Episode 114: General Counseling
Summary
Nick and Kai answer a listener question about finding and working with a therapist. Both share personal experiences with the search process, bad fits, and why starting therapy before a crisis hits is worth doing. The episode argues that for knowledge workers whose income depends on their brain, therapy is routine maintenance, not a sign of failure.
Highlights
- Nick had a therapist around 2008–2009 who kept marveling at his Kickstarter success instead of engaging with his actual problems. A therapist impressed by your achievements is not doing the job.
- Kai saw four therapists before finding one he clicked with. Expecting a fit on the first or second try is the wrong frame.
- Nick notes that therapists have a financial incentive to keep you coming back, which is one reason you should not feel guilty leaving one that is not working. Bad fit is not your fault.
- Both hosts recommend finding a therapist while things are going reasonably well, not during a crisis. Kai’s analogy: you don’t want to shop for a mechanic after your engine explodes, and a therapist who already knows you is far better positioned to help.
- Nick’s therapist told him point-blank to fire a client when he was burning out in November. He did.
- Kai describes the hedonic treadmill: roughly 60% of your baseline happiness is genetic, meaning you revert to a set point regardless of events. Understanding this helped him reframe his anxiety and depression as wiring rather than brokenness.
- Different schools of therapy exist and you won’t know which fits until you try. Nick likes homework assignments; many therapists don’t give them. Knowing your preferences before you’re in crisis narrows the search.
Read the transcript
So one of our lovely, lovely, lovely listeners wrote in with a Question. And before we dive into the question, I’d just love to remind all of our listeners: you could email us anytime you want with topic suggestions or questions you have. Go to makemoneyonline. exposed, scroll down to the footer, and you’ll see a big old contact link. Click that link and it’ll send an email over to Nick’s office and to me. And we love getting email from you listeners. We’d love your questions. Please go on sending them in. It’s fine. Here’s the question that somebody wrote in about a topic I’d love to learn more about. What’s your experience with finding a therapist and working with one? I’m considering taking the leap myself and would appreciate to learn what you’d recommend. And this is a topic Nick and I have talked about a couple of times, but We’re bringing it back as a topic because I think it’s one of the more valuable things we could talk about. Mental health is so, so, so important. And as independent business owners, we often lack support systems, lack communities, lack People who are able to talk to about the struggles we go through, and finding a mental health professional, a therapist, a counselor, is one of the most valuable things you can do. I’m often reminded of Mike Montero’s quote: the two most valuable fees or expenses he pays each month are to his lawyer and to his therapist. And continually, they provide the most value to his business. I have to say, it’s the exact same for any investment I’ve ever made in my own mental health and seeing a therapist and seeing a counselor. It’s beyond good. What are your thoughts? What’s your experience?
Uh multitudinous. I think the first thing to keep in mind here I’ll begin with kind of an anecdote. There was a period about two years ago when basically everything in my personal life was a private hell. And I kept it mostly quiet for a minute, and uh but I would like go out with friends and I would just talk. And it was what I needed at the time. And uh And I would talk about how everything is going horribly, and they’d be like, Oh my god, that’s so horrible. And I’d be like, Yeah. And then toward like somewhere around the three-quarter period in every single one of these conversations, I would be like, Well, you know, I’ve been Talking about myself for this entire time. How are you doing? Like, um, you know, we’re having a dinner together. Like, we should pretend like there’s things going on in your life because there are. And they’re like, uh and they always kept talking about like, uh, well, um, FedEx won’t deliver my package, but it’s nowhere near the s the level of problems that you have. And I’m like, no, I asked for a reason, yo. Like FedEx not delivering your package is it’s not we’re not having a contest to see who has the grander, most existentially difficult problems here. You know, like it’s not like I won. I assure you I didn’t. But I want to hear about it because it matters, right? And I’m bringing this anecdote up because what ends up happening with a therapist Is you go see a therapist, and the therapist is always dealing or frequently dealing with people who are dealing with worse, heavier shit than you, right? Like. Like major life trauma type stuff. They might be grappling with addiction. They might be grappling with the death of a loved one or infidelity, like the big societal moray things, right? Or just horrible abuse scenario, all of it, you know? And then you come in, and if you’re listening to this, you want to be an independent consultant, or you might be doing pretty well, and you might be okay in your mental health situation, or something, whatever. But you need somebody to talk to about it. You need counseling. The last thing that you should be looking for in that situation out of a therapist is somebody who is outright impressed by you. Right. I remember when I was first seeking a therapist in like 2008, nine. Like I was going through some rough stuff in my life about a decade ago. And I remember feeling like oddly hollow after my therapy sessions where I would talk about stuff and like King Sinslang was about to come out. And I had just done a thing on Kickstarter and they hadn’t heard of Kickstarter yet because it was 2009. And they were always like, My God, you just made up $12,000 by publishing something on the internet. I’m like, yeah. Anti-miserable. Like, can we deal with the anti-miserable bit? That’s why I’m here. And they never, they just focused on the achievements. Like, fuck your achievements in therapy. Like, the progress is what matters. But like, I go into therapy and I am a human. I’m not consultant nick D. I’m somebody who is dealing with a lot of stressful and difficult and heavy things in his life, and so are you. And you should not let a therapist tell you constantly that you’re doing great when in fact you feel like you’re doing like garbage It took a minute for me to find a good one for that reason.
