Hello everyone. I'm Diane Grissell, also known
as Silver Disobedience, and this is the Silver Disobedience
Perception Dynamics podcast where we explore all kinds of
operating systems within society.
And today I have a very interesting guest.
She got her master's in counseling and then went on to
get licensed as a counselor, but she's giving up that license.
Her name is Anna Holtzman, and we're going to talk to her about
shifts in psychology, therapy judgments, self worth issues,
how these things shift, what's changing within psychology and
how the landscape's changing. So please say hi to Anna
Holtzman. Hi, Diane, thank you so much for
having me here. I am very happy to have you.
As we talked a little bit before this show started, the entire
landscape of psychology, which is basically a relatively new
science, is changing on all different cylinders for a lot of
different reasons. Tell me what some of your
thoughts are on the current state of psychology.
Yeah, well, part of me, the current state of psychology
could be a pretty broad topic. But I know that one of the
things we were chatting about just earlier is that for a long
time, therapists were trained to be kind of a blank slate, you
know, not to really share anything about themselves
personally, maybe even not to share their own emotions.
And that is something that's changing quite a bit.
And I'm a big fan of that change.
And it's it's one of the reasons I really like, I work as both a
therapist and a coach, but I'm no longer taking on new therapy
clients. I'm phasing that out.
And I really enjoy working in under the umbrella of coaching
where it's kind of anything goes.
You know, you can trust your own instincts and use your own life
experience as part of the work. And I think that that's a really
powerful way that we relate as human beings.
You know, like, have you ever had a conversation with any
human being other than a therapist where you felt heard
and connected and, you know, like just engaged in human
connection where they were just sitting there like a blank slate
and not sharing any of their own humanity with you?
Well, it's an interesting shift in psychology and I'm not 100%
on board with it. Yeah, I love, I love that we
have different tastes on. This yeah.
And when I first read a, you know, when I first read about it
in Psychology Today and I had seen that all these, this new
younger breed of therapists are all saying, no, we have sharing
sessions. I share how I feel about this
and the client shares how they feel.
And my thought was why you're bringing your opinions into it.
And the idea about a good therapy session is one that
someone's not judging you. They're not giving their
opinions. They're letting you explore what
you think by asking provocative, thought provoking questions.
So I think there's a I'm curious as to where you think the
benefits are of sharing your insights.
I mean, that's interesting. I, I don't often share my own
opinions on things in a session, but things I will share are, you
know, if I've had a life experience that relates to what
someone I'm working with is experiencing, I'll share.
You know, I'll say something like I'm just in AI, you know,
I'm a coach, but I'm also just another human being.
And, you know, the feelings that you're having totally make sense
to me because I've had those feelings as well.
And it it just helps to to normalize what the person is
feeling, you know? But in a therapy session,
suppose your feelings were repulsed by what someone shared.
So if you enter an area. If you enter an area.
Which is why I don't think it ever belongs.
I mean, when you are in a situation where a therapist is
sharing their in some, in some ways it's easier you're getting
their approval or your their reprimand or dislike if someone
is if that's the environment you're in.
I mean, that's an interesting I, I'm like, that's just so
different from how I, how I work or really how I think about it
when it's kind of like a, an all or nothing.
Like I'm, I'm not going to share every feeling that I have with a
client. I'm going to share things that I
think can be helpful and supportive to them, that can
help them feel less alone with their experience.
That can, you know, help them feel less isolated in their
experience. That can help them feel like
they're a part of humanity and not some alien who's broken and
weird and disconnected from everyone.
So I'm not going to share things just to throw spaghetti at the
wall, right? I'm going to share things that I
feel would support them. And if where?
Does, where do you draw that line?
Well, how does, how does a therapist draw that line though?
You know, which is what I wonder when I see this as a new trend,
and I'm not saying I think it's totally right or wrong.
I want to have a discussion on it because it is such a huge
shift. And you know, I mean, some
people will say, well, I, I didn't want to do therapy
because I feel like the person's just listening to me.
But a good therapist is listening and asking thought
provoking questions to make the person understand themselves.
