Hello and welcome to the show. I’m so excited to have Jason Martin with me. Jason is an associate professor of counseling and clinical director in a CACREP accredited counselor training program. He also has a private practice in Belton, Texas. And he’s currently serving as the president of the Texas Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, is active in professional advocacy, which is actually what we’re going to be talking about today.
He’s been in practice for more than 20 years and has been a counselor educator for more than 10 years. His research and education interests include therapist training development, And couples therapy and another side piece that he didn’t put in his bio is Jason was actually my professional supervisor for more years than I like to, yeah,
Jason: yeah, it took me a long time.
That was harder on you than it was on me for sure. Well, that was, that was fun, but
Josh: yeah, no, I was really, I was really thankful to have have you, especially since you’re dually licensed as an LMFT and LPC. That was really. a good thing for me at that time. So, okay. So you’re, you’re the president of TAMFT and you’ve been in that role for
Jason: Well, I’m currently in the middle of my second year as president and I served as president elect for a year prior to that.
So let’s see. I, so yeah, I’ve been president now for about 15 months. And was president elect a year before that. And I had been a board member for TAMFT two years prior to that, I think. Something along those lines.
Josh: Okay. Gotcha. And, and I’m sure that in that position, there’s a lot of opportunities for advocacy and things like that.
Jason: Oh, for sure. That, I mean, that’s the majority of what the job is, is advocating for and promoting the field of marriage and family therapy. Both to the public as well as, you know, to the to other professionals.
Josh: Sure. So in the, in the description of what you were wanting to talk about today, you mentioned the importance of professional advocacy and also removing the cultural stigma of therapy and mental health care.
How do you see those two aligning or intersecting when it comes to advocacy and this stigma that that we face?
Jason: Well, I, I think that there is some, some relation. I actually think I may have identified those as two different topics, but we can certainly cover them together. There, you know, for, as you know, and as your listeners probably are aware, there has been this stigma about mental health for a long time, pretty much as long as we’ve had mental health care as a thing, right?
There’s been a stigma about it. There is this sense that that it’s a personal failing if you have mental health problems or emotional problems or relational problems that is more that that is more stigmatizing than if you have, like, say, a physical ailment. Right. If you get. like cancer, or if you break a bone, you know, no one thinks, well, this means I’m lesser of a person because of that, or that I’m a worse person than if I didn’t have cancer hadn’t broken this bone.
And yet that stigma seems to exist. Thankfully less so today than probably than definitely in years prior, but the stigma still exists that I’m a lesser person. If I have mental problems or emotional problems or relational problems, I should be able to fix these things by myself. There’s this sense that if I need a therapy, if I need mental health care, then that means that I can’t handle my problems by myself.
Right. And I would go as far as to say. That handling our problems by ourself, even when it’s possible, is usually not your best option, or it’s not always your best option, and that at any point in life, counseling, therapy, other forms of mental health care are important. If not benefit or if not necessary, at least beneficial and and would be more efficient and more productive and healthier than simply trying to address it on your own much in the same way that, yeah, if I break my arm, I could put it put my arm in a splint and I could make shift something to That stabilizes my arm and theoretically it may heal.
Now, because I’m not a doctor, doctor of medicine, because I’m not an orthopedist, there’s a good likelihood it’s not going to heal very well, and it’s going to be painful during that healing, and after it’s healed, I’m going to have ongoing problems with that arm. I could do it. Theoretically, right, but there are probably better ways, more efficient ways and healthier ways to do it that an orthopedist would would know that I wouldn’t that they’d be able to do that.
I wouldn’t be able to do sure. And that’s where mental health care. That’s where counseling and therapy come in. Not even just for things severe, but even just, you know, let’s say that I’m, I’m in a job that It’s not that I’m unhappy with, I’m just kind of in a malaise about, and I’m just not feeling very inspired or fulfilled by.
