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Episode Description
Tell most therapists you love couples work and they look at you like a deer in headlights. Maury Holliman, LMFT, finds it easier than individual therapy. And she can tell you exactly why.
In this episode of The Art of Being a Therapist, Ashley Charbonneau and Morgen Villegas sit down with Maury. She’s a certified Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) couples therapist and an EFT supervisor candidate. Ashley has known her since 2012, so the stories run deep (they promised to be selective).
Maury talks about leaving Alabama for a Craigslist house in Denver and burning out in day treatment. She also shares why she picked an MFT program over social work, even though it meant lower pay. Then she walks through EFT in action. She explains how attachment science helps anxious pursuers slow down and avoidant withdrawers lean in. She also shares why she calls them protective mechanisms, not defense mechanisms.
You’ll also hear how to vet a couples therapist before you refer, why she won’t keep secrets between partners, and what burned-out parents of young kids are up against.
Her bottom line? The relationship can’t come last. Even when life says it has to.
GUEST BIO:
Maury Holliman is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) who specializes in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). She is certified in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. As an EFT Supervisor Candidate, she supervises LMFT and LPC candidates and offers EFT and relational consultation. Maury believes good therapy looks at the whole person, including their identities, relationships, and personal history. She is also the Peer Support Leader at her group practice. In that role, she creates chances for connection and helps build a more inclusive and diverse culture.
Transcript
Welcome and Guest Intro
Morgen V.: All right. Welcome back to The Art of Being a Therapist, the space between training and real life. I'm Morgan.
Ashley C.: And I'm Ashley, and today's guest is someone I've known a very long time.
Morgen V.: Which means I get to have two jobs today. I'm a co-host for the podcast. I get to also figure out how many stories Ashley and Maury have that maybe our listeners don't need to hear
Ashley C.: There are several, and Maury and I have already talked offline about being selective and focused.
Morgen V.: Okay, so that sounds reassuring and slightly suspicious, Ashley.
Ashley C.: Maury and I go way back to 2012 before I started grad school, which is part of why I'm so excited for this conversation. One of the things we love doing on this podcast is going beyond someone's professional bio and talking about how they became the person and professional they are today.
Morgen V.: And because, as we've established, training gives you theories, textbooks, ethics, interventions, and then real life says to you, "Here's something you've never dealt with before," and that's really the space that we like to live in around here.
Ashley C.: Maury has had a front row seat to different seasons of my life and my career, and I've had one to hers, so this conversation might be slightly more dangerous than our usual discussions, which I know Morgan fully supports.
Ha ha ha. But in all seriousness, one of the reasons I wanted Maury here is because there's something really valuable about talking with someone who's known you across the eras and across the years, not just about what they do now, but all of my experiences, big wins, worst moments of my career, pivots, conflict with colleagues, mistakes, and sending those voice memos after sessions about, "This just happened. Help. Not sure what to do." And all those moments that got us here today. So Maury, with that, welcome, and I'll let Morgan introduce you so we can stay on track.
Maury's Bio and Focus
Morgen V.: Okay. Maury is a licensed marriage and family therapist specializing in emotionally focused therapy and certified in emotionally focused couples therapy.
She's also an EFT supervisor candidate currently offering supervision to LMFT and LPC candidates, along with EFT and relational consultations. She has a passion for systemic thinking and believes all therapy should explore the whole person, including their identities, relationships, and personal histories.
She currently holds a leadership position of peer support leader for her group practice, in which she curates opportunities for connection and helps build towards a more inclusive and diverse culture. Wow, that's so cool. With that, Maury, are you open to talking with us about your career trajectory?
Maury H.: Absolutely. Thank you all so much. That was such a warm, lovely welcome. I'm so happy to be
High School Spark to Denver Leap
Maury H.: here. So I feel like my career trajectory actually started in high school. I was a really strong student who was really bored, and my junior year of high school, I took a psychology class, and that changed everything for me.
I finally felt like something in school made sense and was interesting. And I did everything I could to stay in that classroom for as long as I could. So I took AP Psychology, and then I was a teacher's assistant for that teacher. And that led me to an undergraduate degree in psychology when I did start college.
