On Mental Health Technology & BetterHelp
Our therapist, Anna Kim, interviewed Dr. Aaron Balick, an expert on the psychology of technology, for our podcast, Out of Session with Kindman & Co. Together they discuss the increasing prevalence of mental health tech companies, like BetterHelp, the complexities and ethical challenges around making therapy more convenient, the pros and cons of telehealth, as well as why a long-term therapeutic relationship is so important. Read on for the transcript of our most recent episode!
Anna (00:01):
All right. That is started. This is started. Okay. Here we go.
Aaron (00:12):
Great.
Anna (00:14):
My name is Anna, and you're listening to Out of Session with Kindman & Company, a Feelings Forward podcast where we leave our therapist selves at the door and have messy real conversations about being human. Today we're going to be talking about the complexities of mental health technology innovations, mental health accessibility, and the general impact of the internet on the field of therapy. On this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Aaron Balick, a London-based psychotherapist, consultant, author, and broadcaster. Aaron has more than two decades of clinical and academic experience, and his book, the Psychodynamics of Social Networking, earned him International Recognition. As an expert in the psychology of technology and social media, Aaron and I became acquainted after both recently publishing blogs about the technology company BetterHelp, both of which we'll link in the episode description. And I'm excited to have a conversation about this topic with him live today. Please welcome Dr. Aaron Balick.
Aaron (01:08):
Hi, thank you. It's great to be here.
tech innovations in the mental health space
Anna (01:09):
Thanks so much for joining us. So we actually became acquainted because of BetterHelp--we live on different continents--and for those who don't know BetterHelp is a mental health tech company that was founded in 2013, and it was acquired by a company called Teladoc in 2015. Through large advertising budgets, BetterHelp has become very well known in the last few years. But I'm curious how you became aware of it. You had been a therapist long before BetterHelp was in existence.
Aaron (01:37):
Yeah, I mean, it seems like there was a world with no BetterHelp and then suddenly there was a world where you couldn't last 10 minutes listening to the radio or something without hearing BetterHelp. So I don't remember exactly where that was, but I do recall becoming cognizant of this ubiquitous online therapy company that I was hearing attached to every podcast I listened to, coming up in ads online attached to National Public Radio. I can't exactly say when it was, but it seemed to come very quick and very heavy.
Anna (02:13):
And what do you remember your early reactions to this idea were?
Aaron (02:19):
I was curious about it because I've always been curious about innovating in the therapy space and finding ways that people can access therapy more readily. I was also doing that myself at the time, doing some therapy education and events and that sort of thing to sort of expand some reach. So I think I knew there were a bunch of things bubbling up. I didn't really get a sense of what it was and why I should be thinking about it until, probably a bit more recently, when I saw the field shifting into a much more internet-based, BetterHelp model. It seemed to be like people's first impression of maybe what therapy was or how they could start therapy was this new thing. So I sort of set about trying to learn a little bit more about it.
Anna (03:11):
Certainly. Yeah. Well, and from my perspective, COVID obviously drastically shifted the way that people were relating to how they were receiving therapy. I was trained entirely in person, and telehealth was just a mention about, oh, well, if you wanted to work in rural communities or something, maybe you would use this tool. But otherwise it was not a popular thing.
Aaron (03:34):
And in fact, the company that I was working with--I'm a private practitioner mostly, but I've worked in that space as well--we had developed online therapies, safe online therapies, just before the pandemic actually. So, because I'm an expat and a lot of my colleagues were expats, and people were working across long distances or people were kind of moving about, the beginning of the digital nomad thing or maybe the middle of that, I don't know exactly... So we were trying to find ways that we could support traditional psychotherapy online, and actually carried out some research to look at what the difference was between face-to-face therapy and online therapy so that we could kind of hold innovation, try and meet this challenge of a new age, but also be responsible to the core principles of traditional psychotherapy. We were struggling with that before we all kind of had to move online with COVID, which was great to have some familiarity in that space. But as you know, once that happened, suddenly everybody was working online, either traditionally or non-traditionally, kind of a bit lost, just making it up as you go along, which seems to have opened up a whole new possibility that we're still trying to make sense of.
Anna (04:50):
Sure. Well, and one of the things that you said was you were trying to figure out how to do this in a secure way. And, of course that's one of the bigger issues with BetterHelp in particular, that they've actually been sued by the FTC for releasing user data, which in a world of therapy feels just totally antithetical to me. That's one of my biggest concerns with the tech movement.