The focus is I'm paying you and the focus is 100% on me and
helping me understand myself. When it starts to become that
sharing dynamic, I don't see how judgment can't enter the
equation one way or another. Well, judgement can enter the
equation even if you're not sharing anything verbally about
yourself. I mean, judgement can come out
in a vibe, in a look. And it usually does come out if,
if the therapist is judging you, I mean, you're going to know
even if they don't say something that tells you that.
But you were asking about where do you draw the line?
And I think, I think this goes to something that you talk about
a lot, which is like rules and you know, codification.
And I think it's really whether it's therapy or coaching, it's a
relationship. So I really draw on the
relationship skills that I use in any other relationship.
I'm, I'm noticing what I'm feeling and I'm using my
intuition and I OfferUp something and I check in with
the client like here's what's coming up, here's a reflection
that's coming up for me. How does this land for you?
And if it lands in a way that's not helpful, like that's
information that helps us figure out where to go next.
How do you differentiate between when you think I'm wearing my
therapist hat versus my coaching hat?
Yeah, it's, that's a really interesting question, people.
I've have asked me that a lot and I've sort of 2 answers to
that. One answer is that I'm when I'm
working with someone, I'm working with someone and it's
about presence and it's about relationship.
And it's not about whether the title I'm being given in that
moment is therapist or coach. So I really attuned to the
person that I'm working with. And so in that sense, I'm kind
of working in the same way, whether it's called therapy or
coaching. And there's just like this legal
delineation between the two. You know, if it's therapy, they
can get reimbursed by their their insurance provider.
And if it's therapy, I can only work with folks who reside in
the state of New York because that's where my license is.
But in another sense, there's something in the back of my mind
that just knows, you know, that what's happening right now is
being called therapy or that knows what's happening right now
is being called coaching. And that very subtly impacts me
and how I show up in those sessions because when, when I
know like this is therapy, all this stuff that I heard in grad
school kind of comes in and it's not in the foreground, but it's
somewhere there in the background.
And there's all this stuff about, you know, there's kind of
like a right way and a wrong way to do things.
And well, if you do this, you could use your lose your
license. And it, it's not that there
isn't a purpose to all of these guidelines and education, but
there's also, and I've spoken to many therapists who have had a
similar experience. I experienced the, the
atmosphere in Graduate School as having quite a bit of like fear
mongering. Like, you know, if you step
outside the side, the line, you could, you're doing things
wrong. You could really harm the
client. If you share anything about
yourself, it could harm the client relationship or and so
there's just this kind of like subtle.
Squeers. So we're back to that idea of
sharing about yourself crossing the line.
Yes, so, and that's just one of the ways in which you know.
But but that is a big area in therapy because it is, you know,
the sharing about yourself crossing the line.
And I really wonder how much, you know, social media, which
has disintermediated so many industries and changed how
people think in so many, many areas.
And all of a sudden, you know what, when I used to, you know,
when I'd work with public relations clients and they'd
say, wait a second, we need to that newspaper to retract that
statement. And I'd say, OK, well, we can
ask them to retract it. But they're, I think it was
maybe Thomas Jefferson who said, you know, never go to battle
with people who buy ink by the barrel, you know, because a
newspaper has unlimited pages to attack you if that's what they
want to do because they're extra aggravated.
You just annoyed them. And the Internet, we've seen
that crowd mentality where everyone has a voice.
Anyone can say anything they want with no restriction
whatsoever. And I really wonder how that
impacted psychology. You know, are we raising a group
of new psychologists that have grown up with, well, I can say
whatever I want and therefore in my sessions, because I do think
it creates a false, a very false sense of importance, which is a
whole other discussion. That's that's so interesting
because I also I have like a completely different take on
this. Let's hear it.
And I'm very active on social media and I love it.
I think it's a great thing. I think that, you know, I mean
social media, just like the printed word, it can be used for
for good, bad and everything in between.
It's how you use it and how you interact with it.
But I feel that social media has really democratized therapy.
It has taken away the sense of, you know, there are the
authorities who are going to tell you if you were well or
unwell or who are going to tell you what's right and wrong.
And it's really opened things up for everyone to interact and
have their, you know, just survey a wide range of different
ideas and express their own ideas.
And to me it's a tool for developing self trust, which how
I believe is how. How does it help teach self
trust? I'm curious.
