Sarah's 35-Year Journey Shows How Mental Health Care Has Evolved

Sarah brings 35 years of clinical expertise to our conversation, revealing how relationship therapy has transformed from a one-dimensional approach to a comprehensive science-based system. As founder of Relate Center in Austin, Texas, she's pioneered an integrated method combining physical therapists, psychotherapists, and physicians to address both emotional and physical dimensions of relationships.

The digital transformation of mental healthcare takes center stage as Sarah candidly discusses how telehealth has revolutionized therapy accessibility while introducing new challenges. She shares thoughtful strategies for maintaining therapeutic connection in virtual settings—a balancing act between convenience and depth that practitioners continue to navigate in our post-pandemic world. Her insights illuminate the profound ways technology has democratized access to mental health support while sometimes sacrificing the intimacy of in-person connection.

What truly distinguishes this conversation is Sarah's perspective on psychology's radical evolution. She articulates how the field has shifted from viewing problems as purely psychological to understanding the critical role of trauma, physiology, and somatic experiences. Modern therapeutic approaches increasingly focus on nervous system regulation—helping clients shift from fight-or-flight responses to states where healing becomes possible. This represents a fundamental reimagining of what effective therapy looks like.

Sarah doesn't shy away from addressing the ethical challenges facing mental health practitioners today, from navigating complicated regulatory environments to fighting for qu

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Chapters

• 0:55 Meeting Sarah from Relate Center
• 10:04 Building a Relationship-Focused Practice
• 16:40 Adapting to Telehealth During COVID
• 22:24 Challenges with Healthcare Data Privacy
• 32:55 Mind-Body Approaches to Psychology
• 42:57 Ethics in Modern Psychology
• 49:28 Future of Therapy and Psychology
• 57:58 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:17

Hello and welcome to another episode here of our podcast. Sitting in front of me is none other than Sarah from Relate Center. Sarah is an amazing, amazing, amazing therapist. She has been in this space for quite a while 35 years of experience working with individuals couples professionals 35 years of experience working with individuals couples professionals. Sarah really takes a science-based approach, deeply personal approach to creating lasting relationships that not only work in your personal life but also in your professional career. Not only has Sarah's impact gone beyond the therapy room she delivers workshops on teamwork, leadership, communication and businesses all across the country. Sarah, welcome to our podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:03

Well, thank you for having me, Blake. I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:06

Yeah, yeah, hopefully that does you some justice there.

Speaker 2: 1:10

It's a lovely, lovely intro.

Speaker 1: 1:12

I had more, I could have kept going, but I wanted you to get in.

Speaker 2: 1:16

Well, let's get into the meat of it. That's good for me.

Speaker 1: 1:18

Yeah, so tell everybody. I've told everybody what you do, but let's put your frame on it.

Speaker 2: 1:25

Sure Well, you did a beautiful job, thank you. I am a clinical social worker by training and have a specialty in sex and relationship counseling, and we some of my colleagues and I had built a business called Relate Center in Austin, texas, where we're really putting together all the new kind of data on what helps people have the best physical and emotional intimate relationship. So that means physical therapists, pilates psychotherapistsists, physicians we really work to give people a well-rounded sense of professional help where?

Speaker 1: 2:06

where did the need come for you guys to start relate center? And like, where was that burning passion? Like, hey, we have to do this well, you know there were.

Speaker 2: 2:14

It was really hard to find people who had really specific skills to help in this area and we kept finding that people got dropped. Like you would have a client you want to send her to a physical therapist, but then that never happened, or we didn't have any way really to come back and make sure that the person was getting an individual kind of an experience. And we really wanted to make sure that we were all talking and that we really had that kind of this bigger view for the individual or the couple. And so it just. We just started working with a couple of people who had the same philosophy and just said, hey, let's do this. And we've now been in business about 16 years.

Speaker 1: 3:00

Wow, it sounds like you kind of got through a lot of the ups and downs. You know, obviously, working in healthcare, there's a lot of fun stuff that you guys have to go through when you're dealing with patient records. I mean, health data is very sensitive data. Talk about how you kind of got through some of those data challenges that businesses do.

Speaker 2: 3:27

Well, you know, I think that's such a good question because what we decided to do to protect people's privacy was be out of network providers. So in network I would have to prove that somebody was crazy enough, sick enough to still get help, and I was often dealing with administrators about trying to prove someone needed my care. So we decided as an out-of-network provider, even though it was more costly, it provided people more protection. We felt like people who were more famous, well-known, were hesitant to come in because they didn't want those records to be in anyone else's file. So we thought about it from that point of view as well as just generally wanting to help streamline the services.

Speaker 2: 4:19

Many times if you're just looking for a network, you are more limited on who actually had the specialty you were looking for. So that helped us. We all keep our own records, we all work with our own kind of system. So we're individual, we're an individual practice, we're a group of individually minded practice people with the same philosophy. But that's how we ended up with it and it clearly has, you know, limits, because we really want, you wish, for people to be able to have access to insurance and to help that they should have. But we're just trying to deal with the real world here.

