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
🏰 Navigating Caregiver Burnout and Resilience in Therapy with Jared Andes
Ever wondered how therapists juggle their professional responsibilities while maintaining their own mental health? Discover the answer with Jared Andes, a licensed clinical social worker and registered play therapist supervisor, as he dives into the world of caregiver burnout and compassion fatigue. In this special episode of the Heroes Welcome podcast, co-hosts Mariela Care Diego and her lively sidekick invite you to explore the critical role play therapy plays in building resilience for therapists who are also caregivers. Inspired by the intriguing TV show Severance, the conversation sheds light on the blurred lines between work and personal life and the necessity of recognizing warning signs before burnout takes hold.
Jared Andes brings a fresh perspective to the generational shift in therapy, as newer cohorts embrace their humanity alongside their professional roles. He challenges outdated notions of constant professionalism, advocating for authentic, human-centered approaches in therapy. Join us as we uncover the importance of self-care for therapists and discuss practical strategies to maintain mental health and thrive both personally and professionally. This episode promises valuable insights for anyone interested in understanding the balance of being a caregiver and a professional in today's world.
A Hero's Welcome Podcast © Maria Laquerre-Diego & Liliana Baylon
Welcome back listeners to an extra special episode of a Heroes Welcome podcast. I am your co-host, mariela Care Diego, and I am joined by my very playful co-host.
Speaker 2:I think that's me. I was like, oh, I'm not going to be playful this morning. No, that's me Just kidding. Thank you for joining us in this special episode. We're going to be talking about Disney and these amazing conferences that is happening. How many weeks, maria? We have Not enough. We're not doing math this morning, but it's coming up really fast and we have here one of the presenters. Presentors yes, did I just made up a word? No, it is Jared. How do you want to present yourself to our audience this morning?
Speaker 3:I'm I don't know. I'm Jared Andes. I'm a licensed clinical social worker and a registered plate therapist supervisor. I have been in practice for about 12 years and I'm really excited to join and present on my topic, which we're going to talk about in a second.
Speaker 2:Got to tease it for just a second here, oh you want to tease it Like, please tell us what is it you're going to be presenting on?
Speaker 3:So we're going to be talking the title is Running on Empty and we'll be talking about building resilience in play therapists. Using play therapy Not just you know the kind of general things that we talk about, but specifically using play to build resilience and to cope with caregiver burnout and compassion fatigue.
Speaker 1:I love this because you're addressing some of the elephants in the room right. Like as therapists. We show up and we give our all, but we are also humans who wear other hats, and many of us are caregivers in a variety of ways outside of our job title.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I don't know if either of you have seen the show Severance. It's kind of a strange concept, so for your listeners who haven't seen it in this TV show, it's like this sci-fi world where people have their brains separated so that part of their brain only knows what happens in their work life and part of their brain only knows what happens in their personal life. Yeah, that doesn't happen, thankfully, in real life, and so everything that we experience, both as a therapist and then outside of that, with whatever responsibilities we have, all of that leads to both our wellness and to our detriment, and it's important to honor both and to make sure that we're paying attention to what are the warning signs? When have we crossed past the warning signs and we're into more dangerous territory, and how do we cope with it when we get there?
Speaker 2:Oh, I love it. Love it Right. We come from older generations, or seasoned therapists as we like to call it in our field, that they adopted all ideas, which was you are professional all the time, either when you're working or not working. And then we have this new cohort that will include us. That we're saying that's not going to work, because I am human and I get these roles in everywhere I go. I don't stop knowing what I know as a therapist, but also I'm a human who does not stop being a caretaker.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, a family member. So I love that you're going into how do we take care of you, especially in our field, that the word that came out is like it's so fake. Is that okay for me to say that out loud? It's so fake in regards to we advise clients in regards to how, and we're curious about how you're taking care of yourself, but we tend not to adapt, as you stated, jared, like how are we paying attention to our wellness while showing up?
