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Episode Description
Before her first session as a therapy intern, Lindsay was terrified. She went to her supervisor and asked what she was supposed to say. The answer: “I just need you to be in the room with this person.”
That one sentence changed how she does therapy.
In this episode of The Art of Being a Therapist, hosts Ashley Charbonneau and Morgen Villegas sit down with Lindsay Colegrove, a social worker (and Ashley’s sister) who took the long way into the field. Her path ran through school psychology, early childhood education, and a few years managing a restaurant. Along the way, she learned to walk with her self-doubt instead of fighting it.
Today Lindsay works through an existential lens. She helps clients explore identity, purpose, grief, love, and belonging. These are the parts of being human that no assessment can measure.
In this conversation, we talk about:
Why sitting with uncertainty can matter more than having the right intervention
Why the “blank slate” therapist is a myth
How one hard session taught her about boundaries and therapist safety
The gaps grad school leaves new therapists to fill on their own
How she blends policy advocacy with clinical work
Do you wonder if you’re the only new therapist who feels this lost? You’re not. Lindsay interviewed 15 interns for her capstone project, and every one of them felt it too.
GUEST BIO:
Lindsay Colegrove, M.Ed., MSW, SWC, ADDC, started her career in early childhood education. There, she saw how social-emotional and developmental challenges affect children and their families. That led her to graduate training in school psychology. In 2023, she moved into social work to better address the systemic and social factors that shape mental health.
Today, Lindsay’s work centers on advocacy and policy. She’s especially passionate about LGBTQ+ mental health, anti-oppressive practice, and advancing equity through an intersectional lens. She believes healing happens when people feel truly seen, heard, and valued. Her approach is warm, relational, and strengths-based. She brings creativity, curiosity, and connection to her work with trauma, identity exploration, grief, anxiety, and life transitions.
CHAPTERS
[00:00] Meet Lindsay
[01:34] From Curiosity to Social Work
[03:44] Macro Meets Clinical
[04:55] Values and Real Connection
[07:18] Meaning Purpose and Presence
[09:45] Sitting with Uncertainty
[17:03] Boundaries and Therapist Safety
[20:23] Training Gaps and Final Takeaways
Transcript
Meet Lindsay
Morgen V.: Welcome back to The Art of Being a Therapist. I'm Morgan, one of your hosts, and I'm here with Ashley, my co-host, as well as our guest for today, Lindsay. One of the themes that has come up again and again throughout this season is that there's no single way to become a therapist or to be one. Every clinician brings a unique combination of experiences, values, interests, and strength to their work.
Ashley C.: And today's guest is someone whose journey reflects that idea. We're excited to welcome Lindsay to the podcast and learn more about the experiences that have influenced her path, the work that she's passionate about, and what she's learned along the way. Lindsay is also my sister. She began in early childhood education, where she witnessed the impact that social, emotional, and developmental challenges can have on young people and their families.
This led her to pursue training in school psychology, where she earned her first master's, and then she transitioned to getting a master's in social work in 2023 so she could more fully address the systemic and social factors that shape mental health and wellbeing. Today, her work integrates advocacy and policy with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ mental health, anti-oppressive practice, and advancing equity through an intersectional lens.
Morgen V.: Lindsay, welcome. Do you wanna start with telling us a little bit more about yourself and your journey to social work?
From Curiosity to Social Work
Lindsay C.: I grew up in a small town in Colorado. For as long as I can remember, I've always just been very curious. I've always been curious about people, about how the world works, and I didn't know that you could make a career out of that until now, so that's cool.
I think when I left for college, and throughout college, I had this sense of- Urgency to figure out my life, do the right thing, which partly landed me on psychology because I was undeclared for a while, and I was like, "Holy shit, I gotta figure something out." But psychology also made sense because of that curiosity.
And it also felt broad enough that I could choose to do whatever I wanted to do with that once I did figure that out. And so when I graduated, I'd hit my first, I guess you could call it an existential crisis. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I was struggling a lot in my personal life. But I did know that I loved mental health and I loved kids.
And so I found a job in early childhood education, and that's when I started noticing disparities in development and in education. That didn't work out. I had this gut feeling that it wasn't the right thing for me, but I also just really didn't like how assessment-heavy it was. I felt like I was putting people into boxes.
