My Top 3 Thorns as a Mental Health Therapist
In this episode, Erin, offers insights into the challenges therapists face. Erin also answers a listener's question about pursuing a career in OCD therapy and discusses the importance of specialized training.
She shares a personal story about parenting and the natural process of growth, paralleling it to mental health therapy.
Erin introduces Thrizer, a service to help understand mental health insurance benefits, and highlights the expected growth in the mental health field. Simple Practice is another great tool if you are a therapist.
She lists her top three annoyances as a therapist: dealing with insurance, doctors prescribing therapy routines, and therapists who misrepresent their expertise in OCD treatment. The episode concludes with recommendations for reliable OCD treatment training and a preview of the next episode focusing on emetophobia, the fear of vomiting.
References:
00:00 Raising OCD Awareness with NoCD
00:33 Celebrating 25 Episodes: The Journey So Far
00:48 Top 3 Annoyances of Being a Therapist
12:03 Navigating Insurance Nightmares for Therapists and Patients
19:06 The Importance of Specialized OCD Treatment
27:33 Closing Thoughts and Next Episode Teaser
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We're partnering with NoCD to raise awareness about OCD. OCD is more than what you see on TV and in the movies. Imagine having unwanted thoughts about your relationship stuck in your head all day, no matter how hard you try to make them go away. That's Relationship OCD. It comes with unrelenting, intrusive images, Thoughts and urges about your partner or loved one.
Breaking the OCD cycle takes effective treatment. Go to NOCD. com to get evidence based treatment. Happy Fabulous Friday, y'all. All right, we're reaching episode number 25 and I'm so excited. We've been doing this podcast for six months and it's been such a fun ride. In today's episode, I'm going to be covering my top three most annoying things about being a therapist.
Hi, I'm Erin, licensed clinical mental health counselor and OCD specialist. I'm also a Christian, wife, mom to three, and small business owner, helping those who are overwhelmed by stress to climb out of that valley and enjoy the view. Reheat your coffee and pop in your AirPods to learn how to boss up to OCD.
If you're a therapy seeker, or if you are a therapist yourself, when you hear these top three annoying things, you're probably going to be like, yep, I'm there too. Now, before we get started into my whole soapbox, I want to share with you a question I got from one of the audience members. All right, and this question comes from Matthew Joseph out of Bloomington, Indiana.
Hey, Matthew. In Matthew's question, he was sharing with me how he's passionate about OCD. He has dealt with it in his own life. And so he asked, I'm fascinated to hear more about your journey in helping others with OCD as it is a path that I have been considering for myself. So, Matthew, I think that is great.
Alright, Matthew, what I have done in your undergraduate and graduate school training, there's not a lot of specialized, education around OCD. And so you have to go and seek out that training on your own. I have done training through the NoCD Academy and NoCD does sponsor this podcast. NoCD offers free, CEUs.
So if you're a therapist, you know what I'm talking about. Or if you're just curious about OCD, the NoCD Learning Academy is a very good resource. Like they just recently did a training about exposure therapy for eating disorders. And so I'm thinking my next episode is going to be about one of those.
eating disorders that ties in to OCD and it's that fear of throwing up. In short, it's called emetophobia. You guys can plan for that in the next episode. So anyway, Matthew, getting back to your question. Seek out some specialized training. I recommend the NoCD Learning Academy and also take a look at all the research out there about exposure and response prevention because that will help back you up as you provide therapy for OCD.
And Matthew went on to share, I am loving the content on the podcast a lot. Even the titles just resonate with my experience. I'm excited to explore and listen to more of your episodes. So I really appreciate that Matthew and if any of you listeners have a question about anything related to obsessive compulsive disorder or intrusive thoughts, compulsions, there is a link in the show notes where you can submit those questions.
All right, we're getting out of the spring season and getting close to summer. So the other day, my oldest son was seeing some little birds bounce across the yard. He was getting all excited. I am not an expert on birds, but he was feeling worried that these birds were going to be vulnerable to predators.
And I totally get it, but he was, He's asking to hold them and put them back in their nest because he could see where their nest was. Their nest was built on the kid's playground, so he could clearly see that the birds had left the nest. And so he's thinking like, Oh my gosh, I got to put the birds back.
So these baby birds are hopping around in the yard. His first instinct is to scoop them up, save them, put them back in the nest, and he's thinking that he is rescuing them. So, very good intentions, but as a parent, you know that there's this natural process that birds leave the nest. And it's natural for them to learn how to fly.
Animals seem to just have a way of knowing things. So, in those moments, I We were explaining to our son, like, you have to let it go. You have to let nature take its course. And if we interfere, it might actually harm the birds. Because I was telling my son, like, okay, even if you put them back in the nest, they're going to want to jump out again.
At least they made it safely to the ground, because where the nest was on the playground is pretty high up. He's thinking, Mom, like, They're not flying. They're just hopping around. I'm like, yes, but just like when you were a toddler learning to walk It's not like you started walking right away. I mean you tried, fell down, Tried again until you finally got it.
He accepted the direction and was like, okay, I'm gonna leave it alone and he The very next day, my husband saw at least one of the birds fly away, like, for real, fly away. And just like those baby birds, we all go through stages of growth and development. There's ups and downs in life. We all face challenges.
And just like I tell my clients, a lot of times, We grow when it's hard. And so sometimes the best way to support someone is by giving them the space they need in order for them to build their resilience and their strength to make their own path. That was also true for the birds. We had to give them space and allow them to take their wings, literally and figuratively.
When the case is for us humans, we also need to have that space where we grow and develop for our mental health. A lot of times people think that mental health can be a quick fix. If you've been in therapy before, or if you are a therapist, you know that therapy is a process and finding the right resources can make all the difference.
In thinking about the birds, we knew how to intervene, which was to give them that space to learn how to grow. Therapy can give you that space in order to grow. And so I want to share with you some statistics. Back in 2022, just two years ago, um, Around 55. 8 million adults in the United States got treatment or counseling for their mental health within that year or the previous year.
So the numbers for the mental health demand are very much increasing as time goes on. If you're that therapy seeker, it can be challenging to know what to do, where to go. And then, once you find a therapist, then there's that layer of figuring out if they take your insurance or not. So I want to share with you this billing service called Thryser.
Thryser is a fantastic way to figure out what your mental health benefits are for in network care and out of network care. Some of you may be wondering, like, what is the meaning of this in network, out of network care? Totally get it. So, in network is when your therapist or your provider takes your insurance and it has done the paperwork to get paneled with that insurance company.
Out of network means that they are not on that insurance panel, but that doesn't mean that you still won't get any insurance benefits. It's just that those benefits look different. And so with Thryser, they offer a free calculator to help you see what your benefits are. If you use my link, whether you're a therapy seeker or a therapist, you will get money off those first claims that you send in through Thryser.
So, as a therapist, you can use Thryser for your patients. They only charge a 3 percent transaction fee, and they do the claim process for you. You don't have to deal with the complex issues of sending in insurance claims. And then your clients know up front what to expect with their out of network benefits.
If you're that therapy seeker, with Thrizer you can see how much your insurance is going to reimburse you for seeing that therapist who is out of network with your insurance. In both scenarios, whether you're the therapy seeker or the therapist, Thryser will send in the claim to insurance for you, which is such a nice feature to have.
If you're the therapy seeker, you don't have to deal with the super bills. If you're a therapist, you don't have to deal with the claims or providing the patient with their super bills. So use my referral link today and enjoy that seamless path to accessing more of your mental health benefits. Just like those baby birds, with the right support, you can soar to new heights.
That link for Thryser is in the show notes. If you use my link, I may get a kickback as well at no additional cost to you. But with it being Mental Health Awareness Month, this field of mental health counseling and getting help from the mental health care system, it's expected to grow 9 percent over the next decade.
And that 9 percent is faster than average. That means that about each year there's going to be almost 75, 000 new jobs. every year over this next decade in the mental health field. With the mental health field growing and growing at a very rapid pace, it's wonderful how much mental health awareness there is, and that mental health care is a lot more accessible than it used to be.