Speaker 1: 5:00

Yeah, since you started Relate Center to now, how have you seen the business evolve?

Speaker 2: 5:07

Well, you know we went through COVID. So I think the most important thing is we all learned how to do online counseling. So how do we try to reach people? And you know that was a big advantage for many, many people, not even after COVID because of I don't know what traffic is like in Las Vegas, but in Austin it's crazy and you know it would take people an hour to get to an office and an hour to get home. Hour to get home. So it's really opened up people's ability to get help and in that way it's it's all. It's more cost effective for people and for us.

Speaker 2: 5:47

It's convenient and I can be in New Jersey and I'm still working with people, because I can work with people from different, because I also have a coaching certificate. So I'm I have an international coaching certificate as well as a license, and that helps me immediately have protection.

Speaker 1: 6:07

Yeah, with your background in psychology and clinical social work, how did you kind of transition into coaching and the thought leadership training?

Speaker 2: 6:16

Well, I've always had an interest in giving practical help and working with entrepreneurs. That's kind of my area of most enjoyment, really. People who are kind of spared to try and do some of their own kinds of things men and women, not necessarily businesses, but that kind of personality, businesses but that kind of personality. So as I decided to move to a beautiful place, another beautiful place, I needed to find ways that I could see more clients that weren't just in my state, and so that has given me the flexibility to do that.

Speaker 1: 6:52

That is epic. I'm curious as to your approach to healthcare. Obviously, therapy is one of those things that's a very catered, scientific, psychological intervention, if we can use that term. How is the approach that Relate Center takes to psychotherapy different than you know somebody who you would stereotypically sit down on a couch with and chalk it up?

Speaker 2: 7:27

You know, I think that's such a good question because there are lots of different modalities and many modalities have fit for many different kinds of people. So we really I think who we attract are people who want a lot of science-based studies and data. So a lot of our practices around sexual health, so many of our clients come from physicians who need to have someone looking at a different kind of filling in what they can't do medically. So that's part of who I think we're attracting is people who are referrals. I think our approach is also practical. So we want people to like why are they here? What are your goals? Are we meeting your goals? We do long-term therapy some of us as well, but all really with. Are we helping someone get from A to Z so that they can really see progress and feel it physiologically as well?

Speaker 1: 8:36

When obviously a lot of people use kind of COVID as a transition period. We've heard it so many times the way that businesses operate immediately had to shift during COVID, especially now with the prevalence of telehealth, like for Relate Center, getting people comfortable kind of doing the telehealth. Or were you guys already kind of ready to go when?

Speaker 2: 9:04

that happened. Well, you know that's interesting that you're asking me about that, because I had taken a part-time position while I was out of town working with an online company, so I was already starting to look at that to learn how to use the computer, to learn, kind of, how to use different avenues. So when COVID happened, I really already had a little preview and a jumpstart to it. That helped me a lot and I think we also just trying to figure out how do we get services to people. There was an organization, a national organization, that offered free therapy to people in health care reach the people in need. And you know when, when you're talking to people in, you know in the hospitals or watching people die all the time, you want to be able to get them access right away to get some help with that.

Speaker 1: 10:10

Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. Um, and I'm assuming now that you've been so successful at Relate Center and the way that you see patients, has your approach to the way that you serve customers through telehealth changed? Have you shifted the business to accommodate?

Speaker 2: 10:32

Yes, absolutely, especially because now that I have to do virtual work most of the time, unless I'm doing workshops and I think it's worked really really well it's nice that we still have people who can do in-person. I think it's a great combination of some people who want to be able to keep doing online, as well as the people who really want to come and see someone in person.

Speaker 1: 10:57

Yeah, as well as the people who really want to come and see someone in person. Yeah, I'm curious as to you know, obviously when you start a healthcare service company I mean especially when you're handling, you know, patient records you know obviously HIPAA comes to mind. You have to deal a lot with HIPAA the way that you handle data, the way that you transmit data. What was your thought process to approaching HIPAA, to approaching patient data, how is stored, how is transmitted, and how did you bring some of those built-in compliance and security mandates into your practice?

Speaker 2: 11:38

That is a complicated answer and so I'm going to tell you my process. So I did sign up. I do an online scheduling credit card note taking service. I limit what I actually put down in terms of my notes. I keep my file drawer with notes. I try not to actually write down anything that I think could get my client in trouble because I don't really try. I've had a bad experience with the courts, you know, getting my notes and not being as careful as I should have been earlier in my career when I didn't understand kind of the consequences, but certainly it's been very. You know, I don't know how you all or what you're finding out about this, but it's really hard to find programs that are geared for small businesses. So many of these programs are really built for these big, big companies with lots of therapists and do insurance that are really kind of geared that way and can be very expensive.