From there, things get a little wonky. Because I was focused on psychology at a large public university, a lot of the professors had a very similar career trajectory in which their focus was going to be research. And so the ways in which they were able to direct me and support me were towards research.
And so I ended up applying for programs where I could get my master's and my PhD in one fell swoop. And thankfully, I got into none of those programs because I had absolutely no life experience, and was not a strong candidate for any of those programs. That was definitely a scary, panicked moment for me.
It was move back in with my parents or figure out how to get a job with an undergraduate degree in psychology. I, at that time, had already met Ashley and reached out to her, and she really encouraged me to apply in to some jobs out here in Denver, because there's a plethora of mental health fields and positions here in Denver that unfortunately do not exist in Alabama.
And so I ended up applying to a job at a day treatment facility. I flew out here one week, fell in love with who my supervisor was going to be, and two weeks later, I moved to Denver into a house with two men I found on Craigslist. And from there, I started working in day treatment. Spent a
Burnout and Back to School
Maury H.: year in that.
The first six months were pretty magical. I was very much in love with what I was doing. I felt like I was really helping. And then the last six months were just full of burnout, and the program itself felt like a sinking ship, and you all have already discussed how some of those programs can really take a toll on the clinicians and take a toll on the students and children and systems as well.
From there, I quit that job and moved into an administrative assistant position in a community mental health center I needed a break. I needed to recover, but I still wanted to stay in the field. I still wanted to stay relevant. I still wanted opportunities to engage in trainings and to learn. And through that position, I was able to take a year of just doing a job that was still very difficult in all of its own ways, but I didn't bring it home with me like I had in day treatment.
After about a year, I decided that I needed to go back to school. I was ready to go back to school, and I started looking into what programs, what kind of therapy I wanted to do. At that point, I knew I want to be a therapist. I don't want to do research. I love people. I love humans. And one of the wonky parts of my trajectory was reaching out to different kinds of clinicians, so LCSWs, LPCs, LMFTs, and getting a lot of feedback that I should go into a social work program.
I did not want to go into a social work program, and so I dug my heels in and said, "Nope, I want to be a couples therapist. I want to be a family therapist. I'm doing an MFT program." I enrolled in an MFT program And after three courses in that MFT program, my program closed. And so I had to transition very quickly into a, going from a hybrid program to an online-only program, in which I essentially taught myself for two years.
During that transition, I moved back into day treatment. So I stayed at the community mental health center that I was at, but I moved from adult resource to child and family, and was back on the floor doing work in the classroom management, crisis intervention, teaching groups, and all in all, just providing safety and support for our teachers and our students.
From there, I was able to do my internship. I did my internship through COVID, so I did therapy for the first time online, and I also worked with some families who were involved in CPS, so I was doing in-the-home interventions as well. I took the summer off after I graduated because as all of us are, who worked through COVID can imagine, it was quite a burnout to not only do an internship and graduate, but also to be back in person in August of 2020.
We returned to our milieu as quickly as possible because we saw how much our students were struggling trying to do classes online. Took the summer off, and by October of 2021, I had obtained the position that I currently hold at the private practice that I work at, and have been there ever since.
Ashley C.: I know I've known you through all of that, but I forgot about so much of that because, I don't know, you focus on the here and now, and you realize what a freaking wild ride your career and education has been.
And I remember when you were like, "I'm applying to jobs at day treatment in Denver," and I found a place on Craigslist and it was like, "Here we go."
Maury H.: Yes. And honestly, there's so much more I could go into that makes all of that much more chaotic, but I think that we have enough of a feel of it, but it was quite a journey for me, as I think it is for many people with COVID really just throwing a wrench into everyone's lives and careers, I think.
But yeah, whenever I say it out loud, I'm like Okay. It's been a journey, but we are exactly where we're supposed to be.
Morgen V.: Yes. Oh, I love this trajectory, 'cause it seems like one wouldn't necessarily be completely related to another, right? But I imagine there's so many different ways that they
What Day Treatment Teaches
Morgen V.: connect. If we just rewind for a second, for people that aren't used to some of the systems, can you explain what day treatment is and what it's for, who it serves, what the purpose is, and then maybe how that how... now informs the practice that you have?