I know now that there are consequences to that. So I ultimately left that. Then I managed a restaurant for a couple of years. That kind of got me a little bit more connected to myself and what I wanted to do next, which was ultimately social work. So I went back to school. I think there was always this part of me that maybe secretly wanted to be a therapist.
I think there was this other part of me that was very critical of myself and a very strong self-doubt component. Well, I'm struggling, so who am I to tell people what to do in their lives? So yeah, it's been a complicated journey, but ultimately I just pushed through, and I guess walked with- That self-doubt versus against it, which really helped me just kind of dive into something that was very uncomfortable and still is uncomfortable
Macro Meets Clinical
Lindsay C.: at times.
I did an internship that was more like meso, macro based with an LGBTQ+ organization, working directly to close mental health disparity gaps, working with politicians and lobbying firms, and definitely pushed me outside of my comfort zone, but I loved it. And I kind of had this tension after that internship.
I was like, "Well, maybe I wanna be a meso, macro social worker." But then I was like, "Well, let me give myself a chance to see the clinical realm," because I didn't wanna shut that door, and did my concentration year internship where I work
Ashley C.: now.
Lindsay C.: So yeah, I really enjoy it. It's challenging. It's rewarding. I work with folks across the lifespan.
I thought I always wanted to work with kids in the clinical space, and then I started working with kids and I was like, eh. So I primarily work with adults. I do have a couple kids and a handful of teens, but primarily adults.
Morgen V.: What a cool trajectory and story. I just feel like we are so lucky that you jumped ship.
Mm-hmm. I'm wondering if you wanna just expand on that a little bit more, like what have you seen in your social work world, and how has that maybe differed from what you were experiencing in the school
Values and Real Connection
Morgen V.: realm?
Lindsay C.: I think the therapy space, or at least the one that I'm used to because I'm in the therapy space, I do really work from an existential lens, looking at things like identity, purpose, grief, love, belonging, all of the things that make us inherently human outside of assessment-based or intelligence-based or performance-based parts of us that run the show for a lot of people's lives.
And then we hit a point where we're like, "Okay, something's not working," and all of those more protective parts start to break down a little bit. So I think social work allows me the space to live more in my personal values, and also encourage people or help guide people to look at life in a different way than they were taught or learned over the course of their life.
Morgen V.: Yeah. Though I think that you're already getting into this, like what makes a good therapist, but I'm wondering if living into your own values helps you to do that and provide good therapy, right? Like, you circled back to your own values, and now you help hold a mirror for your clients to find their purpose.
Lindsay C.: Yeah, absolutely. When it comes to being a good therapist, I think historically at least we're taught to not let our personal values or our emotional experience kind of leak into the therapy space. I kinda think that's bullshit. I don't think it's even possible. I think that what people really want when they enter the therapy space is just someone to connect with.
Now, there's of course ethical boundaries that we follow, but that doesn't mean that we erase our humanity as we do that. I think relationship is the most important aspect of therapy, and you can't do that without knowing yourself. I don't think you have to know every part of yourself, 'cause I think life is a lifelong journey, but at least being willing to take a look at yourself, be with yourself, be authentic.
I think that's one of the most important things.
Ashley C.: I think it's interesting that you spoke about figuring out life, and when you started talking about where you were at in college, it sounded like figuring out life was more related to a milestone or an accomplishment or a career path. And now there's been a shift to meaning and purpose and reflecting that to
Meaning Purpose and Presence
Ashley C.: your clients.
And one of my favorite books of all time is Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom, and he has a quote in the book that says, "The way you get meaning into your life is to find something or create something that gives you purpose and meaning." And so Lindsay, I'm wondering, do you feel like you've- created this life or your career for yourself, or did you feel like it existed and you had to find it?
Lindsay C.: I think both. I think it's always existed. I think that it also takes a level of creation. If we think about purpose and meaning, you're not just gonna wake up one day and have everything that you've ever wanted. It's a process, and it takes intentional decision-making, and it takes making mistakes and having failures and being willing to navigate with those failures.
I think that's been both a theme in my personal and professional life of like, okay, what do I do when I feel uncertain? What do I do when I feel the imposter syndrome? What do I do when I feel like I'm making a mistake or I'm failing? I think there's often been this tension in my life where I feel like I need to solve it or fix it versus this is just where I am right now.