Well, that’s not like a critical thing, and if I don’t go to counseling for that, I’m, you know, it’s probably not going to hurt me necessarily, but going to counseling could certainly help with that, and could certainly serve a benefit.
Josh: Yeah. So, so why do you think that, that people in general are more ashamed to discuss mental health issues than they are physical issues?
Jason: It’s, it’s difficult to see it, and it’s difficult for one person to perfectly relate to the exp the mental health experiences of another person that’s challenging. Like if I see someone with a broken arm, I immediately think, oh, that’s got to hurt. And if I had that broken arm, like I can see and I can imagine myself with a broken arm and how hard that would be and how much pain that would be.
I can imagine that. If I see someone struggling with, let’s say, depression. I may not necessarily and maybe maybe if I’ve had depression, I can do this. So I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it may be more difficult, especially for somebody who hasn’t experienced depression to have a sense of what that person is experiencing, what they’re going through, exactly how difficult it really is.
And so we look at that person and think, Oh, it’s not that bad. And we try to say, well, you know, you have a good family. You have a nice house, you have a good job, you make a good living, what do you have to be depressed about? And we try to rationalize it and understand it through our own lens, not realizing that that’s a very different framework than what they are experiencing themselves.
Josh: For sure. Yeah, it’s really easy to… To just say, well, just get yourself up out of bed, right? Why is that so hard for you to do? Just roll out of bed.
Jason: Yeah. You, you’re saying you spending your whole day in bed. Well, don’t do that. Don’t do that. Stop it.
Stop it. Like that, like that old yeah. Like the Bob Newhart.
Yeah.
Josh: I love that one. I love that one. And so, you know, as, as therapists, obviously this is something that I would say most therapists would acknowledge. Yeah, we, you know, there’s no need to have a stigma, but, you know, I know a lot of therapists that wouldn’t seek mental health, you know, care for themselves or, you know, in, in, in my past, when I’ve sought this out, I’ve wanted to go, you know, to a town 30 miles away, you know, just to avoid, you know, seeing my peers and things like this.
But how do, how do you think that, that, I mean, do therapists contribute to this in any way?
Jason: That’s a good question. I think in some ways we do even in the even in the best of intentions, I think we can contribute to it. I don’t think that we talk about our mental health care as much like our personal experiences in therapy.
And I don’t just mean with our clients. Although I think that there are appropriate ways and times to disclose that to our clients if it would be therapeutically beneficial. But, but we don’t, we don’t talk about that as much with others. I think that we, we are not as good at practicing what we preach.
You know, the things that we are encouraging our clients to do, we don’t always do ourselves. And that’s because it’s hard. And that’s because it, it takes time and patience. And like everybody else, we are, we don’t want to take that time and we are very impatient. And so I, I think that that serves as some of the barrier.
But also I think one of the things that we do is that, and I’m definitely guilty of this is we don’t. We don’t necessarily speak the same language all the time of other people, you know, like we, we, you know, we’ll use the terminology that we learned in graduate school a little too freely with people who didn’t go to graduate school for counseling or therapy.
I think that sometimes we we may be able to see, and we do this with our clients sometimes, but I think we do it with our personal relationships a lot more, we may see kind of a potential solution to a problem. and in helping someone with that problem devalue the emotional experience that they’re having in the struggle.
Does that make sense? Oh, totally, totally. So we, so we, we hear someone describing something they’re going through and our therapist mind turns on and we are thinking about a treatment plan, so to speak, whether it’s with a client or not, we’re thinking about the and we get pretty good at laying out, okay, here’s the problem.
Right. This is the goal, and I can see a path between point A and point B. Right. Whereas, That can feel very invalidating to someone who is still wrestling with the raw emotion of the problem, right? You know, and and so even if we do that well and navigate that that balance well in session, we don’t always navigate it.