Speaker 1: 12:53

So you know, we're always kind of struggling about what's the best program that can give me what I need, protects my clients, protects their them financially, but also is has some kind of flexibility of how I work yeah, that makes a lot of sense, um, and it's an, it's an interesting perspective and thank you for being so candid and so honest and, um, and I'm sure, obviously, in your entire amazing career, you've learned a lot and you've changed a lot and you've grown a lot. So, the way that you do business and the way that you handle, uh, information, um, not only that too, but it's just changed a lot over the years. Like, if you look at HIPAA, like HIPAA, um, you know, it was written in 1996, which was, you know, most people weren't doing telehealth and things like that back then.

Speaker 1: 13:46

And then, you know, they had a new privacy rule that was finalized in 2000. And then in 2003, you know, of course, they came out with some more rules around, like EPHI and administrative and physical safeguards, and I mean 2006, 2009.

Speaker 2: 14:04

I've had a lawyer tell me that if anyone wanted to look at anyone's books really closely, we'd all be in trouble.

Speaker 1: 14:13

Oh, totally, totally. Yeah, I mean, it's weird. A lot of the people that we talk to, they essentially try to avoid handling patient record as much as possible so they can skirt around HIPAA, or they use systems that are essentially offload A lot of it, like Epic. Like Epic is, you know, kind of the industry leader, um, in in our opinion, and in patient record management, um, you know obviously now, um, in 2020, well, in 2025, I guess now we were expecting, you know, some changes to HIPAA. You know around like multi-factor authentication it had to be mandatory.

Speaker 1: 15:05

You know data encryption. You know not only patient health information at rest, but in transit. And now, in 2025, patients and providers are going to have to go through an annual risk analysis which is fun I was like kidding like a colonoscopy every year, wow. And not only that, too, but you know coming up with incident response, disaster recovery plans, oh yeah yeah. Internal audits. You know compliance audits, and not only that too, but with the 2025 proposed rule changes, they're going to be a little bit stricter on vendor management and how you know sensitive data gets out and how you respond to that Um, and they're going to talk a little bit in some of these new proposed rules about um, uh, like, uh, employee turnover.

Speaker 2: 16:13

You know so, like if somebody leaves your practice, like how you suspend their access to you know phi, which is fun so a lot of fun, a lot of fun stuff to prepare for right, which is why I'm going to a coaching kind of model sure you know I, what's happening is it's forcing out a lot of good practitioners because, it's become more and more administrative versus actually giving treatment.

Speaker 2: 16:46

And you know, I think that's. You know you can kind of understand where it comes from, but it's just overwhelming for most of us, especially unless you know, unless you have your. Maybe what it's going to do is make all therapists have to join these big practices so that the administrators handle everything and they don't have to do it. But you know, when I joined this one online company, my, my salary was a third of what I usually make. So you know, I think that's. The other thing is they're making it very hard for people to actually provide treatment in my field. It's very discouraging for me.

Speaker 1: 17:38

Yeah, I agree they're making it complicated to be in healthcare. If we had more of a starter kit, like if we gave and I hope the government listens to things like these.

Speaker 1: 17:56

but if we had a starter kit. Like a starter kit, like hey, look, here here's a starter kit that you can use to get into healthcare, especially as a mom and pop practice. You know, with you know a handful of providers, um, where it's not not expensive, a lot of the heavy lifting is done for you. Um, you know, out of the box, you're ready to kind of just start seeing patients and treating and treating patients and providing, you know, extra care, like you know amazing care, like I wish we got there. Yeah, because you know our health care system is is a wonky one is a wonky one.

Speaker 1: 18:38

I've seen it from the other side. I've lived in Europe and I've spent quite a lot of time in the markets out there and in learning how they treat patients. And yeah, it's a very weird process here, especially considering everything operates on a referral network. So your primary care refers you to X Y Z, who then refers you to X Y Z, and then it's just this snowball of referrals which doesn't really exist in other healthcare markets that I've been a part of. Um, I'm curious to your approach. So from what I read about you, I mean you're a very accomplished individual. First of all, let me say you also work with corporate teams. Is that accurate? Yes, wow, okay, so I'm curious to how.

Speaker 2: 19:39

Professional teams, so I would say, not big corporations.

Speaker 1: 19:42

Sure, sure, sure.

Speaker 2: 19:45

Maybe I'm interrupting too soon. I've worked a lot with the law school in Austin, helping train young lawyers and helping them learn how they are on a team, and some entrepreneurs, some small businesses that are more that not some family businesses, but also just smaller kinds of groups who are looking at how to do better leadership.

Speaker 1: 20:17

Would you say that, how you cater your curriculum or your therapy services, how did you refine those? You know, obviously it sounds like you came from seeing people one-on-one in a patient setting, kind of graduating into working with multiple people, kind of trying to to jump. People learn differently. People you know process information differently. So how did you approach seeing somebody one-on-one to? Then you know coaching teams and developing team. You know team building.

