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Episode Description
What happens when a therapist stops leaving parts of herself at the office door?
Hosts Ashley Charbonneau and Morgen Villegas sit down with Kellee Myers, founder of Wild Transformations Therapy. She spent ten years in agency work before opening her private practice in 2018. Today she specializes in trauma, anxiety, neurodivergence, and LGBTQ+ care, with a focus on EMDR.
Kellee talks about leaving a case management job with 125 clients, building a practice around motherhood, and the isolation that can creep into private practice. Then the conversation turns to therapeutic rituals. Kellee explains how reclaiming her own spirituality led her to the closing of the bones ceremony. She now offers it as a four-hour ceremony that honors grief and celebration during big life transitions.
The three also question the 60-minute clinical hour, and why trauma often needs more time than one session allows.
In this episode:
Fighting burnout and isolation in private practice
What the closing of the bones ceremony is and who it’s for
How to offer ritual work ethically next to therapy
Why EMDR intensives and longer sessions can help with trauma
As Kellee puts it, “Therapy doesn’t look one way anymore.”
GUEST BIO:
Kellee Myers, LPC, LAC, Clinical Supervisor, EMDR-Certified
Kellee spent ten years in hospitals, case management, and residential substance use programs before she founded Wild Transformations Therapy in 2018. She specializes in trauma, anxiety, neurodivergence, and LGBTQ+ care. She uses EMDR to help clients heal childhood trauma that gets in the way of healthy relationships. She is also parts-work informed and trained in AEDP.
Kellee offers individual and group therapy, EMDR supervision, and therapeutic rituals. These are intensive-style sessions that hold space for grief and celebration during big life transitions. She currently has openings for rituals and three spots in her biweekly “LGBTQ+ for 40+” group on Saturday mornings in Broomfield.
Outside of work, she’s a proud mama of two, a cat lover, a coffee addict, and a new fan of hip-hop dance.
CHAPTERS
[1:39] From Agency Work to Private Practice
[3:30] Lessons and Burnout in Agency Work
[6:26] Balancing Motherhood and Practice
[9:21] Craving Community in Private Practice
[12:1]3 Building Community and Peer Support
[14:23] Therapeutic Rituals and Closing of the Bones
[22:50] Breaking the 60-Minute Clinical Hour
[26:40] What Makes a Good Therapist
Transcript
Introduction and Welcome
Ashley C.: Okay Welcome back to The Art of Being a Therapist: The Space Between Training and Real Life. I'm Ashley, and I'm here with my co-host,
Morgen V.: Morgan. Hi, everyone. Today we're with Kelly. Welcome, Kelly. After a decade of working in various mental health settings, including hospitals, case management organizations, and 90-day residential intensive outpatient programs for adults engaging in substance use recovery, Kelly established a private practice called Wild Transformations Therapy in 2018.
Her specializations include trauma, anxiety, neurodivergence, and the LGBTQ+ community. She's passionate about using EMDR to process remnants of childhood developmental trauma that get in the way of healthy, fulfilling relationships, and also provides consultation and supervision. Her offerings include individual therapy, group therapy, therapeutic rituals, which are like intensives but can help honor and hold space for both grief and celebration in times of big transitions.
Outside of work, Kelly is a proud mama and self-proclaimed cat lover, coffee addict, and her new self-care is hip hop dance. I'm so excited to talk with you today. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you both.
Ashley C.: Welcome, Kelly. Like Morgan said, we are so excited to have you and to get to know you more. As I listened to your intro with Morgan, I realized how much I have in common with you in terms of kind of the start of our careers and early career trajectory.
For our listeners, do you wanna tell us more in your own words what your career has looked like?
From Agency Work to Private Practice
Morgen V.: Sure.
Kellee M.: Yeah, that's fun hearing that we have a lot in common. Yes, it has looked like a lot of agency work before graduate school, and then I always knew that I wanted to go into private practice, which you can't beat the flexibility.
So, that was always the plan, and I'm so grateful for all my agency experience because it really just, it does give you a lot of experience.
Ashley C.: It's interesting that you always knew you wanted to go into private practice. I was the exact opposite. I never- Yeah ... thought I would go into private practice, and then as Morgan knows, I couldn't tolerate working in systems.