To me, it teaches self trust because it it takes us out of
this context that we formerly were in where there were like,
you know, several famous books by famous psychologists or, or
therapists. And those were the people that
we perceived as having all the authority.
And they know better than I do because they're the only ones
who have a voice and they're the only ones whose voices I can
find. And I don't have a platform to
have a voice. So that means my voice doesn't
matter and I should just listen to them.
Whereas in this world of social media, sure, it can be used in
all kinds of different ways, but one of the ways in which it's
used is it it shows you that everyone has a voice and can use
it if they want to. And you have a voice too and can
use it if you want to. There are 1,000,000 zillion
different ideas out there about different things.
Like there is no one word of authority on what therapy
modality is the best. Or, you know, there's just lots
of different ideas out there and they're there for you to
synthesize and come up with your with your own feelings and views
about things. That's, that's a very intriguing
perspective because I do believe in the disintermediation that's
occurred from the Internet and particularly social media.
We also have a point where there's so much self diagnosis
going on and the running joke of a Google doctor.
But and then where are those boundaries that you draw on
social media or are there none? Do you feel it's a free for all?
You know, because you're you're sometimes wearing the therapist
hat and sometimes you're not. Well, when I, when I use social
media, I use it as a coach and I don't even, I mean, I, I may
mention, you know, as part of a story that I, I am licensed as a
therapist and that's part of my background, but I'm not, I don't
use the letters after my name on my Instagram profile, for
example. How do you define the difference
between a therapist and a coach from your perspective?
Yeah. You know, the way that I would
define the difference is probably very different from how
most other therapists or coaches would define it, because I
define it as, to me, this is controversial to most people.
To me, it's largely a difference in legal specifications and
marketing. It's a difference in marketing
because marketing yourself as a therapist with the letters after
the name projects a certain kind of image and there's a certain
kind of client who's looking for a particular style of support
that is attracted to that type of marketing.
Whereas if I market myself as a coach, I'll just say very
broadly, and there are tons of exceptions to this, but a client
who's looking for a therapist is generally looking to bring a
problem to this therapist and get this therapist expertise in
solving that problem. And they are looking to the
therapist as an authority who knows more than them.
Someone who is looking for a coach, I would say is more often
someone who has a particular goal in mind, less about
something they want to solve and get rid of like a problem, but
more more often a goal that they want to reach or achieve.
And they are looking for someone who's maybe like walked the path
already who might know more by virtue of being further along on
the path that they want to walk on than they presently are.
So kind of like a a mentor and they're looking to do the work
and have someone's guidance and support.
And I'm curious, you prefaced that by saying this is
controversial. What part of that statement was
controversial? Because it sounded like a good.
Differentiator. I think the controversial part
is that I see the difference more as being about the
marketing aspect. Whereas what I generally hear
from therapists and coaches, but particularly from therapists, is
that, you know, a therapist is first of all, delving into the
past and also, you know, has particular training so that they
are qualified to work on certain diagnosable disorders.
And whereas a coach is future focused, but also they're, you
know, they're not qualified to deal with certain diagnosable
issues. And those should be left for a
therapist. I think there is, you know,
there are, there are situations it's, it's very important to
know the limits of your scope. Honestly, even if you're, if you
are a licensed therapist, like I'm not an expert in eating
disorders, for example. So that's really out of my
scope. It would be irresponsible for me
to take on a client to say, you know, I'm going to help you heal
from this eating disorder. I don't have that training or
that expertise, but I know coaches who have great expertise
in eating disorders and and tons of experience in that field who
help people in that realm. I think what's, what's
controversial is in my opinion, it's about the relationship you
have with the client and your personal area of expertise more
so than to me, it's, it's really not that important if you have
the letters after your name or not.
Do you have but legally you know?
Do you have coaching clients who ask if they can run you through
run their invoices through their therapy bills?
I've had that question, but I'm very, very clear with that with
folks like right at the beginning of working together,
I, I say, you know, what we're doing is coaching.
And one of the things that means is that this is not billable
through insurance. When you think of the shifts
going on, why do you think they're happening?
Why do you think there are more coaches coming up?
Is it that they don't want to go through school like you did,
they don't want to deal with the licensing?
Or is it just plain a different mentality?
