A Hero's Welcome Podcast
Welcome to the Hero's Welcome Podcast, your ultimate guide to understanding the incredible world of mental health! Join us on this inspiring journey as we delve into the hearts and minds of the unsung heroes behind this transformative therapeutic approach.
Hosted by Maria Laquerre Diego, LMFT-S, RPT-S, and Liliana Baylon, LMFT-S, RPT-S, two dedicated mental health & play therapist advocates with a profound passion for well-being, the Hero's Welcome Podcast is your gateway to unraveling the extraordinary world of mental health.
Join us on this enlightening journey as we spotlight the remarkable contributions of mental health therapists. Our podcast is a dedicated platform for showcasing the profound impact of mental health and emotional well-being. In every episode, we bring you engaging interviews with esteemed experts and seasoned practitioners who share an unwavering commitment to harnessing the healing potential of mental health.
Hosts:
Maria Laquerre-Diego
maria@anewhopetc.org
Liliana Baylon
liliana@lilianabaylon.com
A Hero's Welcome Podcast
🏰 Transforming Ethics and Supervision at Disney with Melissa Hueste and NanDee Walker
Have you ever wondered how ethics and supervision could be transformed into a magical adventure? Join us as we welcome Melissa Hueste and NanDee Walker, two creative powerhouses ready to redefine professional development against the enchanting backdrop of Disney parks. With their innovative approach, Melissa and NanDee promise to turn what was once dry and mundane into a lively, immersive experience at their Disney-themed conference. Hurry, as spots are limited, but be a part of this extraordinary journey that combines the rigors of ethics with the whimsy of your favorite childhood memories.
Explore the galaxy of ethical supervision through the exciting narratives of Star Wars and the Avengers. Alongside our expert guests, we unravel how the challenges faced by beloved characters like the Jedi or Captain America mirror real-world dilemmas encountered by therapists. We aim to empower therapists with fresh perspectives and confidence in navigating ethical quandaries by weaving these iconic stories into our discussions. Tune in for an enlightening session that blends pop culture with professional growth, promising an entertaining learning adventure.
A Hero's Welcome Podcast © Maria Laquerre-Diego & Liliana Baylon
welcome listeners to a very special episode of a hero's welcome podcast. I am your co-host, maria laquer diego, and I'm joined by my ever glowing co-host that would be me the glowing part.
Speaker 2:This is lilliana valen, and this is a special episode which we are here to promote. I was going to say Disney, disney does not need promotion. There is a retreat that Maria tends to do since last year. Right, what was her first one?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Second year, so we have two special guests. How would you like to introduce yourselves, ladies, to our audience?
Speaker 3:How would you like to introduce yourselves, ladies, to our audience? I'm Melissa Winterscheid.
Speaker 4:I am a LPCS and an RPTS. My name is Mandy Walker. I am an LPCS, an NCC and an RPT.
Speaker 2:Look at us with all our initials. Can you tell us the name? What is it that you're going to be presenting?
Speaker 4:We're going to be presenting supervision and ethics in different sessions during this conference, which we're very excited about.
Speaker 3:But here's the catch All of our sessions are in the park, we are using the rides, we are using the stories of the different parts of Disney and Star Wars and all the things, and bringing them together to do the two things that most people dislike about CEs, which is ethics and supervision. So we're making ethics and supervision fun.
Speaker 1:What better way to earn some CEs than standing in line for a ride at Disneyland?
Speaker 2:It's like talking about ethics, whoever's trying to cut in line for supervision, when you're like calm down, let's breathe in, let's do it. It's happening for you in this moment, or supervision, when you're like calm down, let's breathe in, let's do it. It's happening for you in this moment.
Speaker 4:I love this we're going to prove that both topics don't need to be scary, don't need to be hard and don't need to be boring and forced upon you.
Speaker 2:There you go. I love that.
Speaker 1:I love it, I love it, I love it. Yeah, so, melissa was actually an attendee this year for our first ever play therapy Disney bound conference, and yeah so, melissa, tell me a little bit about what made you reach out in terms of offering to be a part of the speaker lineup this year and bringing Nandi along with you.
Speaker 3:So I tend to not go anywhere without Nandi.
Speaker 1:So this March was an anomaly then?