Fair. So, I kinda narrowed my pathway into private practice. I'm curious what lessons stood out to you from agency work that you have carried over to private practice, and what are maybe some things you learned in agency that you have told yourself, "I'm absolutely not going to carry this over into my own business"?
Kellee M.: Sure. I think what I'm most grateful for out of all the systems from agency work was getting to have a plethora of intense experiences where I walked out of that and was like, "You can hit me with anything." When you've seen someone put on a hold or you've worked in the residential rehab with someone being picked up by the cops at midnight wearing a- kind of hat.
You can hit me with anything and that's not going to surprise me. I appreciate all the experience and confidence that it gave me to then venture out on my own. What did you leave behind? Just doing way too much, tempering our own hyper achieving parts, but just not doing too much. I mean, in my case management role, I had 125 clients, and that wasn't being a therapist, I wanna clarify that piece.
Lessons and Burnout in Agency Work
Kellee M.: So I was doing home visits. It was more of a social work role, but it was people with severe and persistent mental illness doing quarterly home visits, and then of course the phone calls and setting them up with services in the home, which I found it so rewarding, but it was just too much at the end of the day.
Had a bit of my own overwhelm and depression as anyone might in that scenario, and that was around the time that I started grad school, and I had to have this almost kinda come to Jesus with myself of I am either gonna fail my clients or I'm gonna fail grad school in the sense of not getting enough out of it.
So I made the difficult decision in my first semester to resign from that position, which was offering a lot of financial security, but at the end of the day, it just wasn't worth it, and I'm glad that I made that decision.
Morgen V.: But that must've been so hard. I'm just having so much compassion for what that younger you must have had to go through to make that choice, because just knowing how expensive grad school is and just knowing how choosing this path is just fraught with so many challenges.
And so, yeah, thank you for sharing that.
Kellee M.: Yeah. Yeah, definitely piecemealed nanny positions, barista positions, three jobs, you know, to make it all work. It's absolute-
Ashley C.: And I appreciate you brought up this idea of choosing ourselves over our clients, and I think that is such a complex decision that we have to make on a daily basis in terms of our schedule and maybe smaller decisions, but also during these big moments within our careers or education.
And it is not easy, I think, for a lot of us to make that decision. And I think in other fields it's like, "Oh, yeah, of course, you choose yourself over your job." Mm-hmm. And that's not easy for so many of us.
Kellee M.: So overlapped for us. Yeah. When the core of what we do is doing relationships well and always striving for that, and that negotiation of needs and reciprocity.
Morgen V.: Was that something that you felt like you intrinsically knew as you were coming into this or did you learn that from somewhere?
Kellee M.: It's a constant evolution. It was my intention at the beginning of grad school to keep that job and do that, but it just was such a clear no at the time. I would sign on at 8:00 AM.
At the worst, I had 40 voicemails. It just became such a clear no, and I actually tried-- I haven't thought of this in ages, but I posed, "What if I work part-time?" And they just weren't able to accommodate that, and it had to be a no. And then living off of the student loans and the nanny gigs and all the part-time gigs, which ultimately did end up working.
Balancing Motherhood and Practice
Kellee M.: And then becoming a mother a few years ago of a four-and-a-half-year-old and a two-and-a-half-year-old. That has been such a unceremonious throw into figuring out what does balance look like and that ever-changing daycare and those systems. And ultimately, I've worked 12 to 15 sessions a week these last few years when there's been a lot of sleepless nights.
In some ways, I'm grateful that I had a young one right after COVID, because it being 2021, when I had my first, I cannot imagine had I been working in that agency at that time. I'm so grateful that I- I had a position where I could take a nap in the middle of the day, and I was still working my butt off.
I was still seeing 25 clients a week, and when there was a cancellation, I could take a nap.
Ashley C.: I know this wasn't the point that you were trying to make, but I can't imagine coming into work with 40 voicemail. That's half a day's work right there.
Kellee M.: Yeah.
Ashley C.: At least, if you're trying to call everyone back. Yeah.
Again, a lot of people who don't work in the mental health field think all we do is listen every day or talk to people all day, every day, and that's a perfect example of how quickly our day fills up with things that don't bring in any money. I know you were in agency setting, but if that was to happen in private practice, right?
