Mental Health: Where To Turn For Professional Help - Therapy versus Coaching [Getting Help 3]
Welcome to the third episode of our Getting Help series on the I Thought I Was Over This podcast!
In part 3, we’re looking at where to turn for professional help, offering thoughts and perspectives on therapy v. coaching — when they might be helpful, respectively, as well as what to look for in a provider so you can make the change you’re hoping to make.
Key moments include:
04:44 – Assessing your relationship with your parents and how the past has impacted the present to explore mental health support options.
07:00 – Helping your kids get the outside support they need is not an indicator of your success or failure as a parent.
08:05 – Single-event trauma and how you need professional help to process it.
10:22 – What’s the difference between licensed, certified, or trained professionals?
15:55 – Answering the question: “When should I get professional help?”
23:10 – How to find a good coaching fit and when working with a coach can be helpful.
25:25 – Support groups as one of the most underrated resources for alleviating mental health concerns.
28:52 – Books as a resource - and what to be mindful of.
If interested in receiving my newsletter, A Moment of Pause, you can sign up here.
Please remember that this podcast is not a replacement for treatment by a healthcare or mental health professional. This content is created for education and entertainment purposes only.
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This transcript was created by A.I. — please forgive translation mistakes.
[00:00:00] Thank you for being here. It's hard to believe we are solidly into fall and for whatever reason in my private practice, this is a popular time to reach out and get help. The holidays, of course, are coming up and as they do, there can be a lot of grief, sadness. There can be stress and worry of where to spend the holidays, how much to spend if you don't work out a budget.
[00:00:26] This can lead to paralyzing anxiety and overwhelm in the new year. If you're a business owner, you're entering into the fourth quarter, we can have dynamics with parents. And if you're a parent and have a spouse as well, it can be more strained as you make decisions together.
[00:00:49] Trying to decide where what when. And of course there are so many great things that happen during this time. We have lots of celebrations, joy, bonding, connection. And those are amazing things. I just wanna make sure that we also point out the difficult things because these episodes that I've been doing are identifying where you can seek help, what you can seek help for.
[00:01:21] And even as we come into the new year, there may be habits or changes that you want to make. So this episode is to support you. Trying to find where to get those things. A reminder of what I've done in the first and second episode of this series, in the first episode, I discussed a decision making tree for getting medication. When should you consider it? What are the things you should consider? In the second episode, I addressed what you can expect from a professional relationship.
[00:01:55] And in that episode, I did not address that psychotherapy or any kind of coaching or mental health does not involve sex, and it's an important point. I think it can feel obvious, but when we are in states of vulnerability and just wanting the symptoms in our life, To be resolved. We can override so many things inside of us,
[00:02:25] including overriding when we physically feel uncomfortable. So I want you to know that for me personally, I think being asked if you wanna hug or being asked if it's okay if a hand goes on your shoulder. If you have somebody sitting side by side next to you,
[00:02:50] a best practice is to ask you if that's okay. And if you have someone who does come and sit next to you, I think it's a fair question to ask them why they have done that if they haven't made it explicitly clear. And I also want to encourage you to check in after that type of session and to see when you're out of the situation and your adrenaline has gone down.
[00:03:24] How did that make you feel? And then you can use that information for the future to let your helper know, Hey, I actually felt uncomfortable with that, or, you know, I really noticed that, that made me feel so safe. You know, you can give them feedback of how that landed, I wanted to address that before I dove into today's session.
[00:03:48] mental health support really comes in a lot of forms, and it can be difficult to decide what do you need to look at in order to help your symptoms go away or to help you get to that next level of interacting that you want to do. One of the things I want you to examine inside of you is noticing, do you feel really loyal to your parents, and does that keep you from exploring how the past has impacted the present?
[00:04:28] I think there can be a bias out there when you're doing explorative therapy that it's about blaming our caregivers. And that really is a oversimplification,
[00:04:40] many things hold complexity, and it's the same when we're going back and noticing how our upbringing, how I responded to my upbringing, really impacts how today I might be dealing with a present day situation. So the biases that you may have knowingly or unknowingly if you haven't had therapy, Want you to explore those because they could impact you choosing a type of therapy, or going into coaching when what you really need is mental health support.
[00:05:18] So look and explore what your biases are going into getting help. And I want you to know there are a lot of helpers out. I'm in Psychology today and there may be like 600 providers listed in my city alone. There are a lot of people out there who want to help other people, we all get into this profession for a reason.