Speaker 3:Yes, it was we're a pretty dynamic duo. Dynamic duo, um, and the other part was I had this idea of doing something in the parks, um, and wanting to take it and making the in-park days really immersive with with the learning part, and I was very excited about that. I think when we we had our first day in March and we had the activity that we had to do in the parks, I was like, oh my gosh, we could do so many things in this park and like, and then I was, it was like game on and I really like, I really love teaching. So for me and we are very ethics and supervision focused, so it was just kind of a no brainer.
Speaker 2:I love that. So what is one thing that anyone who attends and, by the way, there's limited space anyone who's listening hopefully you'll go and grab that seat right away, but what is one thing that you can share to our listeners, that they're going to? It will be one takeaway from that. They're going to learn, I'm sorry, about supervision, and one thing that they can learn about ethics besides that they don't have to be scary and fun.
Speaker 4:Those are the two biggest points already.
Speaker 4:The biggest one, Something that I I'm confident that people are going to take away from discussing supervision in this is that creativity is a vital part of good supervision and continued supervision, which we tend to call consultation, but that it's an important thing, but that we can keep it creative. It doesn't have to be stagnant, and the simple fact that we're in a creative environment will lead itself to everybody opening up their minds and going the sky's the limit. We can do what we need to and what we want to and what we can imagine as far as supervision and continuing consultation is concerned.
Speaker 2:Love it. The sky is the limit. That's a beautiful image that we can all take right away. Love that. You got ethics.
Speaker 3:Ethics. So I think that viewing ethics through a Disney lens can be very entertaining. It also changes the way that you watch anything that Disney produces right.
Speaker 3:So now and one of our. So I'm going to admit I am not a and I was born a Trekkie. So, um, we decided to do a Star Wars ethics and a Disney ethics, um, so people could have their choice. And, uh, when we were so, I had to go back and start watching Star Wars, um, and I think I ruined it for my husband. He was like, are you gonna, as we do, all the characters because I love them? And I was like, I mean, it's kind of what I'm doing right now. So, um, I think that just giving um people a different lens to, as a way to look at things, um, and even when it comes to something like ethics, like it doesn't have to be this, you know, it's just not. Don't sleep with your clients and what's the other one? Don't, don't talk.
Speaker 1:Don't be Facebook friends, right yeah.
Speaker 3:Don't be Facebook friends.
Speaker 1:Side by side.
Speaker 3:Those are the two like right, and so it can be other things, and there's there's areas that you can discuss and look into and grow with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I love that. I mean I am biased because you know it's my, it's my thing, but I think it's. I think it's really for me. It's so exciting to see it light the spark for others to also consider, cause I mean, liliana knows this and Melissa you do too, cause you attended this year. I'm a super nerd, super nerd, and so when I can geek out about stuff and other that are often you know, I think about the ethics and supervision trainings I go to. They're like read this case study and then decide how to handle it. And it's like, you know, so-and-so has found that this client is attracted to them. How do we handle this? I'm like, well, this is the same thing we've been doing. How much more fun is it? Okay, so Darth Vader killing a planet to get something that was stolen from him? Let's go there. Right, let's talk about the ethics behind decision making in this trio. It's just so much more fun, yeah.
Speaker 4:It's a different way to relate and to identify with the stories that are already out there in the world. So we can relate and identify with our supervisees, with the people that we're consulting with, with our clients themselves, in a much broader fashion, which just increases our connection to them and it increases our ability to help them with their own insight, our ability to help them with their own insight. So the more we can relate through differences and similarities at the same time, where we're different or where we're not different, the better we are at what we are trying to do.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. I was gonna say, like, what training self ethics you guys are going that you're talking about sleeping with your clients? We work with children, people. Stop this, um, and and how beautiful it is. Right, um, I was like now we're talking about the law, not ethics. But, okay, it's my mind, um, but how beautiful it is that, um, what you two are suggesting in regards to, even when we use this example, a start words which is oh, can I put myself in their shoes and realize that ethics is not black and white?
Speaker 2:The cases that we work in is so complicated there's no right way. But ethics is inviting us to think about math in regards to problem solving. How will we get there? What were the steps to get there? Did we empathize that? We went beyond that curiosity and wonder right, um, how do we make that decision? So I think it's beautiful because, yeah, in the example that you were sharing, maria, I was like yeah, can you? Did you steal something that was stolen from you or was that an eye for an eye? Was that like we're even? Did this cancel, like in math?