Calling people back does not bring in money, but it often takes up a lot of our time. And then having to push things back depending on how those conversations go, especially if anyone is in crisis. And then, as you said, having over 100 clients, when you start pushing stuff back from morning to the afternoon, and then very quickly our week is over and we still have 8 million things on our to-do list.
Kellee M.: Yeah. The road to burnout, right? And so that's why a lot of these systems have a lot of turnover, and then ultimately it did get better in that system after a time. But I really appreciate, Ashley, you naming the invisible labor piece or those unpaid pieces of what that looks like now. Yes, I've only, quote unquote, "been seeing 12 to 15 clients a week with young ones," where, good luck if I've had more than four hours of sleep the night before.
And in recent years it's getting better. Yay. But all those other pieces of marketing and connecting with colleagues, which is so spirit fulfilling and helps against that burnout piece. But there's so many hats that we wear as business owners, which is fun and also taxing in a different way. And it sounds like
Morgen V.: what you've created though is essentially a system that works for you with your
Kellee M.: family,
Morgen V.: with your life, and you're naming the road to burnout.
I'm wondering what road do you feel like you're on at this point? And we might get now into a little bit more of some of the things that you've added to your practice.
Craving Community in Private Practice
Kellee M.: I've been out of agency work for so long, it's been eight years, that I'm craving more community lately. I'm not exactly sure what that's gonna look like.
Life tells me it'll reveal itself in time. But another way to put it, I'm feeling a little bit isolated lately in private practice. But- There's that daydream sometimes of like, do I go back to agency work? You know, I wanna be around others to be nurtured, to nurture others.
Ashley C.: I appreciate you saying and describing this constant evolution, and I appreciate you naming the daydream about agency life.
It takes me a lot of cognitive effort to remind myself that the grass is not greener, and it's a lot of executive functioning on our business outside of those direct clinical hours.
Kellee M.: It, it happens for any of us when you've been in something long enough, is like, oh, what would it be like to be there again?
And also maybe giving ourselves permission to do that again if we want to, if we need to, for all the reasons we
Morgen V.: get to go back. Or recreate it in some way. At least in my own experience, what you're talking about with being nurtured in an agency, I completely forgot about that piece. But- ... you know, in a concrete way what it can look like in my experience is being able to debrief something or being able to really talk through something while those parts of me are activated.
Somebody else might be able to witness that for me more quickly. Curious, what does nurturing feel like when we're even talking about this? A lot of us work individually, but we long for some kind of collective energy.
Kellee M.: Yeah. I appreciate the reminder that it can be recreated in a new way, that when there's this grass is greener wondering that happens, to go back to like, oh, what's at the core of this?
And you named it. The, what's at the core is people more readily available to, to be right there, to be in a moment together after intensity or after excitement of just had this really powerful EMDR session and wanting to share that. And I think how it can be created is- You know, it takes creativity, but like setting up, like for like what we're already doing, Morgan and I have a friendship outside of this of like leaving each other Voxers can really be helpful.
So here's my reminder to do more of that. Yes, but you're naming something so powerful though, because that is a container.
Morgen V.: We're not sharing confidential information- Yeah ... but we're just sharing about maybe what's happening internally for us as we're holding space for folks, what we might need from each other to be able to continue with our day or with our week or whatever it is.
And it could be also checking in about family, checking in about like the other intersecting ways that we have to show up in this world. It just is a space for deep listening.
Building Community and Peer Support
Ashley C.: And I think that is something that's not talked about much either, is life is happening outside of our clinical sessions, and I think a lot of us have had to turn off the news and news alerts specifically because there were times where I was seeing news alerts in between sessions and was having a very difficult time regulating.
But now I use some of that time between sessions to listen to the messages from people like Morgan, which honestly fill my heart and fill my cup. Even if it is maybe something that someone else has to process or maybe a difficult topic, I still really want to lean into community, and that's a great reminder that we are in community.
And it also gives me time to maybe verbally process stuff that has happened while I've been in session with clients, and maybe I don't need anything back. Maybe it's just me verbalizing something for seven minutes on a rambling voice memo to someone I trust, and then I'm like, "Oh, I feel better." And sometimes I'll message someone and say, "You don't have to respond to that," or, "Actually, you don't even have to listen to that."