Speaker 2:What are the warning signs that I tend to ignore, because I cannot abandon a client and I have to show up, and then you go home and if you have children damn children, they go into you, go play all day. How come you don't want to play with us, right? Thank you for not leaving me alone. I was like I cannot be alone. So you're going to be talking about this. So tell us, besides talking about wellness, talking about warning signs, talking about things that they can do so they don't have to go there, what is. What is something that you want to share with the audience so that they can know what is? What else are they going to learn in your, in your training?
Speaker 3:So I don't give too much away. We are going to get real for sure. Like it's going to get real. I don't want to like sugarcoat that because it is going to be real and we're also. We're going to have fun, we're going to connect in really playful and meaningful ways and we're going to learn new ways of supporting ourselves and each other. Really excited about all of it. I know it's a little bit mysterious, but I don't want to give too much away because I really am excited to experience this with the participants and I don't want them to come into it knowing too much because that'll maybe lessen the effect. But I want to say just a couple of things that, without giving specifics, a little bit of experience.
Speaker 3:So when I was a pretty new therapist, I was about six months away from getting my independent license, one of my clients actually got arrested right outside of my office and it was a pretty traumatic experience for both of us and I mean I went out because he was like he heard screaming and I went out and he was there with the police officer and the police officer was, you know, standing his ground and the my client was also standing his ground and it ended up being just a really difficult situation. Afterwards. What did I do? Went into my office and I saw my next client and the next one all the way through the end of the day. And then I get home and I'm like I have two. I had two young children at that point and I was working with them and playing with them and you know, doing all the things that a parent does and the end of the day comes and I hadn't processed it one bit and full force came hours later and, of course, anytime you put off the emotion, you get that augmented reaction. You have to pay it with interest and it really hit. And the next time he was in my office, we were talking and we were kind of processing what happened and I was shocked. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm the most unprofessional therapist because I started to cry.
Speaker 3:The kids experience and my experience, that shared experience of his arrest was so powerful. I just it just started happening and I was like what in the world? And I realized that it had a lot to do with the fact that I let so much of it go unprocessed, unexamined. Now, we don't always have those kinds of experiences. That was kind of a strange one. In fact, no one's ever been arrested in my office before or after, but we do have really difficult and powerful experiences in our offices regularly. We witness a lot, we hold a lot. That's our job right.
Speaker 1:We're containers, but we're human containers and we have to be able to say hey, hey, this container also needs some help and some support I love that and it's more and more relevant right with the things, not just in our own therapy practice, but what's happening in our local communities, our larger communities and our nationwide communities. Right like I think it's, I think we're just being able to talk about it more and more. It wasn't like the world wasn't a crazy place or that our practice wasn't a crazy practice before now, but I think we're starting to see the lines between outside life and therapy life blur more, and this is such an important topic because we are human and we are not doing ourselves or our clients any good when we pretend that we're not us when we get used to or program in our school or in our credentialing all the associations that we belong to.
Speaker 2:In regards to repress, don't bring it in as if it doesn't have a benefit, because when you were sharing your example, I was like I can see the benefit for the client because shame was already there. Right, you got to witness me at this point and when I see you crying, I can see the empathy of that experience. But what a beautiful and powerful way of attuning to the client's pain and shame. Right, and how. And I think that's exactly the movement of this new cohort coming in and saying I do not want to repress, I don't want to go through the expectancy of seven years in this field and then having burnout or being sick or retiring, daydreaming about going to work at Starbucks or Target it sounds so fun instead of being micromanaged. So how do we help them recognize all of this? It's such a beautiful and powerful way, jared, thank you. Thank you for teaching this.