Speaker 2: 20:54

So you know, a lot of this just like happens by chance, where I think I had a client who worked at a law firm who said, hey, would you come and give a talk to the young women lawyers? And we're like, sure, why not? You know, I think a lot of opportunities is that as well. I think I could do that, let's try. In fact, I think that that tends to be one of the things that women have a harder time doing, of just being able to try something, even if you're not sure you have all the skills.

Speaker 2: 21:38

Started working and taking up some of those opportunities and saying, hey, what about doing some some workshop? Hey, what about me learning what are some different ways to teach people about themselves? So, for example, some people love working with some kind of profiles, so we use different kind of behavioral profiles that help someone see themselves better. Then we would do, we do horse workshops where people learn leadership skills from the horses who can't, you know, can't tell you what to do, but they react and you kind of learn from their reaction of you're connected or you're a leader or not. And I think that as I grew, you know, I wanted to share it with different kinds of people, and then that grew from there.

Speaker 1: 22:30

How do you feel like psychology has evolved, I mean since you got in the industry, you know, a while ago.

Speaker 2: 22:38

Yeah, wow. Well, that's yeah, because I sat around in my college in one of those early self-awareness groups in 1975. So, wow, that's crazy. It's changed quite a bit since then. You know, for one thing, we have so much more data now of what actually helps. We have more of a sense of we have to deal with people. Listen, when I first went to sex therapy school, they believed that almost all sexual problems were in your head.

Speaker 1: 23:12

Wow.

Speaker 2: 23:14

And we've learned that that's just not true. Have learned that that's just not true. There are so many things that are about how you are, what happens through trauma and how you are in your body, as well as different kind of biological medical issues. We just know so much more, so much more of what I do really in my practices. Tell people what we know about.

Speaker 1: 23:43

Let me tell you what we now know or what we don't know about. X. Sure, I was thinking you would I mean, based off our, our limited interactions that I was thinking you'd say something also along the lines of um, the, the people's willingness to participate, and it's, you know, like, like therapy. You know it used to be kind of taboo, you know nobody would talk about it, that you're in therapy and it was kind of like one of those little secrets.

Speaker 1: 24:07

You know that like it's a really good point, you know you keep under, uh, under like tight lock and key, but now people are, oh, yeah, just, how do you know? Just I'm, that's true, I'm going to therapy at at 1, like you know, like people are more open, um, and with the rise of, you know, digital, the digital infrastructure that we live in, people have kind of embraced this and and, and you know the lack of um, uh, I mean, access to physicians and patient. I mean, I mean now, I mean I can connect with you who's in New Jersey, I'm in Vegas and you know, I, you know not not have access to your skill set here, because the health care system in Vegas is absolutely terrible. Besides, the point for therapy has changed and how people interpret it. And, and, yeah, I mean no shame here, I've, I've been in therapy for multiple years, right, you know, because I've, I've, I've watched.

Speaker 1: 25:10

I watched this one. I don't know what it was. It was like info doc or something, and they talked about how the brain and you probably will love this but how the brain has evolved to modern stress and modern scheduling. Like our brain is not designed to process the amount of information that we put through it every single day. So burnout, right, I mean so many of the workforce industry is burned. I mean, at least in my field, I can tell you for sure. Probably in others, but your brain was not designed to take and use it the way that we use it in this modern world.

Speaker 2: 25:55

True, right, yeah, well, you know. That's such a good point that we know now that part of the reason that we started our podcast and we're also now writing a book is to be able to get information out to people that they may not have. So many people need just information so that they can live their life more effectively so that they can live their life more effectively?

Speaker 1: 26:21

Yeah, what areas do you feel like of psychology are evolving the fastest right now, or maybe even the ones that are maybe the most misunderstood?

Speaker 2: 26:29

you know whether it's clinical or yeah, I think the whole issue around body, around somatic training, trauma of you know, ptsd, stress I think so much more is being studied about that, about how to help people. I've had multiple trainings in dealing with trauma and how to integrate people, kind of a mind-body approach, positive intelligence, emotional intelligence, how you really kind of put together the different things Because one we either had the idea that insight was enough. Once I understand what happened to me, I will be completely healthy, happened to me, I will be completely healthy. That didn't seem to work Right Right. Or if I just know all of my emotions, that'll work. If it's really about how do you integrate, how do you understand your history and your weight survival mechanism, how do you live in your body in a way that helps it calm down so it can respond to all this stress? And how do you shift? You know how do you shift to think more productively or act more productively. So that's to me, the magic that is making these things more doable more access, right.

Speaker 1: 27:57

Do you feel like there's newer promising approaches or maybe modalities that are more promising that you've started to realize in the field you know? I think the idea is we do need to be open to what are the new things.

Speaker 2: 28:26

I just recently took a course in positive intelligence which really was kind of taking all these complicated ideas and making them more accessible on your app. You know it's how do you get people to start using the tools?