But just knowing that it got to someone or that I have people to do that with is enough most days.
Kellee M.: 1,000%, just the verbalizing what we do in therapy when we're in the client chair is just getting it out of our body, out of our heart, out of our mind, and having this container of friendship and colleagues.
I'm wondering if we're able to shift now into talking
Morgen V.: more about the- Really sacred work that you've shifted into. Therapy is one, but I think creating of the rituals that you've added to your practice, if you wanna speak to that. Just as a brief naming to listeners is that Kelly has provided a ceremony to me as well, and we might get into that a little bit, and that's welcome.
But I want you to just share out what feels right for you in terms of what that process has felt like and maybe why you wanted to shift into doing that work, 'cause it is quite remarkable.
Therapeutic Rituals and Closing of the Bones
Kellee M.: Thank you, Morgan. What's been on my mind is how the personal and the professional just so interact throughout our careers.
They shape and inform who we are and the work we do if we let it. The more I become myself- The more I show up in my business and the more that helps prevent burnout. I'm remembering a past supervision group post agency work in private practice where our supervisor really held really well, like, how are you shutting down parts of yourself in session?
I think in retrospect, part of what I learned to shut down in myself in this journey is spirituality. Didn't realize emotion would come up, but that's okay. And I have a complex religious trauma, spiritual trauma, as many of us do, and many of us in the LGBTQ. I'm bi, and that's something I'm very passionate about working with, is like reclaiming a sense of spirituality that works for me.
And for me, it's oracle cards, it's tarot readings, it's witchy woo stuff, and I was not letting that be in the room. But the more I have put oracle cards out in my office as just like a nod of like meaning something to those who it'll mean something to, it has enlivened the work so much. I cannot tell you how many clients in the last year as I've been like, "This may or may not land for you, but would you wanna pull a card?"
Or, you know, just stuff like that, and I never push it, and I really think it's quite professional and respectful, but I can't tell you how many people have then shared so much more about themselves that I had no idea of things they were into like that. And so I think it's really just helped everything blossom and what it looks like as therapeutic rituals as well.
So the closing the bounds ceremony, I got to experience, it's a postpartum ceremony to help let your birth story emerge of having been pregnant, having had any miscarriages. I had one in between two children, and it was just this container that I didn't know I needed, that I found through ultimately being held in community and self-care.
When I had my second, I was going to a support group through Sanctuary Doulas, highly recommend them in Boulder, Colorado. And there was an intern there, a counseling intern who said, "I appreciate you sharing about your grief, and there's this-" There's this ritual we could do called closing of the bones, and I was like, "I don't know what that is, but yes."
Everything in me was like, "Yes, that." And then I've started offering them in my practice, and it's so powerful. It's such a powerful container for the biggest transitions in our lives. I offer them outside of the postpartum experience as well, so offering them for the LGBTQ community. You know, there might be someone who wants to celebrate 12 months of being on HRT or these, these other milestones.
And so it's a great container for those transitions, to hold our grief and our celebration.
Morgen V.: I think that creating ceremony and ritual is such a beautiful complement to life. Just speaking from my own personal experience of doing a closing of the bones with you, that experience was up there with the births of my two children and getting married.
That was such a transformative experience for me to do that and to be witnessed, to be able to close out with deep intention the childbearing years of my life Here I go and cry. But just really want listeners to really understand and have this insight into what this means for us as therapists, right?
To add these kinds of components to our practice, that it is possible. But there's some differences with how that works. Yeah. Curious if you wanna name that, too.
Kellee M.: Yeah. Thank you so much, Morgan. I'm touched by the emotion, and it's just the biggest endorsement I could ever have as from a colleague that I look up to and trust as much as I, I trust you, that to have given you a powerful experience, and I just want others to experience it.
Like, this power of sitting in a circle, and we don't need a therapist to do that, but it's helpful to have a guide. It's helpful to have a container when there's things that are so big in life that are beyond words that, that you want four hours to give to it instead of just an hour therapy session. I always tell people therapy is amazing, and being in a circle is that much more.
It's so powerful. It's a little less regulated, right, than our profession, so it's like adjacent. So I'm consulting with my lawyer, and I'm doing all of that, and I'm also allowing the combination of freedom and structure. And so yeah, it does look a little bit different, but practically speaking, what it looks like is a four-hour ceremony.