Aaron (05:13):
I mean, I don't want to sound like an alarmist, but it's like there's so many things to be worried about. (Laughter). When we were doing it, we were just trying to make sure that we could do the best we could to be HIPAA compliant or data protection compliant over here in Europe, in the UK, and also thinking about hacking and that sort of thing. And you've got so many layers of possibilities about where information can go. So even if you're just using a regular video conferencing tool, we know it's already vulnerable to some kind of compromise. And then if you're moving to a full on telehealth platform, you have worry about information being compromised on the most basic level, by accident or by hackers, whether the people who own those platforms are going to treat that material with respect on the other hand. And then it's a whole other thing about whether the therapy happening across those platforms is good enough and boundaried enough and all that sort of thing.
betterhelp could be better if it weren’t actually therapy
Anna (06:18):
Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the therapy on those platforms because the way that BetterHelp advertises itself, it's like the super convenient, super accessible, really great therapy, and I think the reason that I wrote my blog is because I feel like there are some pretty big misconceptions about what convenience actually is and what therapy actually is. I don't know, can you speak to that a little bit?
Aaron (06:46):
Yeah, I mean, I kind of worked out recently that maybe if we didn't call what BetterHelp was doing necessarily psychotherapy, I might be able to be a bit more comfortable with it maybe. I still think it would be problematic, but I think it's the conflation of psychotherapy as I know it, and mental health support in a whole variety of different ways. So it could be, well, it is the fact that you have this platform that's offering something to people in the world of mental health, mental health professionals to speak to in some way or fashion. But the way that BetterHelp works is completely antithetical to how I was trained to offer a psychotherapeutic space, which was about consistency, regularity, space between those sessions. Generally very little contact between sessions, generally a commitment of more than a very short period of time...
(07:52)
A whole series of things that, as soon as you onboard into BetterHelp, it's like, if you don't like your therapist, choose another therapist, and you're free to send your therapist text messages and receive text messages. You can do it online, you can do it through message, you can do it through conversation. You don't have to have the same time every week. And while all of these things might be useful ways of being creative about doing psychotherapy, my background says, well, you need to discover that in therapy and make judgments about what's clinically useful, how you want to use that space, rather than just having a whole massive menu of options that just by default you get to use.
Anna (08:35):
Right. And just the idea that therapy is not just talking to a therapist, that's not what therapy is. That actually, therapy is all sorts of other things, that it actually includes a lot of boundaries and some pretty thoughtful ways to interact with another person, and that when we remove those, right, you mentioned texting a therapist. That's one of the things when I was researching BetterHelp as far as clinicians' experiences go, that seems to me to be one of the more distressing things that you're expected to respond to text messages within 24 hours and all these sorts of things, which I just think isn't always what therapy is or should be. That's not always helpful.
Aaron (09:21):
I agree. And again, there might be a situation in which you would negotiate with your client about text messages in between sessions because it's useful for that time for that person. Some people might not make that choice, some would, but there's generally a conversation about it. And I think what you're seeing here is what happens when developers take hold of a niche market. So you have developers wanting to build a business, the niche market being therapy, which is definitely ready for innovation and creative thinking. It says, oh, well, we can just solve all these problems that are "pain points," this is the language they use, in the therapy space. And it's like, okay, I get that. But your model, in a sense, in the IT space is things like Tinder or Grindr or Amazon or Deliveroo. So it's about increasing convenience, decreasing friction wherever you can, which if you want to order something off Amazon and get it the next day, it makes a lot of sense. But if you have an anxiety disorder and you have difficulty containing your anxiety--and that actually the work needs to happen in the space between sessions, so you can measure your tolerance of the anxiety that rises rather than just solving it with a text message or a call out of hours--you have the platform making those decisions for you rather than the clinical judgment of a therapist in relation to their client making those decisions for their best interest for their mental health. And that's where things get a little bit messy, I think.
Anna (10:57):
Right, because that friction that you're talking about actually is the work. And so, if we remove it entirely... and maybe it does go back to what you were suggesting originally, that BetterHelp could function if it were not called therapy, because if you take all that friction out, it isn't therapy.
Aaron (11:17):
Yes. And you have to identify what kind of help you need. So, say you are a comfort eater, for example, and you find an app that delivers your favorite foods to your door in under two hours. That solves that there's food in the house or not to comfort eat with, but it doesn't solve the underlying problem of comfort eating that you want to solve. So it might be that the model for BetterHelp works for one sort of thing. Maybe. I don't want to start listing the kind of things that it might help for, but it's not going to help for some of the things that we're talking about here just because of the way that it's set up. So if you're promoting it as kind of an all rounder mental health therapy situation, it isn't that thing because it's got to look different for the different kinds of people and the different kinds of needs and the therapeutic process that they need to engage with.
