WP 38 | How to Make Hard Decisions in Your Faith-based Practice with Katie Vernoy and Curt Widhalm
Welcome to the Wise Practice podcast, where we explore the evolving landscape of therapy and provide insights for modern therapists. In this episode, we dive into the topic of ethical practices in faith-based therapy. Our host Whitney Owens, engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Katie Vernoy and Curt Widhalm, focusing on the challenges therapists face when integrating faith into their practice while ensuring ethical standards are upheld. Let's explore the key takeaways from their discussion.
Balancing Faith and Professional Responsibilities
Recognizing the Intersection: Curt Widhalm emphasizes the importance of striking a delicate balance between incorporating faith and adhering to professional obligations. He highlights the need to present therapy in a secular manner while being open to utilizing a client's faith as a resource. Widhalm explains, "There's a sweet spot of overlap that really good work can be done, and it's on those edges of either side where you're putting yourself at risk." Imagine a client seeking therapy, grappling with their faith-related struggles. By presenting faith as a resource or exploring its role within therapy, therapists can create a safe space for clients to address their needs. This approach honors the client's beliefs while promoting healing and growth.
Operating Within Boundaries: Therapists must make decisions that align with their professional license, rather than solely operating based on personal faith. While faith can be integrated into therapy, it is crucial to avoid overstepping ethical boundaries. Widhalm emphasizes, "Am I operating within my license, or am I operating within my faith? And there's a sweet spot of overlap that really good work can be done."
Unethical Practices in Faith-Based Therapy
Illegal and Harmful Therapies: Katie Vernoy sheds light on the unethical use of conversion therapy in some faith-based practices. She explains that conversion therapy aims to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. Vernoy emphasizes, "To put it in kind of a higher level theme, using therapy to promote your own mission and trying to change the world through changing the individuals that come into your therapy room, instead of being present for the process and the healing that they need, is egregious."
Neglecting Best Practices for Suicidal Clients: Curt Widhalm raises concerns about therapists who disregard evidence-based approaches when working with clients experiencing suicidal ideation. In such a vulnerable state, imposing religious beliefs that emphasize eternal suffering can deepen their despair. Instead, therapists should employ evidence-based approaches that prioritize client safety and well-being. He highlights the potential harm of introducing religious perspectives that focus on eternal punishment, stating, "Trying to convince them that, 'Oh, you're signing up for an eternity more of this,' does not align with the best practices of where we're at."
Navigating Clients' Diverse Belief Systems
Understanding Client Perspectives: Katie Vernoy emphasizes the importance of therapists gaining a deep understanding of their client's belief systems. She shares a personal example, noting the challenge of working with clients from different faith backgrounds, stating, "If I believe that strongly, and my client does not, I'm missing so many opportunities. It requires so many questions."
Evaluating Ethical Decision-Making: Curt Widhalm advocates for ongoing evaluation and reflection on ethical decision-making processes. He stresses the significance of involving clients in evaluating the effectiveness of therapeutic strategies and adjusting future approaches accordingly. Widhalm encourages therapists to embrace diverse viewpoints and engage in consultation groups with professionals who hold different beliefs.
Integrating Faith Responsibly
Avoiding Theological Advice: Whitney Owens highlights the importance of therapists refraining from providing theological advice and instead focusing on integrating the clinical piece of therapy. She encourages therapists to let clients teach them about their beliefs, stating, "We are there to integrate the clinical piece. Then, they teach us what they believe."
Reflecting on Personal Bias: Katie Vernoy reminds therapists to be mindful of their own biases and avoid imposing their faith on clients who may not share the same beliefs. She emphasizes the need for a thorough exploration of clients' belief systems to ensure effective and respectful therapy. Katie raises a crucial concern about the incorporation of illegal practices, specifically mentioning conversion therapy. She highlights the harm caused by these practices and states, "I feel like it's an abuse of the system." Conversion therapy aims to change an individual's sexual orientation or gender identity, disregarding their inherent nature. Such practices are not only unethical but also illegal in many states.