Maury H.: And that's a very important part of why I am where I am today. So in my first job in day treatment, it was both a day treatment and respite program. So we would have students who were enrolled in our school program, and we would also have an on-site milieu that would have a constant rotation of different children with different needs coming in and out.
So the population that I have worked with priMauryly in day treatment, to put it in the, the most broad and succinct terms that I possibly can, are traumatized youth who also have special education needs. Now, that does not cover the fact that what often happens in day treatment is children who have nowhere else to go are placed in day treatment.
School systems who are underfunded, uh, and have nowhere to put children who are either severely mentally ill, violent, struggling in a special education classroom, or have inconsistent parental care, we end up being the catch-all for those students and those children. What I saw in that job was that we could do anything and everything for these children to teach them both educationally and social emotionally, and they would go home on the weekend and everything would be undone.
And once I started getting more involved on the clinical side, I started to see that the children were absolutely not the problem. The problem was the parents, the family system, the structures in which those family systems were trying to navigate, and that is what led me to wanna pursue an MFT program, because I really felt that I could help these children if I could help the parents.
So that's really what led me to where I am today. That is a definitely an important part of the story.
Why MFT Over Social Work
Ashley C.: This might be a hot take, but why not a social work program?
Maury H.: Absolutely. So I wanna just caveat by saying we've got several years under our belt at this point. However, what I was told was, if you go into social work, you'll get paid more and insurance will not fight you.
I wasn't interested in doing social work. My view of social work at the time was that it was more a macro systems level of thinking. I wanted to specialize. If I was gonna go back to school after all this time and all of this work that I had put in, I was going to do it because I was passionate about what I was learning.
I was not about to spend all that money to take classes that I didn't care about. And so that eventually led me to just deciding marriage and family therapy is my calling, it's my passion, and if I'm going to spend all of this money, this time, this energy while I'm working on school, I want it to be something that I'm excited about
Ashley C.: I love that. And you definitely didn't critique social workers the way I thought you were going to.
Maury H.: No, I have so much admiration for people who can do social work, and I think that it is not a social work issue, it is an overall mental health field issue in that when I was looking for jobs, I was gonna get paid less at community mental health centers because I was an MFT and not a social worker.
And I learned that once I started applying for jobs, and it confused me so much. Why on earth would you pay me less to do the work that I'm specialized to do? My skills are in family therapy, and yet I would get paid less to do family therapy that I had all this training and experience in because of the degree I held.
That just never made any sense to me, which is ultimately what led me to go into a private group practice setting.
Ashley C.: And I'll out myself here, but my social work program didn't offer a specialty in family therapy, couples therapy, parent-child relations. Even clinically, I'm much more broadly trained than you were, I would say.
Maury H.: And I just cannot imagine being paid less than a social worker.
Morgen V.: That's just so demoralizing and not okay, and just on so many levels, given the experience that you have and the training, and then paying for grad school and all the things, right? And you even had a, you even had an undergraduate in psychology.
And so when I hear you say that, I just get real, real fired up and really protective because it's like it doesn't really matter what license we have. If we're, if we are grounded in ethics and integrity and we understand, like, how to do clinical work, then we should fucking be paid. Anyway, I'm off my soapbox now.
Let's go back to your career trajectory. So you were saying that this, that the day treatment perspective, like you understood then that you wanted to work with families to support essentially the child, and now you're in a
Private Practice and Money Guilt
Morgen V.: private practice. Can you tell us what that's been like? What has been maybe career sustaining, saving, or what maybe still feels like a drain or depletion for you?
Maury H.: Sure. Yeah. Wow, that is a big question. I think maybe the first thing that comes to mind is a question that I get asked often by clients at the practice that I'm at now, which is, how do you not take this all home with you? And my answer is the same every time. I have worked with traumatized youth who are enmeshed in poverty, racism, the, the worst of the worst situations, who have experienced some of the most severe abuse you've ever heard of, and I now work with adults who overall have pretty solid resources.
I don't have to be worried about you. I know what it is to be worried about the vulnerable. Now, not everybody who comes to a private group practice is loaded and has all of these resources. I understand that there's always gonna be gray and nuance, but I think for me, that has taken a lot of adjusting, and can also, I think, bring up some of the complications around some of the guilt we can carry as therapists who are trying to-- Our profession is our passion.