Anna (12:13):
Yeah. Well, and I think that it's hard to talk about because BetterHelp does have such large advertising budgets. People think that that is therapy. And you and I have talked before about how therapy has kind of a marketing problem in, any question you could ask about it or any advice you could give someone about it as a therapist, it's sort of like, well, it depends on the situation and the therapist, and in this case, "maybe," and it's not as catchy as BetterHelp. I mean even the name, right?
Aaron (12:50):
(Laughter). Yes. Yeah. It's better than the help that you're able to give. I guess it's the implicit situation. It's such a struggle because you try to imagine it in another realm of health, so it's "Better Cancer Care," it's just have all your cancer needs met here. And it's like, okay, if you have cancer, you're going to want to sit with your oncologist and you're going to want to need to understand what kind of cancer it is, what kind of treatments are available to you, what's the best approach. You don't just give chemo to everyone, and it's a little bit of a clunky metaphor, I know, but sort of those basic things that you think, well, it's just how the platform works. You email someone, they link you up with a therapist, you can contact them anytime you want, you can change therapist. It's just how it works. It's like, yes, but that is a little bit like saying, you should be on this chemo regimen because you have cancer. And actually, therapy doesn't work that way. And even if they had a kind of triage in a sense, where you could go in and really understand what your needs are, and then have the platform meet those needs rather than just have this kind of smorgasbord situation going on, I think even that would be a better plan, but it's just the very structure of the thing might be antithetical to lots of different therapeutic needs.
the tiktok effect on mental health & therapy
Anna (14:19):
Yeah. Well, and you're making me think about the sort of TikTok-ification of mental health more generally, that there are so many videos on social media now about attachment style or autism or ADHD that are a one size fits all piece of information or advice, and that is so antithetical to the way that therapists work. Can you just speak a little bit, I know you're an expert in this area about mental health and social media.
Aaron (14:49):
Yes. Well, I mean there's one piece of that that I like, which is the psychoeducation piece. So somebody might see a TikTok video and kind of start to gain an understanding about attachment theory, start to be able to identify themselves as having an issue around attachment. And then you want to work on that. So if that's a doorway in, if it's a gateway drug to therapy, then I think that's great. But you can go all the way back to 1856 or maybe say between 1856 and 1900 when Freud was just beginning to draw a picture of what psychoanalysis looked like. And one of the really early things that he learned and was very disappointed to learn was that the interpretation alone didn't work. That understanding intellectually what the problem was, this magic moment where you say, well, I think blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, doesn't change. It frustrates a lot of people in therapy because they're like, I understand it, but I keep doing the same thing, or I keep finding myself in the same trouble.
(15:51)
And that's where the real art of therapy comes in. So yes, you can find a TikTok video, you can identify yourself in it. You can have some theory for it, but it's not going to do crap for you unless you know how to work that through your system, which is what well-trained therapists know how to do. And there are well-trained therapists, I'm sure, on BetterHelp that know how to work through that. I'm just obviously not convinced that the structures through which they're working are the most amenable. And as I think you're saying, the expectations that are built in, if I can get this off of Amazon, if I can have the date I want off of Tinder, whether that becomes a relationship, it's another question, which is a kind of similar metaphor as well. It's the same problem. I understand this thing, but can I actually attend to it properly through this method?
Anna (16:43):
Yeah. Well, and the interpretation isn't enough makes me think about at Kindman & Company, we're relational therapists and we focus a lot on somatics. And so I actually find that even just meeting with telehealth clients is more difficult for me than meeting in person because I just don't have the same information and I don't have the same opportunities always to control the environment or to do more physical interventions, having people lie down these sorts of things depending on where they are. And I think that's one of the other things that when I think about something like BetterHelp, that is just entirely virtual, comes to mind as a potential concern because some of the options for working through things are limited by the platform. Which is not to say that telehealth isn't super important and it hasn't made things really accessible, but that accessible convenience line, again, just feels tenuous to me.