Speaker 2:But our profession is not that simple. It's not black and white, not when we're talking about ethics and not when we're talking about supervision, right, the things that our supervisors are dealing with are more complicated than ever, because now we have we are global, we have access to good information, bad information, um, you know boundaries that we need to have in supervision. That most of our supervisees because it's a new cohort, a new generation they, they don't have the black and white thinking that the same way that we were. Can I say that a lot because we come from a cohort. So I think, no, absolutely right that you guys are doing it in the park and using real, like very experiential, very experiential, um, it is happening.
Speaker 1:So I think that is so cool I love that and I think that I think you make a good point, lilliana, because you know I was talking. I was doing consultation early last week before the holiday and we were chatting about the supervisor was like they just need this immediate response from me, right, like they're texting me about something and I feel like I have to respond. And I told, I told them. I was like do you remember being in your program or your first job? Did we have texting back then? Because we didn't.
Speaker 1:For me, like I'm, I'm old enough to say we did not have texting like we have texting now. That was used for emergencies only and only after nine, because I had limited texts. Like I'm super aging myself right now, right, but this generation it expensive. I couldn't imagine. I never once texted my supervisor a question, right, like you waited until supervision and you use that hour and like if you needed an extra one, you asked for an extra one, and nowadays it's like on Saturday, hey, I have this question, what do I need to do about this case? And the supervisors are like I feel like I'm supposed to respond, they're supposed to have immediate access to me, and so I love that you guys have dedicated yourselves to supervision and ethics. I think that's the two most common topics people shy away from. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. Anything besides besides? Don't sleep with your client because they're minors people Besides that.
Speaker 1:Or their parents. Their parents are also a no-no.
Speaker 3:Or their aunts and uncles. It's a whole thing.
Speaker 4:Don't sleep with your supervisor.
Speaker 2:Oh my God. Yeah, please don't. There's too many millions of people, please don't. But let's make it fun while we're learning. We're not shaming, we're learning.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's right, that's right. So you guys picked Star Wars. How did you go through the process of these? Are the in-park experiences that line up the best with ethics and supervision, or did you just say these are the rides I really want to make sure I get on, so we're?
Speaker 3:going to frame it around these. Well, I don't know if you're aware of this, but I'm kind of a car. I have heard that about you, melissa, I remember and there is so supervision is actually in DCA and so to me I mean you have Marvel land and cars and you also have inside outs in there, but you have, you have those two things and I was like what is more supervision like than the like the relationship between lightning McQueen and Doc Hudson? Oh, wow. And then you know Marvel, it's like the land of supervision, like those dynamics. So that one was a pretty easy. This can happen pretty, um, easy.
Speaker 4:This is this can happen. Yeah, for me, having this the one of the ethics based very much on Star Wars, we do. We do touch on Avengers topics like the imposter syndrome and the worthiness of of Captain America picking up Thor's hammer and what that took for that moment to happen. We touch on Avengers, we touch on cars, but a lot of the ethical discussions and processing is going to be based on Star Wars ideas and for me, as you mentioned before, it lent itself very easily and very beautifully with everything involving the force and the differences between the force and the Sith and how they trained their people. The Jedi had a certain style and when it didn't work for them, it was all because of ethical dilemmas that they went a certain way with. Like they had their system but ethically they made poor choices and it was the downfall of their entire system. So how can we, as therapists, learn from that? We have a system in place. We have a code of ethics. No matter what you are LPC, lmft ethics no matter what you are LPC, lmft, social worker, wherever you are you have a code of ethics and we've got it in place. It's all there.
Speaker 4:But depending on what we do with that as a whole and as individuals, but in this mode it really is a macro thing. It's what are we doing with it as a culture? That's the ethics. We can apply it individually, but it's what's happening with ethics and how we are learning ethics, how we are practicing ethics, how we are willing or not willing. That's a big point. That I wanted to go over is how we are not willing to consult on ethical dilemmas because we're afraid of somebody saying you're bad, you're bad, you're bad, you lose your license. I'm reporting you to the board. There are, I mean, I experienced situations during the beginning of my supervision that were 100% not ethical but, I, did not know what to do, and I know that I'm now combining these two ideas again.
