5 Ways To Spot A Clueless Therapist

Cassie 0:00
Here at a Touch of Flavor, we teach non monogamous folks how to overcome their obstacles and build thriving relationships.

Josh 0:10
This podcast is about answering one question, how do you create loving, passionate, secure relationships outside the box, even if nothing has ever worked before, if you want to know the answer, you're in the right place.

Cassie 0:39
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Josh 0:44
Hello, hello, everybody, it is so awesome to see you always love getting on here to talk to you folks. It gets like fired up. Right? I wanted to hop on today I want to talk about something, might be some stuff in here this little controversial-- don't care, right? Because I want to talk about five ways to spot a clueless therapist. And this is why this is so important. Right? Every day, Cassie and I talk to folks who have been through couples therapy trying to fix the relationship they go, they're in a rough spot, they're looking for help, they need to be pulled out of the fire, right? And they go looking for therapists because they want help, right? They want help, they want to turn things around, they want to get things back to a place where they're awesome. They know that they're headed in a bad direction. They're arguing they're fighting, they're not in love, like they can see things heading for the brink. Maybe somebody's talking about leaving, maybe it's been brought up, maybe they're separated, maybe people have separated at some point to come back. Maybe they know they don't have long, right? Maybe they're they're, you know, going into non mongamy. You know, they're running into all kinds of problems and issues and, you know, just whatever. Right? And so they go and they look for help, and they go out and they find somebody and they find a therapist, because you know, therapists are who you go see. And you know, and this is somebody somebody around them, somebody local that somebody they found on the internet, you know, that's close by or you know, through their insurance. Or maybe they have a friend of a friend who went and saw this person. And they go in, they see this person, right? And they come out the other side of therapy with things worse than ever. Right? This is this, and this is what you need to understand about this. This is why this is so important. Right? First off relationships, they're either getting better or they're getting worse, right? So if you go you see somebody or you don't see somebody doesn't matter, but you're not fixing the problem. Things are getting worse in your relationship and they're headed downhill our relationships are never stagnant. We talked about this idea of relationship inertia, right? Our relationships are always either moving in a positive direction, or they're moving down. So if you're not fixing these problems, right, your relationship is getting worse. But that isn't the biggest problem. The biggest problem and this is what you really need to understand you really need to internalize so you can avoid the fate of so many people that we see and we talk to is that the wrong help is worse than no help. Okay, I'm gonna say it again, the wrong help is worse than no help at all.

Josh 3:30
And you may be wondering, like, what are you talking about? I mean, you go, you get help. And I want to be really clear, this isn't any anything saying poorly, badly reflecting on you, as a person as a couple as a group going and trying to get help, right, you're doing it because you care. Because you want to turn things around. You want to build the relationship that you want. But that's why this is such a shame. Because again, when you go and you get the wrong help and the wrong advice, you can torpedo your relationship way faster than you would have if you just let things keep going the way that they're going. And that is a shame, and that is heartbreaking when it happens. So I want to save you from that and save you from what we see all the time in these situations. Right. So I want to tell you five ways to spot a clueless therapist. And if you are somebody who's in the spot of looking for help pay really close attention to this because this is going to be absolutely critical. Okay. First thing to look for. This person is a generalist, right? I mean, they treat everything, they do relationships, they do addiction. They do PTSD, they do depression, they treat ADHD. They treat eating disorders. Right. There is a lot of truth to the phrase, jack of all trades, master of none, and what you need to understand is that dealing with relationships is specialized, right? When you're working. And y'all know if you've listened to us, like, we're actually big fans of therapy in general, for a lot of things, right. But couples, you know, when you when you're trying to fix a relationship, you have multiple people at play here, right? Their specific sets of problems. And you know, and honestly, regardless of whether it was relationships or not, I'm always, you always get much better results, seeing somebody who specializes in whatever your problem is, whether that is depression, or eating disorders, or anxiety or whatever, right. But when you're talking about relationships, it becomes doubly so because you run into a specific set of challenges with relationships, right, and people who are generalists, and I'm not saying they're not great human beings, maybe they are, right, but they're going to be clueless about how to deal with relationships, and the problems that come up, right, so you need to pay very close attention to that. If you go and you're looking at somebody and you're looking at their profile, you're looking them up, right, and they have this whole laundry list of things that they treat, that aren't related to relationship, you're looking at the wrong person, you need to go somewhere else. Flat out, like do not pass go do not collect $200 go look somewhere else. Right? Because you need somebody who's dealing with this all day, every day, these problems gonna give you the best advice when it comes to stuff inside of your relationships. You're not here to solve your eating disorder. Right? So step one, are they a generalist? No, go. Step two, someone who is poly friendly or poly affirming. Okay. And I want to draw a really hard line here on this, because I actually think in some circumstances, it's great when somebody identifies as poly friendly or poly affirming, right? If you're going to deal with somebody because you want to treat your ADHD I just talked about ADHD recently. Right? And you're non monogamous. And you want to be able to talk about all the areas of your life without reservation, having somebody who is poly friendly, poly affirming whatever, is awesome. Right? Here's the problem. When you're talking about your relationship, and somebody says that they are poly friendly or poly affirming. What that means is I'm not polyamorous in 99% of cases, maybe there's 1%, right? I'm not polyamorous, right? I don't specialize in dealing with these problems. I'm just friendly. So if you come into my office, right, and you're talking to me about your relationships, and the stuff that's going on, I don't know not gonna have any clue about the non monogamy, but I'm not gonna judge you for it. Right? But this doesn't work. Because when you are non monogamous, and here's the thing, there are a lot of challenges that non monogamous folks run into connection, arguing communication, time management, right? That are challenges that monogamous people have. But non monogamy spreads into everything in our relationships.