Aaron (17:39):
Yeah. So there's this question to be asked, right between convenience and ease and clinical judgment. So something like telehealth for example, and you can find this in the research, for some people, it decreases their inhibition. So for some people who would find it really difficult to talk to a therapist in a room, they find that they can go onto a Zoom call or whatever and talk more easily. In this case, you could make an argument that working virtually is helpful, at least on this stage for this person. It might be that once you increase disinhibition, you might try it in the room because actually where you want to grow is that interpersonal complexity that you're talking about.
(18:22)
We also know from some of the research about working on screens is that screen sessions are more forgettable to both parties. So it just seems to be the case that clients forget what we talked about last week, therapists forget what we talked about last week, more if it's on a screen or a call than coming to a room. And there's a really simple explanation for this. If you have to get to somebody's office, it's a multi-stimulatory experience. You have to get on a bus or a train or get in your car or walk, go to a space, have the intention of going to that space, be in that space, which feels different, smells different, looks different, for a period of time, which is also multisensory, how you're feeling in that room and what you're looking at, the whole body, all that stuff. And then you go home from it. So there's this whole moment in time. But online, you could be doing your taxes or doing a spreadsheet or getting off a call with your mother, for example, which might be quite productive for session, get into a therapy session and immediately afterwards start doing your taxes or watching Netflix or looking at pornography or anything. It's all in the same space. So you actually lose a transition from the banal space to what's kind of a sacred one to another banal one, and it becomes banal like everything else online. And when you're working online, you want to work around, can you build in rituals to make it different from everything else? But I don't think they're doing that on BetterHelp either. I just don't think they're thinking through these really important clinical considerations, even in the helpful side of telehealth.
Anna (19:57):
Sure. Well, and that's definitely not happening with a text message. I think about how hard I have to work to do these things as a therapist working telehealth. I remember early in the pandemic especially, I was sort of like, I think I need to get dressed, all the way dressed, because I need to know I'm at work now and I'm not, I don't know, watching something on my computer. It is a strange shift, especially when so much of our lives are already on screens.
Aaron (20:25):
Yes, and for therapy to become another kind of thing like that is problematic.
Anna (20:32):
Right. When maybe the whole point, and maybe this is an oversimplification, but the whole point of therapy is about life--the life that you're living with other people out in the world, not on screens. Ideally. So it's a weird facsimile for the thing you're trying to change to do it all virtually. But I guess what advice would you give to people who are trying to decide what medium to do therapy in or how to find a therapist or how to navigate the sort of complexities of a world where BetterHelp is the most accessible version of therapy?
Aaron (21:13):
Yeah, so I guess you have to work within what's accessible to you, so there's going to be a variety of things there. How able-bodied you are, for example, can you get to this? Can you get to a session? Can you get to an accessible session. Economically, can you afford it? Timescale, can you see someone during the day? There's going to be a whole bunch of mitigating factors or limiting factors, but if you can get a measure of that thing, I think it's really important to shop around, actually, and to ask some questions and to have a conversation about what it is you're looking for, what that person can do, why they can do that, you know what kind of training or background do they have, have they worked with people like you before, how long that may take, what the work looks like...
(22:12)
It's like, you want to interview each other to make sure that this is going to be a match, and this is having your needs met. It's different from ordering a book on Amazon or anything else. It's different from ordering an Uber because it's not a one size fits all thing. So if you think I'll get onto BetterHelp, I'll find someone. Now I'm in "therapy," it's like, maybe not. You really need to find out with someone whether you're a match, whether you can do this work together, how that will look, how much it's going to cost, when you can do it. Is that a possibility? And how does that feel when you've had that conversation? It's going to feel better with some people than with others.
the economic value of therapy
Anna (22:53):
Yeah. Yeah. It also makes me think about figuring out what you're really wanting out of therapy and what value you place on that. Right? Because when I think about cost or accessibility, yes, some therapy is just prohibitively expensive, and that is one of the problems in our industry, broadly speaking. But I think part of what's happening there is that when people see that BetterHelp is X amount of dollars per month, and you get all this stuff, you get your therapist and texting and video chat and whatever, that looks a lot more appealing than, oh, I could pay three times that much once a week to go sit in an office somewhere. But actually what you're paying for is a sort of long-term investment in your own growth and change. And that maybe if you could actually see what that would look like long-term, it would be worth that value to you.
