more developed, more seasoned, more mature therapists. I focus a lot on differentiation and systems theory. And the whole idea of that, if you were to summarize it, is to work in therapy to be as emotionally mature as you can be, therefore to be intimate with others and simultaneously separate.
And I think part of what you're describing in looking back at school is that students who are right out of college or in their early mid twenties, I certainly was, are less differentiated, less emotionally mature. And it doesn't mean that you can't do wonderful, meaningful, important work, but you're at such a different psychological stage, which part of what draws me to this whole topic in terms of how well poised, I think all three of you are to do really good work by virtue of when you're starting to do it. What would you add to that?
Brooke Stroud:
I would like to add something to that. And speaking of differentiation, I had the experience that you had of feeling when I was in the master's program and I was already 30 something at that time, feeling like, have you guys paid taxes? Do you know what it is to hold a job? When I got into the doctoral program, yes. I mean, one of my closest friends from the program was 23 and I was almost 45. We are still working together today. There was another woman in the program who's also one of my closest friends who was 55, and our cohort is still very, very close. What I found really challenging was that I was writing for Time Magazine in the Village Voice, not small publications, and my writing was being taken apart. I was literally being scrutinized in everything. I was doing two-way mirrors and feedback.
I think it was probably quarterly, but it felt like weekly and receiving constant, constant feedback about my performance, my insight into myself, my personal growth. It was like a rewiring, I felt like for me of feeling like a very sort of found self full human and then having to really submit to the whole process of being a student was an incredibly vulnerable experience. So I think it's valuable and almost a parallel process to what your patients are experiencing as they come in. Not that we're scrutinizing or that we're, but it's the vulnerability that I think that gave me a real sense of what it might be like to be a patient walking into their
Elisabeth LaMotte:
First ever session. It's such a good point. I mean, I remember doing that in my earlier twenties, the two-way mirror and all those things. And I did do additional training where there was a half of the program was clergy, and the clergy tended to be a bit older. And I remember classmates asking, what's the difference? At that point, I was in my early twenties and I had classmates in their forties and fifties and they said, what is the difference between us? And I remember one of the professors saying, the younger students are much more open to everything and anything, including submitting to whatever it is and studying every detail, but they don't have the developed self to bring into the room, and I think are not therefore able to work with as many clients simply because of stage of development. So you're bringing me back to those humbling experiences, but I don't think they were as humbling for me because of my stage of development. Do you ever think about what you would've been like as a therapist if you were doing it without the robust experiences that you had professionally beforehand? Do you ever think about that?
Karey Swartwout:
All the time. Yeah. How so? Yeah, I mean definitely just I could not, because especially with each of the classes and we're talking about different subjects and talking about counseling, whether like you said, family systems or systems therapy, and I just would not have had the confidence and I wouldn't have the resources internally and just cognitively and just the wealth of data that I have captured over the decades of life to truly be able to help someone who would come in with trauma from a divorce or come in with having to help an elderly parent die, or
Just all the things that, a lot of the things that bring people to therapy, I dunno that I would've had the skillset, a couple that's navigating infidelity, I would've been like, would've been like, let me Google this. Yeah, totally or cha, but I just would not have had the confidence. The confidence, and that would've been quickly accessed that I do now. And so I think it's even thought, and I think there should there be, I mean, it's an interesting question. Should there be an age requirement minimum to go into this field? I feel increasingly, maybe
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Another way that that is touched upon is should there be a requirement that you have therapy? And it used to be much more common that there was, and now it isn't. And I don't think it's an unrelated question at all. Karey, there's something else I want to make sure I ask. And you alluded to it in the very beginning of our conversation when you talked about being in the restaurant industry and some of the ways that one can feel like a therapist in that role classically as a bartender, but really in any part of the restaurant industry. And what I have found in my practice, but also just in life, is there's so much alcohol use in the restaurant industry. Do you think that will shape the way you show up as a therapist, your knowledge and understanding about that?