Josh 8:19
Right? It impacts our communication, it impacts the things that we're talking about. Right? It impacts our connection. It impacts our time management, it impacts the agreements that we have in our household, right? It impacts us handling responsibilities, impacts are parenting. And when you're going to someone, and they are poly friendly, poly affirming, they don't actually understand the challenges that you're facing and how to fix them. They haven't lived through them. They don't spend their days helping people solve those problems. They're completely unequipped to handle where you're at. And they're going to wind up giving you advice. Not intentionally, right? But that might be the right advice in a monogamous relationship is going to be the wrong advice for you, and it's going to make things worse, you should not even be considering if you are non monogamous, you should not even be considering going to somebody who does not specialize in working with non monogamous folks. Right, who isn't non monogamous themselves. So they actually have lived the experiences in their lives and gone through these challenges. And who does not help people solve these challenges every day? Because they do not know the answers to your questions. And they're going to give them if you go and you're talking to them, right? They're going to give them from the frame of reference from the knowledge that they have. And you're not going to know if it's the right answer. You're not going to know if it's the wrong answer and you're going to find out when something goes wrong and blows up Because again, even though even when non monogamy isn't the problem that you're going to address, when you are non monogamous, that weaves into every other area of your relationship, and I've seen so many people who have had stuff blown up by poly friendly poly affirming, well, meaning couples therapists who have just not known the right advice to give hard no go hard pass, go find somebody else, right? Third thing, what about this in the middle, because it's the least important, right?

Josh 10:38
There a way to spot a clueless therapist. And the reason this is the least important is because it's might not be the way to spot a clueless therapist. So the way to spot them, clueless or mediocre therapist, someone who takes insurance? And you may be a little taken aback by this, like, Don't all therapists take insurance? And the answer is no. Something that people who live and work in this space of relationships, and actually even mental health in general, a lot of areas of mental health, it gets kind of specific, but let's keep it to relationships, because that's what I know. Right? They know that the therapists who are really awesome at what they do, don't take insurance. Why don't they take insurance because they don't need to, they don't need the insurance companies to send them clients because they're too in demand. They don't want to go through insurance, because the insurance isn't going to pay them what they're worth. Because people are willing to pay them because they're really good at what they do. So they don't need to go through insurance. And because of all of that, they don't need to go through the overhead of having a person in their office who they're paying to deal with insurance all day long. Right? So the really awesome therapists either don't take insurance, or occasionally don't take insurance for the highest level work that they do for the really transformational work. Right. So, and again, I understand that this is probably blowing your mind, like you're probably under the impression that all therapists take insurance. But again, this is this is kind of like, common knowledge when you work in this in this space. Right? The truly good therapist will not take insurance. And here's the thing. And I said, this isn't necessarily clueless, this is clueless, or maybe it's just mediocre. But again, I want you to run away from mediocre. And this is why that's so important. And listen, we all have things areas in our lives where we have to decide where do we settle? Where do we not, right? We're all working with limited resources, limited money, limited time, limited energy, and we all have to decide where we invest and where we settle. Right? None of us are able to, you know, move the needle to the maximum and everything in life. Right? Doesn't matter where you're at in life. So with that being said, We're all making these decisions, right? When your relationship, your family, your happiness is on the line, that is not the place to settle. It's not, it's too important. You're talking about keeping your partner in your life when you're talking about the choice between going through a life that you love, where you're able to be yourself and everybody relationship able to be happy, or life where you're living miserable and refraction yourself and your partner hurting each other. When you're talking about losing this person that you love, or your kids living in two separate houses, you're not getting to see them every day, or just not truly being able to be who you are. It's not the place to settle. Right? So third way to spot a therapist that you should stay away from. Somebody takes insurance, right when it comes to relationships. You can't settle. Right? That's the least important piece but I wanted to include it because I realized that most people don't understand that or know that. Right.