I think it's a different mentality.
And what do you think that is? I think it's a different
mentality and what what I see is there are a lot of people in the
field who similar to me. Our do have a therapy license
and they're either they're leaving their license to go into
coaching or they're adding coaching and they're doing both.
And in the broadest terms, the the main reason is it just gives
you a lot more freedom in a lot of different ways.
It gives you more freedom. I feel it gives you more freedom
to be yourself more authentically.
And to me, that's a really useful tool in helping people
grow when I'm being myself authentically.
Like what do every one of my clients want?
They want to be themselves authentically at the end of the
day, you know, whether they're coming to me because they they
want to heal from chronic pain, which was a specialty of mine
for about five years. Or whether they're coming to me
because they want to grow their own business or they want to
write a book, or they want to put their art out into the
world, which are some of the things that people are coming to
me for. And now at the, you know, the
underpinning of it all is they want to feel like they are being
their authentic selves, that they're authentically expressing
themselves and sharing that with the world.
And so if I'm not doing that as I'm working with them, it
doesn't really, it's not conducive to them growing into
that either. Well, that to me is where I
would draw the line between therapy and coaching.
If you're, if you're going to share your experiences to me and
to guide someone, I would think that leans a little more into
the coaching. I mean, because even leading a
group, you know, you know, even if it was a group discussion,
it's still you have the moderator who's leading it.
That is not necessarily sharing their, his or her opinion.
Yeah, yeah, I coaching is certainly a lot more conducive
to the coach sharing themselves authentically.
And I think that's one of the big reasons that a lot of
people, whether they're coming from being a therapist and
having a license or not, are being drawn to coaching now.
And some of the other reasons are, as I was mentioning before,
when you're a therapist, you can only work with clients who are
residing in the state in which you are licensed.
And it's kind of a pain in the butt to get licensed in multiple
states, although people do it, but it's just more paperwork.
Do you think this shift happened when people started to work from
home? Yes, yes, that's exactly what I
was going to say. Yeah.
So when the COVID lockdown started, we all went remote.
My work went remote. I was not happy about the
reasons it was happening, but I was happy to go remote because
it just gives you a lot more freedom and flexibility in lots
of ways. And then you start thinking,
well, why am I only working with people who live in my state?
There's so many people around the world who need and want my
help, and it just feels so limiting to be limited to those
who live locally. When you know, we're we're
working with each other on Zoom, so you could be anywhere.
What? How do you define your work set
today? Let's say in the coaching area,
What would be your area of expertise?
So my area of expertise is the nervous system.
I work through a nervous system lens and the people that I work
with are creatives, coaches and entrepreneurs, people who are
very passionate about what they do.
There are people who are a lot like me.
They're they're, they have big passions about what they do.
This very strong need to express themselves authentically to be
seen and heard. And also they're sensitive
people. So along with that big passion
is like very intense fears of saying what they really want to
say, of putting themselves out there in a more authentic way,
of truly letting themselves be seen.
And so I am helping those people learn how to work with their
nervous system so they can kind of dance with this passion and
fear. They can help them work together
and not have the the fear just be blocking the passion and be
in conflict that way. You know, it's interesting.
One of the words you use a lot is authentic and authenticity.
And they say in psychology courses, when someone repeats
the same word over and over again, that's the word you
should probably pay attention to because you're getting hidden
clues about the person you're speaking with.
Yeah. So considering you use the word
authentic a few times in this interview, what does that mean?
Because it's, in many ways, it's a very, in my opinion, it's an
extremely overused word that has lost a lot of its meaning
because it's so overused. I mean, people want to be just
plain jerks and say, well, I'm being authentic.
And it's no, you're being a jerk.
You know, your, your rights have gone beyond.
So how do you define authenticity?
Here's how I'll define what it means to me and I'll I'll
describe this using the lens of the nervous system, which is the
lens that I find really useful. So the nervous system, our
nervous systems are, are pretty simple like they're, they're
pretty, they're very similar to like the nervous system you.
Touch something, it's hot. You know it in a second and.
So you could say there's kind of like a switch in our nervous
system and it has two basic settings.
