Best Riva Stoudt Podcasts (2024)

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Ep 3.10 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Diagnosis 34:05

8h ago34:05

34:05

In my last episode, Dr. Awais Aftab and I explored the controversial nature of Borderline Personality Disorder as a diagnosis. One of the reasons I wanted to discuss BPD is that it opens the door for digging into psychiatric diagnosis itself, and that’s part of what I want to discuss more today. What is our purpose in using diagnosis? How does it b…

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Ep 3.9 - Epistemic Justice in Diagnosis: Exploring Borderline Personality Disorder with Dr. Awais Aftab 42:39

29d ago42:39

42:39

Suppose you polled therapists and asked them what the most controversial diagnosis is in the current version of the DSM. Many of us would likely say Borderline Personality Disorder, and it would certainly be in almost everybody's top three. I’ve been wanting to do an episode on BPD for a bit because there is something about this controversial diagn…

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Ep 3.8 - The Medicine of Intimacy: Embracing Anger in Therapy 23:00

2M ago23:00

23:00

Imagine yourself saying, “I am angry at my client.” If you immediately need to add a whole bunch of context and caveats to make that statement feel okay, you’re not alone. Admitting that we get angry with clients is uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable with colleagues and supervisors, and it’s definitely uncomfortable with clients. It’s even uncomfort…

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Ep 3.7 - Getting Into It: Overt Conflict with Your Clients with Dr. K Hixson 55:37

2M ago55:37

55:37

Be honest. When you think about overt conflict with a client, is your first thought that it’s a site of exciting progress, full of potential for movement? No, of course not. I don’t either. If you’re like me, and I’m guessing a lot of you are, your first reaction to actual, or even hypothetical, conflict with a client is somewhere on a spectrum fro…

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Ep 3.6 - How to Stop Treating Your Clients Like Your Parents 31:02

3M ago31:02

31:02

How can we stop treating our clients like our parents? As therapists, we often share the experience of having been a parentified child, and this shared background fundamentally shapes the way we practice therapy, creating a unique bond and understanding among us. The relational patterns we developed as children, regardless of our current relationsh…

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Ep 3.5 - From Childhood Wounds to Therapeutic Wisdom with Dr. Karen Maroda 58:45

4M ago58:45

58:45

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: as a group, therapists tend to have some pretty similar formative childhood experiences. Our shared experiences as parentified children not only draw us to this field, but according to today’s guest, they fundamentally influence and shape how we practice once we become therapists. This understanding can f…

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Ep 3.4 - Therapy in the Shaky Landscape of Contemporary Neuroscience 26:00

4M ago26:00

26:00

As humans, we tend to like answers a lot more than we like questions. When we believe we have found answers, re-examining what we think of as truth is inherently destabilizing. In a relatively young field like neuroscience, paradigm shifts, misconceptions, corrections, retractions, and foundational remodels are inevitable. We already have more ques…

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Ep 3.3 - Unraveling Popular Ideas: Challenging Neuroscientific Narratives in Therapy with Kristen Martin 52:44

5M ago52:44

52:44

If you’re a therapist in 2024, odds are you have given a client a neuroscientific explanation for a symptom they’re experiencing or an intervention you’re using. You’ve probably done it sometime in the last week. So have I. Neuroscience-based language is the lingua franca of our field nowadays. As a field, we have largely abandoned the languages of…

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Ep 3.2 - Finding Our Place in the Lineage of Therapeutic Practice 27:24

5M ago27:24

27:24

Since the last episode’s conversation with hannah baer about the Jewishness of therapy, I’ve been thinking a lot about lineage. When I first decided to do an episode on the topic, I was primarily motivated by wanting a deep sense of admiration for the Jewish pioneers of the field. Their contributions, which, like any minority group, tend to get era…

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Ep 3.1 - Between Mysticism and Modernity: Reclaiming the Jewishness of Therapy with hannah baer 1:07:00

6M ago1:07:00

1:07:00

Raise your hand if this sounds familiar: In a group of leftie social justice therapists, someone says that therapy is a profession founded by white men. Everyone else in the room nods along and acknowledges the white male hegemonic roots of the profession, then moves on to discuss other things. The problem with saying that white men founded therapy…

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Introducing The Kiln: Revolutionizing The Therapy Training Landscape 51:38