Speaker 1: 28:43

Yeah, something that I've noticed too, or maybe you could probably talk on, is the type of persona that you know generally we'll see a therapist is usually a higher um people. A lot, a lot of underprivileged uh communities don't have access to physical uh um or, I'm sorry, psychological uh therapy. Um, how, how do you feel like we can introduce psychotherapy to these types of communities and how do you think we can kind of get through that? You know, this is life-changing.

Speaker 2: 29:27

Well, you know, I think that that's so important and such a big problem and you know, I think we're losing the middle class more and more, not gaining it, so there are more and more people who don't have access to any health care or mental health care. That's part of why I've always liked coming from social work, because I think it's trying to reach all people versus limited but um, I don't know how we're going to do that yeah you know I don't know how people you know what I've always tried to do is offer some low-fee services along in my practice.

Speaker 2: 30:10

I try to do so. I used to. I'm clearly not doing them now that I'm not in Austin. But some free talks where people can come in, but some free talks where people can come um. I think I've worked in doctor's offices where I would be a part of the team, so we were doing that early on and I think that you know help people be able to get some access because, again, it's information a lot of people just don't know.

Speaker 1: 30:38

Right.

Speaker 2: 30:38

And men are afraid to ask.

Speaker 1: 30:41

Totally. It's almost like embarrassing for people to ask for help these days, which is a shame. Yeah, I'm curious. It's something that I've thought a lot about, and maybe there's no answer, maybe you have the perfect answer, but it seems like people and I can only speak from my personal experience. I got into therapy when I was like the glass was overflowing of life and I'm like I need to see somebody, I need to talk to somebody, I need to see some, I need to talk to somebody. Do you think there are kind of like do you think there is a preventative approach to therapy, to psychotherapy, instead of just saying, oh shit, I'm here and now I need to talk to somebody? Like, like, how do you get ahead of needing therapy?

Speaker 2: 31:38

Well, you know, yes, absolutely yes.

Speaker 2: 31:43

And I have had some families where they have their kids come in, not because they're having problems but because, hey, they're a teenager, let's get you in so that you know, you start getting some self-awareness.

Speaker 2: 31:58

And you know, I think more and more people are aware that they need to help their kids have skills, especially now you think of what kids are going through. Young people have so much pressure on them and there's so many limitations that are put on them now in this world with what's happening. So, you know, I think that that takes us, it takes our generations, to help these new, these new generations come in. That would give them tools so they can say, hey, are you reaching close to that point? Then it's time to go back in and talk to somebody. Sure, I'm working right now with a kid who's doing a junior year abroad and, um, her parents are like we're still gonna have you talk to her. So, even though she's in south america, she's we're doing therapy. Yeah, just because they knew they were gonna, she was going to be in some new experiences that she wasn't sure how to deal with.

Speaker 1: 33:02

I mean, yeah, that is amazing that parents are that supportive of her mental health. I'm curious and this is going to be a huge pivot. But you know we've talked. We've talked a lot about transitioning Relate Center, you know, from seeing patients in person to, you know, covid, to the online boom, to telehealth. We've touched on a lot of that, something that I can speak from, to my personal experience, and that's a lot of the stuff that I try to bring into the podcast. You know, because I'm a patient, we're all patients. You know, because I'm a patient, we're all patients. But with the rise of telehealth, you've also seen the decline in the quality of care. So how does Relate Center address that?

Speaker 2: 33:54

Well, I'm not sure how each one of us would say that, how each one of us would say that I miss not being able to have some personal contact. You know, I think what's best is you mix the two so you have some real contact with somebody and then you can work virtually. I don't have that opportunity right now. Part of what I'm doing to try to stay more connected is I use my text and email more so that I try to let people know if they're having a hard time. You know, we can check in with each other, we can do a short call.

Speaker 2: 34:35

There are lots of ways to try to kind of get past that. I just have an hour once a week or every other week, because that's the other thing. That's happened a lot because the costs have keep going up. A lot of people are now coming in every other week and that's much harder to keep the thread of how are you doing? Are you making progress? Where are you getting stuck? So you know, I think you have to just up your communication in different kind of ways.

Speaker 1: 35:05

That makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 2: 35:06

You know, I had people who are like driving in their car and doing therapy and like that's not a good idea.

Speaker 1: 35:16

Pull over, sit down and enjoy this.

Speaker 2: 35:18

Enjoy our discussion good idea pull over, sit down and enjoy this, enjoy our discussion. I had someone who was doing a garage sale while she was trying to do a therapy session.

Speaker 1: 35:29

I'm like no, let's reschedule.