Karey Swartwout:
I think that's also been an interesting part of the journey in my schoolwork in my master's program. And in one episode of The Bear will fill you into all the fun things about the restaurant world. And I feel a little bit of pride watching that with my teenage and college age sons because they're like, that's so cool. I'm like, that's me. I did that. All the Meison plus and the knife and the burn. Look at my burn marks like that.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
I always say corn now and behind every time I'm
Karey Swartwout:
Behind. Behind. Oh no, my son, my older son Henry. Yeah, he says that. He says behind. Yeah, he's like behind. But I think it's been interesting. Yes, lots of alcohol, lots of drug use, wonderful, wonderful conversations around the bar as the night goes on. It's fascinating to watch and fascinating to watch those relationships either develop or fall apart. But I think what has been interesting is that because substance use is behind so many problems of humans, that it's been interesting, that has, I think that could also be an area that could be further developed for therapists to really focus a lot more on that with clients, with clients of drinking age or even not drinking age. But it's definitely an area that, and I think it's interesting too to see this, it seems like this younger generation as opposed to our generation, which was very different with our relationship to alcohol and what we were privy to, even from our own parents, this generation seems to have a different attitude towards alcohol. You see a lot more of alcohol free or it's just not even a thing. But the restaurant world, it is a dysfunctional world and it's a dysfunctional work environment. And I think there are some restaurants and restaurant industries, Southern Smoke, which is a hospitality nonprofit down in Houston that provides free counseling for their workers. So it's an ongoing issue, but can you have one without the other? I think big question. There's a reason why you want your liquor license when you get a restaurant, because that's where the sales are. So it's a hard question,
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Dan, how do you think your writing is going to inform your work as a therapist and vice versa? What would you say about that?
Daniel Duane:
Yeah, so I've thought about that a lot. I'm still working on that question, but many, many different ways. They talk to each other in a lot of different ways, and there's a lot for me to work out. There's sort of kinks and complexities to work out, let's say, in that I have been a, well, okay, so I've done a lot of different kinds of writing, but the two sort of really big strains in my writing. I know I mentioned adventure journalism earlier, but the truth is there's sort of two other really big areas. One is memoir. So I've done a lot of personal essay writing and first person, I've written books that are first person. And I've also done a lot of writing that was sort of in nonfiction, creative nonfiction that involved historical reading and science and stuff like that. So the ways that those things affect interact with therapy is on the one hand in a sort of great way, the nonfiction experience and the journalism experience has given me this sense of I know what it means to feel interested in something.
I know what it means to feel excited by something I know. I've really learned deeply the process of discovering what lights up my own mind. And that has helped me in reading the psychological and psychoanalytic literature because I think if I were a younger person, I'd be just like, I better just read the whole darn textbook and try to remember what's in the textbook. That, and just whatever they say is important to learn is probably what I better learn. And my brain just does not roll that way anymore. I mean, I do my coursework, I get my courses done, I learn what I got to learn. I'm getting my degree, but I chase areas of authentic fascination because I just know that that's how I learn best. So I found these, this one particular psychoanalytic writer, this guy Thomas Ogden, who writes about the British Object Relations School a lot, and his writing is so beautiful.
And so I just sort of have this practice of every morning I just read one of his essays and it just completely lights me up and gets my juices going. But then there's another, on the memoir side, that one is sort of interesting in that as a practice to write a good personal essay, you really have to look within and be, the more honest you can be, the better the writing will be. So the more truthful you are about yourself, and that's a lot harder than it looks to be true. To tell a true story about your own life is a lot harder than it looks,
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Which is therapy in
Daniel Duane:
A way. Yeah. Okay. So that's
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Call in similar ways,
Daniel Duane:
Painful. That's what I'm saying. There's a sort of, I think there's, I'm going to describe sort of an upside and then a complicator. The upside is that I think that process that is feeling pretty similar to me now that I'm getting a chance to work with some clients, it's feeling to me like they're telling stories in essence, and I can feel where there's vry in the story or I can feel where maybe something's not being attended to or there's hidden pain in a story. And because I've been doing that my whole life on the other side, when therapists themselves, when therapists present themselves to the world, they seem to find it almost impossible to be honest about themselves because, and I don't mean that they're deceptive. What I mean is I don't mean that therapist, I don't mean there's any deception, but there's such a culture of being very careful about self-disclosure of being very careful about the kind of persona you present, how many details you share about yourself. Do you share your angular, crazy vulgar side? Do you share that you're, I don't know, cuckoo for Cocoa puffs? I mean, you're really careful about what you share, and that's just like kryptonite for good writing. That's just like a recipe for bad writing. There's no getting around that problem. So that's something I'm really thinking about a lot and trying to figure out how to manage as I go forward in life.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
That is so interesting. And Brooke, you look like you just went like this.