We're so lucky in that way. It's also a business, and so I both have to balance this idea of making money so I can support myself, and not just support myself, but also live a life that is relatively comfortable and joyful so that my cup is full so that I can be the best therapist for my clients. So it's been-- I think that's maybe one of the toughest places for me mentally and emotionally is balancing this need to make money off of something that feels like it should be free to everyone.
I hope that answers your question.
Ashley C.: I love that, and-
Morgen V.: Yeah, me too.
Ashley C.: Getting chills over here ... when we are financially stable, we are better therapists. I definitely distilled down what you said to one sentence, but that's what I took from that. When we are financially stable because we get paid, we are better therapists.
We don't need second jobs. We don't need third jobs. We don't have to work part-time. We don't have to work overtime, and we are better therapists.
Maury H.: I still remember what I made when I started in this field. Now, granted, this was 10 years ago. I was a baby, very early 20s. I was making less than $14 an hour doing some of the hardest work, by the way, hands-on crisis intervention.
It was not just talking children through really hard moments. It was physically restraining children. It was chasing children in the streets. It was some of the most intense work that anyone can do, and I had three roommates. I'm in a different phase of life. I don't want three roommates. I'm in my 30s.
I'm grown. I want to feel comfortable and independent also. I don't wanna have to rely on a partner or family who are themselves struggling to make ends meet in some cases to keep myself afloat and happy. And I think that it is a vicious cycle of we as therapists have to convince ourselves that we're worth the money that we charge.
You're trained more now. You have more experience. You're licensed. You're certified, so you deserve more money. That's true, but why does the client have to suffer because of that? And that is neither my fault, my practice's fault, the client's fault. That's the system. That's the value we place as a society, as a culture, as a country on mental health work.
Why Couples Work Matters
Ashley C.: Shifting gears a little bit, what draws you to continue working with couples? And a couple of follow-up questions there, and you can go in any direction you want. What makes a good couples therapist? What do you like best about being a couples therapist? What are the worst parts of this work? And what are some assumptions about couples or couples therapy that are not true?
Maury H.: I love couples therapy, and every time I say that, therapists who don't do couples therapy look at me like a deer in headlights. "What? That's wild that you love couples therapy. I'm so scared to work with couples." I actually find couples work to be easier than individual work. We as therapists are absolutely the agent of change, right?
How we show up in the space, the interventions that we do, et cetera, et cetera. But when there's two people, and I wanna make room for sometimes there's more than two people in a relationship, I am here for the ENM and poly community all day, but I'm gonna speak more generally, that when there's two people in the room, my interventions are between the two of you.
I'm trying to get you two to speak a different language. It's not on me to hold all of this. I'm trying to teach your partner how to hold your pain, your vulnerability, your trauma. In individual work, I find I end up giving a lot more of myself actually, because I am the one who is holding the trauma and the pain and the hurt, even if it's just for 50 minutes, and that's exhausting in a different way.
Now, some couples come in and they're highly escalated, and that is a really hard part of this work. It also energizes me. I enjoy, to an extent, confrontation. I enjoy challenge. I enjoy being my full self and bringing my whole personality and all I have to give into a space. That is actually very energizing and cup-filling for me.
What do I love the most about couples therapy? I don't know how to say it other than when- I feel like you can watch the change happen in sessions so much more viscerally than you can with individuals. Individuals are gonna, okay, 50 minutes is up, and they're gonna go back to their lives, and maybe they make changes, maybe they don't.
That's a journey, right? We're all on that journey with them together. But with my couples, I can literally watch, oh my gosh, you finally said something different. You finally did something different. Look at that. They come in, last week they're screaming at each other, they come in this week and they're giggling.
And for me, that is just, ugh, so magical. I think that the thing I dislike the most about couples therapy is that there are a lot of therapists out there doing couples therapy who have no business doing this work. They have no training, no experience, and yet they are seeing couples and families. And that is really frustrating.