One setting is fear, threat response, and the other setting
I'll call flow. When we feel connected with
ourselves and we're able to connect with other people, we're
able to think expansively and consider that there are many
different options. We can feel like we're in the
creative flow. We feel in tune with our bodies.
We feel present. That's what I mean by
authenticity. When you feel connected to
yourself and to others and to your to your flow of energy.
Where do you think the boundaries are on authenticity
these days? What do you mean by that?
Well, you know, someone could say I feel very connected with
myself and therefore I feel I can say whatever I want.
I personally, my opinion is that that I can say whatever I want
like without any consideration for how that might affect other
people. I feel that comes from a fear
place to me like that fear setting.
When we're in that fear mode, we tend to either suppress what we
think and feel or we express it explosively.
Like we, we push it through, but when we're in that flow setting,
we express things relationally. So we express to connect with
other people. And when if I'm just going to
say whatever the hell I want without caring how that's going
to impact other people, that's not communicating relationally
and that's not connecting, that's projecting.
Right, so there is that. There is that line you see in
projecting verse. How would you define rejecting
since you just said it? And I wouldn't even see it as a
line. I would.
I see it as like, there's left
and there's right. And those are kind of like the
two fear directions. And then there's up, which would
be the flow direction. So like fear.
Yeah. It leads to either suppressing
ourselves or just black. You know, just like shouting at
someone instead of communicating with someone.
What do you think of the expression Think Before You
Speak where the acronym is? Is it thoughtful, hurtful,
intelligent, necessary, or kind? I mean, I, I think it's a good
policy and I would maybe, I would maybe tweak it for myself
to feel before you speak like feel and you know, I'll feel
into my body like because I can tell by sensing into my body if
I'm in fear or if I'm in flow. And I don't want to speak from
fear. If I'm in fear, I want to come
have a conversation with myself 1st and melt through that fear
and get into flow before I express this to anyone else.
What do you think comes first, the feeling or the thought?
It really depends. It depends, and it depends how
tuned in or not tuned in we are to our feelings which are, which
are in our bodies, like fear. If I want to know what I'm
feeling, I'll ask myself, like, is my body feeling like it's
contracting or does it feel open?
And if it's contracting, I mean, there's nothing wrong with that.
It's perfectly natural and normal and it's a sign that
there there's some fear going through me, which is a common
thing. I mean, we feel fear about a
bazillion times a day. I do agree with you.
I think there's a difference and there's a time 11 precedes the
other. I would hate to rule out
instincts. You know, one of my favorite
books was The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker when he talks
about, you know, if you were in a dark building and you're about
to get in an elevator and you see someone in the elevator, if
you have that split second instinct of fear, don't get in.
Just say, you know, turn around, you forgot your keys.
You don't have to explain it, but he talks about how most
people overrule that instinct and they get in the elevator
anyway. And so those are times I think
you absolutely have a feeling 1st.
And then there's times people ruminate.
They get in the middle of a thought and that thought becomes
obsessive to some degree or another, and now they're having
little feelings of what they can do, what they can't do.
You know how things are going to unfold.
Yeah, absolutely. I kind of feel like it's a
chicken and egg thing, you know, like I think of the body
reaction to fear and the mind reaction to fear as just
different, different expressions of fear.
You know, when I am in fear, I'll know it because maybe my
body's contracting. Maybe I feel like my shoulders
are tight, or I have a headache, or I might notice it because I'm
talking to myself in a really mean way.
Or maybe it's all the above. But these are all just
expressions. These are all the different ways
that fear makes itself known to me.
One of the things you said was interesting.
You said, you know, you'll with your coaching clients, for
example, you might share some of your experiences.
And I often think about professional sports, which I've
never played and I'm completely uncoordinated.
So no one's signing me up at any phase of my life for those.
But I've often thought about, you know, the coaches that
played the game and the coaches that didn't.
And if I was a player at the, you know, top of my game, which
what it takes to be a professional athlete in this
country, it's a, you know, funnel that really narrows it
down. You know, would I, would I be
able to shelve my ego and listen to a coach that maybe had never
played the game, but really knew the game?
Well, what do you think about that when it comes to coaching
clients? If you're coaching a business
leader, where where your. Yeah, you know, it's
interesting. So I have 2 answers to this.