Speaker 1: 35:30

Well, if she cleans out all that junk, then you know, maybe she'll feel you know some release there um, something that I've noticed and you know just a little bit more about my personal life is therapy is about what you get out, what you put in to therapy, and it comes back down to how you communicate. You know how honest you are, but a lot of during that process it's more about self-realization, like when you're trying to break down your problems to somebody who just knows a few things about you and you're trying to distill it. In that process you simplify your complicated problems and it changes the way that you feel about your problems and, additionally, it gives you a new perspective. So I've noticed, at least in my therapy, a lot of my session is like this this realization, like I made this out to be such a big deal, but it wasn't, or like you know, um, it's, it's, it's a realization process.

Speaker 2: 36:42

So I don't know, maybe I'm thinking about it differently, but yeah, no, I think that that's a really good way to say that. You know, I think about so much of the time. We have to see that we are not our problems. We are a whole perfect self and we have problems and challenges and when it feels like it's all one, it feels terrible. But when you can say, oh, I'm having a problem with blah, blah, blah Me and my ex, my job, Tell me about your job and then what you know, you get some distance. Like you said you can. That's part of simplifying it, but it's also getting some being able to look at it from a different point of view. You know that whole idea about the elephant. You know where you look at the elephant.

Speaker 2: 37:28

It's a different thing yeah you, you want to be able to do that, to really understand and shift yeah right, because we're really helping you shift your physiology from that fight or flight kind of anxious place to more of a relaxed kind of calm place, because that's where we really think best.

Speaker 1: 37:52

Yeah, and then you get in there and do your thing. I'm curious and, as I started um in cyber security and my career has been, you know, 10 years plus in cyber security, now something that I never really thought about and now that I'm in this industry, I think a lot about ethics, right, you know like what? Like what's ethical, what's unethical? So this might be an interesting question, but what do you see is the biggest ethical challenges in psychology, especially in the digital age?

Speaker 2: 38:37

So I had a mentor who said was kind of reading the tea leaves and said eventually the good therapists are going to be called something like psychics or something because, you won't be able to be an effective therapist under all these rules.

Speaker 2: 39:03

won't be able to be an effective therapist under all these rules, and so I think that's going to be. The biggest ethical problem is when we start feel like, okay, let me give you an example. I treat trans people and women and men too, but in Texas if a neighbor heard I was treating that neighbor's kid who was 13, because they had trans issues, they could turn me in, they could take away my license and charge me $10,000.

Speaker 1: 39:40

That's crazy.

Speaker 2: 39:43

If I told a woman she could go to another state to have an abortion, I could lose my license that's embarrassing, so you know you you're having to. How do you be really helpful to people who need help?

Speaker 2: 39:59

right and I'm talking about really crazy things that are happening, those examples. But then you're just talking about if I'm, if I'm spending all my time following the rules, how much time is left for me to actually do the therapy. So right, there's two kinds of ethical issues in that way. You know, I'm giving you the crazy thing that's happening in our world.

Speaker 1: 40:25

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 40:25

Politically, but I'm also just talking about all the rules and regulations that are coming in.

Speaker 1: 40:31

I feel like that's a mic drop moment right there. I feel like that's a mic drop moment right there. Like you know, like you know, therapists, doctors, whatever nurses like, should be focused on quality of care and that's the most important thing, you know, instead of you know, tiptoeing around policies or legal challenges or all these things, it just eats into the quality of care, the experience that you get from your practicing physician or psychologist or whatever. It just takes away from everything and it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing that we from everything.

Speaker 2: 41:19

Yeah, and it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing that we're here. Yeah, and you know, of course we want to protect people from bad treatment. Sure so you understand where these things come from, but when they've kind of gone over the top.

Speaker 1: 41:38

Yeah, no, that makes sense. This is. This is another interesting question. I came to some hard questions.

Speaker 1: 41:43

In case you, can't tell so for our listeners out there. You know we have a lot in the tech space. You know we have a lot of, you know, systems administrators. You know people that serve and wear multiple hats and they're juggling all these different things that life has thrown at you or your boss has thrown at you. You know, not everybody is going to be able to go directly to you. You know maybe a couple of them. You know right, but how do you separate a good therapist from a bad therapist and how do you know this is the right therapist for me?

Speaker 2: 42:25

Well, I think our job as therapists is trying to teach people how to make how to how to make those decisions. So I know that there's some, I think psychology today does it, but I on the website for therapists, they, I think they talk a little bit about how do you choose a therapist? I think one of the things I say to people is the research at least the research a couple years ago is that within like eight to 10 sessions, a client should be making some progress. If not, it's the wrong therapist or the wrong technique. So I always tell people I want you to let's talk about what your goals are. We're going to be checking in to see if we're actually making progress, if I'm the right match for you. I think that's our responsibility is to help people think about if they're getting what they want from the process. Now, clearly, not everybody does that, but that's what I do and I like.

Speaker 1: 43:30

Yeah, amazing response. This is kind of a next generation. I kind of want to talk a little bit about the next generation. I feel like you have so much insight that you know I mean maybe somebody out there might be listening who's interested in psychology, or you know, maybe getting into the field, or maybe somebody's daughter, son, niece, nephew, you know what I mean. That's how podcasts work right. How do you think psychology education and training need to evolve to prepare future therapists?

