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Episode Description
You lean in. You validate. You say, “That must be so hard.” Then the person on the other end of the couch says, “Hard for you? What about me?”
The skills that work so well with individual clients can fall apart in a couples session in about 10 seconds.
In this episode, Morgen Villegas and Ashley Charbonneau sit down with Dr. Laura Eubanks Gambrel, a certified Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) couples therapist, supervisor, and trainer with more than 20 years of clinical experience. Laura explains why couples therapy is not individual therapy with two people in the room, and why taking couples without training can harm clients.
You’ll hear:
What “catching bullets” means in EFT, and why a single sigh can restart an old fight
How to hold a firm, engaged container without telling couples what to do
Why even Sue Johnson, the founder of EFT, had “dentist days”
What makes a good supervisor, and why supervision should feel like a secure base
The broken system where clients with the highest needs get the newest, lowest-paid therapists
GUEST BIO:
Laura Eubanks Gambrel, PhD, LMHC (WA), LMFT (NC), LPC (CO), is a couples therapist, supervisor, researcher, author, and trainer with more than 20 years of clinical experience. She is a Certified Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist, an EFCT Supervisor-in-Training, an AAMFT Approved Supervisor, and a certified mindfulness instructor. She has supervised hundreds of therapists as a faculty member and in private practice. Dr. Gambrel meets clinicians at their learning edge, balancing support with challenge as they learn to trust the EFT process. Through her private practice, Relational Mindfulness - Therapy and Consultation, she offers therapy, supervision, and training in Bellingham, Washington, and virtually worldwide.
CHAPTERS
[00:00] Meet Laura Gambrel
[02:23] From Play Therapy to Couples
[04:37] Why Individual Skills Backfire
[07:10] Catching Bullets in Session
[10:47] Burnout and Dentist Days
[13:13] Why Couples Therapists Need Training
[22:17] What Makes Good Supervision
[28:16] Systems, Resistance, Closing
Transcript
Meet Laura Gambrel
Ashley C.: Let me know when you're ready, Morgan. Ready. Welcome back to The Art of Being a Therapist: The Space Between Training and Real Life. I'm Ashley, one of your hosts.
Morgen V.: And I'm Morgan, your other host. Today we have a really amazing guest, Laura Eubanks Gambrel. She's a therapist, supervisor, researcher, author, and trainer with over 20 years of clinical experience, and oh my gosh, we're gonna finally, finally talk about couples therapy.
She's a certified emotionally focused couples therapist and EFCT supervisor in training. She's grounded in experiential therapy, attachment science, and the transformative power of EFT. She's also an AAMFT-approved supervisor and a certified mindfulness instructor. And based on her experience supervising hundreds of therapists as a faculty member and in private practice, Dr. Gambrel brings a developmentally attuned approach that meets clinicians at their learning edge.
Supervisees value her ability to hold clinical complexity with compassion, balance support with challenge, integrate soulfulness with science, and offer clear guidance that builds confidence and competence in the vulnerable work of couples therapy, particularly in learning to trust the EFT process.
Dr. Gambrel has a private practice called Relational Mindfulness Therapy and Consultation, where she provides therapy, supervision, and training in person in Bellingham, Washington, and virtually around the world. And a bit of a fun fact is that Laura and I served together in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic.
It was 20 years ago that we were sent there, and so that's how we met each other. And through many conversations around psychology and therapy, we've really maintained a friendship that has spanned across different careers, different life transitions, including children. And I'm just really honored to have you here today, Laura.
Laura E.: Yay. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here, and I love talking about couples therapy.
Ashley C.: We're so excited to have you, and I can't wait to dive into couples therapy, mostly because it's something I'm like, "Oh, I could never do that." But one of my best friends is an LMFT as well, and so it's just interesting how we come from different perspectives, and I always learn something from her.
So I'm very excited to learn today as
From Play Therapy to Couples
Ashley C.: well. And before we get started on that specifically, can you tell us a bit about your career trajectory?
Laura E.: Oh, yeah, sure. So it's interesting, I hear from so many people, they're like, "Oh, couples, that's the thing I do not want to do." And I love it and how great it is that we all have our things that we love to do.
The things we don't love to do, we can find somebody else who does. So yeah, it's surprising to me that I ended up being a couples therapist, 'cause it was not where I started. So I got my master's from Naropa University, and was trained in contemplative psychotherapy, so mindfulness-based approaches, and I was trained as a play therapist, so my first early part of my work was working with kids and teens.