Can I just be with this? I think for me, transitioning into a state of more presence, so now that doesn't mean I'm present all the time. I have my moments. But I think just being willing to explore what present means to me has allowed me to maintain more alignment in life and more alignment in my professional life as well.
Ashley C.: And that makes me think of when we ask the question, what is a good therapist? It is knowing when to jump in and help a client problem solve, versus sitting in discomfort, versus how do I encourage them to find or create something for themselves, whether it's a healthy coping skill, whether it is a bigger identity exploration, whether it's being able to tolerate an uncomfortable situation.
I think some of our earlier guests as well have talked about that urge to fix, and I think as social workers, we see systems, and we see how they can work better. And sometimes it takes a lot of effort to not fix and to not jump
Sitting With Uncertainty
Ashley C.: in. And so I'm curious, as you look at your clinical growth over the years, do you feel like you have to consciously remind yourself to sit in it with a client, or do you feel like that's something you've really mastered?
Lindsay C.: I have not mastered it, no.
Ashley C.: I haven't either. It's okay.
Lindsay C.: I think it is something that I do have to remind myself of, especially when I have clients who are so overwhelmed by the current sociopolitical system, and that's not something I can just wave a wand and fix. Sometimes there aren't solutions when your client is experiencing major financial struggles, but they have a disability.
Sometimes there are no clear, immediate solutions, and sitting in that uncertainty is wildly uncomfortable for the client and for me, and I think that's okay. I think that when you sit in it with your clients, it lets them know that it's okay to be uncertain right now. And that there's someone willing to sit in that uncertainty or in that pain with me.
So no, I have not mastered it.
Morgen V.: I'm just hearing a lot of themes of parallel process. As you learn, so your clients learn, and vice versa. And lived experience can sometimes show up in the room with our clients, and it just seems like there's just such a humanity in the way that you approach the work.
You're talking about liminal spaces, the in between, and the uncertainty, the gray areas, and how that's such an important piece of what we do. I think I was mostly taught about how to find resources and solutions and jump in and do all the things, but I wasn't really taught about just accompanying and attuning and sitting with someone in their discomfort.
You're touching on some really important pieces of the work right now, and I wonder if your existential lens, in a way, helps scaffold you.
Lindsay C.: Yeah. I don't think that it's something that's taught. I think that there are multiple ways that I got to this spot. I think, one, my own experience as a client in therapy, it just left a huge mark on me on not only on how I live my personal life, but also how I show up in the room.
During my concentration year internship, leading up to my first session with a client, I was so nervous. I was so scared, and I went to my supervisor and I told her, I was like, "I'm so nervous. I don't know what to do. What am I supposed to say to this person? How do I interact with them?" And she was just like, "I just need you to be in the room with this person."
And that made me feel relief. 'Cause what I heard in that is that I don't have to know everything. I don't have to have everything figured out. I don't need a specific intervention. I just need to talk to this person and be with this person. The way that I look at the world is very existential. I think it was after I read The Gift of Therapy for the first time, and then I went on this long reading spiral of existential therapy, and I really resonated with it, not feeling like you have to show up in a rigid way or have a solution figured out in the matter of a few weeks.
Ashley C.: I love that your supervisor said, "Just be." I put just in air quotes because it is very hard sometimes to just be with a client. You spoke a little bit about this gap in grad school, Lindsay, but I'm curious, looking at maybe a generation above you, what do you think those therapists got right and what do you think they're missing?
Lindsay C.: When I think about my supervisors, they all have their own niche and they are highly clinically skilled. There's no doubt about that. I just wanted to circle back for a second when you were talking about how you have to remind yourself to be present or to focus on the relationship. What I've learned more recently is that my perfectionistic or my self-doubt part was starting to creep into that space as well, in that I felt like I needed to be 100% all the time with my clients.
And I've learned recently that's not the case and that's not possible. And so I think it was September or October where the Charlie Kirk shooting happened, the Evergreen shooting happened, all within an hour of each other. My clients were coming in with the same stress about it over and over and over again, and I was feeling stressed about it.
And at first I was like, "I gotta pull my shit together. I gotta be with my clients. I gotta push this aside." And then I think over time I realized that it's okay that this is impacting me, too. It's impacting everyone and there are things that are gonna impact us personally and professionally that are going to pull us out of the present moment.