No, I think the process of finding a good therapist is It’s more extended than people think. It’s not you connect with the therapist and boom, it’s your therapist. What I’ve always found is it’s a process of going through two, three, five. Multiple therapists, multiple counselors, and seeing who you jive with, who you have a good relationship with, since a lot of it is the interpersonal dynamics. Is it somebody who is supportive in the way you need to be supported, not want to be supported, but Need to be supported? Is it somebody who is there to listen? Is it somebody who is able to provide the right kind of advice or direction or feedback or ask the correct questions? Sometimes you might start seeing a therapist and one or two sessions in discover, ah, for whatever reason, this just isn’t a good fit. That’s completely fine. That is perfectly, perfectly, perfectly normal. The great thing to do in that scenario is to realize: okay, this one therapist is not a fit. Let me move on to another therapist, a second, a third, and a fourth. Until you find the one that’s a good match. The therapist I was seeing in Eugene before I moved, I had seen four other therapists before that therapist To finally find one that I clicked with.
Yeah, yeah. And like, you know, your first therapy session is that’s it. It’s one therapy session. That’s it. Pretend like you just went to a doctor’s appointment, end of therapy session, you’re done. But the therapist and here’s the fucked up thing about it, the way the industry operates is that like the therapist obviously has a vested interest in as it would be for any info product turning you into subscriber revenue, right? And I know that’s crazy like simplistic and not very charitable, but like it’s there is some truth to it, right? Frankly, the worse off I’m doing, the more I’m in a therapist’s office, and that’s probably good for the bottom line of the therapist. So like the challenge out of all of this is you should never blame yourself For a bad fit with a therapist. Just as you would not blame yourself for a bad fit with a client, I would hope, after listening to 114 episodes of this podcast. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It doesn’t mean you’re doing something evil or being a jerk by like not Hanging out with this person. I think it’s also difficult because the therapist is meant to be like a caring and supportive human being to you. And so if they’re doing their job right, you should probably feel a little bit bad firing the therapist. Because you were just in a situation where for one hour someone paid caring and supportive attention to you. And then you fire them. You know?
But I mean, double’s advocate, I’d also say if they’re a good therapist and you go through that situation and at the end of that hour, you’re like, you know what? You’re a good therapist, but this just doesn’t seem like what I need. A good therapist would say, thank you so much for telling me that. Great to hear that. Maybe provide referrals, maybe provide other direction, maybe provide answers to whatever the issue that presented itself was, adapting how they interact with you or suggesting. Ways to change how you’re seeking out therapists to find one that’s a better match.
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, the other thing that you don’t really know with therapy until you get into it is that there are Many warrings, the largely mutually exclusive schools of thought around therapy, and you don’t know which one is going to be a fit For you until you actually go through and try it out. And sometimes you can be in a crisis scenario where you don’t have the luxury to like start try it out. So, another thing I recommend is learn what those things are, what their intended outcomes are like, and find a therapist that works out well for you while you’re still okay. Because when everything is going to hell, that’s when you want to really ramp it up. So you should just go there and be like, here’s who I am. Here are my struggles. And you have a nice, chill conversation. If you’re like me and you’re a consultant who’s very outcome driven, you want a to-do list coming out of it. I love homework and therapy. Lots of therapists don’t s do that. Some really like doing that. I don’t know. It’s very different and very highly variable.
And I mean, I think the good, I think, again. It’s an iterative process. And you might find a therapist and work with them for a few months or a year or a few years and then discover it’s not quite what I want. That doesn’t mean it was a terrible experience. It just means you’ve become better at assessing what types of support you need: be it homework assignments, be it a specific mode of therapy, be it other things. to help you resolve whatever the underlying issues are, what the problems you’re experiencing are, what the feelings you’re experiencing are.
Yeah. And I think going when you’re okay also allows the therapist to understand things about you that you don’t necessarily have, like the critical distance. To fully grok. Like, I was wrangling with burnout in like November of this past year, and my therapist was like, You should fire a client. That’s it. I’m just going to tell you point blank, like this is happening. And I’m like, oh, yeah, you’re totally right. And then I did. By no fault of mine.
To me, it seems more and more like not in a negative sense, but in a positive sense. Finding a mechanic for your car. You don’t want to be shopping for a mechanic when your engine just exploded. You want to find a mechanic when your car is in good shape so the mechanic knows, oh, this is what the car is like. Oh, you just blew your engine. Okay, we could fix That and get it back to normal. Yeah, yeah.