Speaker 1:And I'm excited because, I mean, it's my conference. So you know I am biased, show off Biased. But I think it's really important, Jared, that you said like we're going to actually do work because, yes, yes, it's a conference being held at Disneyland, yes, we're going to have a lot of play wrapped in and interweaved and all of it, and we're doing real work while we're doing this, and I think it's it's important for us to have that balance between this is hard and heavy work and then let's go and like, regulate and play and integrate it that way yeah, integration, what a great word, um, I think you both know.
Speaker 3:Um, my first play therapy supervisor was JP Lilly, and he would always talk about everything that you experience as a, as a person, can lead to your integration and that, you know, it was a very important aspect, and I think that it's the same concept here. We want to integrate our experience, we want to integrate ourselves as therapists. Um, so we're really able to attune to our clients, and I'm really excited to do that at Disneyland for a couple of reasons. One and one other thing that JP said was we would talk about something that happened in session, right, and he'd say, okay, it's like here's the technique and then like here's the result, but somewhere in the middle is where the magic happens, and I love that play therapy can bring that magic and it obviously shares that in common with Disneyland, right, what place where magic happens on a daily basis.
Speaker 3:And then the other thing is that Walt Disney once said it's kind of fun to do the impossible, and I think that with everything we're going to be talking about at that conference, we're really working on doing the impossible. We do live in a really challenging time. Yeah, our clients know it, we know it and they feel it. We are talking about taking a break from all of that difficulty. Not ignoring it, but taking a break and saying, hey, I'm going to get really centered with myself, I'm going to connect with other people and I'm going to come back to my clients in a really centered and healthy way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I love that and I know I know it was a hard ask, Jared, but why did you say yes to coming and being a part of Play Therapy Disney bound this year?
Speaker 3:to coming and being a part of play therapy Disney bound this year. So I'm coming back to that magic thing. I love the like. The magic of play therapy can happen in a place as magical as Disneyland. And so I didn't grow up with Disneyland.
Speaker 3:I went twice, I think in my, you know, before I was 18, but my wife taught me the magic of Disneyland because she absolutely loves it.
Speaker 3:I did not realize how much she loved it I'm going to say this on a podcast and she's going to kill me. But we went to Disney World and we were riding on the Magic Express bus and this little video starts playing and I look over and she's got tears coming from her eyes and she was just so happy and I was like, oh, you really love Disneyland, or Disney World in this case and she's like, yeah, it's so magical. And when we got there, we had our first son right, he was about a year old at that point and I was like, oh, it is so magical. It was not what I experienced as a kid Not that I didn't love it as a kid, it was just another level of magic and I think when you bring play therapists together, it's always magical, but when you bring them into a place, place as special as Disneyland, talking about what we're going to be talking about and doing what we're going to be doing, the magic is in abundance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm so excited, I'm so thrilled that you said yes, that you're going to be a part of it. I mean, if you've, if you've touched base with anything that I do or anything that Jared does, I mean it's magical. Anyway, jared, you're such a gift to our community and such a voice that needs to be amplified. I mean, it was a no brainer to ask you. I'm very excited to have you and again having you on the podcast, because we've had you, we've had you and we'll probably have you back, because you have such good information that needs to be not just, you know, gatekeeped in Utah. We want to share that.
Speaker 3:That's why I said yes.
Speaker 1:I wanted the hype, I just wanted to listen to you talk about me Now, if you know Jared, you know that that's absolutely not true.
Speaker 2:So again, please, anyone who's listening. We have limited space, so below Jared's podcast episode is going to be information about him and about the training. Hurry up, it's not that long. Go have a blast at Disney and learn. At the same time, it's tax deductible because you're going to go and learn and everything that you're going to do as you hear uh, hear from um jared is going to be very experiential, which is that's how we all learn, how to practice having that felt sense. So do not miss this opportunity. Go see jared um and have fun with maria at disney ah, yeah, we'd love to have you.
Speaker 1:So, jared, I hope you've packed your mickey ears and are ready to come. We're under 100 days now, so yeah, I'm sticking awesome.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to us. We'll see you next time. Well then, bye.
