Speaker A: Welcome to the Therapist burnout podcast, episode 68. Hey therapist, welcome back. I hope you liked last week’s episode with Shulamit where we talked a little bit about all kinds of things, but I love her analogy of kind of being a canary in the coal mine if you’ve been in Burnout.
So if you didn’t check that one out, check it out.
I am bubbling with many things. It’s finally sunny in the state of Maine. Here in the US it’s been a cold. Whatever you think spring was, that wasn’t. What I’ve experienced has been some legit winter.
And I got a puppy yesterday. Oh my goodness. I’ve been trying to do work with a puppy and stopped working out, but I told myself I would do 10 minutes of this episode and then see if I can come back to it before I go on vacation where it’s going to be warm.
So looking forward to that. But just a few puppy reflections for you.
I was telling one of my consulting clients, puppies and children know how to live like a human.
I am firmly in belief that dogs remind us how to be human because they are just experiencing the world, looking at like acorns as something new and novel.
And it’s fun, like watching my new puppy discover the world. And I’ve already been outside more, walking around more, a lot more work, but also I think wonderful glimmers into just noticing spring and all the little things. So I know I’m going to love having this lovely puppy I had on my agenda to talk to you about money this week, and I will.
But there is a therapist scam saga. Okay, maybe it’s not a scam, but kind of, yeah, it is a scam.
So if you haven’t heard already, there is a company called Seven Cups and they have published maybe a hundred thousand therapists information in their directory.
And it just so happens that the president of this company was my clinical supervisor. So it is like really weird for me to be talking about it on my podcast.
I did reach out to them for a statement. Who? Who knows if I’m too small potatoes to reach back out for a statement. It’s been clogging my feed and then my friends from school have been messaging me about their experiences with this person.
And if I can remember correctly, when he was launching this company, he was telling me I went to a Christian integration school. I’ve talked about that a few times on the podcast. And I think he was launching this company for like missionaries who were going to do like some kind of Christian mission.
Overseas that they could get some kind of support. So I feel like I remember him training listeners and I don’t have a problem with peer support like I have I there are like the NAMI Warmline here in Maine as a resource that I had often given as a therapist and so nothing wrong at all with these peer to peer networks.
I think that is great.
The problem is when you publish therapist data without their consent. So I’m going to unpack some of the hot takes from this week on LinkedIn from the Things that I’ve saw people post and and also just reflect a little bit about this was my supervisor, my clinical supervisor who was one of the people that was foundational in my training and they are part of big situation and I have no idea how much they know about or how much they’re involved in this company but they’re the founder so I’m guessing they probably do. But that’s conjecture. And so I also want to respond to a couple of emails that I received from the pen pal list and by the way, if you’re not signed up, please sign up for the pen pal list.
That’s the email list where give you information on the podcast and tips. I respond back to you too. Sometimes on the podcast, sometimes be email but I respond back to my messages.
Okay, so seven Cups, let’s do it. I think this is just the latest in many difficulties. I think the therapists have their relationship with tech. So I think it. I don’t know where it started but it’s certainly like, you know, the better helps and talk spaces of the tech space really help to solidify that they don’t have our back.
So again I think they were publishing therapist profiles or therapist information and then funneling or back channeling those referrals who thought they were going to get in touch with that actual therapist profile which they saw they are not getting in touch with that therapist.
BetterHelp is then trying to connect them with their therapists or in this case the new iteration, 7 Cups is trying to give them information, trying to fill their own therapist or their peer led support offering whatever they offer.
I think they have trained listeners. I don’t know how many people are trained listeners or what that training even is, but I’m guessing it’s some kind of peer network. Again, it isn’t a bad thing to have peer support and peer listeners. There’s nothing inherently wrong with therapy chatbots as long as I think they are done in an ethical way.
They are not touted as the replacement for therapy. Again so this peer led thing isn’t like a bait and switch. Oh, you want a therapist. But we also have peer support while you’re waiting for your therapist which they have no affiliation with.