And I remember having a supervisor being like, "You need to have more parent meetings. You need to, like, be doing more family therapy and incorporating it." I was like no thank you. I'm very comfortable with the kids." Loved that. But then the more I did that work, I always talked about how I felt like I had this preventionist perspective.
Oh, I'm gonna work with, like, the kids and the teens before things get big and bad, right, and help them. And then the more I worked with the kids and the teens, the more I was like, "Nope, I really need to work with their parents." So I went on and got my PhD in marriage and family therapy from Virginia Tech, and then was a faculty member for 10 years, had a small private practice on the side, but taught for a long time, and then pandemic hit, and I think like a lot of people, had a bit of a existential/career crisis, and decided to move from North Carolina to here in Bellingham, Washington, leave my job, and now I'm in private practice.
So that's the very short career trajectory. I work a lot with couples. I see some individuals too, but my main focus is couples, and I do a lot of therapist training, teaching, and supervision. So I found a way to pair those passions in private practice, which is fun.
Ashley C.: I can't wait to dive into the supervision piece in a little bit here as well.
Why Individual Skills Backfire
Ashley C.: But for people who aren't super well-versed in couples therapy, what would you say is extremely important to know? Said another way, what do you wish all people who work with individuals k- know about couples or couples therapy specifically?
Laura E.: Oh. Oh, that's a big question. I probably have about 12 different answers to that question.
But the first thing that comes to mind is that I feel like a lot of You know, like, y- you are talking a lot about the training we get in grad school and in real life and what does it look like, and I feel like there's this, can be this big gap from individual to couples therapy in that the things we often learn to do as therapists with individuals will backfire and will not work with couples.
So our great validation and leaning in and being present and giving a lot of space will derail a couples session in 10 seconds, because you start talking to one person and you're like, "Oh, that must be so hard," but then their partner there is, "What are you talking about? It's hard for me." And so that sense of having to build your ability as a therapist to hold a container that holds both people and the relational space is very different than the energy I bring to most my individual sessions.
And I think that is something that's a skill I've had to really learn, 'cause it's not my natural way of being to be more strong and forceful, but I've just learned you have to be with couples, otherwise the cycle will just take over and smash everyone in the room. So holding that firm is really what can help it move in a new way.
So you're saying being more directive, less validating of one person, right? You're validating maybe of the relationship, but not of an individual person's- Mm-hmm ... experience. The way that you just explained that, I feel like I learned more in that 20-second clip than I did in my entire grad school training.
So I just really appreciate you saying that. It's just so powerful to have that tidbit as a individual therapist to know that's what my client is going into, and to be prepared for that, and to know that there's maybe more of a directive experience that they're gonna have
Catching Bullets in Session
Laura E.: to go through. Is there a s- frequent statement or some kind of anecdote that you can share with us, kind of a direct way that you are with folks?
The way that I have had to cultivate a lot of attunement to what is happening with both people and the energy between them i- is important, so that you're, like, tracking when s- when something's about to happen, and trying to catch it. In EFT we talk about catching bullets. They're real fast, right? And a bullet in a long-term relationship can just be a sigh or a look, and all of a sudden the other person is back in an experience from the past that was really painful.
And so direct doesn't mean- Telling them what to do. It's more like I'm holding a container, and what I always tell people is my role here in this room is to ensure that you do not hurt each other here in the room in the way that you hurt each other at home And I'm not gonna allow that to happen. So I'm gonna intervene.
I'm gonna say, "Wait. Stop. Slow down. Pause. Whoa!" Right? I can hear in EFT we love to do a lot of affect matching, which we don't often do in individual therapy, but it's like the sense of, "Oh my God, this is really big for you. I can see how big this is getting. Yes, it's big, and can we take a breath? Okay, this is a lot.
Let's slow down. Okay, I want to hear, I really want to hear what is so intense for you and so important, and I want you to be able to say it in a way that's different so that your partner can take it in. Ooh, partner, I can see already where this is coming up for you. Can you hold? Hold right here, 'cause I want to see what can be different.
You're here 'cause you want something new or different. Let me help you to have a connection and to have a different experience," right? So my directiveness is a lot of interrupting, a lot of softening, a lot of, "Oh, I see that this is painful, hard, infuriating. Ooh, this is coming from an important place, and I wanna get it, and you want your partner to get it.
