A Therapist Can't Say That

Dr. Kae Hixson and I started a new podcast! I wanted to give you a peek into what we’re up to.Welcome to The Kiln, where postgraduate education meets brave, bold, and imperfect therapy.We’re here to shake up professional culture—to make …

Over the course of three seasons, we have talked plenty about trauma. And yet, somehow, I have never explicitly described or discussed the modality I use with clients, Mentalization-Based Narrative Exposure Therapy (MBNET).MBNET is a methodology that Dr. Kae Hixson …

As I’ve been trying to wrap up this season of the podcast, I’ve been reflecting, in particular on my conversations about psychiatric diagnosis with Dr. Awais Aftab and Dr. Miri Forbes.I keep coming back to this question: How do we …

Everyone who has a foot in the world of psychiatric diagnosis seems to agree that our diagnostic system could, at the very least, use some updating, if not burning it down and starting over.So how do we approach developing constructs …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …