Psychotherapy Notes

The Last 100 Hours, Part 2: Is paying to track your hours worth it?

March 16, 2016February 29, 2016 by Jeffrey Liebert

256px-2010-07-20_Black_windup_alarm_clock_face Fifty hours. Five-oh. That is all that is left. It truly is hard to believe just how close I am to being done with my 3,000-hour requirement for MFT licensure.

For a majority of the time I’ve been gathering hours, like most interns I haven’t had a clear sense of exactly how close I have been to being done. California’s process of categorizing and tracking hours for MFT licensure is notoriously complicated. It can be hard enough to keep track of the hours we work, let alone figure out which of the many categories or “buckets” the hours belong under. The process is even more difficult, and often frustrating, due to the maximum and minimum requirements under each individual bucket. Anyone who is currently tracking his or her hours, or who had in the past, understands that this is a daunting process.

How this year’s religious freedom bills would impact therapists

February 23, 2016 by Ben Caldwell

Golden gavel 1, By walknboston (Flickr: Gavel) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Several states are considering religious freedom bills that would directly impact therapist training and licensure, and clients’ ability to access appropriate mental health care.

As has been the trend for several years now, these bills — also commonly referred to as “conscience clause” legislation — are being framed as protection of the rights of religious people to act in accordance with their moral or religious beliefs, free from government interference. The bills tend to be broadly written, though there have been at least a few instances of bills being written specifically to apply to mental health (including one this year — see discussion of Tennessee below).

The Last 100 Hours, Part 1: Introducing Jeff Liebert

February 27, 2016February 10, 2016 by Jeffrey Liebert

track-running-lanes [Ed. note: With this post, I’d like to personally welcome Jeff Liebert, MA, to the Psychotherapy Notes team. Jeff is from Sacramento, currently lives and works in Los Angeles, and is ever-so-close to completing the journey to MFT licensure. His first few posts here will focus on the big decisions that come with the last 100 hours of that journey. Welcome aboard, Jeff! -Ben]

It’s here at last: The final 100 hours. I am so close to completing my supervised experience, which is the most extensive requirement in my way of being a licensed therapist. As I sit here on the edge of licensure, I am full of both excitement and dread.

Psychotherapy’s dirty little secrets

February 27, 2016February 8, 2016 by Ben Caldwell

As tremendously effective as psychotherapy is, and as much as we try to help out students and new professionals, there are some things about working in this field that we don’t eagerly share. It’s not that we don’t want you to know, necessarily, it’s just… these things don’t look so good.

Here are three secrets we keep about the world of therapy. Each one is true, even if we don’t talk about them much.

Hear me on the Talking Therapy podcast

February 1, 2016 by Ben Caldwell

A few weeks ago, I sat down with John Webber and RJ Thomas from the popular Talking Therapy podcast. We talked about license exams, the high cost of becoming a therapist, the importance of measuring outcomes, my book Saving Psychotherapy, and a lot more. It’s a wide-ranging interview, and I hope you find it interesting and informative.

You can find my specific episode on this page, or just directly download the mp3 here.