Let me help you to do that." Or, and sometimes it's the other side, right? "Hmm, I can see something's going on for you, and you're slowing down, you're looking away. Where did you go? Can you come back? 'Cause I'm here. I'm here for you." I would like the word engagement maybe better than direct, 'cause direct to me has this directive, I'm gonna tell you, "Stop this.
Do this. This is what's better," and more it's like I'm right in here with you. I'm very engaged, very highly active in ways that I'm not in individual therapy, 'cause you can leave a lot of space, and people can find their way around. But if you leave that kind of space, not always but in, in more activated couples when they're first coming in, if you leave that kind of space, it will get filled in with their old patterns of reacting to each other.
Morgen V.: I mean, that just sounds so incredibly attuned, right, Laura? I don't even know the circumstances that you were feeling when you just gave that information, but I felt like some of the parts of me were like, oh my gosh, if I was in the room with my husband and someone was so engaged and so able to reflect, like, my patterns to me, that would feel so healing and so powerful.
And so you- Yeah ... do that multiple times a day is what you're
Burnout and Dentist Days
Morgen V.: saying. So it takes a lot of energy, right? And I think that's why I'm so passionate about therapist supervision and training for couples work, because if you don't have somebody in your corner, people get burned out. They get knocked down, and they don't wanna get back up, and I've seen that happen so many times.
Laura E.: I've been there. I have been a therapist for 20 years, and I have weeks where I'm like, "I don't know." I always tell my supervisees, I did this training with Sue Johnson, EFT founder, and she talked about this really hard couple she was working with, and she was like, "Why did I become a couples therapist? I should've been a dentist.
Being a dentist would've been so much better." And so I usually joke a lot with my supervisees, like, "I'm having a dentist day." If even Sue Johnson can have a dentist day, we can all have dentist days. We can normalize that. And that doesn't mean that we can't keep going and we can't keep showing up with the right kind of support.
There is always a need for more couples therapists, and that's because it takes, I think, a different kind of energy that can be really tiring, and it can be hard. What you were saying here, Morgan, about preparing your individual clients for couples therapy, what's so hard is I think also clients come in saying, "Oh, good, we're in therapy.
Now the therapist is really gonna see me and see how much I've been putting up with this jerk for 20 years." And I'm like, "Yeah, that's hard and painful, and your partner has their own pain, and I wanna see if you can see that. We're gonna look at what you're both contributing to this dynamic." And a lot of times people don't like that.
That's why people like AI. They want somebody to tell them sycophantically, "You're so great. Your perspective is so great. Your partner is so awful. I can see how great you are." I want people to be able to hold and see from me, "I see you. This is hard, and I'm with you, and there's something that needs to change here in terms of how you're interacting and being with your partner if you want your relationship to be different."
And that dual message can be really hard and painful for people to take in, especially if they're coming into couples therapy and, "Oh, good, this therapist is finally gonna tell my partner to be different." And I will, but I'm also gonna tell you to be different. People don't like that. That's a big part of my job, is holding that.
Yeah.
Why Couples Need Training
Ashley C.: I appreciate you naming that you need specific training to be a couples therapist, which seems intuitive for many of us. But I also want to name for our listeners, as a supervisor, I get all the time from supervisees, like, "Oh, I got this referral for couples therapy. I'm gonna take it." And I am the one to say, "First of all, I don't see couples.
I don't supervise to couples, and if you do not have training in couples, this is well outside your scope." And usually people aren't defensive about that, but they're like, "But why?" What is your answer to that, that maybe you can help me explain to other therapists or pre-licensed therapists or students why they should not work with couples when they've only worked with individuals?
Laura E.: It's not just individual therapy with two people in the room, and we can't use the same skills and interventions that we use individually for a couple because they won't work. We have to conceptualize, at least in EFT, right, there's a whole bunch of other models, a whole bunch of other ways. I'm also trained in Gottman and, sort of a general systemic approach through my PhD.
But as an MFT through and through, I really believe in looking at the systemic cycles and patterns between people, and that in order to do strong relational work, you have to have a strong relational conceptualization. And if you don't have training, background, and understanding of how to do that, it's very easy to do harm to one or both members of the couple or to the relationship.
And I have heard from so many clients who have had really negative experiences in couples therapy, where they have felt like it made things worse. I hear all kinds of stories like, "Oh, we went to this couples therapist, and she told us after two sessions our relationship wasn't gonna work and we should get divorced."