Speaker 2: 44:10

Well, I hope we have young people who are interested in doing this, because I love what I do. It's a powerful thing to feel like you're making a difference in people's lives and offering something that helps you know versus something else. So you know, I love what I do. You know, I think that you had a great idea. And why don't we get some kind of a in school? So when I went to school, they didn't train us about how to be a therapist. They, you know, they expected us to go into agencies and not do something on our own. There should be classes on how do you build a business? How do you think about this? How do you streamline it so you can do the best job you can? How do you think about what kind of ongoing training you should be doing to keep up with what's happening in the field? How do you do that? How do you put together a support system? So it would be really great because we have to. Right now you're just kind of scrambling around to find those answers.

Speaker 1: 45:19

Right.

Speaker 2: 45:20

You know, fortunately you have to be in supervision right now and good supervisors are going to help people cobble that together. But but again, it would be so nice if you had some systems that were really thinking about that in a better way.

Speaker 1: 45:40

I couldn't agree more. Let's frame that also towards, maybe, psych students who are just coming out of the university. Hey, I don't even know what type of therapist I want to be.

Speaker 2: 45:57

Yeah, they're not supposed to know. They don't need to know that, they need to know. I like this field, I like learning and I'm going to take a smattering of different things and get a direction. Hopefully, people start out more general. That's what you want to do and say, oh, I really like working with x yeah so, um, that people also have personality or behavioral traits that help lead them right.

Speaker 2: 46:31

So if you're a really analytic person who likes lots detail, you might want to go more into some of the testing. They're doing some incredible kinds of testing these these days so that you're really looking more at that data or research. You know a research person or or if you really more a generalist, you know you're going to like to do more, you might want to be more a generalist. You know you're gonna are I'm like to do more. You might want to be more a therapist. Like you know, there's so many things now that are available once people get kind of the basics that makes a ton of sense.

Speaker 1: 47:12

Um, this podcast has just we've done. You know we've covered so much and you know something that you know, I guess before our discussion, you know I had never really thought about, but you know, we talked a bit about coaching, we talked about about therapy, we talked about psychology. Right, and to somebody like me, like those are pretty much the same thing, but they're not. So do you see a future where the lines are blurred between, like, coaching, therapy, psychology, like do you see those merging together?

Speaker 2: 47:58

Well, I think certain groups are. So I think psychiatrists are becoming more and more giving medicine. They're getting more into the medical verse. Used to be. Psychiatrists were great therapists. Some of the best therapists in history were psychiatrists. You know Jung Freud, you know they were great therapists. Some of the best therapists in history were psychiatrists. You know Jung Freud, you know they were great.

Speaker 2: 48:21

So now I think psychology, social work, clinical coaching they're more and more coming together. More and more of us therapists are getting coaching training and more coaches are getting therapy training. So we're kind of seeing the skills of sometimes you want to be very practical help people with a particular problem. They've identified a problem. We're going to solve that problem. Some people are here for more how to understand their life and how to help explore what the problems are in there that's holding them back, that they may not be able to describe. So I think that's all kind of coming together.

Speaker 1: 49:05

Let's get out the crystal ball and in. In 10 years, what do you think therapy will look like? Like psychology?

Speaker 2: 49:18

Psychics. What do you think therapy will?

Speaker 1: 49:20

look like like psychology, psychics. The crystal ball is the difference.

Speaker 2: 49:23

Yeah, well I think it's going to continue to get two-tiered, that people who can't afford it are going to get the agency six sessions, take medicine and we're done. I mean it's going to be and then people who have money are going to have better health care and better mental health care. I think that's the sad thing.

Speaker 1: 49:52

That's terrible and tragic.

Speaker 2: 49:56

You know, the only thing we can try to help do is add, get people to be aware and vote for what they need yeah, 100 um.

Speaker 1: 50:08

And this again we talked a little bit about, you know, like doing a new business starter kit and all these like these, these amazing things that could happen If you could redesign one part of the psychology field, whether it be licensing, education or even, you know, delivery. What do you think it would be?

Speaker 2: 50:33

Okay, what holds me back is the threat of being sued. So there are many horror stories of someone who's decided they don't like the therapist and they, you know, put in a complaint and it can ruin the therapist's life. So so much of what I having a license. Even though they say it protects you, it also doesn't protect you. So you know, I have to think about is this person who wants treatment going to be the kind of person that I can trust and worrying about that? And so there, you know that that you hate to have to make that kind of be thinking about that, yeah, or mine, oh my God, from what you were saying is like, oh my God, I'm going to be sued. I don't have any of those kind of things in place that you're talking about. You know, like it's overwhelming.

Speaker 1: 51:42

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 51:42

So I think that's the biggest concern I have in my field.