[00:05:42] So you do need to know there are helpers out there who perpetuate the stereotype that we're blaming family members. And if you find yourself in a situation like. Examine and ask questions. Do you think that this is all my father's fault? And if they are simplifying it in that way, I'm not sure that they're gonna get you where you need to go, because it is all about integrating the different parts, holding complexity, holding reality.
[00:06:21] Understanding what that caregiver was going through that helps make sense of why they interacted in a certain way. I hope that if you're a parent and you have a child who is coming and saying, Hey, I think I need therapy, listen. This happens to us, including my children who have two therapists for parents. You know, it's so great to get that outside perspective and the sooner that you can get them help, if they are having issues, having anxiety issues, having suicidal thoughts.
[00:07:02] O C d eating disorders. You know, the list goes on right now of the youth and their mental health issues as a result of coming out of all the lockdowns and the stress. It's not just lockdowns. There's been a lot of stress, a lot of turmoil for all of us, and the youth have picked this up and their developing brains are still trying to make sense of things, so try to get them help sooner than later, it's not a reflection on how poorly you're doing as a parent, so I hope that I can eliminate any fears or shame that can enter in.
[00:07:48] I also want you to know that if you have an event trauma, I'm gonna name some things.
[00:07:55] So if I trigger you, I want you to reground, look around the room. Name 10 objects, wait until your system has reregulated before you continue listening to my podcast. But single events that you may not think about. Car accidents are one of the number one things that I see in my office in terms of perpetual anxiety.
[00:08:23] That is coming up usually the people who come in have had some anxiety in the past, but it gets worse and worse when they have had an accident and they start checking rechecking. There's so many things that can happen because it is a trauma to our body and it's actually something that is fairly straightforward to work through on a neurobiologic level. So if you can get help, if you have some residual there, I encourage you to do that. Any events where your life was threatened, even when you have events where it's turned out okay, like you've gotten caught in a riptide and you really thought for a moment that you might drown.
[00:09:13] Any of those things, those are trauma events that need to be processed and completed in your body. And for some, you definitely can do it on your own, but you wanna be paying attention to how much anxiety and disruption of sleep, just look for thoughts, avoiding those situations again.
[00:09:39] Anything like that, you want to eventually get professional help if it goes on for too long, because it's just saying that your neurobiology needs to complete things
[00:09:50] one of the things that is different when you are seeing someone who's licensed versus someone who is certified versus someone who says that they're neither a licensed person, usually has a board and a governing body. Keeps them accountable, make sure that they have their continuing education,.
[00:10:19] It means that they are up to date on ethics and the changing laws, and you have protection. You have a board like the Board of Psychology, the Board of Behavioral Sciences. There are some national boards . Both psychologists and for the master's level, and those can be your governing boards for your provider that you're seeing.
[00:10:46] But any of those people, you can, file a complaint. And when you're seeing someone who's certified, they have a governing body who has certified them, but they don't protect you as the consumer. And there are a lot of different certificates out there. You can go to a weekend class and get a certificate.
[00:11:11] I'm a certified somatic experiencing practitioner. That's a certificate that took me, I think, four or five years to get, because the training itself is three years and You had to get certain number of hours of personal somatic experiencing as well as participate in the case studies
[00:11:37] But that's a very different certificate than if you just took a weekend class. So you usually can look things up. People are supposed to be very upfront of how they're certified, where their formal training is, and you would be amazed at how many certification really isn't that in depth, so you wanna be paying attention to those kind of things.
[00:12:08] I usually recommend if you are a couple in crisis that you see a therapist who does a lot of couple's work. There are many people out. Who are primarily individual therapists, and they will see one or two couples because you really can do whatever work. As long as you feel like you're adequately trained, you can see those clients.
[00:12:41] The thing about it is couples work is very in depth. Usually you are seeking couples help because you're in crisis. Someone needs to be more trained than just their education classes. So I'm gonna just name the specialties that I think are really robust and research based.
[00:13:07] The first one would be Sue Johnson's emotionally focused therapy called eft. I believe that many people could say that they are EFT trained. What you wanna ask is if they're EFT certified. That's a different level of training than someone who has just been trained by, say, a day long class. So you can say that you're an EFT therapist after you've gone through a day training, but that is very different for obvious reasons than someone who is getting certified and who actually is getting supervised by an EFT therapist.
[00:13:48] There's another modality by Stan Tatkin. He has modality called P A C T. It's an attachment based. It is rooted in science, you can look up his stuff. I'm not sure if they have a list of therapists who they would say are certified. John Gottman has some amazing trainings and they do do some intensives that are a weekend long, but their skill-building bases are so scientifically based sometimes they're doing a lot of communication stuff, and so in my opinion, you can get certified in something like that because you're really addressing some of the communication dynamics which just doesn't take as much time as when you're learning some of the attachment system stuff that goes on in the dynamics most important thing, you want your therapist to specialize in something that is couples related. I don't think eclectic therapist in couples.