And I'm like, "Ugh," like number one, no one should be saying that. Know if really that's what the therapist said or not, I'm holding that loosely, but also somehow they got that message from something that was happening. It's very easy as a therapist if you're not trained to look at those dynamics, and if you haven't been in a long-term relationship yourself, I'm not saying everybody who is a solid couples therapist has to have that.
We all come from different backgrounds and learn, but it's very easy to take your own framework and view of what a healthy relationship is and say, "Oh, just do this to other people," and to over-pathologize protest behaviors or shut down or what happens to people in the negative cycle as a personality flaw, as a diagnostic characteristic, when really it's like, no, this is what happens.
This is how people respond when they're afraid of losing the person who means the most to them in their life. And so people can have very large, very intense behaviors inside of that kind of distress that are understandable, not pathological. And I think outside of that frame when you're used to just working with individuals, you will not see often that level of escalation, dysregulation, intensity when it's just you and an individual outside of people who maybe do have particular kinds of diagnoses or, more extreme intrapsychic concerns.
And so it's just very easy to inappropriately apply an individual lens to what's happening in the room, and when we do that, we can really leave people feeling this sense of either shame, "Oh, I'm bad or wrong and I shouldn't be in this relationship," or, "I can't be in a relationship," or, that blame, "Oh yeah, this is all my partner's fault and I don't have to do anything."
Or, "Oh, our relationship is wrong or bad or will never be fixed." That's devastating to people, so devastating, and that's a really big risk that you take if you enter into couples therapy if you don't have the, enough training and background.
Ashley C.: And it sounds like it's almost easy to feel pressured or convince yourself to see a couple when you shouldn't.
And I'm just thinking, I worked at a facility once where every month we had to, per policy, provide one family session a month to each of our youth clients and their families, and looking back- I understand the policy, but none of us were trained in family work. And so I think in an agency setting, I could see how it could very quickly come to a head between someone who doesn't have the experience and someone who's trying to run the agency feeling like they have to provide all these services.
In addition to some people who might be pre-licensed or even fully licensed, right? Who either are intentionally trying to expand their scope and don't know how to do it, or they get a random referral and it's like, "I don't know how I got this couple, but I'm gonna try it." And that's maybe something for people to explore and pause and slow down and seek explicit support with.
If not, refer out if they can.
Laura E.: Yeah. Yeah, and I think what you're pointing to is so right, Ashley, because that was my experience in community mental health and in my internship, is you work with who you're given and you do your best. And we could sit here and say it's not just couples therapy. Obviously, couples therapy is my specialty, so I have a...
It's very near and dear to my heart, but I'm sure you could have anybody on here who has a particular specialty, eating disorders, OCD, and people would say, "Don't do this treatment unless you have specialized training because you could harm people." That was my experience as a new therapist. I was put into the deep water, right?
And just said, "Good luck," and didn't have a lot of support. I was lucky to have some good colleagues. I was scrambling to get trainings here and didn't have a lot of money or extra time, and piecing things together, and that was really good for my training, and I think I did a disservice to some of my clients there, and that's hard on my heart sometimes to think about 15 years ago, 20 years ago, the kind of therapy I was doing versus the therapy I'm doing now.
Ashley C.: So wild to think about that. Yes. I have those moments at least once a month where- Yeah ... I'm like, "Oh, 14, 15 years ago, what was I doing?"
Laura E.: Yes, and so I guess I, I wanna have that tenderness for myself, but I also wanna hold that tenderness for the pre-licensed folks and the newly licensed folks. And in that early career part, you are doing the best you can do, and that's amazing, and you're probably being given way too much.
And you can't know everything and be an expert in everything, so we're doing our best. And if you're further along in your career, if you're in private practice, if you're in a group practice where you have a certain amount of autonomy and ability to choose your cases, please get specialized training in a lot of these areas where there is specialized training available because it will help you to help your clients.
And so I guess I'm, I'm feeling that need to wanna balance out, I know I have not always been a therapist who was certified in EFT and have 20 years of experience. I can think back to where I was and know that, yeah, I had to go through a learning process, and I wish that I could go back and redo some of those things that I can't.
And so if you're in the middle of that right now, we're holding you tenderly, and know that you're doing your best and that's the best you can do, and you can't manufacture 15 years of experience. The only way to do it is to go through it, and so get the best support you can. That's... and know that it's gonna be hard, and eventually you will get to a place where you feel good and confident about yourself and your work.
I definitely was not there when I graduated, so it took me many years to, to be able to have that kind of solidity in my seat as a therapist.