7M ago51:38

51:38

Co-conspirator and friend of the podcast, Dr. K Hixson, returns to share some exciting news about a true labor of love. We’ve joined up to create The Kiln, a comprehensive supervision and training program for pre-licensed therapists in Oregon. The Kiln will also offer continuing education to practicing clinicians. This venture was born out of our m…

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EP 2.12: 10 Things I Have Learned in 10 Years as a Therapist – Part 2 22:41

10M ago22:41

22:41

To wrap up season two of A Therapist Can’t Say That, I’m continuing my reflections on my ten years as a therapist. I’ll be back in April with interviews on some juicy topics, but for now, here are lessons six through ten that I’ve learned over the last decade of doing this work. Listen to the full episode to hear: Why being overly passive for fear …

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EP 2.11 - 10 Things I Have Learned in 10 Years as a Therapist – Part 1 24:46

11M ago24:46

24:46

Every therapist remembers their first client. Many look back and cringe at what a bad job they think they did. But for me, I look back and remember the magic I felt in the room with my very first client. Which isn’t to say I’ve never done a bad job with clients. I have, just like we all have. But after ten years of being a therapist, when the work …

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EP 2.10 - Client Relationships in the Trenches: The Role of Self-Validated Intimacy 33:11

12M ago33:11

33:11

In the last episode with Dr. K Hixson, I said that our field is defined by the wish fulfillment fantasy of the parentified child. The parentified child wants nothing more than to get it right, manage the relationship, and have the parental figure be healed and available to you If you are a therapist and you think that you were not, in some way, a p…

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EP 2.9 - Immediacy in Therapy: Breaking the Fourth Wall with Dr. K Hixson 1:05:07

1y ago1:05:07

1:05:07

Immediacy may seem like a stale topic, but I truly believe that it has the capacity to be the primary tool of magic in the therapeutic relationship. Immediacy is risky. Immediacy is counter-cultural. Immediacy is a disruption to our people-pleasing tendencies. Immediacy challenges us to stretch our tolerance for uncertainty. Immediacy is a key to u…

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EP 2.8 - Paradox, Love, and the Therapeutic Journey 30:41

1y ago30:41

30:41

Inspired by my conversation in the last episode with Dr. Andrea Celenza, today I want to talk about tolerating paradoxes and about love in the context of therapy. In our conversation and in her book, Sexual Boundary Violations, Dr. Celenza discusses the concept of the “multiple irreducible levels of reality in the therapeutic relationship.” None of…

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EP 2.7 - Let's Talk About Sex: A Humane Approach to Sexual Boundary Violations with Dr. Andrea Celenza 51:37

1y ago51:37

51:37

Sex with clients. It’s an interesting topic because it’s both very taboo and not at all polarizing. Many taboo topics are just that because discussion of them invites conflict. Sexual boundary transgressions aren’t like that. We can pretty much all agree that they’re wrong and bad. So then why is it so hard to talk about? I would argue that in this…

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EP 2.6: The Vulnerability of the Therapist as Client 24:13

1y ago24:13

24:13

Being in therapy as a therapist, and being a therapist for therapists, is a bit like magicians trying to entertain each other. We’ve studied the tricks and techniques. We’ve seen behind the curtain and we can’t pretend otherwise. There is enormous pressure for each of us to do our own work in therapy in order to be good clinicians for our clients, …

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EP 2.5: Behind the Scenes: When Therapists Become Clients with Dr. Elena Herrera 48:34

1y ago48:34

48:34

Why is it so hard to be in therapy as a therapist? Why is it so hard sometimes to be a therapist for other therapists? What happens when we sit down and try to play this game we play with each other? I’ve been wanting to do an episode on therapists as clients since I conceived of this show, so I’m excited to share my conversation with Dr. Elena Her…

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EP 2.4: What Happens When Our Clients Encounter Our Humanity? 32:59

1+ y ago32:59

32:59

Trauma therapists are often told that we have to prepare our clients for any and all disruptions to our schedules well in advance, to avoid causing harm to them or causing therapeutic rupture. But life happens. We have unexpected and unforeseen circumstances that mean that we may have to suddenly cancel sessions or rearrange our entire schedules ar…

1
EP 2.3: Normalizing Vulnerability: The Power of Authenticity in Client Relationships with Onyx Fujii and Asher Pandjiris 1:03:47