[00:15:01] Therapy specialize enough to know where an entry point is for you to be able to stop the dynamics that are most likely ingrained. So of course it's not a hard, fast rule, but I would say if you're in crisis, try to get the most skilled person you can. And those are the recommendations that I would say yes.
[00:15:30] When I'm thinking about getting help, I would say a big brush stroke is if you are getting help in any of the big mental health items like anxiety. Depression, insomnia, Eating dynamics. I really believe that you should get a mental health professional to help you. Don't go the coaching route. If you are hearing things that aren't there or seeing things that aren't there that other people aren't seen, then I really believe you should most likely start with a psychiatrist.
[00:16:13] And find out what's going there. On a medical level, there are definitely prescribed medication that can cause some of those hallucinations and.
[00:16:27] I think any mental health practitioner would be sending you to a psychiatrist if those are some of the symptoms that you're coming in with.
[00:16:37] If you've had a depressed caregiver, an anxious caregiver, an absent caregiver trauma that you can name that happened when you were a child, I always recommend seeking a license professional for these things.
[00:16:56] How the past impacts the present is a woven tapestry that takes this collaboration between you as the narrator and your therapist. For me, if you know that your patterns have been very deep from the time when you are a child, I'm just not convinced that someone who has only done a coaching program is as adept at that.
[00:17:26] And I'm not saying that this is gonna be a hundred percent accurate. , but why not try someone who at least has had the formal education and if they're licensed, they have done thousands lit, literally thousands of hours of seeing people with supervision and getting feedback on their work. So I think it just sets you up to getting help faster. You need somebody who will be able to put you on the road to change.
[00:18:09] and here I wouldn't say, Hey, go to a psychologist for sure, because I know a lot of master level people who have gone on. Done certificate programs gotten an expertise. So even though a psychologist has doubled the formal training as a master's level, it is about what has a person specialized in and how have they gained their expertise.
[00:18:39] It's so much about the person and their continuing education over some of the formal education. Now, the thing about a psychologist is, you know, they have gotten a lot more supervision along the way in their training, and that can be beneficial if you are dealing with hardcore. Mental health things that are happening neurobiologically in your body.
[00:19:07] Then pick a psychologist if you need to get testing and assessment, pick a psychologist because they have a lot more supervised work. Now you can be a master's level and literally attend a weekend workshop and say that you do as. That is not the type of person you want to be reading your test results because you need them to be weaving your history.
[00:19:39] It's just, I, I won't get stuck on a tangent here, but it's just a lot more complicated. And so if you can, you know, sometimes you can't make a choice. You have to go with who's around you, but if you can pick a psychologist in those situations, When you know that you're coming in for trauma work, my bias is that you need someone who has gone through an advanced certificate program.
[00:20:05] I don't think that formal education in and of itself that I've seen covers trauma work as in depth as these specialty programs. The one that I think gets tons of publicity is emdr. And here's the thing I would say about emdr. You can say you do EMDR after a weekend training. EMDR is a modality. Where someone needs to at least get advanced trainings, get supervision, learn how to use the modality adequately.
[00:20:39] I think that EMDR is great for event trauma or vocational traumas. I think when you have developmental trauma, my bias is you're gonna have other modalities out. That are better, such as A E D P, that's accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy by Diana Fosha and therapists trained in this modality.
[00:21:03] Understand the relational healing structures and if you are certified, you have had a couple years of their training, you've had to record sessions. You get supervision. It is a very robust training program for anyone who actually gets the certificate.
[00:21:25] So I have talked a little bit about mental health, relational dynamics, trauma. What about the other things like needing support or finding solutions to problems like emotional eating, parenting, things like that. And here, I think if you have these really specific things that you want to change, using a coach can be helpful.
[00:21:51] But what you should know about using a coach is that they don't have any governing boards that oversee them. Anyone really can call themselves a coach. Anyone also can say that they're a counselor, whereas words like psychologists are governed in most states to mean someone with a doctorate, a field of clinical psychology, or.
[00:22:17] Doctorate of philosophy or doctorate of education in certain countries like Australia and England, the title is actually protected by the government. And the exception in the United States is that school psychologists have a master's degree, but they must operate within the school system in most states to have the title school psychologist.