Josh 14:48
Fourth piece. One of my pet peeves. Fourth Way to spot a clueless therapist is in how long they tell you it is going to take To fix the problem. This drives me nuts. I can't tell you how many people I talked to. Most couples therapists, when you go to them will tell you, you know, to expect it to take months or years to fix the problems that are going on here. Right? And this isn't something to take my word for when you're talking to a therapist, ask them, ask them, How long is it going to take to fix these problems? If we have been disconnected and lonely? And feeling like roommates and arguing for the last four years? How long? Here's what's going on ABCDE? F? How long is it going to take to fix these problems? You should expect an answer. And if they can't answer, or if that answer is months, or years, you found the sign. Because it does not take that long to turn a relationship around when we work with clients. We take people from the brink of breakup brink of divorce, like people couldn't imagine making it another few months to loving and secure, it does not take forever. And in fact, it's actually harder to do, the longer you take to fix relationship, the less likely it becomes that you're actually going to fix it. Because you backtrack faster than you make progress at the end of the day. Right? If it's taking you seven, eight months to fix the relationship in between your sessions, that means you're backtracking so far that you are backtracking more than you're gaining. Right. So if somebody's telling you, it's going to take months to fix your relationships, that is your sign. And here's the second piece. And this is what really truly blows my mind. The other thing to keep in mind when somebody's telling you how long is going to take to fix relationships? How much longer does your relationship have? Does your relationship have a year? Does it have nine months? Does it have six months? Is is the critical point the breaking point. Now? How long do you have? It blows my mind? Right. And again, Iraqis is not people's fault. It's just how we're taught to think about this stuff. Right? The people who I see who will know that their relationship, right, like somebody's getting a point where they can't do this anymore. And they've got like three months to fix this. And they'll go to a therapist, who tells him it's going to take them seven months. If it's over, they just want to ask how long? Pretty obvious what happens next, right. So that's the fourth sign. Here's the fifth sign. Right? The fifth way to spot a clueless therapist is really simple. Do they have testimonials? Right, the absence of testimonials? is a sign that you should be running away from. And you might be saying, well, I don't know. Can therapists have testimonials? Can they not? It depends on who you ask. But here's the thing. Right? The problem is this, if somebody that you're talking to has no testimonials, you have no fucking idea if they're good or not, and your relationships are too important to gamble on. Right? And let me just talk about testimonials for a minute because this is the truth of the matter. And this is what everybody misses. Right? People talk to sometimes about our qualifications. I've talked about all the training we've had, how long we've been doing this where we've taught, right, you know, that we've you know, we've spent like $50,000 in training last year that you know, we've trained with some of the best coaches in the world who worked with like fortune 500 companies and you know, like fortune 500 CEOs and like, you know, like all this stuff, I can tell you all this stuff it but it doesn't matter. Right? Because at the end of the day, qualifications are cool. But the only question that you should really be thinking about because you don't care about where somebody went to school, or how long they've been doing this or whatever. What you care about, is can this person fix your relationship? Can this person get you from arguing and fighting? To back to love him this person gets you from feeling disconnected and feeling like roommates to having that passion and excitement and connection that you did when you first got together can this person navigate you through this transition to non monogamy? That's where you're at. Right? Can this person help you get out of the fear and anxiety around your relationship? Get back that security. That's what you care about. Right? And then I think you know, that is by looking at other people who this person has helped make the same transition, right. And so when you're looking at testimonials, this is what's so important understand this, what you need to look for, right? Because I see super sketch testimonials all the time. Especially the more that like we get into Internet stuff. And the more that people realize how important testimonials are, and that at the end of the day, what people really do care about is other people have had these changes, right?