Well. Outside of session in terms of, you know, talking with our friends and our family and acquaintances around these issues. And I think that to some degree that invalidation can contribute to the to the stigma as well. Yeah,
Josh: no, as you’re sharing that, the other place where I, I think that I’ve experienced what you’re talking about, I’m, I’m a part of several different practice coaching groups.
And one of the things that we do are, we call them website teardowns, which sounds really horrible, but really we’re looking at, at how to improve our own like private practice websites and make them more attractive to, to clients. And in the process of doing these teardowns, you look at. You kind of evaluate other people’s private practice pages and, and look at how clinical the language is in the website copy, like on the homepage, the way that they’re talking about helping clients is a lot of times very clinical.
And I can see how somebody that’s, you know, looking for help shows up on this page and just feels this disparity between You know, what they know and how, how they understand their problem and what they’re being told about their problem. And it kind of creates this divide, this, you know, expert, you know, type of feeling.
Jason: Yeah. I’ll be honest, selfishly. I like seeing that stuff. on therapist websites, because when I go to a website, I’m not necessarily looking for a therapist. For me, I’m looking like maybe for a referral for somebody. And as a therapist, I like seeing that stuff. I want to see, you know, I like seeing where people went to school.
Not that that makes a huge difference, but you know, if they went to school where I went to school or where I teach, you know, that, that helps me go, Oh, okay. I recognize that. But I do like hearing, you know, their models of therapy. However, While I understand what dialectical behavioral therapy is, if you have that listed on your webpage, the average client will not know what dialectical behavioral therapy is.
And it can sound a little intimidating, and it can sound like, well, I don’t know what that is, and I think the pharmaceutical companies have trained us that You know, there should be a commercial and I should be able to go into my doctor and ask for a specific kind of treatment. And if I don’t know what dialectical behavioral therapy is, should I be asking for that?
And I think that creates a little bit. I don’t know if that’s so much contributing to the stigma, but at least the barrier. Okay, yeah,
Josh: that’s a good way of putting it. Yeah, so, so do you feel like as, as therapists we have a responsibility when clients do come to us and we feel that they have this stigma against counseling?
To what degree do you feel like, you know, it’s our responsibility to help coach them through removing that or to not be ashamed of it because obviously they, they’re concerned about their privacy and, you know, confidentiality is something that we, we have to uphold. So we can’t really force them, you know, to, to broadcast about coming to counseling.
Jason: We wouldn’t want to know. And I don’t think that’s necessary. I mean. Who among us necessarily broadcast going to the dentist when we do that? So I don’t know that we necessarily need to do that. But I would like for clients to think of it almost like going to the dentist where you go periodically just for a checkup, but you also may go when you have a, an emergency or when you have a, an acute problem to be addressed to answer your question.
I think the, the biggest or the most important first task for a therapist is Earning the client’s trust and building that trust. What goes along with that and maybe a secondary goal right after building trust is normalizing various experiences. So I’m whatever that experience may be. A lot of times clients come in.
And they are concerned that the problems they’re experiencing are abnormal, and because they’re abnormal, that is something problematic with them as a person. And I want to normalize. I want to identify, not like artificially so, and not in a way that is that is disingenuous. But I want clients to see, Hey, look what you’re experiencing.
A lot of people experience what you are feeling. A lot of people are feeling now you may be experiencing it and feeling it in a way that is unique to you. So I’m not saying that, that you’re just like everybody else, but that. There’s nothing inherently deficient in you because of this, that you’re experiencing, because guess what a lot of people do, maybe even to the point of being universal, you know?
And that goes with any problem that a client may come in with, whether it’s depression or anxiety or parenting or relational problems in a, in a couple’s relationship, there’s all sorts of normalization that can happen that says, You know, you are not deficient as a person because of this. In fact, this in, in some ways is what connects you to humanity, right?
Josh: I love that. And at the same time, I’m hearing all of my clients saying, yeah, but, and they’ve got all of their own internal scripts that are, that are convincing them that,
Jason: right. And, and my counter argument to that is, but you don’t know how those scripts. how those yabbas are expressing themselves in other people’s lives.