Ashley C.: And I think a lot of people are like, "I wanna be an expert. I wanna be good. I wanna be the best I can be." And reflecting back, I understand that, and be patient. Well, I don't wanna be patient.
I wanna learn. And sometimes learning unfolds over months or years, and there's no way to rush that.
What Makes Good Supervision
Ashley C.: I'm curious, speaking of supervision, what do you think makes a good supervisor?
Laura E.: We have, in general, done newer therapists a disservice in the way the therapy field has developed into this sense of evidence-based practice and all these niche trainings, where I just see so many people in grad school and new therapists being like, "I have to be an expert.
I have to get EMDR certified. I need to get EFT trained. I need to do all these trainings, all these things." There's an element of that comes from such a wonderful, great place, and it's true. It's great to get specialized training, and there's a certain amount of Like you're saying, the training to be a good therapist just comes from putting in the hours.
So just wanting to recognize a lot of that is pressure that new therapists, I think, are feeling from the outside, and then they have to feel like they have to catch up. That's hard. Then your second piece about being a good supervisor, I guess big picture, my big picture answer is similar to, I think, what makes a good therapist, which is that you have a clear idea of your conceptualization of the developmental process of a clinician, of a therapist, of a supervisee, and the things that you're doing in session align with that larger conceptualization.
And so what that means is I have this view that I really feel like who we are in the room with our clients is the most important thing, and the more congruent we can be in terms of how we show up, the better we will be able to serve our clients. And so my goal in supervision then is to help the therapist find their most congruent and authentic selves.
And if they can do that and show up in that way, I trust that the tools, the strategies and interventions that are also important to learn, that they will come and that they will land. And so what I'm doing then in supervision is really focused on helping people to ground into that secure place inside.
Some of that is relationally through me as a proxy attachment figure, right? Me being there, supporting people, joining with them through the hard work of being a therapist. Sometimes it's giving people difficult feedback so that they can reflect. Sometimes it's learning, teaching skills. Sometimes it's role-playing.
But whatever I'm choosing there is towards this overarching goal, right? And that I'm being intentional and thoughtful about how I'm responding to a supervisee based on where they are in their developmental journey. And that I'm tracking. I have a solid assessment, right? It looks different with supervisees than with clients, but I have a solid assessment of how they're doing in different domains, where they need to grow and learn, those kinds of things.
And so I think that kind of thoughtfulness and intentionality is really important. And a lot of, you know, just like we're talking about with couples therapy, I think a lot of people become supervisors without specific training in supervision. They're like, "Oh, I've been a therapist for two years or five years, now I'll be a supervisor."
And maybe you have a lot of helpful experience and clinical insight to share. That in and of itself is not supervision. That's just sharing your advice and thoughts and experience. Supervision, for it to be solid and good, is a tangible goal-directed process just like therapy when it's good. We're not just showing up talking about cases, just like with my clients.
They're not just showing up talking about their feelings or their week. Maybe that's what they feel like they're doing, but I might be doing something else back here, right, and I'm being very intentional. But I have a conceptualization and I'm working on that in the moment, linking those things together.
Ashley C.: And I love this attachment lens or relational lens. I, I think you used the word relational. I describe supervision as from an attachment lens as well. I want to be your secure base so that you can go out into the world, into your career, and try new things, and learn and grow. And sometimes it's not about the outcome.
Sometimes it's about the experience and then coming back to the se- secure base and reflecting and processing and even critiquing collaboratively what that experience was like and what met your expectations and what didn't. And I also appreciate you naming you're very intentional, and you're tracking, and you're watching, and you're monitoring.
Laura E.: That's what allows us to take risks, and therapy is nothing but a risk-taking endeavor to get more and more grounded in, I think, trusting our own instincts.
Morgen V.: Yeah, and I just, I think what you're speaking to though is essentially a prevention of supervision related trauma, right? Like the way that you come prepared, the way that you hold space, the way that you're describing how you are as a supervisor will increase the security, will increase the likelihood that someone may have longevity and sustainability in this profession.
When it's just like aimless, just check in, let's do administrative tasks, a lot of supervisors are in dual roles as like a clinical and agency supervisor, and so if people feel like they can't really bring their true selves, they can't bring that congruence that you're talking about, right, because they might not feel safe, it just feels like there is a sense of safety that really is the main point of all of it, where someone can discuss really hard things and not feel like they have to censor themselves, and they can really learn from it.