As therapists, navigating the integration of faith-based practices with ethical considerations is a delicate balancing act. By recognizing the intersection of faith and professional responsibilities, understanding clients' diverse belief systems, and upholding best practices, therapists can create an environment that promotes client well-being and respects their autonomy. Remember to continually evaluate and reflect on ethical decision-making processes while engaging in consultation groups with professionals who hold different perspectives.
Tips for Ethical Faith-Based Therapy:
Embrace the balance between faith and professional responsibilities.
Stay updated on legal and ethical guidelines to avoid incorporating harmful or illegal practices.
Prioritize evidence-based approaches when working with clients experiencing sensitive issues such as suicidality.
Seek to understand and respect clients' diverse belief systems to provide effective therapy.
Engage in ongoing reflection, evaluation, and consultation to improve ethical decision-making processes.
Remember, ethical faith-based therapy is about promoting healing, respecting autonomy, and working collaboratively with clients to achieve their goals. Together, we can create a therapeutic environment that fosters growth and well-being.
Stay tuned for more insightful episodes from the Wise Practice podcast, where we explore the ever-evolving landscape of therapy and provide valuable resources for therapists like you.
Links and Resouces
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WP 38 | How to Make Hard Decisions in your Faith-based Practice with Katie Vernoy and Curt Widhalm
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Whitney Owens: Hello friends and welcome back to The Wise Practice Podcast. I am looking forward to my conversation today with Kurt Helm and Katie Vernoy, and we're gonna be talking about how to make ethical decisions and practices within having a faith-based practice, cuz that can be. Some conflict there, um, in so many ways.
Whitney Owens: So we're gonna be handling that today. But let me tell you a little bit about the two of them. If you have not met them yet. They are both licensed marriage and family therapists in the LA area. They co-host the Modern Therapist Survival Guide Podcast. They have created successful private practices, are actively involved in professions, professional organizations in so many ways.
Whitney Owens: Kurt is a current member of the California Association for Marriage and Family Therapist Ethics Committee and the former subject matter expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, and Katie is the past C A M F T. President. Kurt and Katie provide training and consultation to therapists who are entering the profession, starting and growing a therapy practice and who are ready to step into leadership all while navigating the modern therapist problems.
Whitney Owens: I'm so glad y'all are on the show today.
Katie Vernoy: Thanks for having
Curt Widhalm: us.
Whitney Owens: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I feel like a super special person because I just love your podcast. So when I get to have people on my podcast that I love their podcast, it's like so fun. Well, we're happy to be here. Yeah. Well, great. Okay, well we are gonna jump into this topic because I think there's a lot to process on it and it's how do we have an ethical, faith-based practice?
Whitney Owens: And so maybe some things to first point out here are, what does that even mean? Like what are ethics? Like just the basics and like how do you have an ethical practice? And then we could kind of talk about some of the problems.
Curt Widhalm: So I'm gonna talk from my experience in this, and I'm not gonna speak on behalf of any of the committees or the boards that you mentioned here, but I think that really kind of the starting point and having kind of a professional identity in and of itself is that.
Curt Widhalm: Consumers of the services that we have should have certain expectations of what we do. And an ethics code kind of helps to say, this is what to expect from therapists of our profession. And this is something that's better handled by other therapists themselves rather than it being something that's handled through legislation.
Curt Widhalm: Because in case you haven't noticed the political world's a little bit odd. All the time. And we don't want lawyers and, you know, business people and whoever else sits in those, you know, legislative seats being the ones who make rules for how professionals need to act. And so one of the ways our ethics codes kind of came to be in the first place is.
Curt Widhalm: For professionals to be like, we can regulate ourselves and we can set certain expectations of what the public can expect when they interact with us in our professional roles. And that's how our ethics ended up starting. And it ended up being that. If someone comes to me as a licensed marriage and family therapist, they can expect certain kinds of, you know, standards and morals that we upheld as a profession.
Curt Widhalm: And so this is really kind of unifying us as what makes us a professional is we're we regulate ourselves, we hold each other accountable. And this is in, in regards to anybody who may be coming to us as a client.
Curt Widhalm: Yes.
Whitney Owens: I love that. I love that. And then as I even think about the faith-based community doing that within other faith-based therapists, holding each other accountable, looking at these things together and really questioning one another.