One is like when I look for a coach, I specifically look for
someone who has already been on the path that I'm beginning to
walk on. For example, as I mentioned, I
had been working in the area of helping people recover from
chronic pain, stress related chronic pain syndromes.
And that's something I got into because I had struggled with
migraine headaches for like 10 years.
And I recovered through the work of chronic pain therapists who
speak a lot about their own recovery on podcasts and stuff
like that. And that just helped me so much
because they were showing me what, you know, not exactly what
my path was going to look like, but what a path could look like
because they had been on the path and then they had, you
know, subsequently led many clients on that path.
I work with two coaches at the moment.
I have a business coach that I work with, and I work with her
because of her experience in business and her success in
business. And I am a stepmom and so the
life coach that I work with with for, you know, on all kinds of
stuff, emotions, etcetera. I first started working with her
because she is a stepmom coach, because she is a stepmom and
she, you know, uses all of her experience to help other
stepmoms who are just starting out in that role.
So on the one hand, I think it's very, very helpful when the
coach has had a very relevant experience to you.
And a lot of the people that come to work with me, a lot of
them are creatives and I have a creative background.
I used to work in film and TV, and before that I was a
journalist and worked in publishing at the same time.
One of my favorite clients is a corporate lawyer, and that work
is like completely out of my realm.
I've never worked in that type of setting.
I've never worked in law. But we're a great fit.
And I think what makes us a great fit is that I bring the
nervous system lens to the human experiences that this client is
having. And while I may not have
experience with that context, I certainly have experiences with
feeling intimidated at a meeting full of other people even though
I'm on their same level. But somehow I'm not.
Like my nervous system doesn't know that I have the same level
of authority, you know? I really find it fascinating how
you, when you speak, you zoom in on the nervous system, which is
phenomenal and fascinating and endlessly worthy of exploration.
And I've never heard of something, you know, I think of
it as, you know, instant reactions to things.
And it's very interesting how you're at, you know, pain
pleasure, you know, the the scope of it.
But it's very interesting how you are saying you're bringing
that into your counseling process.
Yeah, I'm. How did you zoom in on that?
Because of the pain. Yes, that was exactly it.
So it, it was funny enough, it was while I was in Graduate
School to become a licensed mental health counselor that I
began studying the nervous system.
But I mean, this will might seem surprising, but I was not
studying it as part of my studies like, and I wasn't even
initially thinking of it in that way.
The reason I was studying it was because I was, I had been
experiencing migraine headaches for the last 10 years when I was
working in reality TV, doing totally different work as a
video editor. And then when I left my TV
career and went to grad school to become a therapist, I thought
that the headaches would subside because, you know, it's like
leaving this very high stress, high pressure career.
And I thought the stress is going to go down, the headaches
are going to go down. But the opposite happened.
And the way I understand it now, I certainly was confused by it
at the time, but the way I understand it now is that I
thought I was going to be stepping into a new environment
where I would feel free to be me.
I would feel like I could just be fully self expressed and talk
about my feelings and just, you know, feel all this ease.
But there were a lot of great things about grad school, but
there were also, you know, a lot of rules and a lot of things I
didn't agree with and a lot of situations where I felt like I
had to sort of hold my tongue in order to pass the class.
And so coming into it, like, ready to just open up and, like,
melt. But then getting there and kind
of like tightening up and contracting, I think that that
just sort of sent my nervous system into a spiral.
So the, the migraines started to really take over my life at that
point. And it finally, it hadn't been a
huge part of my life up until then.
But when it really started to take over, you know, like
anybody who has a symptom that's really taking over their life, I
finally went to Google and was like, what the heck do I do
about this? And I have a holistic
orientation. So I'm looking for, you know,
things that match that. And I discovered this whole
world of mind body medicine and specifically nervous system
education that was helping other people to recover from symptoms
like migraine. And it ultimately helped me
recover. So that was my motivation was to
to fix the problem I was having of of migraine headaches.
You know, something you said that was interesting was the
idea of, you know, I went to school and I thought this was
going to be freeing and instead there were these different
rules. That's actually something I hear
a lot from people now. And I also think about the, I
think there's pluses of that and I think there's minuses because
if you want to be, let's say, a brain surgeon, well, there are
definite rules on how you put capillaries back together, you
know, and you better know them, you know, but it's almost like
there's a in a lot of different industries.