Sometimes this is with existing clients, sometimes it's with people I've never met. And so for those people in the second camp, it would look like three preparatory sessions, more as needed. Wanting to be very trauma-informed with this process always, and so offering enough support and then following it up with an integration session where we debrief.
How are you doing now? What does support look like moving forward if they don't already have an individual therapist? If I have openings, could be with me or I could refer outward. So coaching
Morgen V.: it with, with support because it does bring up a lot. And essentially it's a separate set of ethics and guidelines.
I wasn't your client. Obviously, I'm your friend, and so- Yeah ... there's a different kind of flexibility that you're talking about when you're in that role than when you're a therapist. But you're still a therapist in one way, and then you're able to hold a container doing ritual.
Kellee M.: I see myself as a guide or facilitator.
Morgen V.: Yeah. Folks might be like, "But wait, Morgan's interviewing you on her podcast, but was she a client?" No, was not a client. There's a different kind of- Yeah ... of
Kellee M.: guidelines there. Yep, exactly. Yeah. Thank you for naming that.
Ashley C.: It's beautiful hearing you guys talk about this ritual. I'm just touched in so many ways right now and feeling like I need- Something to mark some closings of some chapters for myself and openings for new chapters to come.
But I also wanna name, therapy is very narrow, and even though the three of us are quite well-trained, we're also naming that sometimes that's not enough, and sometimes people need other things. And at least I'm constantly learning what those other things or modalities, or in this case therapeutic ritual, what those are.
And something that stood out to me too, Kelly, as you were sharing how you got into this work, is that an intern provided this idea to you initially. And I think sometimes we think of interns as newbies or early career therapists, or just, quote unquote, just students or too new to know anything. Those are snap judgments that I think we all need to catch ourselves on.
But how lovely that an intern was the one to open this door for you.
Kellee M.: Yeah. She navigated it beautifully. Looking back, I'm like, wow, that, that may have been intimidating on her part to be offering this to a seasoned clinician. She did amazingly, held it beautifully, and I'm so grateful to her and I'm so grateful to the guidance that she had in her program Therapy doesn't look one way anymore.
I'm thinking about like psychedelic assisted experiences. I wanna clarify that's not what I'm offering. It's not medicine assisted. And it'll be interesting to see how that continues to evolve.
Breaking the 60 Minute Clinical Hour
Ashley C.: And I think even this 53 to 60 minute clinical hour, a lot of us are confined to that for a lot of different reasons.
One, it's quite standardized at this point, but two, insurance kinda drives that game in a lot of ways. I don't mean to call therapy a game, but it really sucks in a lot of ways having to navigate insurance companies, and it does feel like this game of power and control sometimes with insurance companies because they get a say sometimes when we don't.
But I'm also thinking of me and one of my therapeutic journeys at the end of last year, and I was scheduling with my therapist, and I said something along the lines of, "I need a whole day." Like, we get to this hour mark, this 90 minute mark with EMDR, and then we have to stop. And it takes so much effort for me to close that container and then to reopen it.
It takes sometimes 30, 45 minutes, an hour. And thank you to my therapist. She said, "Okay. What time do you wanna start next time?" And she just held that whole afternoon for me, and I think we probably did over three hours until she and I both named, "That's enough for today." And we went on like that for about a month.
And of course, I'm privileged enough to be able to private pay for her time. But I just remember thinking at the end of four to six weeks worth of work how transformative that was for me, and for my therapist to really believe me and meet me where I'm at and be open-minded to something outside of the 60-minute clinical hour.
Kellee M.: I love that you both went for it. You named your need and she met you in it, and that's beautiful. And- Morgan, I know you offer EMDR intensives. I don't know if you just wanna name anything around that and offering that balance in your practice.
Morgen V.: Yeah. Just similar to what you both have shared. It's the opening, the closing, the start, stop, start, stop of doing trauma work, and there's such a limitation.
Of course, we always bring in patriarchy to almost every podcast episode, but it's like, who decided that one hour of therapy was enough, and why? And then why is it weekly? So it's thinking about these structures and then essentially breaking them. Kelly talking about how you brought in ritual, and Ashley, you talking about how you're a therapist and you worked out this plan.