So I recommend that if you are a therapist and I googled myself, I’m I haven’t had an active, I haven’t had a active practice for two years now. But if you are an active therapist then google your name and put seven Cups.
So I saw several therapists that I know that live in my area, one I play tennis with, one I see all the time. And I’m going to be messaging them and letting them know, hey, by the way, I didn’t know if you knew that your profile is on seven Cups and I doubt you know it’s there so you might want to remove your information.
So all of the responses that I’ve seen this week from seven Cups has been you can write in and have your information removed. And the response that I’ve seen on other posts, I’m going to bring up One of those seven cups did respond in a couple of LinkedIn posts that I saw.
One is this is by John Sue Star and they’re saying again, you’re not posting, you’re not linking the responses to you. We kindly request you provide the links through in your posts.
With regard to your claims that about sending not sending referrals to therapists, this is not accurate. We are sending referrals. We understand that you do not believe us. I’m not sure what to tell you.
With time enough, therapists will receive referrals and that’ll be very obvious to you that we are indeed to be sending referrals. So I just doubt they are sending therapist referrals.
So they’re putting your profile on there and say, oh, we have taken your information and made a profile for you on our website and of course we’re going to send you that information.
Has anyone received a referral from 7 Cups? Please let me know right into me and let me know because I’d love to give like a little follow up to let therapists know if that’s happening.
They say that they pay for a service that allows them to triangulate data to find therapist email addresses. We have other ways of confirming therapist emails and interesting, I think John had posted about, you know, the different information that therapists show up for like psychology today or LinkedIn or different other websites. He asked this interesting question.
When you send an email to a therapist, how can you maintain HIPAA compliance by sending along that phi data in an email to them because we don’t. We didn’t approve for seven cups to put our profile on there.
So how are we then to know that this data is going to be protected for our clients? We have no idea. They didn’t respond to that. Yeah, so I made, I responded or I attempted to pretend I was trying to get therapy from one of my therapist local people here.
And I received an email back saying something like, oh, your therapist will reach out to you.
Until they do, here’s information on our trained listeners. So obviously they’re redirecting referrals back to their service and they say it’s a free service, but I think they have different tiers.
So it’s kind of a PSA just to check it out, see if you’re on there. I just think it highlights a larger issue obviously of distrust of tech and the difficult relationship that we have with tech.
And last week I talked about AI and I think we are very distrusting likely of tech companies that really we feel like are out to make a dollar off of our labor because they’ve done that, because we’ve seen that from history.
I think it’s going to take therapists who are on the board, therapists who are developing these tech resources independently of other people. And it’s just interesting that I personally had experience with the person that is in charge of this company.
I mean, when I first heard it, you know, I’m like, oh my gosh, that was my supervisor in grad school. I guess I thought that maybe that service would be different.
But I can’t interpret the behavior of this company any other way as being unethical and, and pretty shady, honestly. So I don’t know how you, I don’t know how you could see it any other way.
Like how can you justify in your mind, let’s just put all these profiles up there. And I think their argument, some of these responses, I got this question, we’re trying to provide information, but you’re also muddying the waters with your own service which you offer in form of a brain. Looks like they offer an injury service on there of their own question.
But back channeling this shorter answer, people are thinking, no, it’s not what the brain injury.
I came from rehab program and we didn’t have anyone with just a dramatician who was in our brain injury program. So we accepted people who had acquired brain injury like a stroke, like a concussion or other type of mild tbi.
Mild TBI or concussion is the biggest type of brain injury. However, it’s not. And it’s also. So trauma is not also considered a neurodevelopmental condition like autism or adhd, something that occurs in the developmental period.
We know that there are differences in brains who’ve experienced traumatic experiences. And I’ve talked on the podcast that trauma and burnout. So secondary traumatic stress and burnout have been shown to have neurological differences in people that have not experienced burnout have not experienced secondary trauma or their own trauma.
