So You Want to Be a Therapist?

07.31.2023 - By Rick Hanson, Ph.D., Forrest Hanson Play

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Over the last 10 years interest in therapy has boomed, and with the greater demand for therapists more people than ever are considering pursuing a career in mental health. On today’s episode Forrest speaks to five therapists and therapists-in-training to learn the lessons they wish they’d known when they started.

You can watch this episode on YouTube.

Key Topics:

0:00: Intro

2:15: Rick Hanson

5:05: Key traits of good therapists

17:50: Questions a prospective therapist might not think to ask

25:00: Self-employement, emotional regulation, and boundaries

27:45: Efficacy, complacency, and respecting the craft

31:45: Lori Gottlieb

35:20: Emotional intimacy and human connection

38:50: Modalities

40:50: Vulnerability, uncertainty, and making mistakes

48:10: Terry Real

52:45: Learning how to heal yourself first

55:35: What therapy is actually like

59:30: Messiness

1:03:15: Elizabeth Ferreira

1:06:35: Somatics, and being yourself

1:11:50: How to suffer with someone, then let it move through you

1:16:45: Awareness and the bravery of owning what’s in the room

1:21:15: Chaos, and loving yourself

1:27:45: Taylor Banfield

1:34:00: Sitting with a client for the first time

1:37:45: Choosing a specific career path

1:39:10: Boundaries

1:43:15: Recap

About our Guests: Rick Hanson is a psychologist, Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, New York Times best-selling author, and frequent guest on Being Well.

Lori Gottlieb is a practicing therapist in Los Angeles, and is the author of the bestseller Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.

Terry Real is a longtime clinician, the founder of the Relational Life Institute, and bestselling author of a number of books including Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship.

Elizabeth Ferreira is an associate somatic psychotherapist working in the San Francisco Bay Area. If you’d like to work with Elizabeth, you can reach out to her through her website or Instagram.

Taylor Banfield is a graduate student in the PsyD program at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California.

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