Brooke Stroud:
I appreciate the struggle. That's where my reaction is seeking truth and being honest with yourself. I'm also trying to figure out how writing is going to fit back into my life, and I'm journaling. And so that's my new foray back into putting words together that aren't notes for my casework. But I find it so fascinating how many footnotes need to go to a sentence and who's that for? Is that for me? Is that for an audience? Why am I putting up some a need to qualify and qualify and qualify? So yeah, I really appreciate what you're saying and I can't wait to read Thomas Ogden. I made a note to myself.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
I can't either. Thank you for that. I
Brooke Stroud:
Really can't.
Daniel Duane:
May I ask Brooke a question here? I'm really Brooke. When you mentioned that you were doing journalism while you were in school and you mentioned some vulnerability around that or complexity around that, I just wanted to, did you mean just that it was a ton of work to be doing both or was there a
Brooke Stroud:
Self
Daniel Duane:
Exposure a little bit
Brooke Stroud:
Maybe? Yeah, I think that maybe I was, I don't know how that came. I wasn't doing journalism at the same time. When I was at LSC, I finished LSE and then started freelance writing again. But when I was at gw, I really exclusively did school.
Daniel Duane:
I really know what you mean about the difference between journaling and process notes therapy. I've actually been noticing that exact thing for myself. I keep a personal journal. I'm also writing process notes, and I think I've had the exact same question in my mind you have, which is like you notice yourself writing process notes. They're basically just for you, and yet you're censoring it into this very anodyne clinical language that you would never use as a writer in describing characters. But then you're in your journal and you feel like, wait, am I allowed to be honest about, I don't know. Anyway, sorry Elizabeth, but that's
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Resonate
Daniel Duane:
With that.
Karey Swartwout:
I think it's similarly with the notes that y'all are talking about. It's just also being careful that I find myself just being very aware in a way that I haven't before of imposing my values and is my recollection accurate? Is this actually what they said? Is that the way that I interpreted it? And so it's the note taking. The process notes is very anxiety inducing. And I wonder, but I can see no matter what age, going back to that, all of our experiences, I feel so much more confident though taking these notes at this stage in life versus if I had been taking these process notes in my twenties because the nuance of what Dan had said, that's not being communicated. I wouldn't even have known to have looked for those things. So I think that's an interesting connection that Brooke and Dan are talking about with that, whether it's self censoring or whether it's discerning reading between the lines. I think it's interesting. It's an interesting journey.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Do any of you have any other questions for each other?
Karey Swartwout:
So many.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
I've learned a lot.
Karey Swartwout:
Go ahead, Karen. I think I would love, I know a bit about Brooke, what some of her clients that she's working with, but I would love to also hear from Dan about his as he is going through this journey. But we could start with Brooke about who she's found herself, what client base, what client demographics that she finds herself gravitating towards, I think is interesting.
Brooke Stroud:
So Dan, do you want to go first?
Speaker 5:
Oh, go ahead, Brooke.
Brooke Stroud:
So yeah, so I'm in private practice. I'm in northwest dc. I have a sliding scale, but I have a pretty high rate. And so it's in a sense by that. So I have a pretty affluent caseload at the moment, and I think that's relevant to the conversations that we're having about where I was in training. There was a far greater diversity and it just a different set of needs for sure. So my graduate focus was on children and adolescents, and so I really started in private practice six and a half years, seven years ago, working with children and adolescents during the pandemic. I really had to drop working with kids online. That was too difficult. And so I took on a whole set of adults. So I continue to have, I've added kids back now since I went back into the office in June of 21.
But I have a varied caseload in terms of age range. So I have as young as four and as old as 60. And I love that. I think I really thrive on of variety. And with the kids, I'm literally on the floor. So I really like getting up and moving around with the teenagers. Some of them I'm working, I incorporate mindfulness and body somatic kind of work. But so I have a pretty wide range in terms of ages. I think trauma, depression, anxiety, OCD, that's probably the diagnoses that I think are most prevalent within my caseload.