Aaron (23:48):
I think that's right. You have to decide whether something is a false economy or not, and just think logically about it, right? It's like, okay, if you have some, let's say mild to moderate anxiety issues about doing a presentation at work or showing up in a social space, it might be that that's where you're symptomatic, that actually a bit of CBT over six to twelve sessions with someone over BetterHelp or through any other kind of thing is actually appropriate for that relatively straightforward thing. Oftentimes, people come with relatively straightforward things and then they find something else. (Laughter). So that's something else you might be missing out on. But if you find yourself repeating the same old patterns in you, you find yourself with the same kind of partner over and over again or self-sabotaging over and over again, or you just can't get over what happened to you as a child or a family dynamic that's really toxic or a dynamic with a partner or work situation that feels deep and embedded...
(24:51)
Just think logically about this for a moment. Do I really think this familiar repetition compulsion that I've been, to use the jargon, this familiar dynamic that keeps coming back after me? Is this something that's going to require some time and investment and some thought and dedication, or can I nail it with a subscription over three months on... in this package? And I think for most of us, the deeper unconsciously informed dynamics that get in our way as living, thriving human beings rather than the more kind of symptomatic things that we're struggling with at a moment, these familiar things... of course, you're going to need something more engaged than that in longer term. And if you can alter that, then what an amazing investment that is. Obviously, I'm biased, I'm biased as a therapist, but I'm also biased because I've been a patient for five years with one stint and four years with another stint with a therapist that I would never want that money back. It was such a great investment in myself.
why therapy sucks…and why that’s a good thing!
Anna (25:56):
Absolutely. I've been seeing my current therapist for about 10 years, and I just think there is immense value in the relationship that I've been able to build in that time. But it also made me think... I wish that people knew that it's really going to suck. That part of the problem with BetterHelp is that, not only can you probably not fix most of these deep seated things in six to twelve sessions, but also that you can't fix them without pain or discomfort or dis-ease or... the feelings that people don't want to feel. That's the part that sucks, is that, and that's why we've got our real marketing problem is it's like, pay me more, inconvenience yourself more. Come here so that you will feel these things you don't want to feel. But I do think it's toward that ultimate goal of feeling better.
Aaron (26:52):
I think that's right. When you think about developers out to relieve the pain points, and we're saying, actually there's a pain point that's very central to this... and think about this just in terms of physical health. Imagine, and again, I'm not saying all of BetterHelp is bad, and I'm sure that there are people dedicated to helping people through those pain points. It's just whether the structure of the platform enables that or not. But it's like, if they were an app that said, "A gym membership, in and out, and if you get tired, you can just stop running on the treadmill. And if your muscles hurt..." I mean, again, I'm making it a little bit silly just for effect, but it's the same thing. It's like, it hurts to go to the gym. It's why it's so difficult for us to go to the gym, but you've got to feel the stretch of the yoga.
(27:43)
You've got to feel the heart pounding of the hit session or the treadmill session. You've got to feel the strain in the muscle of resistance training to build the muscle, the cardiovascular situation, the flexibility. You don't get one without the other. And if you have an app that enables you to kind of short circuit, well, I don't like this therapist, or, that was a bit of a challenging session, so I'm going to try with somebody new, or I don't know how to contain the feelings that brought up, so I'm going to send six text messages to get some reassurance. Are you undermining the process? And I think that's the question you were asking in your blog and me too in this conversation.
a strong therapeutic relationship helps you improve your personal relationships
Anna (28:23):
Yeah. Yeah. I think as you were talking, I could just feel my heart sink because I was thinking the relationship that BetterHelp is encouraging, is also reflective of modern relationships in general. And in a way it is helping people to adapt to a modern world. And that just makes me feel so sad to think that there are fewer and fewer people who are able and maybe have the education or knowledge to see the benefits of doing something long-term that is hard and that could actually have such profound benefits beyond what you think. I mean, the gym metaphor again is simplified, but working out doesn't just make you stronger. It has all sorts of other wide raging impacts, including you could meet someone at the gym who ends up being your partner for the rest of your life. You've put yourself in a new situation. And I think people just don't understand the kind of ripple effect that therapy can have in one's life.
Aaron (29:25):
Yes. And like you were saying before, it's more than... a therapist is more than a therapy. It's a relationship. And what I think is one of the most fundamental aspects of that relationship is how you sit interpersonal complexity, how two human beings share a space and relate in a space and work with each other, sometimes through ease and support, sometimes through conflict and difficulty to enhance those muscles of interpersonal complexity. And we now live in a context where everything de-enhances it, right? Everything's going online. People are being ghosted, people are feeling lonely, the relationships are being mediated through technology, and then they're finding it harder to have the real... to manage conflict, to manage interpersonal complexity. And one of the great powers of a really good longer term therapy is that you get to be in real life interpersonal complexity, and that is a transferable skill. You get better at it outside the therapy room. You improve your relationships, you get better with conflict, you develop a sense of trust if you didn't have one before. You reduce your projections and transferences. It's subtle, like I said, we've got a marketing problem. This is not good at a tagline, reduce your conflicts, projections, and transferences. Right? But what amazing pay dirt that is to deal with all that stuff.