You don’t even necessarily know how that might be expressing itself in my life right now, you know? So, yeah, you, you, the way that, that you may be experiencing your problems is in fact unique to you, but not in a qualitative better or worse way than someone else, you know, and because we don’t have access to other people’s, not just other people’s mind, we don’t have access to a hundred percent of other people’s experiences.
You know, you think about the person that you know the best in the entire world. You don’t encounter them all the time every day. Right. Only in certain contexts. Right. Only in certain contexts. So I think about my wife. My wife is probably the person I know the best out of anyone else in the world. And yet she spends, you know what?
8 to 10 hours a day at her job. I spend a certain amount of time at my job. We connect in the evenings. We connect in the weekends. But the majority of our life together, we’re actually not in the same, you know in, in the same zip code together, actually, you know? And so that’s not to say that I don’t know her well, but I don’t know her perfectly and I don’t know her experiences the way that she knows those experiences.
And then we think about that for literally anyone else that I don’t know as well as my wife and that amount of. Unknown just increases all the more. And what I’m here to tell clients is that some of that unknown is self doubt that you may not see. It’s their own insecurity that you may not see. It is some of their own failings, things where they’ve messed up and made mistakes that you may not see.
It’s, you know, it’s all of that kind of stuff. And so the fact that you’re experiencing that doesn’t mean you’re any less because the other, other people are experiencing it too, to varying degrees. Sure.
Josh: Do you feel like helping clients come to that realization and become more accepting of of their own mental health struggles.
Do you feel like that’s a necessary part of treatment?
Jason: Yes, because I think that people have to see themselves as inherently good. Right. And inherent, they have to be able to see themselves as works in progress. You know, like if I’m, if I’m painting an art piece. Yeah, I’m going to have some critiques of it as I’m working on it, but I always have to keep in mind this isn’t finished.
I’m not done yet. This could still turn out to be a wonderful masterpiece. I don’t know, but I can’t say definitively that it’s not because it’s still a work in progress. And that’s how we have to see ourselves in our lives. Throughout our entire lives, we’re a work in progress. There’s not a, there’s not a, A finished product that will ever happen because we’re always tweaking and growing and learning and changing and adapting, you know?
Josh: Well, and I think too, just helping, helping clients while ourselves realize that, that, that, that process is beautiful in and of itself, right? Just it, it may be uncomfortable as hell, but it’s still a really wonderful. you know, journey, you know, of discovery. Yeah, yeah. The metaphor I use a lot of times with clients as a road trip and not a road trip where you want to get there as fast as you can, but a road trip where you may not have the best GPS service.
Jason: And so you’re going to meander a little bit and you may not even necessarily have. A definitive destination in mind, maybe just more of a general direction, but you’re going to go on this road trip. You are going to have a much better time if you appreciate the journey. Rather than focusing solely on the destination at the end, if you recognize and enjoy, you know, the little quirky roadside shop.
If you look for the, the, you know, the small town local diners and, and the people that you might meet might meet there and the interesting food that you might have along the way. Yeah, some of it’s going to be not so great. And you may have some pretty bad experiences at one point or another, but you’re also going to have some amazing ones.
And if you’re only focused on the destination, you end up missing a lot of that.
Josh: Yeah. You know, in, in the back of my mind, I’m, I’m just hearing these Like I mentioned earlier, these yes, buts and, and I can hear one client in particular saying, yeah, that’s easy for you to say you’re a therapist, right? You help people with this process, right?
You get to end the session and send them out the door. I’m just curious, you know, how, how you feel like. you know, as therapists, we’ve gone through a lot of training to be able to, to have this outlook on life. That is pretty hopeful. I think, I don’t think that would be therapists if we weren’t hopeful about that, but for, for people who just feel stuck.