Daniel Duane:
I guess still, I'm still in the throes of that moment I was describing of thinking, having come into this with a sort of particular idea, and it could still go that way for me in the long run, who knows? But that right now I'm discovering that I'm kind of interested in everybody. I'm discovering that I just love getting to be present and be curious. But I seem to be drawn to creative people, but creativity is so many forms, I guess I feel like the sort of creativity as a source of energy in a life is something I have a lot I really understand. But people are creative in so many different ways that I don't think that excludes a whole lot of people or yeah, I guess I'm still sort of exploring what demographics and who I want to work with because the agency that I'm working with is in San Francisco, it's called the Liberation Institute, and it has a kind of artists and activists, DNA. And so a lot of the people who come through are in one way or another in that spirit and mood, and that just feels fantastic to me. I love the population we get. And I was also sort of wondering, Karey, if you have found yourself working with people in food at all, I could imagine you working with chefs having breakdowns.
Karey Swartwout:
I'd be busy, I'd be very busy.
Daniel Duane:
And the bear needs your help.
Karey Swartwout:
I know they all need my help. Yes, but they're also helping each other, which I think is great about that show. But I definitely, I am finding myself leaning towards more and more because of my own journey, sort of entrepreneurs, small business owners, professionals, that because it is holistic, right? You're not just a solar power integrator and you don't suffer grief or OCD and those, I think increasingly we will see those coming together. And so I thinking from a place of what would've been really helpful to me in my own therapeutic journey, it would've been nice if my therapist had had a background, more of a background in entrepreneurs or small business startups or professional development or midlife career pivots or whatnot. So I think that I find myself, it's like I can't stop looking at, even though I'm not learning about any of that in my practicum, some of it I am in the sense that I am making it happen or I'm making it fit with these, especially with the younger students, or I mean the high school students that I'm helping them develop their own career paths while they're also navigating the death of a parent.
But I'm increasingly finding that these are just, there is no separation. And I would like to, I think, create a practice that really serves that small business entrepreneur professional population and make it less stigma, everybody. It's everybody's got to have their chisel together. It's like, no, nobody has it together. And the more that we can bring awareness to that and encourage that conversation, especially in states where it's not so great to talk about how life sucks sometimes, pull yourself up by the bootstrap. But how can we still also though, value, honor those values of resilience, of pull yourself up and grid, but also simultaneously holds sensitivity and vulnerability. How can we, and I think in the business world, what so many of us have been programmed to do, we all have to be glossy, shiny people and not show any of the, don't look at my beautiful plants. So that's what I keep, that's Dan. I think what I keep gravitating towards,
Daniel Duane:
Don't they call that coaching?
Karey Swartwout:
Well, no, but that's what I think. That's where the, and don't get me started on coaching.
Daniel Duane:
Sorry. I'm sorry. That was a vibe. That whole
Brooke Stroud:
Podcast.
Karey Swartwout:
I would love to be a part of that one in the, we
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Do have to end, but let's think about another conversation once Karey and Jan have finished school, and Brooke, you and I will also be that much further along in our practices. We can come back together and I would love that. Maybe we'll focus on coaching or maybe we'll ignore it, I'm not sure. But really, thank you all so much, Karey, Dan, and Brooke for joining social work talks today. I'm so glad that you made the decisions that you did. I can't help but wish that you weren't all social workers, because that's who I am. And of course, I'm here representing NASW, but I'm generally just so glad that you are on this path and know that you will help so many people, and you've certainly helped me today to think even more about out how honored I am to be in this field. So thank you and
Karey Swartwout:
Thank you, Elizabeth. Thank
Brooke Stroud:
You for having
Daniel Duane:
Us. Thank you. Care. Huge
Brooke Stroud:
Respect to social workers, huge respect.
Speaker 6:
You have been listening to NASW Social Work Talks, a production of the National Association of Social Workers. We encourage you to visit NAS W'S website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members, to create and maintain professional standards and to advance sound social policies. You can learn more@www.social workers.org. And don't forget to subscribe to NSW Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next episode.
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