It's also really scary and does a lot of damage. But the horror stories I have heard from clients of, "The last couples therapist told us we should get a divorce. The last couples therapist told me it was my fault," that is so against systemic thinking, and also the ethics of our practice of telling clients what is and is not right for them, what they should and should not do.
That is literally the opposite of what therapy is supposed to be, right? We're supposed to help them get where they wanna go. So I think that's been one of the hardest things about being a couples therapist, is sometimes I feel like I am undoing the damage other therapists have done to my couples when they show up in the space.
Finding Ethical Couples Therapists
Morgen V.: But how do they find you, or how do they find someone ethical, right? I'm just even thinking about my own experience of trying to find a couples therapist that I think is working in that way. But curious if you can speak to how do we provide good referrals, how do we vet people, and then how do we do good care coordination?
Maury H.: Absolutely. No, I love that question, and this is where my bias is going to show up and I'm gonna fully own that, but I'm also gonna be authentically myself and be honest in that my first go-to is to find an LMFT These are the ones that are trained to do this work from the moment we start classes to the moment we graduate, our entire internships.
We as MFTs are required to do relational hours when we are interns. So that's my number one edit when I am looking to refer a friend, a family member, or another client. I also think that it's really important that your couples therapist is collaborative. Is this a couples therapist who is gonna advocate for releases of information so that maybe you, as the individual therapist or any other clinicians who are involved in the system, are you going to be willing and able to collaborate to make sure that we're all operating as a united front?
Because if there are other therapists involved, we are all now part of this family system, right? And I think it's very important, if not necessary, for there to be collaboration among clinicians. I am very much embedded in the emotionally focused therapy field because that is my specialty, that is my niche, that is the model from which I operate priMauryly.
This is also what my practice specializes in. And so a lot of times I am also looking for other emotionally focused therapists or other therapists who have an understanding of attachment and attachment-based science, right? Other filters are to look at, okay, you're an LPC. Did you specialize when you were in grad school in-- 'cause there are programs who offer specializations, right?
There are programs who offer opportunities to take courses on couples and family and relational work. So that's also really good questions to ask. I think when it comes to finding a good therapist, I always encourage folks to do consults. It is okay to shop around. It is okay to explore multiple therapists.
I know it can be a lot for clients, both with time, with finances, and just generally the emotional labor of unloading your life story on a clinician and then unloading your life story on another clinician, right? But I think it is very important and critical that you feel safe, seen, connected with your therapist, that you feel that they know what they're doing, that they have a level of confidence and hope in what they are doing and what they're trying to do.
That for me are some of the filters that I use in trying to find another therapist that, that I wanna work with.
Morgen V.: I love that and it's, for me, providing referrals like green flag is when there's that immediate connection with care coordination. Okay, you're this person's individual therapist, I'm working with this person as a couple.
Let's all be in communication around their care so that we're not working against each other and that kind of thing. So I appreciate that perspective. It's super helpful. And honestly, there's a part of me that's like, "Oh, Morgan, that's just such a basic question," but it's honestly something that I think when we're in kind of our own individual practice we have-- we struggle with and have to grapple with, "Oh, do I just look on Psychology Today?"
I just, I physically cannot do that anymore. I cannot just send someone a general referral. I have to really be very intentional before I provide a name to someone of, "Here's who I might recommend you reach out to," even if it's just an initial consult. I just am so hesitant because of what you're describing, like the harm that can be caused, honestly, even in the consultation.
So thank you for sharing that. How do you navigate a couple where each person has different needs? I'm thinking about me and my own experience here.
Maury H.: I think what's most common from my perspective is that one partner is very bought into the therapy, and the other partner is being dragged along. That is the dynamic I see that is most common.
And I always joke, but I do think it's true, that couples therapy is a gateway drug to individual therapy. I think people can start to learn the value of therapy in couples therapy. It's interesting to think about that question for me, of what happens when partners want something different? I think my initial response is, I'm not everybody's cup of tea.
I am not the best therapist for everyone. I am not the best therapist for every couple, for every family, for every individual. What I do is very specialized, and I think we as therapists have to be able to own that and name that. I have clients who come in and say, "We want homework, and we wanna read a book, and we wanna do worksheets."
