A panel of conservative therapists, including Pamela Garfield-Jaeger, Sarah Nielsen, Becky Shaulis, Mickey Heller.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the Reality Therapy Podcast, where the truth will set you free.
Welcome to the Reality Therapy Podcast. We have a great lineup of people today talking about what it's like to be a conservative or heterodox therapist in a field that is very progressive. And so I think we should start out with each of you introducing yourselves. Just say your name and like what your license is.
Pamela, you want to go first? Oh, go ahead. Go, Miki. I'm Miki Heller, licensed professional counselor in Texas.
Okay, I'll go next. My name is Pam Garfield Yeager, and I think I'm in the worst crowd. I'm a licensed clinical social worker.
Chapter 2: How do conservative therapists perceive political bias in their field?
Excuse me. I can't even say it, right? Maybe that's a sign.
I'm a licensed clinical social worker and I'm in Georgia. I'm Becky Shawless. I'm a licensed professional counselor also in Texas.
Hi, my name is Sarah Nielsen. I'm at LPC and I'm licensed and reside in Alabama. And then I'm licensed in Missouri, Kansas and New Hampshire as well.
Wow.
She's an overachiever.
So thank you all for coming today.
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Chapter 3: What challenges do conservative therapists face in their practice?
And, you know, kind of wanted to start off just what you notice of the field in terms of political bias. Like, do you see a political bias and what does that look like? Anybody can start off on this one.
Yes. And seen. Go ahead, Pam.
Well, OK, the truth is I'm no longer working in a, you know, in a setting and seeing people day to day to see what people are saying. So a lot of what I see is what's online. So I'll be a little bit honest and I'm not sure what people are saying in real life day to day.
What I see online is getting more and more radical in terms of just comments and everyday people and also the institutions and what they post. To me, that's where I look at and I say, if they're promoting those things, then clearly our field is still in the direction of leaning very, very left and not even considering other points of view.
Yeah, I'll kind of piggyback off of Pam.
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Chapter 4: How does the political climate affect therapy for clients?
I have my own private practice, and I work out of my home. I'm 100% telehealth, so I'm not in other practices and working with other clinicians, so I don't really see or hear a lot of the rigmarole in person. Again, like what Pam said, it's mostly online for me as well, which very radical, very disheartening, very scary what is coming to the clinical world.
And, you know, I think for me, the big part is we got to continue to support, you know, more of the conservative movement. right-leaning therapists to be more vocal and come out and speak out because some of the radical left clinicians are doing a lot of harm and doing a lot of damage. And I think it's got to start in the educational system. We got to start there.
And I think our boards need to really get a wake-up call of what a lot of the licensed professionals that are doing what they're doing and practicing how they're practicing. And it needs to be looked at very, very deeply because clients are getting lied to. They're getting, you know, with affirmative care, you know, it's causing more harm than good. And I think it's got to start
Chapter 5: What are the implications of gender-affirming care in therapy?
like I said, from the boards, the educational systems, and then there needs to be a lot of ethical, it needs to be looked at and kind of dissect with how some of the radical left clinicians are treating, and I use air quotes because in my opinion, they're not treating, they're harming what they're doing.
Again, I see it online more so than in real life because I'm in my home and working by myself. But it's definitely getting worse and it's causing a lot of problems.
I also work from home, Vicki, so in my own practice. But I have actually experienced it with clients who are expecting me to be more affirming.
than anything and when i confront something because that's how i i mean i don't i tell people that i will not pull punches like in our first session like if i feel like there's something that goes against what they're selling me they want to work on i'm going to tell them um and when you mean affirming you're not just talking about gender right because i that's what i mean everything yeah people like i have i have i have a couple of
ethical non-monogamous on my caseload. In other terms, that's polygamy. they want me to be affirming. They know how I feel. I just, we don't, you know, we talk about it as a relationship, but it's really difficult. Um, and then like you guys have said online, it's really interesting to me to be in the therapist groups.
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Chapter 6: How do therapists navigate differing political views with clients?
And I don't, I usually lurk. I don't, I was really excited to find the conservative one because now I have one I can actually talk in where I'm not going to get like beat up. Um, But, you know, where people are going off about some therapist not being affirming enough. And I'm thinking, but I take clients that I'm really uncomfortable with and I work with them.
And I do it from the lens of let's deal with your mental health stuff. We don't have to talk about the politics. We don't have to talk about whatever. Or we come at it from that perspective versus they're telling, you know, I'm seeing all over the place. I don't want to work with a Christian. I don't want to work with a conservative. I can't deal with that mindset, so on and so forth.
Chapter 7: What is the role of therapy in addressing societal issues?
And it's, I've been in the field for 25, so 14 years. And it was bad. And when I first got into the field, it's really bad now. Like just therapists just not being willing to hear somebody else has a different perspective.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Well, I like Mickey and Becky to earn private practice all online from home and have been for a few years. So my exposure is mostly online. However, you know, I moved to Alabama a few years ago. So I try to, you know, do as much networking as I can because my biggest part of my career came out of Missouri.
And I was at a meeting a few months ago, and some of the counselors at that meeting worked within the schools. And I don't really know a lot of the regulations of school counseling.
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Chapter 8: What key messages do conservative therapists want to convey?
I've never done it. I've worked with juveniles, but never in a school setting. And one thing that kind of struck me and I feel like it's kind of left leaning is they were, I would use the word complaining about the permission of kids minors for therapy and how that the kids should be able to submit to therapy at younger ages without the parents permission.
And not only does my moral compass go off with that, but as a parent, I'm just like, I would want to know if my kids were seeking therapy in school. I don't need to know the details, but I would want to know that they're in it and allow that. That's my choice as a parent. So that's kind of the experience that I've had.
So I'm from California and I actually testified against this bill. It's one of my viral moments. There was a bill called AB665 where it has passed. And not only in California are kids 12 and up able to seek their own therapy without any parental consent or involvement. Now they can actually go to residential treatment. without parental consent and involvement.
That passed and it went through in 2023. I think it passed in 2024. How does that work with payment? I'm not sure, honestly. I think a lot of it's sort of public dollars, Medi-Cal, you know, tax-funded stuff. I think a lot of it is trying to target kids who don't have insurance and just they want to kind of snatch up these kids. Mm-hmm.
I'm not sure how it's panning out there because I've moved since then and I haven't heard specifically, but that is one of the worst bills out there. I was a school counselor and we were allowed to see kids without parental consent. However, at this time when I was a school counselor, which was in 2014 through 2016 time, we worked really hard to get parental consent.
And when the parents said no, we almost always never work with them. And if we did, we did very short term. So maybe three or four sessions and then said, you know, off you go. We need your parents to be involved. But now it's a completely different situation.
And to me, that makes sense. If there's like an urgent situation, say my kids, something happened at school, there is urgent. They would need to talk to me. I'm totally fine with that. But just like you said, like on an ongoing basis, parental permission needs to happen. These are our children. So not not the schools.
They did rule that out in Texas, too, that parents have to opt in. It's not an opt out anymore. I can't remember what it is in Alabama.
It's 14 or 16. They were talking about it. I didn't catch it all.
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