Josh 20:38
So this is what you need to look for with testimonials. Right? So number one, again, they don't have them by leave. Why are you gonna gamble on somebody who you don't know can help you? Right? If there are testimonials, what do you want to look for? To make sure that stuff's legit, first most important piece, because the most important, but first important piece, right? Are these people who this versus how are they people like you? We talked earlier about the importance, you know, the difference between people who specialize and non monogamy and people who don't? Right? So, you know, this person has testimonials, great. How many of them are non monogamous? How many of them were in the situation that you're in? How many of them came through and got the results that you want? Are there any? Are there lots you need to know. Second thing that is really important is and this where I was talking about sketch testimonials. I hope this goes without saying. But don't believe everything that you read on the internet, but I can on somebody's website, and I don't care if it is. I don't care if it's if it's you know, like a professional, that I'm looking for help with something. Or if it's buying a frickin toaster, right? Whatever. You don't just automatically believe everything you see online just because it's there. Right, which again, I hope goes without saying that people do this all the time. So often, you'll get on people's websites, and they'll have these testimonials, right? And there'll be like these words about how awesome this person is. Right? And, you know, like, be just like these written these written things. Maybe there's like a photo or two and photos a little suspect, like, you know, the little stock, right? Like maybe you're there's really real photos. And sometimes if you're like me, you may resonate with like, you're reading some of these things, you get this feeling in your gut like this, this? This sounds exactly like a commercial. This this almost sounds like what a testimonial would sound like if this person wrote it themselves, then you go on to the next one. And it's the same kind of thing. Right? Like, Why does every one of these testimonials sound like an infomercial? I don't understand. Right? So I can keep going on here. But here's the important base, right? Don't believe everything that you read on the internet. Okay. And you know, I'm talking about like those gut feelings, right? And and, you know, like, you probably have those before. But what I'm actually saying is you want to be to start with, it's not about your gut feelings. Right? Yet just yet need something more solid than a few words on somebody's website. So what does this look like? Well, there's kind of two things, right. I love video, testimonials. video testimonials are fantastic. Especially if somebody has a number of them. I mean, could somebody I guess, hire actors to do every single video testimony? If there's one, maybe there's two questionable, you've got a whole bunch of video testimonials are real people. Yeah. Right. So I love video, testimonials, video. Testimonials are great. The other thing though, because you know, especially in the non monogamous space, not everybody is willing to have their phase. And when you talk about relationships, right, not everybody is willing to have their face on film, I can actually tell you from personal experience, right, that when you're talking about like video, testimonials, you look at ours, right? And we have a number of video testimonials. And you're kind of scratching the surface because these are just the people that were willing to you know, put their face on camera and say, Hey, I'm monogamous and go pay that live on Facebook, all the places we post these things, right. So the other thing though, that you can look at, is that there's plenty of sites now that provide very certified third party testimonials, right? Where it's not the company like it's not like us, okay, us, for example, right? We're like, we have no control over the testimonials, right? Like, we have to send links to everybody that we work with. And they track that. Right? And then people go in and write their own reviews. Right, and we have no ability to edit them or control them in any way. Right? And there's there's few services like that Trustpilot trust radius, a few things, right. You've probably seen them around. But that's what you want to look for. Right? So number one, do they have testimonials? If no, like I said, Ron, like why? Why are you gonna gamble your life on somebody you don't know can help you with your problems. But if you see testimonials, what do you want to look for? Number one, like I said, Are these people like me? Are they not monogamous? Where are they facing the challenges that I'm facing? Did they get to where I want to go? Right? And second, don't believe everything you see on the internet? Look, look at look for verified reviews on a third party site or look for video reviews. Right? Audio reviews, like just just don't believe everything you see on the internet, right? But again, so five ways to spot a clueless therapist. And again, please pay attention to this, please. Because again, getting and I'm just I'm saying it's cuz I'm so tired of seeing it. Right. Getting the wrong help, is worse than getting no help at all. Five Signs. Number one. They're generalists. You look them up, they treat everything. Everything under the sun, they do. Number two, they are a couples therapist. So that's what we're talking about here. Right? Or a relationship therapist. Let's say that, right? Who is poly friendly, poly affirming. Not actually polyamorous themselves doesn't actually specialize in helping non monogamous people like you. Right?