There absolutely can still be a stigma, yet that stigma, that message, seems to be going down and getting quieter over time. The other thing too, insurance, and just like I was telling you about Thryser, there's a lot more services and coverage to help support your mental health needs. Let's take a break and hear a word from our sponsor.
When we get back from the break, I'm going to tell you my top three annoying things as a therapist. We're partnering with NoCD to raise awareness about OCD. OCD is more than what you see on TV and in the movies. Imagine having unwanted thoughts about your relationship stuck in your head all day, no matter how hard you try to make them go away.
That's Relationship OCD. It comes with unrelenting, intrusive images, thoughts, and urges about your partner or loved one. If you think you may be struggling with Relationship OCD, NoCD offers effective, affordable, and convenient OCD therapy. NoCD therapists are trained in exposure response prevention therapy, the gold standard treatment for OCD.
With NoCD, you can do virtual, live, face to face video sessions with one of their licensed specialty trained therapists. It's affordable, and they accept most major insurance plans. Breaking the relationship OCD cycle takes effective treatment. To get started with NoCD, go to nocd. com slash savage. The thorns of being a therapist.
Third on my list of annoyances is insurance. Insurance, y'all, is a nightmare. Literally, this week, I was calling insurance to follow up on a claim because I haven't received a payment on these sessions that happened in January. We're now in May, almost the end of May. I still haven't gotten paid for those January appointments.
So, call them up. And guess what? They say, Oh, we don't have a record of these claims, even though I have submitted them and I have claimed numbers to go along with it. So then I asked them, what do I do next? Do you need me to resubmit the claim? And guess what? They hang up. Oh my goodness. Like after you, and you know how it is.
Like you call these 1 800 numbers. It's dreadful. You gotta go through all these prompts, you gotta deal with the teleprompt, and you're like, Yes, my zip code is! And it's like, I'm sorry, I didn't get that. And it's like, are you for real right now? Like, I'm going to scream. Can you hear that? Huge pain, because not only do they lose claims, do they lose checks, they don't write the checks, or insurance will deny claims, and then you gotta call them and it takes like an hour just to get to somebody, then they hang up on you?
Please. It's just nonsense. Not many therapists take insurance because of how much of a headache it is. And I totally get it, because if you don't have an administrative assistant, or if you don't have a team that does this stuff for you, it's a lot. So, the insurance that I take is Aetna. So, I'm in network with Aetna, and I'm also TRICARE certified.
So, as a, TRICARE certified provider, the last time I checked with TRICARE, they were not accepting any more in network therapists unless you provided medication. That's typically just your psychiatrist. So, I'm not providing medication, I'm not licensed to provide medication, and that's okay. Like, I just do the talk therapy, the exposure response prevention.
Like your more traditional therapy stuff. So anyway, as a TRICARE certified provider, they do help with the out of network benefits. And a lot of my TRICARE patients get reimbursed. But the frustrating part is, again, it takes so long for my patients to get reimbursed. That's annoying. Now, beautiful thing is Thryser has made that a lot better.
We can see how much they can expect to get reimbursed. We know that up front. We can track the claims there with Thryser. Just makes it so much easier, and it's a lot more transparent for both me and the patient. Tracking down claims in Thryser has made it a whole lot more simple. Thank goodness. The other thing I've learned with TRICARE, and I don't know how much this is true, and if you have TRICARE, you may want to call and ask them, but if you see an out of network provider with TRICARE, like someone like me who's TRICARE certified, if you get a referral from your primary care doctor, that can help potentially raise the reimbursement.
Definitely check into that. I'm with you in the trenches when you're calling insurance. I know it's a pain, but just write everything down. Be persistent. Take down the reference numbers of the call. Take down the name of the person you spoke to. And make sure you understand what you need before you get off the phone.
Or ask to speak to their supervisor. Ask to speak to someone else. When I'm calling insurance, it's annoying because, again, like, it's taking away time to treat patients and to help clients. And like, that's what I'm here to do. And it's ultra annoying when you waited four months to get paid, you call and they say, Oh, we don't have the claim.
Number two on my list of thorns is when doctors tell you how much therapy you need. Have you ever gone to the doctor's office? And Like, it's one thing to say, I suggest you need to go to therapy. But it's a whole nother thing when your doctor says, oh, you should go to therapy at least once a week. You need to go to therapy once every other week.