Jason: Yeah. That’s a challenge. It is more of a challenge. And for those people, I’m not going to try to fix it for them. Well, not just those, but for anybody, it’s not my job to fix it. And actually, I think one of the biggest mistakes that we can make is trying to fix that problem for people who are in fact stuck.
Because as with anything, they have to decide that there comes a point where they have to fix start looking for, okay, how do I get unstuck? Now I’m looking for something action oriented, but until they get to that point, it’s not my job to force them into it. So again, if you haven’t noticed, I work a lot with metaphors, and so one metaphor I use for that is, you know, we encounter people along the road in session, and maybe this person that I’ve encountered is stuck in a pit of mud.
And they can’t get out and they’re sitting there and they’re going, Whoa, is me. I’m stuck in this mud. I can’t believe how messy this is, how gross this is, how much I hate this. How did I ever end up here and they’re sitting there and they don’t like it there. But you can’t, you don’t get the sense that they’re really trying to get out quite yet.
Well, if I go, Hey, grab this stick, I’ll pull you out. No, I what’s the use? I’m just going to get stuck again. Okay, well you know, buck up. It’s not so bad. You know, it’s not over your head, your, your, your, your, your feet and your waist may be stuck, but you know, your arms aren’t stuck and your, your head isn’t stuck.
So it’s not so bad. But I am stuck. It feels very invalidating to them to us. It may seem absurd. Well, if you’re that miserable, do something about it, right? But they have to be in a place mentally and emotionally where they’re ready to do something about it. And so my solution to that is I’m going to sit next to them and say, Yeah, you’re stuck.
And that sucks. And I’m sorry that you’re stuck. And I’m just going to sit here and be with you while you’re stuck and if there’s something I can do to help, great, but if not, at least you won’t be alone while you’re stuck. That’s what they need in that moment. And what I found is that if I focus on that, just being, being present with someone, being empathetic, To their situation, not trying to solve it for them, not trying to fix it for them, not trying to tell them, Hey, here’s what you need to do.
But just sitting with them being with them and empathizing with them. What I find is that after a little bit, they say, I don’t want to be stuck anymore. How do I get unstuck? Right? Okay, now we can start engage in the change process. But the reason for that is They need to trust that I care. And I don’t think a lot of counselors or therapists take the time to consider the fact that yes, you care.
Your client doesn’t necessarily, doesn’t inherently trust that, you know, necessarily. Yeah.
Josh: Not yet anyway.
Jason: Yeah. And they have to trust that. And sometimes the way that we earn that trust is just by sitting with them, empathizing with them, allowing them to emote. And saying, yeah, that does suck. I’m sorry.
You’re having to go through that.
Josh: Well, and that’s, that’s empathy, right?
Jason: Yeah. A hundred percent. Empathy is the key. And, and You know, occasionally I have students that don’t quite understand that at first, right? Well, when they get to clinicals, they learn it in spades. They know that’s that’s what they have to be doing.
Josh: Right, right. So for for people who kind of work through their their own stigmas against seeking mental health. It seems to me that there’s, there’s kind of this swinging pendulum that goes far the other direction where now people are being in some cases, super transparent about their mental health.
And it’s, it’s becoming a very you know, opposite of that. Do you feel it’s possible for that pendulum to swing too wide the other direction?
Jason: In terms of like sharing what’s going on. No, I, I think the exception would be, you know, why, why are we sharing that? Right. You know, and are we sharing it in order to put a billboard and like, look at me, look how wonderful I am for sharing all of this stuff and, and, oh, and, and, you know, praise me for how brave I am.
Right. Okay. That’s probably not a good reason to do it. That’s probably not a good motivation. Yeah, on the other hand, if people are sharing it in order to normalize it in order to encourage other people to seek that out, I don’t see that as anything but a good thing.