And I go, "I don't do that. That's not what I do, and that is A-okay that you want that, and I can do my best to send you resources that you can utilize outside of therapy." But in my experience, people don't do homework. People don't do their therapy homework. And my work is experiential. The change happens in the session.
We are doing interventions that require people to show up differently in the session. It is a subtle and a nuanced model, and I think in that case, when somebody comes in with a, "This is what I want from couples therapy," and, "This is what I want from couples therapy," it's my job to understand where the overlap is and also to prompt them that each of you are going to compromise in this space.
Welcome to being in a relationship.
Morgen V.: I love that answer. It's, it's just so spot on.
EFT in Action and Closing Takeaways
Morgen V.: Can you give an example of, like, how EFT maybe would unfold? You were just naming it a little bit, but I know it is about attachment, but maybe theme that you see frequently with couples, and how does that transpire in the room, that repair?
Maury H.: Absolutely. The number one reason I see couples coming to therapy is communication. If I had a nickel for every time a couple said, "We're here because we're having communication struggles," I would not need to work anymore. Now, communication means so many things, right? And EFT is a model based on the, on attachment science, as you said.
So we as humans grow up learning what to expect from our partners and our relationships based off how we were or were not cared for as infants, as children, as adolescents, as teenagers, as young adults, right? So we learn whether our providers are the people that we depend on are safe, unsafe, are neglectful, are absent, are one day they're this and the next day they're that, inconsistent, right?
And we develop survival skills based off of that. We develop patterns. We develop ways of showing up in relationships, whether that's I learn to people please and caretake so that my mother kept an attachment to me. She was completely emotionally dysregulated, and the only way I could stay safe is if I was the person that she went to, and I was the person who took care of her.
So I learned to compartmentalize and minimize my emotions. Lo and behold, I can now no longer function because I'm having panic attacks every day. All of that stuff that you compartmentalize is still living in your body, right? So that's just one example of where EFT can start to undo, okay, this is what you learned, and let's just really make room for all of the beautiful ways you learned to protect yourself.
These are not defense mechanisms. These are protective mechanisms. I don't believe in defense mechanisms. I believe in protective mechanisms, and we learn those from the moment we are born, and some of it we even learn when we're in the womb, but we don't need to go that far. And so this is how you get to a relationship.
So let's take that example of a young woman who learned to people please and caretake so that her mother didn't escalate and isolate from her. She now shows up in her partnership as someone who, "I'm fine as long as you're fine. I don't have needs. I don't have wants." But why am I so resentful? Why do I shut down?
Why am I so numb? Why can't I connect? I don't feel safe in this relationship Well, you never learned to talk about your emotions. You never learned to talk about your feelings. You never learned that it was okay to be vulnerable, that it's okay to be safe and to open up and to really let somebody in. And in turn, your partner, in some ways, has the complete opposite ways of coping and surviving, 'cause that's who's the most drawn to each other.
That's the coupling we see the most often, is our anxious attachers and our avoidant attachers.
Now, there is absolutely nuance and gray areas and other couples who fall into other categories. I'm speaking generally. It's about teaching my anxious pursuers to slow down and my avoidant withdrawers to lean in.
And that takes time, right? And so it's me who's here holding both of those saying, "I'm gonna be your safe attachment figure. I'm gonna hold the safety. You're gonna share with me before you have to share with your partner. Your partner is gonna bear witness, and they're gonna start to understand you more.
And when you're ready, I'm gonna have you turn and share all this vulnerability with them, and I'm gonna teach them how to hold that safely." Now, that all sounds nice and beautiful and lovely and therapeutic, and wow, wow, wow, that sounds so great. It's not that succinct. It's not that clean. It's not that fast either.
It takes a long time to unlearn patterns that you have been doing your entire life. That is not a, "All right, we've had three sessions, and now you no longer caretaker people please, 'cause you know why you do it." No. We have to practice. We have to make room for the traumas that people can go through while they're under our care.
We have to make room for the systems in which they are operating that are draining their resources, that are draining their emotions, that are making them feel minimized. There's so much nuance to that. But that is ultimately... I tell my clients, "You're gonna learn how to speak a new language in this work.