1+ y ago1:03:47

1:03:47

If you’ve been in this field for even a couple of hours or so, you have almost certainly had someone try to impress upon you the importance of self-care. Not usually in the context of your self being valued for its own sake, but self-care that enables you to show up effectively for your clients. On the face of it, there’s not much to disagree with …

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EP 2.2 Deep Play: Exploring the Therapeutic Playground 27:07

1+ y ago27:07

27:07

For the last few weeks, I’ve been reflecting on the conversation I shared with you in episode 2.1 with Silvana Espinoza Lau about therapeutic goal setting. And what I’ve realized is that when you set out to look at the topic of setting goals in therapy in anything more than a superficial light, you relatively quickly start running into the question…

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EP 2.1: Balancing Goals and Healing in Therapy: Navigating the Tension with Silvana Espinoza Lau 1:06:46

1+ y ago1:06:46

1:06:46

In the final episode of my last season, Therapists As Makers of Culture, I asked you to think about what kind of professional culture you want to leave behind for the next generation of therapists and clients. We have an opportunity, with a little luck and intention and skill, to change something important about the structures of how things have be…

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Ep 18 - Therapists as Makers of Culture 15:18

2y ago15:18

15:18

As I've been reflecting on the conversation Dr. K Hixson and I had about clinical supervision and reflecting on the past season of this podcast, I keep coming back to the piece we stumbled upon about clinical supervisors as culture makers, culture replicators, and culture changers. It feels very fitting that we got there because this podcast itself…

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Ep 17 - The Intimacy and Aliveness of Clinical Supervision with K Hixson 1:05:57

2y ago1:05:57

1:05:57

When you hear the phrase “clinical supervision” what do you think of? For me, the first thing that comes to mind is stacks of paperwork - or whatever the electronic version of that is. I think of the years-long slog of racking up hours while marching towards that finish line of professional legitimacy: licensure. It's not a very alive-sounding phra…

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Ep 16 - Marketing With Integrity 25:34

2y ago25:34

25:34

On episode 15, creative director and brand strategist Rachael Kay Albers said something that I have been turning over and over in my mind since: Marketing artificially accelerates the pace of human relationships. As soon as I heard her say that, something started to click for me about why therapists tend to dislike marketing, and it centers around …

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Ep 15 - Is Ethical Marketing Possible? with Rachael Kay Albers 1:17:19

2y ago1:17:19

1:17:19

Here in 2022, therapists have largely resigned ourselves to the fact that we need to do some kind of marketing. We have been dragged into the world of social media, user generated content, and the imperative of the personal brand. And the necessity of marketing ourselves comes with a lot of uncertainty, discomfort, and unease. How do we market ethi…

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Ep 14 - Growing Into the Light: In Memory of David Schnarch 27:49

2y ago27:49

27:49

Two years ago, on October 8, 2020, my teacher, David Schnarch died suddenly. Anyone who knew Dave even for a few moments, could see that he had an arresting presence. Tall and broad-shouldered with high contrast, salt and pepper hair, strong features, and an electric gaze that, when focused on you, elicited the distinct and disarming feeling that h…

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Ep 13 - Why is Subsequent Therapist Syndrome Common in Our Field? 27:37

2y ago27:37

27:37

In the last episode, Dr. Ofer Zur stated that he estimates at least 50% of board complaints in some way involve the subsequent therapist encouraging a client to initiate a complaint against a prior therapist. And most of these cases do not involve egregious misconduct or predatory behavior. Many of these cases result from misunderstandings, clients…

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Ep 12 - Subsequent Therapist Syndrome with Dr. Ofer Zur 46:08

2y ago46:08

46:08

Imagine you’re sitting in your office with a new client and the intake conversation turns to their previous therapist and they toss off a piece of information or a comment about something that their previous therapist did or said that really concerns you, maybe even alarms or disturbs you. How would you react? What would you do? If it occurred to y…

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Ep 11 - Anti-exposure Bias in Trauma Therapy 36:26

2y ago36:26

36:26

In episode 10, Allison Aosved and I discussed exposure therapy for trauma, and the anti-exposure bias that we are seeing in the field. Today, I want to dig a little deeper into the context of that conversation, the factors that are contributing to anti-exposure bias, and how opinion on theoretical orientation inevitably shifts and swings over time,…

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Ep 10 - Leave No Stone Unturned: The Healing Opportunity of Exposure Therapy with Allison Aosved 1:01:16