Speaker 1: 51:48

That's crazy, like I mean you're out here trying to help people and you know, just because you're out here helping people, I mean usually that's rooted right. You think about nurses, you think about doctors, you think about therapists, right, like you're all mission driven to help people have a better life, to live a safer life or, you know, to to be healthy or whatever it is Like you know there should be adequate protections in place for people like you where you can focus on, you know, patient satisfaction.

Speaker 1: 52:19

Yeah, you know, like if you know, god forbid, you know a surgeon cuts off the wrong leg. We actually had somebody that that, that talked about that on one of our other podcast episodes and he, you know, made a medical robots, you know, and we were talking about he was talking about some type of the way that it drills through parts of the skull and you know there used to be a like. There's a very small margin of error, because if you hit a nerve here, like, you're paralyzed for like the rest of your life and you, so you have one thing and they made some type of technology where you know you can I don't know what, it very complicated, but you can see where that nerve is on the patient.

Speaker 2: 53:06

So you can go around it which is crazy.

Speaker 2: 53:09

It is yeah, and you know as we're talking, you also want to make sure that bad treatment. You know as we're talking, you also want to make sure that bad treatment. You know people don't get bad treatment. They'll get the long leg taken off or traumatized with their therapist because they did a bad job. I mean, again, there are so many things we're trying to balance here about having good treatment and you know how do you and, of course course, what's the difference of bad treatment, and sometimes people make mistakes that sure yeah aren't on purpose but are still could be devastating.

Speaker 2: 53:45

I mean there's right we go from. There's black and white, there's so much gray yeah, I got two more questions for you.

Speaker 1: 53:53

This has been a crazy fun episode. It's been great to talk with you too, or I mean you talked about dealing with. You know even the educational space of dealing with students and up and coming entrepreneurs and things of that. How do you feel like psychologists can better collaborate with other disciplines in the future?

Speaker 2: 54:28

Well, it would be really nice if we had some kind of a space, you know, an online space, where we could safely, could, could, can, could connect with each other. That would because you know we have to we end up leaving messages for physicians trying to get let them know that we've seen their patient or give them some update. It's always hard because everybody's so busy trying to find some kind of a space that we could all connect with each other yeah, yeah, I mean that would be kind of like linkedin, but for just doctors, yeah, where there's no spam and no bs.

Speaker 1: 55:12

Um, so we we talked a lot about, you know, entrepreneurship. I feel like we talked about, you know, starting a business, growing a business. You know licensing. I mean therapy, I mean psychology. I mean we've touched on a lot Um, what role do you feel like psychology will play in solving you know, bigger global challenges? And something that comes to mind is, like you know there's people that I mean, dare I say it are deranged in this modern world, but also you have a lot of anxiety in this world.

Speaker 2: 55:53

You also have a lot of loneliness. Well, I think it's all about the nervous system. I think you've got to go back to the body. You have to help people recognize when they're in that sympathetic part of our nervous system which is fight or flight. You have to help them recognize how to shift into a parasympathetic state and it's. I think it's all about that and how you co-regulate. So you know you co-regulate. I can help regulate somebody if I'm in a good spot, or my animals. I have my standard poodles who are part of my practice, you know, petting the animals, working with the horses. There's ways that we help co-regulate each other and I think that's how we're going to have to help people.

Speaker 1: 56:42

That is an absolute epic, epic response. I can't thank you enough for spending so much of your time with us. I feel like I got a free therapy lesson out of this. So much of your time with us.

Speaker 2: 56:56

I feel like I got a free therapy lesson out of this Blake it's been great talking to you. Thanks, and I'm so sorry I missed the first time we had.

Speaker 1: 57:07

No, you made up for it this time. No, of course you made up for it this time. Let people know where they can find you, how they can connect with you, you know, let them know.

Speaker 2: 57:17

So there are two different websites that's Relate Center in Austin, Texas. That's relatecentercom, or beyondboundariescoachingnet, which is a bummer. That it's net Sarah. It's Sarah at Relate Center. It's the easiest way to go and I'd love to hear from anyone who'd be interested in either just talking more about this or coming in for some work.

Speaker 1: 57:45

Sure.

Speaker 2: 57:47

We'll make sure to leave. And our podcast yeah, we have a podcast on Beyond Boundaries Coaching. You can find us on Apple on all the major podcasting services.

Speaker 1: 58:00

We will certainly in our show notes here link everything where you can find Sarah. Thank, you, everybody, she. This was a fun one. This was a fun one. Again. I can't thank you for spending so much time with us sharing your you know your opinion on psychology. I mean, we talked a lot about entrepreneurship and I mean you know the future of therapy.

Speaker 2: 58:29

Thank you so much, thanks for you Great to talk with and good luck and I can't wait to hear it. Yeah, podcast, it sounds really interesting.

Speaker 1: 58:35

It'll be out before you know it.

Speaker 2: 58:37

Okay.

Speaker 1: 58:38

Bye.

Speaker 2: 58:40

Bye.