[00:22:43] But back to coaches questions. You want to know from your coach, how are they trained in their field of expertise? Are they certified, Which means they went through a program which has some type of requirements and experiences that were expected. And you wanna know what were those, And sometimes you don't have to ask them directly, you can look it up online.
[00:23:10] Nowadays the coaching field is exploding and it really is up to you to make sure this person is a good fit for you, which usually means asking questions or at the very least, being very clear on what problem you are wanting help with and what their approach for that will. I think coaches are amazing for elevating your knowledge, which can help you behave and do things differently.
[00:23:40] I think they're great for finding solutions. Coaching usually has an approach that's more advice oriented, more homework oriented. Often you will have expectations that you need to follow through on as well as having accountability. Other places you can get help, there's mental health apps, and though I don't think that these are the best or right answer for everyone.
[00:24:09] If you are in a crisis and can't be seen by a professional, I do think there's several apps that I really love for a kind of, until I get help, let me at least try to get out of this trauma state. So a couple apps. Free app unwinding by share care. Insight is another app.
[00:24:33] It has lots of meditations and options for finding a place of grounding. There are a couple paid apps that I think. Incredible unwinding anxiety is put out by Dr. Jud Brewer and he has a book that is also under that name and is fantastic.
[00:24:54] It's a great app and it really helps you get out of anxiety spirals. There's Headspace, there's calm. These are great apps for tiding you over when you do need to figure out kind of the how. Why did I get here? What's led me to this place? But while you're waiting, you don't have to be in a place of high dysregulation or anxiety.
[00:25:24] I think one of the most underutilized resources are groups. Groups can potentially accelerate your growth. If it's the right group for you, you really benefit from bearing witness to other people's struggles. I think grief groups are amazing and they really help you realize that you are not alone in your devastation.
[00:25:49] Family Grief Camp. Is also a place that can really bring you together, help you be connected to other people, and let you know that you are not alone. Here in Southern California, we have new hope support groups, but many hospitals have grief groups that you can attend. There are some free overeating groups through.
[00:26:19] An a D.
[00:26:26] There's also AA groups and for so many things, you can find a group. that will support you and AA groups are all over the world. My husband and I run a Townsend Leadership Group for business leaders and entrepreneurs, which are focusing on change from the inside to be a better leader, focusing on character development.
[00:26:55] And I would say our group focuses much more on mental health than say a group such as Mastermind. That are really talking about business strategy and scaling your business addiction specialists, I think those are really amazing supports. If you have an addiction of any kind, having someone who really understands the process.
[00:27:21] To guide you through your addiction with accountability and insight can help you actually overcome and get through and out of your addiction. And as a therapist, I really can't compete with whatever addictive object my clients are coming in with. It's too rewarding. We usually do need extra help in getting away from that coping strategy.
[00:27:52] And so addiction specialists of any kind or addiction groups, like I said, aa, Alcoholics Anonymous, they have tons of different groups, codependency groups, over shoppers or overeaters, you know, that whole. Recovery Movement has a lot of different groups you can attend. There's also Celebrate Recovery.
[00:28:18] Any kind of group with structure is something that can help you get out of a habit that has become a coping strategy.
[00:28:28] Other people that can be part of your support system. I think there's great body workers out there, massage therapists. There's a, there's a whole movement that are involved in psychedelics and those are becoming more popular for treatment cannabis. Is a popular treatment for certain things, certain symptoms, especially if it has to do with night terrors.
[00:28:56] And in November, I have an episode coming out that dives into cannabis use. I also think that books can be great to read and help you gain insight and understanding into your problem. But I do wanna remind you, there is very little regulation where books are concerned. You can basically write a book and say anything you want about a topic.
[00:29:20] Of course, your comments about people are more regulated then the topic itself, you seriously can write a book and say whatever you want. So as the reader, you want to get a sense of where is this person coming from? Identify the author's bias, maybe look at training, think about other points of view, can often help you hold more complexity around emotional pain.
[00:29:50] And give you a sense of direction and give you hope and clarity as to where you need to go in order to solve the problems you're trying to solve. So to recap this episode, think about what you need. What symptoms are you trying to get reduced? What problems are you trying to solve, and how can you find more ease being?
[00:30:17] All of these questions can help you decide where or how you wanna go for getting support. I'm so grateful to be with you. I'd love it if you leave a review or share this episode with someone who could use some guidance. And as always, go sign up for my newsletter. I love writing. Sign up. It is really meant to build self-awareness and help you navigate your life with greater ease.
[00:30:46] The link is in my show notes or on my website, drkimber.net. And as we leave one another, I wanna invite you to soften your jaw. Soften your. Soften your forehead and soften your eyes. Until next time.