They can have a place to process through, and even grieve or even feel sad or upset or whatever it
Systems, Resistance, Closing
Morgen V.: is. We're touching on a lot of systemic problems, lack of training. There's just a privilege in seeking further training if you want to deepen into couples work or trauma work or whatever it is, right? How do you hold that?
How do you share that information with either your supervisees or your students? I mean, we talk about that a lot here, like pretty upfront, just that there's like it's this whole industrial complex that we're a part of, and we really need to be very intentional about our practice and to keep it ethical and our own integrity intact.
I'm just curious about your process with that, just how hard it is to be a part of it sometimes.
Laura E.: It is so hard. If I think back to when I first graduated and was working in community mental health, I had a lovely supervisor who's a great person, and she was stressed. She was overwhelmed. We're all overwhelmed by crises in so many cases.
I had 65 kids in crisis on my caseload. I'm doing all this case management. I saw her an hour a week, and half of that was administrative. I didn't even know enough to know what to ask for or what I was or wasn't getting. And I remember when I started my doc program and one of the first supervision sessions, she's like, "Okay, I want you to set your goals for supervision and our work together."
It wasn't even on my radar. And I think that when you're in particular systems that necessitate you are focused on survival, I was making $15 an hour, I didn't have money and time to, or emotional energy to be exploring trainings or who I really thought I could be as a therapist. And also, I think I was doing, in some ways, great play therapy work, right?
I was showing up and being present with these kiddos in tough places. So clients who have the highest needs with the therapists who have the least training, who are under the most amount of stress, and who are making the least amount of money. I could have some big ideas about it, the, but the main thing to say is this is not fair.
It's not fair to the clients, it's not fair to the therapists, it's not fair to the supervisors in the system. The whole system is not set up to provide care. And so I wanna circle back to that because this is the theme that keeps coming up. Our pocket of resistance is essentially to form a private practice and become private pay, right?
There are so many ways that systems are set up that fail people, and I think I've always had this struggle of how much do I want to work within the system? How much do I wanna work outside of it? How much do I wanna say, "Screw all that, I'm just gonna do my own thing and take care of myself and my family," honestly, right?
And a big part of my process related to COVID was like, I can't be in this university system anymore. The amount I was being paid for the amount of work that I was doing is outrageous. So that's another system, higher ed. But it's important because of that's where therapists are being trained, right? The answer is something way bigger than I personally can influence, right?
One month into being a therapist, just starting out working with the most brutal, intense situations that any human ever encounters, right? And it takes a toll. And so I do think that there's a way where- That there's room for a lot of diversity of voices, and I do think there is a place, and I really hope and want there to be people working within those systems towards change who are being vocal about it, who are talking about it.
I want all of those clients to get good care. And I also want there to be other therapists like me in private practice who are saying part of our resistance is saying that just because we're therapists and we have a heart for this work and we care, doesn't mean that in a capitalist system we shouldn't be able to make money and a living, right?
After COVID, as a society, we didn't wake up and say, "Oh, teachers are essential to the fabric of our entire society. Maybe we should start paying them more and holding them in high regard." And that didn't happen. How did that not happen? And so I think there is a radicalness being able to say, "No, like we deserve to be able to make a living as therapists."
And that doesn't contradict my deep care for my clients, which is true and genuine. And if I was making less money, it's not like I would care less about my clients. So we can hold those things together.
Ashley C.: And it's so hard. It's painful to radically accept that all the time, and it takes a lot of effort for me to do that self-work every day.
But similar to you, right, do you burn the system down from within or do you burn the system down from the outside? And I also have hope that my students and my supervisees will have radical ideas. And to me, that is resistance as well.
Morgen V.: There was just so much joy that I could sense as you're describing your couples work.
Perhaps that resistance, even in a microcosmic way, that has a deep impact in our universe, right? That you're supporting people in their healing process. You're supporting them in understanding and showing up for each other. Any final thoughts before we close? I know we're ending on more of an existential topic.
Laura E.: Yeah. I mean, all of our work as therapists, if it's grounded in genuine human care and connection, is resisting some of what's happening in society, right? So th- there is something really deep and meaningful about our work. And so regardless of all these systems, we can still make a tangible impact in our work every day, every hour, and that's something that sustains me.
Morgen V.: Thank you so much, Laura. This has been very eye-opening, really insightful. Please share this episode with someone who might enjoy it, and be sure to like, follow, or subscribe to the podcast. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other