Josh: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think that you know, one of the things that I was actually talking with a pastor recently, and they’re, they’re wanting to focus on kind of mental health in their community, which I thought was a really great emphasis for them, because what they’re, what they’re seeing is that This readiness to talk about mental health is, is creating a lot of opportunities for them, you know, with the mission that they have in their, in their church, but they’re seeing that shift and, and just recognizing this is a little bit different, whereas people in the past weren’t so apt to, to reach out and, and look for help now that now they are.
Jason: Yeah, yeah. I’ve, I’ve seen that. You know, take place in a number of different areas. I know someone who I currently supervise she, she participated in a mental health awareness day at her church and she was a guest speaker or a panelist or something like that, and the church reported that they had a lot more.
Requests for, for counseling not, not from the staff necessarily, but from, you know, trained professionals. So she ended up getting a number of referrals from that. And, and I think it’s from, that’s where I think normalization is a big part of this, where, where there is becoming more of a critical mass of people who are seeing, oh.
That person struggles with mental health or that person has emotional difficulties or that couple is experienced, you know, has experienced some relational distress, but yet they’re still together and still love each other. Oh, wow. So maybe the fact that I’m feeling those things and that I’m. You know, struggling here or there.
My, my marriage is, you know, not exactly what I want it to be in this way or in that way. Maybe that doesn’t mean that I’m flawed. Maybe it just means that I’m normal, but I can still get help for it.
Josh: Yeah. It, it kind of infuses some hope, you know, right. If, if they can do it, I can do it too. Yeah. Yeah, that’s really for sure.
Jason: So kind of bringing this around to advocacy. Yeah, I was gonna ask about that. Yeah. So as the president of TMFT, I got into working with TMFT and other professional associations I’ve been a part of, because I’ve been become convicted that with in the idea that Therapists really are the best people to advocate for therapy and that we have to, there are a lot of different arenas in which we need to do that.
Now the, where TAMFT does a lot of that is with, with the therapists themselves, just kind of bringing awareness. to other therapists about the issues that we need to be concerned about and about the ways that we can either helpfully or sometimes unhelpfully try to advocate for the field. The other part is in legislature.
You know, our job is, or our license is a state regulated license. And what that means is people who don’t have a license can’t do what we do. Now that’s a privilege, but it’s also a strong responsibility. So we have to make sure that the legislators who are making the laws that govern our, our license and that the board members who you know, direct and, and regulate the license that they have an understanding of, of what we can do, what we are trained to do and and, and how we may be available.
To help the general public and making sure that they have a proper. that they’re properly informed about that. For a lot of therapists in Texas that became very prominently a part of the issue a few years ago. I think it’s been, oh, 12, maybe 13 years ago now that TMA, the Texas Medical Association filed the lawsuit against the state licensing board saying that we could not diagnose.
That was finally settled. I think three or four years, four years ago now, I believe and it was settled in our favor that, yes, we can diagnose, but that was a, that was a, a really scary moment for a lot of us and really the only people. Who were positioned to advocate for that were therapists. We had to do that.
The state licensure board was powerless to do that. What a lot of people don’t realize is the licensure board is legally prohibited from lobbying for or against legislative change. to the to the statutes. They cannot do that. They’re legally not allowed to do so because they work under the governor.
And so if there are any kind of changes, any kind of protections any kind of defense of our field, that’s going to happen. It has to be through people other than the board. And if it’s not the board, who’s it going to be? Well, it’s going to be other therapists. And in our case, it needs to be TAMFT.
Josh: Gotcha. So do you feel like there are any statutes in place right now that need to be adjusted in any way that kind of serve to contribute to the stigma that we’ve been talking about?
Jason: Oh, that’s a good question. I’m, I’m definitely not the best person to ask that question of. That’s okay. I serve as president, so I try to stay abreast of…
of the big ticket items that are going on. But we have an entire legislative committee where that’s where they live. And we have, thankfully, we have a wonderful, wonderful paid lobbyist who knows about these issues in terms of statutes that would help alleviate stigma. I think any statute, which there are some that exist that do not allow therapists to work in specific areas.