Or, you need to tell your therapist that they need to work on blank. And I'm like, bro, do you do therapy? No, so don't tell me how much therapy my patients need just like I'm not stepping in your lane and saying How much medicine you should prescribe them? No. What do I say? I say, hey talk to your doctor.
See what they say about medication. Talk with your doctor about your options. See what they think. Am I telling you? Oh, you should take 20 milligrams of Prozac. No, absolutely not. For one, that's a huge liability risk because that's not my area of expertise. And two, I am NOT a medical doctor. That is their lane.
So everyone needs to stay in their lane and do their job. Wow, just even saying that really fires me up. I hear this come from my patients sometimes and I, it's like simmering in there. I'm like, okay, mindfulness. Let's breathe. It's okay. And yeah, it really greats my nerves. Mm hmm. Very much so. If you are a medical professional, my advice to you is to stay in your lane.
Don't tell people what they should and shouldn't do unless that is your area of expertise, because what it then creates is this undermining of the therapeutic relationship, and I'm not about that, because therapists work Real hard to gain the client's trust. If you're sitting there saying like, oh your therapist needs to focus on this and that, just stop.
Just stop. All right, medical doctors are completely essential, especially when it comes to mental health care, and I love looping in Doctors and creating like this team based approach where we're all on the same page and knowing what we're working towards as a common goal. Like there's a common goal of helping this patient not deal with intrusive thoughts.
There's this common goal of helping this person get back on their feet and feel like they're no longer, you know, in a spiral. The doctor and myself and whoever else may be on this treatment team, maybe it's a teacher, just depends on the life stage, right? We're all in this together to help you with your long term recovery.
What I'm not about is a doctor who's going to tell my patient how much therapy they need and what we need to work on in therapy. No, thank you. And last but not least, my number one, As a therapist is when other therapists say they treat OCD when in fact they don't. What I mean by that is that they don't offer the right kind of treatment.
Please, if you are a therapist listening or you've gone to a therapist that has done this, send them this episode. Send them the message that they should not advertise that they treat OCD unless they are offering exposure response prevention. More often than not, when I get an OCD patient, normally they've already tried another therapist before, and it didn't work.
And you know why it didn't work? Because that therapist didn't use exposure and response prevention. Yes, they are using mindfulness. Mindfulness is totally valid and super duper helpful. Yet, that's not the whole story. You need the full picture in order to help an OCD sufferer complete their journey towards mental wellness.
So, it just burns my buttons when a therapist says they treat OCD and nowhere in their bio or their website are they mentioning exposure and response prevention. What can happen y'all is, first of all, you're wasting your time, energy, money, and effort. Oh my gosh, like, nobody wants that. You're wasting all of those resources on a therapy that will not be effective with your intrusive thoughts or your compulsions.
You're already suffering. It's already hard. Maybe you're one of those people where you sought treatment because you were fearful of acting on those violent thoughts. intrusive thoughts. You thought that, Oh my gosh, I may be a threat to society. I may accidentally hurt somebody. Or maybe you're in such a spiral that you haven't been eating for days on end.
So you go to a therapist with the hope of getting some help, but yet it doesn't help. So what does that leave you? It leaves you totally empty handed. You're frustrated, feeling more defeated, and then it's creating this belief that therapy doesn't work. And let me tell you, it doesn't work. The right kind of therapy does work when you're doing the right kind of therapy, you are as an OCD specialist, as someone who works with people who have intrusive thoughts and compulsions, I am routinely helping people graduate from therapy.
So many times they are saying, Wow, I can't believe how far I've come. I'm doing things I didn't used to do. I can handle things so much better now. It's like my OCD is at its lowest volume it's ever been in my life. Y'all, that is music to my ears because it is so rewarding to see you get better and to see these results for you.
For you, because that's what, as a therapist, you're here to do, you're here to help people. If you're also in that camp of being a therapist and wanting to help people, then do us all a favor and only treat those conditions that you're trained in. If you're a therapist and you have not gotten training in OCD, Go to the NoCD Learning Academy.