And it's also where I wonder about the impact of the Internet
that people are saying, well, I want to skip that part of the
learning, but it might be an essential part of the learning
because when you learn it and you have to suffer a little
through what you learn, you learn different forms of
discipline going forward. And it's also how you decide
what you like going forward or not.
Yes, I completely agree with you and especially on the brain
surgeon point, but but also I'm really glad that I went to grad
school. I'm glad that I went through the
process of getting licensed. I learned so much and a lot of
it was learning what I didn't agree with.
But I, you know, coming to deciding that you disagree with
something based on deep knowledge of that thing you're
disagreeing with is very different from just skipping
over it. That's an.
Excellent point. Yeah.
And for me that for me that really helped me build a lot of
confidence and self trust. I'm not saying that everyone
needs to get licensed in order to work with people.
Then as a coach, I work. I have been the client of many
coaches who don't have therapy licenses.
They have other life experience and expertise in training and
they're fantastic. But for me, that was really a
helpful part of my developing self trust as a coach actually.
Well, I. Your, your background is
actually what drew me to want to speak with you.
I get tons of people reaching out to me who are psychologists
in different fields and I'm really looking for experts in
certain areas. And then I, you know, get a lot,
obviously the hurdles to becoming a coach are a lot lower
than the hurdles of getting licensed.
OK, so that let's just put that on the table.
There's actually no hurdle to becoming a coach because it's
not a regulated field. Meaning like there are all kinds
of certifications you can get if you want to, but there are no
legal repercussions for just waking up one day and putting up
a website and an advertisement and saying I'm a coach.
Whereas if you put up a website and you know Psychology Today
listing saying I'm a psychotherapist and you aren't
licensed, that's a problem and you can get in trouble for it.
And let's talk about that since you're you said I'm giving up my
license over here on therapy side and there's no restrictions
to being a coach. How do you think people in
general, obviously it would be great if they called you, but if
you're if you're not in their, you know, their issue is not
your core expertise. How would you go about telling
people to look for that coach or therapist that's going to be?
Oh yeah, like, like my advice on on what people should look for.
Yeah, yeah, people do ask me this a lot.
And often times people ask me like, if I, especially if
they're looking for a therapist, they'll say what, what modality
should I look for? Because there are all these
different modalities and you know, they know that I, I'm
familiar with these modalities. So what do I think would be best
for them? And you know, if, if there is a
particular mode, if I know them reasonably well and there is a
particular modality I think they would like, I'll mention that to
them. But then the caveat is the most
important thing is how you feel when you're having a
conversation with this person. So prioritize that over what
training or modality they say that they use.
Because if you feel safe with someone and supported by them,
that means your nervous system is feeling safe.
And that means in their presence, you're able to soften
and open up enough to for changes to happen in your
nervous system, in your body and your mind and your spirit.
Like that means it's an environment in which you're
going to be able to open up enough to make the changes that
you want to make. Whereas if you have a
conversation with this person and you're like, their resume
really impresses me and it's like ticks all my boxes.
And when I'm, but when I'm speaking to them, like I feel
all tense and self-conscious and I don't really feel like I trust
them on a gut level or I feel like I have to hide parts of
myself. It's just not going to be a
context in which you're going to be able to do the work you want
to do. If you were going to Fast
forward into five years into the future with the changes of
what's going on in healthcare insurance, psychology, and being
a therapist and licensed therapist versus a coach, what
would your crystal ball, your gut say of where those changes
are going to go? Just out of curiosity?
A fun a fun question. I mean, I don't have a crystal
ball obviously, but where where I see that things are going at
the present is deregulation, meaning that a lot of people are
leaving the licensure world to be free and do their own thing
and not be limited by a lot of the restrictions that exist in
that world. And the other thing that I see
is happening has to do with social media, like people are
finding coaches that they want to work with on platforms like
Instagram or through podcasts like this one.
You know, they're, they just have access to getting to know
people before deciding that they want to work with them.
And so, you know, I think things are moving more and more in the
direction of things being based on forming personal
relationships with people rather than with licensing boards or
with names of well known modalities.