We might get sucked into content versus the process. We might get sucked into other things that could happen in the room, that it's also okay not to be present.
Ashley C.: Yeah, I love that, and I have perfectionistic tendencies as well. I'm really glad you mentioned these two big events. The events themselves were obviously very traumatic.
As a supervisor, I'm also like, "I have to have my shit together for my client, for my supervisees and their clients, and my clients." We are in unprecedented times. We have access to the news 24/7. We're all collectively experiencing these huge traumas. And we're trying to navigate it as best we can. What do you think?
Lindsay C.: I'm not a supervisor obviously, but I wanna speak to how you feel as a supervisor and having this sense of having to have it all together. Me and my colleagues, we can sense when our supervisors are stressed out. Hearing your perspective, that makes sense, and they're probably feeling something similarly of, "We just gotta keep this running.
We gotta make sure everyone else is okay. We gotta make sure we're doing the right thing." From my perspective and some other colleagues' perspectives, we wanna see our supervisors' humanity too. We all struggle sometimes. I'm in therapy, and I love therapy, and I really benefit from it. And so that's definitely an anchoring tool that I use.
Staying connected for me is really important, so knowing when I genuinely need time alone versus when am I avoiding or isolating. Staying connected with friends, colleagues, family, whoever that may be, and having open discussions in that connection about what's actually happening versus pretending like everything's fine.
So that's really helpful. And then meeting myself with gentleness and compassion. I don't need to be hard on myself because where is that gonna get me when I can just show up as I am every day? That feels good to me.
Ashley C.: This energy, this lens, this ability to hold space, this we're all human, this community, this compassion.
Lindsay C.: Thanks for those kind words, Ashley.
Boundaries and Therapist Safety
Lindsay C.: Speaking of something that Ashley has taught me there, this was actually a really pivotal moment for me. When we think about this idea that we have to show up in the space as a blank slate and not let anything get to us, I had an experience with a client that just left me feeling like I had done something really, really wrong.
Long story short, she was just very angry at me, not toward me, like at me. I didn't know how to respond to that at all. After the fact, I did some reflecting and I was like, holy shit, I was, like, fawning. Like, I was apologizing, I was taking on way too much responsibility, and I didn't know that I could put up boundaries with her.
I didn't know that was allowed. And so I remember I sent this voice
Morgen V.: memo
Lindsay C.: to Ashley basically asking for support, and she was the one who told me, like, "You're ... You can put up boundaries. Like, you don't have to take people treating you poorly and just take that." So that was, I think, an important thing that grad school, we didn't even mention anything about that.
I never learned anything about that with my supervisors. Now that's something that I keep in mind of, like, okay, how can I keep myself emotionally safe or physically safe if something ever happened in the room? So thanks, Ashley.
Ashley C.: And I learned that from another social worker in a very traumatic and toxic work environment.
We deserve safety. We are taught either from an early age, from our cultural background, or even during grad school, you have to sacrifice. You're not in it for the money. You have to do this. You have to get back to this client. You have to show up. You have to be there. You don't get to drink water 'cause you have s- eight sessions in a row.
And it took a long time for me to undo that, and sometimes I have to remind myself, too, I deserve safety, and I deserve to feel safe. At work, I can support a client through whatever they're going through that is disrupting that safety, but I still want, need, and deserve safety at work.
Morgen V.: Which ultimately, as you're saying, in terms of this kind of reclaiming our safety and our wellbeing, and if we don't take care of it, we can't take care of our other clients.
We do get to set boundaries, and we also get to evaluate whether or not it feels like a good fit to work with someone.
Ashley C.: And I'll take it one step further. I think a good therapist does set boundaries because boundaries equal safety. Boundaries allow us and our clients to plan and predict, which reduces anxiety.
If we set a boundary, hopefully we are modeling for our clients, you also want, need, and deserve safety in other parts of your life. And it can go well. It might not be comfortable. It might be a new pattern that you're starting, but hopefully we are the template, right? The template in the therapy room that is able to be applied to other parts of the client's life when they leave our room.
But it took me a long time to understand that and figure out how to implement
Training Gaps and Final Takeaways
Ashley C.: it.
Morgen V.: I loved naming all this because it doesn't seem like there's been a paradigm shift necessarily in education, but you've also had really great supervision. Did you feel like you were prepared?