Anna (31:02):
Yeah. Well, and it makes me think also that we shouldn't paint therapy as this perfect magical thing. I mean, there are bad therapists. There are therapists who are great, but are just not a fit. And so I do think the complexity goes both ways. It can be a really positive thing, and I don't want people listening to this to think, oh, I don't feel super connected to my therapist, but maybe Aaron and Anna think I should just ride this out as long as possible. I think our hope would be that you get to have a conversation with your therapist about how it's going. And I think maybe that's sort of the kinds of complexity that a system, a rigid system like BetterHelp might not allow for. Or they make it too easy to get out of that conversation and just avoid what is very uncomfortable and nobody likes to do.
Aaron (31:57):
Yeah, I mean, very clearly it's like the ghosting situation very clearly. It's easier to ghost someone that you don't want to carry on dating or whatever, but it's not a very nice thing to do. Right? It's probably better and more ethical to stomach the discomfort of sharing with that person that it's not working for you and that you would rather not. Right? And in the same way, it'd be very easy to say, well, I'm not going to see that therapist again, I'm going to try somebody new. To show up the next week and say, I felt really unmet in the last session. I didn't think you quite got me. I'm beginning to wonder if this is working. And like you say, maybe it's not working, and maybe that's a chance to identify it's not working, but maybe working through that misunderstanding, you also find each other again, and that you find it just like in a regular relationship, you find a deeper relationship there because you've resolved something that came up between the two of you and you've been able to move through it.
Anna (32:56):
And you've built confidence in yourself by being able to speak up and say these things that are uncomfortable. Again, the benefits are myriad, but just not very marketable and sexy. (Laughter).
Aaron (33:12):
Yeah, "I'm going to do traditional face-to-face psychotherapy, so I can negotiate conflict with my therapist about them having failed me." It's like, yeah, right. But actually, those of us who've done it, these are sometimes the biggest moments in therapy. It's like, oh, I've been avoiding conflict my whole life because of my relationship with my mother, and I was able to face it with you because I feel safe to face it with you and resolve it and actually feel stronger in my capacity to say no to others or set my boundaries, or... it can be really amazing, those moments.
Anna (33:41):
Yeah. Well, I feel like maybe the best summary of our conversation is that therapy is great and we want people to try it. And maybe as you're trying it, again, I don't want to discourage people from services like BetterHelp necessarily in the sense that I think some therapy is better than no therapy, and that, again, there probably are wonderful clinicians on these platforms who are also trapped by these systems trying to get enough clients and make a living. But that maybe if people can just hold a little more complexity in the ways that they're thinking about therapy and what it might look like and that maybe it's going to be a little uncomfortable, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
creating a meaningful therapeutic relationship on BetterHelp
Aaron (34:22):
It may be for those people that have been benefiting from that platform, and I know lots of people have, many people haven't... trying, some of the things that we're talking about there, if you feel like something didn't work out with a therapist before, it may be right that you find somebody else, but it also might be worth trying to see if you can find out what went wrong there and speak to them again and do that. And for the therapists that are working across the platform, maybe it helps to do a little bit of psychoeducation and say, I think it'd be really important if we try and frame it this way rather than just going to the default settings of the platform if that's at all possible. Right? It'd be great if we could meet at the same time every week, and these boundaries are important because of blah, blah, blah. And if you feel like I've got it wrong with you, do you think you could let me know rather than logging off and finding somebody else? (Laughter). There might be ways to work within that at least hold some of these things that we're talking about.
Anna (35:15):
Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Well, thank you so much for this conversation. I hope that for any therapist listening, you feel empowered to be not marketable, but still valuable. And for any clients, I hope that this is helpful in figuring out what kind of therapy would be best for you.
Aaron (35:33):
Certainly. Me too.
Anna (35:36):
Thanks so much, Aaron.
Aaron (35:38):
Thanks for having me.
Anna Kim is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, a writer, and an adventurer. Anna works with individuals, intimate relationships, families, and groups to support growth and change. She is especially interested in grief & loss, identity & authenticity, and attachment, but appreciates all the infinite, complicated parts of being alive.
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