What that will look like, I'm really not sure because, you
know, somehow the the world of licensure is going to have to
adapt and yeah, evolve. But it's certainly an intriguing
thought, and I think it's going to shift.
And where those shifts fall out, I'm not sure.
But one of the things I think about a lot because I'm
constantly reading what's going on in the field of psychology,
is I'll equate it to a makeup artist, OK, an Instagram makeup
artist. I've been on set a lot of times
doing commercials, advertisements and ads.
And a few times someone would say, well, I hired this makeup
artist because I've seen their Instagram page.
It looks great. Well, that makeup artist comes
on set and within 10 minutes the set is entirely destroyed.
The tension level has gone up exponentially because that
makeup artist was really good at doing their own makeup.
Yeah, but they weren't good at doing makeup on, let's say,
somebody with a different skin tone or different skin texture
or a different age skin or worse.
They only bought their makeup kit for their own their own self
instead of the entire makeup kit for a realm of ethnicities,
ages, and everything else that a professional would bring.
Yeah, and I know it's say a stretch on an analogy, but it's
not. And when everyone starts getting
their advice from Instagram and I have a very big community,
over 1,000,000 people read my contact content the month, I
wouldn't necessarily tell them. And I tell them constantly,
Don't take advice from me. I don't know you, you don't know
me. So I am sharing thoughts I have,
but I certainly don't suggest you.
You know, it's like my I maybe because I grew up with a mother
who said, OK, so if John jumps off the Brooklyn Bridge, you're
going to do it too. You know, so I were, I wonder
about this. I wonder about it for future
generations, grabbing their info and thinking just because
someone has a lot of followers, they're the person I should
listen to. I I think that's wrong.
So I'm going to share the a flip side.
To I love it, yes, that's what that's our goal in these
discussions. Yeah, I, I, I these are the most
interesting kind of in conversations, right?
When when we're not like exactly on the same page because we get
to learn from each other and like.
And we can do it without shouting, which is the goal of
this show. When isn't that really what the
world needs, especially right now?
So, you know, I, I've been a, a therapy client since before this
age of social media. And when I first went about
looking for a therapist, all I really knew about them was that
they had a license. And I read their brief bio in
Psychology Today. If that was even if they even
had one, because I remember my, my first real therapist, I just
my best friend was seeing a therapist and he said, you know,
can your therapist recommend a therapist to me?
Which is a perfectly legit way of going about it.
So I got this recommendation. I went to see her and, you know,
I didn't even, I wasn't even going to shop around because how
do you even shop around in those days?
And I was pretty fortunate. It was I, I benefited from that
therapy relationship. But I know lots of other people
who had similar experiences where they just, you know,
they're like, well, that person's licensed and they were
recommended to me and they, you could have any range of
different kind of experience. I know people have had horrific
experiences and they didn't know that this wasn't unusual because
there's no context. They're not seeing other people
on social media talk about what a good therapist is, right?
They they don't. Yeah, they're they're not
hearing other people's experiences.
Whereas nowadays, when I want someone to help me with an
issue, like struggling with my role as a stepmom, for example,
I can listen to all these different podcast interviews
that this person spoke on. I can read everything they've
ever written on Instagram. So I really get a sense of what
is their point of view, what is their style?
Who are they as a person? I can kind of get to know them
and make an informed decision in a way that I couldn't have
before social media and podcasting.
That's a very interesting perspective.
And you you raised some very good points and I've been
speaking with Anna Holtzman and you are really just very
fascinating. I enjoyed every aspect of this
conversation truly from start to finish.
Me too, this is just a really enlivening conversation.
Thank you so much. Everybody, I'm Diane Grassell.
This has been the silver despedience perception Dynamics
podcast and we've been recording in iconic Manhattan center.
We're in TV Studio 2 where, Oh my gosh, some greats have either
practiced here or played here or filmed shows here.
So it's a true honor to be here. Anna Holtzman was my guest.
We had a great conversation and all her information is below.
And I highly encourage you follow her on social media, get
in touch, say hello, tell her how much you enjoyed her
episode, and please hit subscribe.
I'm Diane Grissel again, please hit subscribe and share this
with your friends and come back often.
Thank you.