Speaker 4:But that's why I'm so passionate about these ideas was because I was in a vulnerable position when I first graduated from grad school and I first went into the therapy field and was under supervision where I was by my supervisors directly put in very unethical situations and told do this. I mean, I even tried to question things that were unethical in this group supervision that I was told to lie about because in our state you can't do all of you couldn't. Now you can, you couldn't do all of your supervision in a group format, but they only would do it in a group format and I was told to lie about it on my list in a group format. And I was told to lie about it on my list and like I had no choice, I felt like I had no choice. Now I'm saying I should have said something, even to the board, no matter what that was going to mean for me. But I was terrified of what was going to happen to me if I reported this situation. And so I, you know, I fired them and I got a good supervisor.
Speaker 4:It's what I did, but it took a lot of processing with outside people and outside consultation for me to get to the point where I felt like I had the power to say this is not good. I knew that it wasn't good, but I didn't have the, I didn't have the confidence to say this is not good. So all of that really leads into this, this identifying with the Star Wars world, and you don't have to know Star Wars, like. I've already got little bitty clips all ready to show people in park if we need to while we're waiting in line. I mean the whole thing is, I mean it's brilliant. In my mind, this is going to be one heck of an experience and I'm very, very excited about what we are, what we are going to do and the, the, the processing we're going to be able to have in the discussions that we will be able to have. That would never happen in a serial classroom ever yes oh sounds amazing, amazing got.
Speaker 2:About this whole thing. So for all of you who are listening out there, just listen. You're going to have so much conversation, so much experiential. You're going to be in power. What we do is not black and white and that's just in the conversation that we're having and the empowerment right that we were just um shared with in regards to.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of situations as a supervisee in this field that, even though we have guidelines, please read your ethics. Often just like go pretend um, but you have them there. They're there for a reason. You have them for your credentials, your licensure, you have them for play therapy. Read them both. I promise you you're not gonnaure. You're having for play therapy. Read them both. I promise you you're not going to fall asleep. You're going to be what this was here the whole time. You're going to be surprised. And then how we're going to integrate it by going to your right brain and bringing pop culture and bringing those scenarios that we don't tend to think about, because when we see movies good for you. If you don't see it this way, you're not thinking about ethics and supervision. If you hang with the four of us, it's gonna be ruined for you because we see supervision and ethics everywhere. So come in, have fun. Learn in the park in regards to supervision and ethics while you're having fun riding cars. That was an awesome.
Speaker 2:I do remember long line, but it was awesome so good and star wars, um any last bit that we want to share, any words of um encouragement, so anyone who's listening they can go register. If you're registered, lucky you. But anything that we want to share before we go you can also.
Speaker 3:We're also doing an ethics, that is, in um the fantasy land so what we live in choices, so fantasy land will um, take on the things? The one that's really important to me is Peter Pan. So there's multiple things. We're going to go on there with ethics, but for me, I look at Wendy and all the lovely hats that she has to wear and I am currently school-based and that is a very yeah measure trove of ethical dilemmas on the daily basis. And we are going, we are going to talk about that, and I don't think that that's something that gets talked about.
Speaker 3:A lot is when you're in and you see her. You get to see your clients on the daily. What does that look like? How do you manage that that? Because now everybody knows that you see them, and so there's there's a lot of hats that I get to wear in a school that when I was in private practice, I don't have, um, and so we look at wendy's hats and how she has to explore those and you know, and then other things in fantasy land that come off and you're like, oh, I didn't think about that as an ethical thing yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So all of you, please sign up. Uh, we will include that link if you haven't seen it. Maria has done an amazing um uh, advertising it. But if you haven't seen it, we're going to include um the link so that you can register and then look out for these two amazing classes, even if you're like, oh my god, I'm not certain and supervising, go take it, you can anyway?
Speaker 2:have a blast. Just what, what these ladies just described and you just never know, might as well have it. You're gonna be there, you're gonna be in a group, you're gonna have a blast. You're going to have a blast. You're going to be learning so much. You will never see these movies ever again the same. Uh, good for you if you don't see them the same, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, that means we've done our job thank you very much, maria.
Speaker 2:Anything else you want to add?
Speaker 1:no, I am just so thankful that you ladies are coming and going to be a part of it in this way this year. Yeah, and I'm just so honored it's taken off the way it has. Oh my gosh, it makes my heart just like pitter patter. I'm like, oh, not only have I found my people, but like I think I've turned on a beacon and other people are going to find us too. So I'm very excited. Less than 100 days, I get to play with you guys in the park. I mean, I love my job. I love my job.
Speaker 2:We all do. Thank you, listeners, and please hurry up Limited seating. Go sign up and have a blast Until next time.