Go out to all of these other continuing education platforms. You can also look at the International OCD Foundation. When you're looking at continuing education courses, there are definitely some on simple practice as well. If you're that clinician who uses simple practice, Or if you're interested in starting simple practice, let me put a link in the show notes where you can get started with simple practice for your record keeping.
But you can also get into their learning side of the house and do their continuing education. I remember taking one of their courses on pure. Obsessions, so the pure O subtype, so when someone just purely obsesses over their worries and intrusive thoughts, there's not as much of the behaviors or compulsions.
So seek out those reliable sources for your trainings and get trained up. So get trained up. Also seek out consultation. Ask people about how they have worked through these client cases, but don't advertise that you treat OCD when you don't. When someone is experiencing intrusive thoughts, the last thing they need is a
If you are a therapy seeker and you need help with your intrusive thoughts or those spirals that you can't help or you're just not sure if this is OCD or not, schedule a consult. If you're located in North Carolina or Virginia, you are welcome to schedule a consult with me. If you're located outside of those locations, check out KnowCD.
It is a no obligation, free consultation for you to get a feel and see what you're dealing with. And you can go into that consultation and ask that therapist, like, Hey, is this OCD? Like, I'm just not really sure. You can ask those kinds of questions. You can also go in and ask, like, Hey, what kind of steps do you do?
What are you planning on doing to help me get better? Very critical question, right? Because that's what we're there to do. I'm not there to just hold space. Ask those questions of when and how do you expect for me to reach these treatment goals? It's okay to ask your therapist that, because We've all been there where we feel uncertain about like, where's this going?
When you're working with intrusive thoughts and compulsions, the goal is to help you manage these things, lower the anxiety, decrease the other symptoms that are going on, and there should be an action plan. I encourage you to talk to your therapist about that action plan, which is also known as your treatment plan or your treatment goals.
So ask them, what are our plans? What are the steps to help me reach these treatment goals? If you're struggling with the intrusive thoughts and compulsions and there's not exposure and response prevention built in there, yeah, that might be a problem. Now, I totally get that exposure and response prevention can be uncomfortable, but also your therapist is going to be working with you step by step to help make sure that you are successful.
You're going to be changing that relationship with discomfort. I have come across this where someone asked me, Can I get better from my OCD if I don't do exposure and response prevention? And the gentle answer is no, likely not. Without the exposure response prevention, you're not allowing your brain to have that corrective experience.
And we can only do that through behaviors. So if there are certain exposures that you're really worried about, talk to your therapist about it. Be open and honest about your concerns and also Just get a feel, get a vibe for what the treatment plan is. You have that right to know. I think that's it for my soapbox for today.
I appreciate you all being here. I'd love for you to check out the links in the show notes. I've got the link in the show notes where you can submit your questions. Check out my link for Thryser so then you can see those out of network benefits that may be part of your insurance plan. That way you can be more informed about the cost of therapy and what you can expect from your insurance.
We're partnering with NoCD to raise awareness about OCD. OCD is more than what you see on TV and in the movies. Imagine having unwanted thoughts about your relationship stuck in your head all day, no matter how hard you try to make them go away. That's Relationship OCD. It comes with unrelenting, intrusive images, Thoughts and urges about your partner or loved one.
Breaking the OCD cycle takes effective treatment. Go to NOCD. com to get evidence based treatment. Come back next week and you know what? Let's go ahead and talk about that fear of throwing up. If you have ever found yourself restricting food or praying that you don't throw up or you're doing things because you're so afraid of vomiting, I've got that episode coming your way.
All right, y'all have a great Memorial Day holiday and I'll see you back here next Friday. Ciao. Thank you for listening to another episode of Bossing Up Overcoming OCD. This information is intended to be helpful and not a substitute for professional counseling. If you're struggling with any mental health challenges, I encourage you to seek help from a qualified therapist or healthcare professional.
Ciao. If you enjoyed today's episode, please take a moment to rate and review the show. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners, and don't forget to check out the affiliate links in the show notes for hand picked recommendations that can brighten your day. Your support through these links helps keep the show running and provide valuable content.
You're not alone in your journey. Stay strong, stay resilient, and keep bossing up. See you next time.
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