I do EMDR intensives where we will do four hours a day for three days, so it's a total of 12 hours, and there's studies around this to treat PTSD. These are real solutions to problems that were created by these systems, right? Where it's like it doesn't work to start, stop in some of the treatment that we provide.
And I wanna shift back to Kelly. This is also neurodivergent
Kellee M.: affirming care. I'm curious if you wanna speak more to that, too. Also having ADHD so often having that experience of Reaching that 45 minute mark and it's like, "Well, eff, I was just getting there." And every ADHD client of mine having that same experience and us creatively navigating to pivot to a 90 minute session is mostly what it's looked like in my practice prior to offering therapeutic rituals.
PTSD is not acquired in a day. It takes time to unpack it. So yeah, I'm just touched by all the ways that we are all getting creative with it, Ashley, your therapist included, to create real healing.
What Makes a Good Therapist
Ashley C.: I'd love to ask a broader question to Kelly. What makes a good therapist?
Kellee M.: So many things. Bringing in ourselves, not being overly clinical, also bringing in professionalism and boundaries, and then always that self-care of doing our own work.
What makes a good therapist is having your own therapist, and I still have that as part of my routine.
Morgen V.: We're never stagnant in this profession, and the name of your business just really speaks to that. We're always in a wild transformation. I just love that your personal and your professional reflect each other because as you said earlier, that's like a burnout prevention, but it also does require a lot of tending and a lot of care.
Kellee M.: So it's energizing to have our practices reflect us, and when we're in newness of a new project, it takes the building, it takes the watering it.
Ashley C.: I also love that you take part in hip hop dance classes. Yeah. It has seriously been on my mind for years to get back into dance. I once had a physical therapist tell me to get back into dance because in so many forms of dance you can't tense your body.
But it was just this interesting idea that we can relieve tension, and I've met so many wonderful therapists, but also other professionals who are giving ideas outside of their field, and they're not trying to monopolize a client or a patient. They're not trying to get them back week after week after week.
They're honestly naming, "These other things might help, and do you want more information?" I've learned a lot from you both today, and I'm just really grateful, Kelly, that you're here because hopefully the next time we talk I will have taken a dance class.
Kellee M.: Yes. Or we can go together. I'll put that out there.
Morgen V.: What has that been like? If you wanna just name that really quick, 'cause I would love to hear how dance has maybe felt like a wild transformation for you.
Kellee M.: Yeah. So empowering. There's been this opening of how do I fit a bit more of myself in now, and- Like you, Ashley, I just kept getting this message of, "Dance, dance, dance."
And I decided to listen to it. I dabbled in hip hop in college, but I wasn't one of those people who grew up going to dance classes since I was three or anything, so it took a little bit of getting through some fear. But, and then the studio I went to, I didn't know this when I picked it, but I happened to join at a time that they were starting a new song, and choreography, and routine.
They're like, "Do you wanna perform with us in, in six months?" And in my terror, and also the remembering of, "S- okay, Kelly, what are you working on? You're working on, as an Enneagram 9, being a little bit louder, being a little bit more you, being more expressive." And so I said yes, and performing was both terrifying and empowering, and as I think it's always both of those things that
Morgen V.: travel together.
It was awesome to watch. Yes. Thank you. It was so powerful. I just feel like dance and movement, it just helps us get in touch with parts of ourselves that are maybe in the background. It helps us get in touch with our bodies, our communities, our histories. It was fucking awesome.
Kellee M.: Thank you, and thank you for, yet again, another way of witnessing me.
And yeah, I think hip hop in particular, it's powerful for anger, and moving anger, for taking up space. There's so many, like, therapeutic themes that it's helpful for. And one of my favorite parts of my work, and you two maybe relate, is pairing people with the right people. So it's like, "Oh, you need a pelvic floor therapist?
I got a gal. You need this or you need that? I've got someone."
Ashley C.: And it was a pelvic floor physical therapist that told me to get into dance, so again, feel like the universe is just putting me in the right place at the right time today, which, you know, spiritually is just beautiful, and I feel very grateful to hold space with the both of you today.
Morgen V.: Yeah. It's been amazing to talk with you. Thank you so much for listening to our episode spotlighting Kelly. 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.