Lindsay C.: The biggest way that I felt prepared was how systems of power, privilege, oppression interact.
I think all of that knowledge was very, very helpful, not just to consider how my clients might experience the world, but also how I experience the world and how that might be different than a lot of my clients. So to try and reflect on things like how do I hold onto humility when I'm privileged in certain areas, how do I center their experience and consider my experience, but not make the therapy session about me.
So things like that I think were really helpful. I really loved the majority of my professors just in how they showed up in the room. Them showing up with their humanity reinforced my own values around that. Clinically, I don't think I was ... and when I say clinically, I mean, like very intervention specific.
I don't think I was prepared for that. I had never seen a DAP note before, never done an intake before. The bigger themes of how I'm more like focused, like my grad schooling definitely supported that. But there's definitely a lot of gaps as well. I guess another way grad school prepared me, for my capstone, I did it all around the experiences of interns.
So I did a qualitative interview with 15 participants, and that also really came from my own discomfort and uncertainty around these gaps that we're talking about because I just remember feeling like, "Am I the only one who feels this way?" So I was like, "I'm gonna do my project on that." And I found out that literally everyone feels that way.
And so I don't necessarily know what the solution to that is. In a lot of ways, you do just have to jump in. You're not gonna know what it's like to be in the room with a client until you're in the room with a client.
Ashley C.: And it's interesting that so many of us feel alone in our experiences on both sides of the coin, in our worst moments or even the successes.
How is it possible that all of us feel so isolated and alone even if we're having shared experiences? It's not just when we're a student or new to the field, it's also when we see a new type of client. When you're like, "I thought I've heard everything. Nope." And then we're like, "Who can I go to?" And then that isolation can compound so quickly.
Lindsay C.: Well, I think that's partly at least a reflection of the individualistic nature of this society. We're taught to connect with people based on things like achievement and success and performance.
Morgen V.: I have this part that's like why aren't schools doing better to serve us and help us bridge this gap between the theoretical pieces and the work that we're doing?
And also thinking about these qualitative or quantitative studies we had to do. Maybe we should do studies on the institutions and say, "Here's where we need to intervene. Here's where we need to support folks differently." There's so much wisdom that you are sharing with us today, systemically, individually, clinically.
I'm experiencing a lot of appreciation. I feel like I've learned a lot about our field because you've been in grad school recently. I also love hearing that you have had very generous professors who influenced you and impacted you. I feel really hopeful that you will have a long, sustainable career in front of you because of the awareness that you hold and the way that you're showing up.
Lindsay C.: Well, thank you. Me too.
Ashley C.: And I'll say, Morgan, Lindsay has changed the world. She was very modest about her first year internship but as part of that internship she was part of legislative changes that have impacted the masses in our state, specific populations especially. I really learned a lot from her and her first year internship.
Now I'm much more involved in politics. Everyone vote, please, all the time. It's been really cool to see Lindsay really blending the macro and the micro work that social work offers that I think often isn't done.
Morgen V.: That is amazing. That could be a whole class that you could teach. Mm-hmm. Here's what social work can actually look like and here's how I do it.
Wouldn't that be so powerful to hear your journey with that, the macro and the micro?
Ashley C.: So Lindsay, any last things that you would like to share with our listeners about what it means to be a good therapist?
Lindsay C.: Try not to focus on the nitty-gritty of good or goodness. Enjoy the journey, be gentle with yourselves, and figure out what aligns with you.
There are parts of being a clinical therapist that might align with someone and they might not align with you, and that's okay.
Ashley C.: I know you wanna steer away from the word good or goodness, and a lot of times I hate this good versus bad binary as well, but being a good therapist takes a lot of work.
There's this becoming, and becoming a therapist is hard, and it's an iterative process that's never done. Thank you, Lindsay, for sharing your therapeutic perspective and the importance of relational practices. Also, this creativity, curiosity, and connection as major pathways for clients to grow and change.
I think we've both seen here how passionate you are about incorporating those things in even deeper trauma work and identity exploration, grief, anxiety, life transitions, and I certainly appreciate the reminder to seek community and be kind to yourself.
Lindsay C.: Yeah. Thank you guys for having me. This has been great.
Ashley C.: Thank you so much.