2y ago1:01:16

1:01:16

Trauma has become a huge buzzword over the past several years. In fact, I would say that trauma is having a moment. And because trauma is having a moment, there is a glut of people out there who are chomping at the bit to tell you what the best kind of treatment for your trauma is and what you should be looking for in a trauma therapist. And this h…

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Ep 09 - It's Complicated: Why We Become Therapists 27:23

2y ago27:23

27:23

Why do we become therapists? You wouldn’t necessarily think this is a spicy topic, but it is. Some therapists would say that we as therapists are just people who are unusually compassionate, empathetic, and giving, even selfless or altruistic. I don’t agree. I don't think we're more inherently compassionate or giving people than anybody else. Often…

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Ep 08 - Why We Become Therapists with Ben Fineman and Carrie Wiita 1:02:59

2y ago1:02:59

1:02:59

There are so many ways, so many careers we can choose where helping people is the central thing. And the type of helping that we are interested in and pursue says at least as much about us, if not more, than the fact that we want to help in general. Yet, if you ask a therapist why we decided to get into this field, the answer you're most likely to …

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Ep 07 - The Poison and The Cure: Expanding Our Understanding of the Wounded Healer 26:54

2y ago26:54

26:54

Therapists are tasked with being secret keepers. The first layer of secrecy seems easy and simple. Maintaining client confidentiality. You can probably recite the limits of confidentiality off the top of your head, and you probably do it regularly during intake sessions. Everything else goes in the vault. But the vault isn’t a what, it’s a who. The…

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Ep 06 - Carrying the Weight of Moral Injury with Dr. K Hixson 53:18

2+ y ago53:18

53:18

Moral injury. It’s a term that often evokes images of soldiers deep in the fog of war or perhaps of a surgeon in scrubs holding their head in their hands in the hallway of a hospital emergency department. A therapist sitting quietly in their office or in the cubicle of a community mental health agency’s open office plan isn’t really what pops into …

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Ep 05 - How Are You Doing? Building A Culture Of Support 25:05

2+ y ago25:05

25:05

As therapists, we know about the power of silence and how much someone is saying when they aren’t saying anything at all. And we know how silence around something big, like a client’s suicide attempt, sends the message that this is too big or too scary to talk about. But if we mostly all agree that therapists are responsible for doing their own sel…

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Ep 04 - Doing Our Own Work: Mental Health and Workplace Culture with Rebecca Ching, LMFT, PCC, Certified IFS Therapist 58:02

2+ y ago58:02

58:02

It’s something of a cliché that being a therapist comes with the obligation to do your own work. And it happens to be a cliché I agree with. And if you’re listening to this podcast, I’m guessing you do too. But what happens when the institutions and systems that train us, employ us, and regulate us act as barriers to actually doing that self-work? …

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Ep 03 - Uncharted Waters: The "Good Therapist" and Collective Trauma 22:02

2+ y ago22:02

22:02

The “good therapist” isn't necessarily the type of therapist you want to be. It's not the most actualized version of you as a therapist. It's not even necessarily a particularly effective therapist. The good therapist is about being seen as good and about being able to reassure ourselves that we are good when maybe we don't feel so sure. Maybe we b…

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Ep 02 - The Myth of the "Good Therapist" with Nancy Jane Smith 54:02

2+ y ago54:02

54:02

If you’re a therapist, even if you’re far from your practicum days, you can probably relate to the feeling of sitting in a session and being distracted by the thought of whether you’re living up to the standard of a good therapist. And you’ve probably had a moment where you’re sitting with a client or group and you heard something come out of your …

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Ep 01 - Why I Started A Therapist Can't Say That 16:34

2+ y ago16:34

16:34

I got the idea for this podcast in late 2019. I had been in the field for several years at that point. Long enough to work through the first wave of impostor syndrome, experience my first episode of burnout, bounce back from burnout, get high on the grandiosity when I realized I really was helping people and changing their lives, go through the sec…

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Introducing A Therapist Can't Say That 2:30

2+ y ago2:30

2:30

When you became a therapist, what did you think you were signing up for? Maybe grad school prepared you for the endless introspection, the awkward intake sessions, and the pile of unfinished notes that is somehow always waiting for you, even when you were pretty sure you just finished it. Maybe you weren’t too thrown by the onslaught of personal pr…

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