You're gonna learn how to speak about emotions." 'Cause sometimes that's all you got, is, "All of this sucks. Everything is awful. Everything is on fire. We're so stressed. We don't have enough money. The kids are chaos, and we don't have any friends, and our family is far away, and we're drowning, we're drowning, we're drowning All you have is not being alone in it
Ashley C.: It's so beautiful and inspiring to hear you talk this way.
Morgen V.: I just thank you so much for what you shared. I think there was like a part that really felt very seen and very tender about just the way that you were describing that experience of repair, and I know that it doesn't happen quickly. So there's that personal level of it, but also the level that you were naming in the beginning about why you became a couples therapist is because you want to support people, you wanna walk alongside them so that they can create a system for their own children or for whomever they interact with in their life that feels like it's grounded in integrity and love and care, rather than perhaps what generationally was passed down to them.
And so I was just thinking about all of that power. It's just this connecting kind of universal energy. So thank you so much for how you described that. It's just so incredibly grounding and amazing to know that there's someone out there holding that kind of space for couples or for, for people that come across your-- that you come across.
Maury H.: I really appreciate you saying that. I will tell my couples this. I think couples therapy is more intimate and scarier than individual therapy. How much courage it takes people to sit down and talk about the hardest, darkest parts of their lives with their partner bearing witness is so powerful and so intimate, and I am honored to do the work that I do.
I love this work. I think it is so powerful. Let me also say that there are a lot of people who come in being like, "You're just gonna blame my mom for everything." I am grounded in, and this is true no matter what the situation is, your parents did the best they could with what they had, and they came into this world and into this relationship and into this parenting with their own trauma, survival mechanisms, and protective actions.
They did the best they could with what they had. That does not excuse that they probably could have done better And that you learned negative coping skills from those relationships. And that is what it is to be human.
Morgen V.: We say therapists should do their own therapy. I don't know. Now I'm like, maybe we all need to do our own partner therapy too.
Like...
Maury H.: I have never had an individual client who couldn't benefit from some couples therapy. Yeah. I think couples therapy is powerful because we are all in relationship with everything. We're in relationships with all the systems at all times, and it shows up. It shows up in our mental health. It shows up in the ways we cope.
It shows up in our vices. It shows up in our strengths.
Ashley C.: Do you work with individual clients who are not in romantic relationships and maybe seeking support as they start to date? And if so, what does therapy around that look like with you?
Maury H.: I'm sitting here thinking about That. What I would say is I have not had a ton of experience with individuals who are looking to date.
I have had many individuals, priMauryly women, but also some men, who are on the brink of divorce, who are questioning, "Should I stay or should I go?" And that is a really scary place to be, and I think oftentimes they seek couples therapists because they believe that couples therapists are gonna be the ones who are gonna tell them yes or no.
If you are at a point where you are questioning it that severely, we are in some pretty dire circumstances most of the time, and I'm gonna recommend couples therapy from there, right? And if you don't have a partner or you yourself are not willing or able to engage in that work, the relationship is going to remain as it has been.
Okay. I would love to see more clients who are trying to date. I have helped some clients... I will also say I have had clients who have transitioned out of relationships and then into new ones while they've been under my care, and that's a beautiful thing to see grow because they are also going into those new relationships empowered with a lot more knowledge of themselves and a lot more knowledge of their patterns, and our hope is that they can learn how to not repeat those patterns in this new relationship.
Morgen V.: Can you answer two more questions before we start to wrap up? Should couples therapists see an individual within the couple as a separate therapy, right? That's my first question.
Maury H.: No. Okay. Highly unethical.
Morgen V.: Then can you speak to the information overload that we are at, that we're living through right now, and how you notice that also intersect with some of the struggles that your clients are facing?
Maury H.: Rant and rage about this all the time. So let me say that I, on very rare occasions, will see my couples clients for one-on-one sessions. Now, that is built into the EFT model. We do an initial intake session, and then I do two individual sessions with each partner to do what's called an attachment history, and I am very clear with my clients from the moment they step into my office, everything you tell me is open to your partner knowing, and if you tell me something your partner doesn't know, I'm gonna encourage you to share that before our next session or I'm gonna support you in telling them in our next session.