Well, and also, if you go to a mechanic right when you blow the engine, like you haven’t established a relationship with them, so they’re far more likely to screw you because they know that you’re doing poorly in your life. And I’m not saying a therapist is liable to screw you, because that’s not really what the whole point is. But like you’re liable to not get the kind of care that you really desperately need when you go in a crisis scenario.
I mean, when you’re in a crisis scenario, it’s so hard to effectively communicate. what you’re feeling, what your needs are, what you may know the root causes, but due to the crisis scenario, you are unable to clearly see it or clearly state it to that other person. And the crisis itself can become a barrier to resolving the causes of the crisis.
Yeah, that’s exactly right. Like, you end up playing at a negative handicap, and you’re already in crisis. You don’t need a negative handicap in that situation. Trust me.
Oh, gosh, no. One, one, sort of relating to therapy, one concept I’ve been exposed to more and more over the last year is the concept of the hedonic treadmill. And I’m probably butchering the pronunciation since I butchered the pronunciation of 90% of things. I believe it’s hedonistic treadmill. Hedonistic treadmill. Thank you. I’m trying to. I know. Humans reverting to sort of a baseline. Level of happiness, no matter whether a positive or a negative event happens. And I just read a wonderful book. It’ll be in the show notes, The Antidote, Positive Thinking for People Who Cannot Stand Positive Thinking. And I believe it was in this book that they talked about how Due to this adaptation, no matter what happens in your life, being it a hugely positive thing or a hugely negative thing You revert back to that baseline. And that baseline is actually defined about 60% of the time by your genetic coding. So If you’re the type of person who feels about things, down about things, well, it might be that part of that is your internal wiring. You are just built in such a way that you revert to this baseline of happiness. And As somebody who has dealt on and off with anxiety and depression over the past few years, realizing this concept was actually really helpful because it helped me transition from thinking, gosh, I must be broken if I’m continually feeling in this way. To oh, I am wired in such a way that this is something I feel more often than other people. Okay, now that I’ve understood that, let me see if I could separate myself from it, sort of monkey mind style, or figure out how to adapt and overcome it if possible. Groking the concept of hedonic adaptation really helped me understand where my internal happiness comes from, what drives that internal happiness, and what influence I can actually have on it.
Yeah. One thing that therapy has been good for me is allowing my anxiety to stay in check most of the time and knowing Basically, getting a 30,000-foot view of how my brain operates under normal circumstances. And so that has allowed me to. Understand and identify burnout. It’s allowed me to understand when I’m being anxious or upset for any reason. And then take measures to try and address it, right? Like self-care or stepping away from the desk or flying to Thailand, you know, all of these things. Or can be tremendously helpful. So, I mean, I obviously recommend it. It is good for getting out of your head and talking to somebody who has no stake in your life and is smart and good at pushing back on you. That is the most important things that I get out of it. And you might get different things that might be useful to you.
So now I highly recommend it for any listener that Has considered it or thought about it, there unfortunately is a bit of a stigma around seeing a mental health professional and Man, I want to do everything in my power over my life to shake that bias away. It’s good. It’s healthy. It’s like hiring a personal trainer. It’s like taking your car in for a tune-up. It’s something you should be doing frequently and regularly. Just to clear the cruft out of your head and have a better understanding of how you work and what you’re feeling and what’s causing that and what changes you might be able to make if If all it turns out to be is, hey, once a week or once every other week, you sit down in a room with a person and talk about your feelings, and you feel a little better because of that. that’s a huge win in and of itself.
If you’re listening to this, you probably in the very broad field of knowledge work in some capacity, which basically just means you use your brain to make money for yourself so that you can actually support yourself in your life. rather than like a construction worker using their body to build things or whatever have you. That means your brain is the biggest asset that you have. It’s the thing that your friends and your loved ones rely on. It’s the thing that is the breadwinner for your life. And being in therapy allows you to keep from fucking it up. That’s basically it. And you’re welcome to disagree with that or think that you have some sort of problem, but you don’t. You’re exercising that brain every single day and everything that you’re doing. And it gets tired and it gets confused, and it’s very hard to deal with that. And I mean, if you’ve learned nothing else from this podcast, my God, it’s that like the brain can create a bunch of internal biases that work against you. And that you rely on other people to jar you out of those things is not an admission of failure. It isn’t far from it. It’s an admission of strength.
Completely agreed. Completely agreed. It really is a level up to start interacting with other people and relying on other people to provide that support to you. It’s not a failure. It’s not a negative. It’s not something to be concerned about. It’s not something to Worry about what other people will think about it. It’s something good. It’s something great. I mean, in my own life, I’ve expressed to people like, oh, I’m seeing a therapist. And I’ve been met with a mixture of responses from that’s wonderful to, that’s kind of wonky, to, are you okay? And In every case, I try to reset it to like, this is a positive thing I’m doing to help myself become a better human, just like going to the gym, just like following a diet. It’s self-improvement. It’s making sure my brain is healthy and happy. And we only get one brain.