Josh 27:11
Not saying they're clueless, in general, but they're clueless about where you're at and what you need, right? Second thing. Third, they take insurance. It's just an unfortunate truth. The best therapists don't take insurance and your relationship too important, your family's too important to settle for mediocre. Fourth, fourth, right. They say it's going to take months or years to fix problems, or they won't answer the question. Right, and again, keep in mind with that, the length of time that they're saying, compared to the length of time your relationship has. And understand that a lot of times that straw breaks the camel's back, it's not obvious, right? And then lastly, they don't have testimonials. They don't have stories, where they don't have stories of people like you. Or they have stories, as my kid would say, got a 17 year old, or kind of sauce, right? Like little sketch, right? You can't verify him, you know, just texting our website. Those are the things you need to be looking for. Okay? And I don't want you to give up. Right, I know, you can hear all these things, you can be like, this is a hell of a hell of a bar to cross. Like, I'm supposed to find somebody who specializes in relationships and specializes in non monogamy helping folks through those challenges and can, you know, fix my problems fast enough and has stories and proof from other people who they've helped before? It's a tall order. Right? And obviously, I'm going to tell you that we have all those things, of course, right. But you know, listen, I honestly at this point in this conversation, I don't care if it's us, don't settle, find somebody who meets his criteria, even if it's not us. Right, because I know we're the best at what we do. But with that being said, even if you're going to go somewhere else, I would much rather you find somebody who stands like a snowball's chance in hell of helping you. I don't think I use that analogy. Right. Right. But I'd rather you find somebody who actually has a chance of helping you At least a chance. And if you're looking at these five things, and you have somebody who's not who's who's popping up for one of those signs, they're not going to be able to help you through it. Right? So here's the thing, like I said, find somebody and this isn't a call to give up. And this isn't this isn't that like, you're wrong for looking for help. Right. And I always like to clarify this. Because when you go in, you're looking for therapy, that's you're reaching out for help, right? That that's you caring about your Alicia, that's you standing up, that's you being willing to do the work. And that is awesome. But it's because that's so awesome that you deserve an actual like chance to come from that. So don't settle. Right? Find people who can help you. And like I said, we do this every day. We help people through this all the time, right? We have testimonials live or go to go to attach flavor.com forward slash stories, right? or look us up on Trustpilot like, but don't settle. And if you would like to talk to us, and see if we might be able to help you. And what we do would be a good fit. Right and you're not willing to settle in your relationships reach out, go to a touch flavor.com forward slash talk, right book a free call, one of us will get on the phone with you, we'll chat with you. We've got the experience to tell you if your relationship is actually recoverable or not from, where it's at, and what steps it would take to get there. And we'll do that and we'll walk you through it. All right. But whatever you do, do not settle. Because again, while your intentions behind it, and looking for help are amazing. And while To be honest, the intentions of the people that you're going to for help are probably amazing. Though worst, or the or the wrong advice is worse than getting no help at all the wrong help is worse than getting no help at all. All right. We love you all. Which sometimes White comes out in a bit more of a hyper tone. Because we get tired of seeing people hurt and tired of seeing them suffer and their relationships suffer and seeing people lose opportunities that they didn't need to lose, and seeing things get worse than they didn't need to get worse. Right. But we love you all. We're here. Like I said, if you want to chat chat with us about what we do and how we can help go to Touch play rock comm forward slash talk. Don't sell in your relationships. And we'll talk to you again soon.

Josh 33:00
Thanks for tuning into today's show, we release new episodes every week, so make sure to subscribe.

Cassie 33:07
If you're ready to transform your relationship and you'd like to see if you're a fit to work with us here's what I want you to do next, head over to atouchofflavor.com/talk and book an appointment to speak with our team we'll get on the phone with you for about an hour. And we'll get you crystal clear on three things. What's really not working in your relationships, what your dream relationships would look like and a step by step plan to close the gap and save your family even if nothing has worked before.

Josh 33:34
We talk with hundreds of non monogamous folks like you every year. And here's the truth, building loving, thriving relationships that doesn't happen on its own. You need expert guidance to make that happen. And unfortunately, when you are building relationships outside the box, that's impossible to find and we get it but that's exactly what we do. We've helped clients all over the world, save their families get the passion back and become best friends again.

Cassie 33:58
So if you want to see if we can help you do the same head over to atouchofflavor.com/talk. I'm Cassie.

Josh 34:06
And I'm Josh. Let's talk soon.