I am not the holder of secrets. I cannot operate that way. Neither one of you as individuals is my client. Your relationship is my client. I hear all the time, "I was seeing this individual therapist, and then we started doing couples therapy, and then my partner didn't really feel very seen and felt they were really biased."
That's 'cause they are. "Oh, we were seeing a couples therapist, and I decided to stay with them to do individual work." That's a dual relationship. It's one of the most basic ethic principles that exists across all licensures. So that's the answer to that question. The biggest thing that I see is the stress and the strain of parenting on a relationship, and in this world where very few people can survive without two incomes.
So we now have parents who are working ridiculous hours because of the country that we live in, and I could go on a capitalist rage and rant, but I will refrain. I have couples come in-- I actually got, like, several at once recently where all of these couples were parents of young children, and they come in so burned out, so exhausted.
This whole saying of, "It takes a village," we say it so casually without really understanding what it is to raise a little person, what it is to develop an empathetic, kind, compassionate, smart, unique vivacious child, right? That we all are hoping we can raise, whatever that looks like for you. Kids are in school more than they're seeing their families, more than they're seeing their parents, and jobs don't stop in the summer.
Jobs don't stop for fall break. Jobs don't stop for early release. The education system is broken and is making it that much harder for parents. Parents are parenting in isolation. They are exhausted. They are waking up 5:00 AM and sprinting to 7:00 PM, where maybe they get to have dinner with their children, maybe they get to help them with some homework, and then we're off to bed.
And that's Monday through Friday, where Saturday and Sunday is recovery time. And that's where we're trying to build relationships with our children in two days where we're also trying to recover from the sheer exhaustion of just existing in this world. And that's not to speak for the social, cultural, political turmoil that we all experience, whether we're aware of it or not energetically, right?
We have screens teaching children and just ruining their little brains that are still developing. We have teachers who are understaffed and underpaid and exhausted. And let me be very clear, I don't blame any individual person within these systems. I blame the systems. I blame this country. I blame this government for not valuing child development, for not valuing family in the ways that we claim to.
And so a lot of times my couples come in, especially my parents of young children I have nothing left to give. Our relationship is the lowest priority. And we learn in grad school that the most successful families are families in which the parents have the strongest relationship. We have this idea that parents are supposed to develop, you should set your partner aside and focus on your children.
No. No. You have to have a solid partnership. You have to have a loving, supportive, healthy partnership because you are modeling to your children what to expect from other people. The relationship can't come last, and yet I feel as though I am screaming that into the void because where can they give? I know it, and this is an achy conversation I have all the time.
I know you have nothing left to give. I know you can't work less. I know you can't pay less money for this thing. I know you can't make more money from your job. I know you can't take more time off. I know you don't have time to build friendships and community and support systems. I know your parents live across the country.
I know you can't find a babysitter who's reliable and consistent that you can trust. That's nobody's fault And yet, it's often what makes me feel like I am just dumping a thimble of water on a bonfire, right? Where I'm like, I am just really trying to get you to that next phase of life where your children are a little bit more independent.
Ashley C.: Wow. I'm just taking all of that in. You both know I could go on and on about systems, but just hearing that the relationship should be the priority, Maury, I don't know that I've ever heard you say that or say it like that, and that is just mind-blowing, and beautiful, and inspiring, but also sometimes not the reality, and what an awesome but sucky place to sit with a couple.
You know? Both of those things can be true at the same time. Before we let you go, regarding our field, one thumbs up, one thumbs down, and one middle finger. So what's one thing that's going well, one thing that's not going well, and one thing that you wanna just give the middle finger to in our field?
Maury H.: One thumbs up is I believe that MFTs and the value of couples and family therapy is on the rise, and that makes me really excited for us as a society.
One thumbs down, I believe that we still have a lot of work to do to stop putting the burden on our clients financially to get the services that they need in order for us as therapists to be able to survive and thrive in our own personal lives. And insurance companies can take my middle finger.
Ashley C.: Thank you for sharing space today, and thank you for sharing your expertise and your journey, and some really thought-provoking questions and perspectives.
We hope our listeners got a lot out of our conversation, and please like or subscribe to our podcast, and we will see you next time.