So I think it is. And I’ve seen on some models that neurodiversity has trauma under that umbrella, because we are. We are kind of saying we know that there are differences in the brain, right?
So there are differences in the way that person navigates through their world. So I think certainly we can say that therapist you might be experiencing, and I hear a lot of that cognitive burnout symptoms of feeling foggy, of feeling like you don’t.
You can’t focus like you used to focus before. And I would say that’s really normal for folks that are in burnout, for folks that have dealt with secondary traumatic stress or vicarious trauma.
And. And I think we can see it’s a res. It does impact our cognition. We do see neurological changes.
And it’s like the chicken or the egg. Like, did you have some underlying neurodiverse condition or a neurodevelopmental condition? I have always been someone who’s been forgetful. That’s just my brain.
It has always been that way. I was never diagnosed with adhd. However, I can see the through line throughout my life that I certainly struggle with. Staying sitting, like, I cannot sit.
That was one of the things. As a therapist, I really struggled to sit for six to seven hours a day, which was required of me as a therapist. And at the end of the day, I just wanted to move.
I am a mover. Like, I teach fitness classes. I do all of those things. And I. I frequently think about my choice of going into psychology as, what was I thinking there?
Because that doesn’t really fit with the type of person that I see myself as. Like, I’ve got up from this desk. I’m standing currently, but I’ve got away from this desk many times because I have this puppy.
I was crying again. So, yeah, I. I think a lot of therapists likely probably have a little of both going on. Did they have a neurodevelopmental condition going on previously? We know that women, primarily this podcast is listened to by women may not have gotten diagnosed with a neurodiverse condition like adhd.
Or autism? Was there something there? Not sure. I think a lot of the reason why I talk about those differences here on the podcast is because a lot of therapists write into me and tell me they think they’re losing their ****.
And so you’re not losing your ****. It’s valid. Like, it is totally valid that you are feeling this way. And we see it from the research that a lot of people deal with the cognitive symptoms of burnout, such as feeling more forgetful, feeling a lot of brain fog, feeling like you can’t manage your life.
I think that’s a result of the being exposed to trauma. So therapists are exposed to trauma and thus become traumatized themselves. That is vicarious trauma. And we also have our own trauma that we bring into the work.
Right. I think trauma has. Has touched most of our lives in some way, whether it was in early childhood or some other parts of our life. But does being a therapist make you neurologically different?
I would say I think it does. I think it’s the result of trauma because I know I am more hyper vigilant than I was before. So I was naturally kind of a easygoing person.
I wasn’t super keyed up. And was that me being a therapist? Was that me after motherhood, after like that neurological change that happens for mothers? I’m not sure. I can’t untether all of the things to know.
Which one it was, which one caused me to have anxiety, Was it menopause? I don’t know. I. I think it could be all of the above. It could be maybe I had some underlying narrative neurodiversity.
Perhaps you do. And so what might be helpful with that? I think what I have found is using strategies that we know are helpful for executive functioning. And a lot of that is stuff that, you know, really uncluttering your week, your day, finding those pockets of brain rest are super important.
So if you didn’t listen to my episode where I talk about that, it is episode 65. So overbooked and overwhelmed your calendar. I didn’t say the whole word. I had to bleep it out.
And 64 tips for overwhelm for Therapists and Burnout. So those are ones that I would listen to. If that is, you listen to those. They’re very helpful. So that’s what I have for you today.
Hope if you are someone who is on this seven Cups website to Google yourself and message them to have yourself removed. If you don’t want yourself there, write to me.
If someone is getting referrals from seven Cups? Because I would love to know. Because that’s what they are telling us on the interwebs and I don’t trust it. And it is so freaking weird that that was my clinical supervisor that has founded this company.
What else do I want to tell you about?
I can’t wait to be at the beach next week. I’m going to be at the beach for Easter and I’m very excited about that. So that’s the conclusion of your Squirrel Brain episode for the week.
Have a good one.