So I think while therapists are allowed to work in schools, I don’t think that, at least in Texas, there is enough of an initiative to get licensed therapists in schools. I think that that would be one thing. I think also kind of. There are some statutes in on the books that are. That I think just generally misunderstand what therapy is and what it isn’t.
You know, insurance can be a really good thing because insurance can pay for therapy a lot of times. But I think too much of the statutes are geared towards insurance. And this gets into kind of the entire health care system, which, you know, obviously has has problems well outside that of just Those relating to therapy, but I think finding ways for people to be able to afford and access therapy that do not depend on insurance.
I think that that would be a really good thing to do. And, and also bringing therapy more prominently into the workplace. So I’m, I’m part of a task force. in Texas that is looking to better address the mental health care of police officers. And this was an initiative started by various police chiefs through throughout the state who saw a alarmingly increase increasing rate of suicide among active duty police officers and saw a lot of mental health care.
And so they saw that there was a strong stigma. Within their own forces around mental health care, and a lot of that was tied sometimes understandably and sometimes maybe in misconceived ways, because it was tied to job performance, and there was this fear that that it would, that it would impact fitness for duty.
And, and so what I’ve really appreciated about being on this task force is that they’re looking for ways to normalize mental and emotional distress, especially in high stress jobs, such as being a police officer and looking for ways to, to de stigmatize that in a way that, that allows. People to seek help allows officers to seek help without fearing that it’s going to affect their job without fearing that it will, you know, impact the way that other people see them or the respect that others may have for them.
And, and I think that that’s been a really I think there’s some been, there have been some really good conversations about that. We haven’t necessarily taken much action as a task force, but there have been some really good conversations. So I think in terms of statutes anything that would open up the availability and normalize the therapeutic experience, especially in areas where it may have traditionally not necessarily been, yeah.
Josh: Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s quite the task. Yeah. I mean, when you think about, you know, not just police officers, but in other areas and, you know, you and I here living so close to an army base, you know, experience that a lot you know, from active duty.
Jason: Well, and, and a lot of the soldiers that I know who, that I’ve talked to about this, they say, you know, the army is, It, it gives, there are certain pockets where it’s done really well, but on the whole, the military is really terrible about The mental health care of its soldiers.
Like I said, there are some pockets where it is done well, but, but the, you know, the whole military system is not necessarily set up with that as a priority and and that’s challenging. And for re there are reasons for that, but nevertheless, it’s challenging.
Josh: Okay. Well, Jason, this has been really, really great.
I’d be really curious if, if you had just like 30 seconds. To sit with a therapist who said, Hey, what, what do I need to do to really, if there was one thing that I could accomplish that would help with this, either in terms of advocacy or destigmatizing where would you direct them?
Jason: Like in terms of just.
taking on for themselves what they can do to address this problem.
Josh: Professionally, if they felt like, man, I want to do my part to help with this beyond, you know, working with my clients and helping them better.
Jason: Talk about your own mental health. more openly and honestly be, be the person that you want other people to be.
Talk about it with your friends and your family, your acquaintances. Of course, you know, we, we don’t want to disclose, we don’t necessarily need to disclose everything, but talk about it. And when you experience challenging moments in your life, seek out your own therapy. That’s a lot easier to do nowadays that we have teletherapy and telehealth.
That, that, you know, I don’t, I don’t want to see a lot of the people in my own community because I work with them and know them or friends with them, but I, but I actually have seen a therapist who’s located in the Dallas area because that’s somebody I don’t necessarily encounter very often and didn’t know prior to that.
So do your own therapy. Talk about your own therapy. Talk about your own mental health. Just be more vocal and open and honest and vulnerable about those things. Be that example.
Josh: I love it. That’s great advice. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Jason: Sure. My pleasure. Glad to be here. Thanks for the invitation.
Josh: Maybe we’ll have you back another time.
Jason: Yeah, I’d love that. Thanks.