Katie Vernoy: So, To me, it seems like there's, to me, it seems like there's this element of when you add a faith-based element to your practice, you're, you're actually, you have two ethical standards that are, are combining.
Katie Vernoy: You've got the professional ethical standards and you've also got the, the values and morals that come with your faith. And I think to me, that becomes, Complicated. If there are times when those things maybe disagree, there are times when they are completely aligned, and that makes it super easy. But I think that it becomes more and more important to have some sort of a decision making process around how do you decide how you're going to set up your practice if you have values and morals that potentially don't align with your ethical code, and how do you make those things fit for you?
Katie Vernoy: I can't think of a specific example, but I, I do think that there's, there's elements where being able to. Think about how you're putting your practice together in a very structured way, uh, becomes really important. Mm-hmm.
Whitney Owens: A hundred percent.
Katie Vernoy: And Kurt has a cool, um, ethical decision making, uh, process that he puts together for his classes and that kind of stuff.
Katie Vernoy: We have a whole episode on ethical decision making around dual relationships actually. But, um, but is that one of the things that you were going to tell this audience was about the ethical decision making process, the 17 stage decision? Well, I, I wasn't
Curt Widhalm: gonna, I wasn't gonna get into all of the steps, but.
Curt Widhalm: You know, I think just kind of tying this together a little bit is the, the secular ethics that come from some of the professional organizations are a lot of, um, focused on the definition of right and wrong, determined by those professional organizations and the individuals that make them up and the ethics that may come out of a faith-based organization also have, you know, kind of that similar process.
Curt Widhalm: But there's another question that comes into it, which is, What is the willingness of God in these situations? And I think as Katie's describing, it's being able to uphold both of those in those situations. And it's being able to ask those questions in a way that ends up ultimately being for the benefit of the client.
Curt Widhalm: And this is where the process of having a good ethical decision making process. Ends up helping to come to the resolution on this. And you know, the, the one that I like is 17 steps long. And it does take some things, it takes
Katie Vernoy: a long time. We had a whole hour on this,
Curt Widhalm: but the, and, and it's not even mine.
Curt Widhalm: It's, uh, Pope and Vasquez, they, they've been, you know, great, you know, ethicists around mental health work for 40 years at this point. And. I think that it's something that when we get into those, those decisions that really do make us kind of question, is there an ethical quandary here that it helps us to clarify it, and this is where, when.
Curt Widhalm: I'm sitting on an ethics committee and we're evaluating a case. The first thing that we're starting to ask is, well, what was the decision making process here? What process did you go through? And I see the big difference between those who end up getting cited versus those that were like, oh, this person was actually thinking through things, is the people who actually adopted.
Curt Widhalm: Some kind of ethical decision making thing. It doesn't have to be the 17 step pope in Vasquez one. It's just kind of alright. How did you look at identifying what is the ethical problem in this situation and what did you do from there?
Katie Vernoy: The thing I like about that too is that what Kurt has told me many, many times, it's more about the process than the outcome.
Katie Vernoy: Obviously there are some outcomes that are so harmful that there's going to be some problem with it. Right, but don't sleep with your clients. Yeah. Well that's, yeah. I don't know what decision making processes I got that one. I don't know what that decision making process would make that even a, a choice.
Katie Vernoy: But if you. If you are acting in good faith, you've had a strong decision making process, it makes sense. Other folks, you know, similarly situated would have, have potentially gone down that same path. You're gonna be okay even if the outcome isn't ideal. Obviously with the caveat that some outcomes are so harmful that they will still, there still is an outcome.
Katie Vernoy: There's still a, a kind of a punishment, but to me it feels like I. Being able to, to have a thoughtful process. You know, a very deliberate process even, you know, for, for faith-based practice owners, maybe even a prayerful process where you're really looking at how do I get to a place of making all of these little decisions about how I run my practice, if this is gonna be my guiding light.
Katie Vernoy: Mm-hmm.
Whitney Owens: Yeah. So, man, so many good points y'all are bringing up here, and even just there at the end, I was thinking about. I see some practice owners who would put more of a Christian emphasis on their practice and then also offer counseling. But then, I mean, I personally think it's about having an ethical clinical business and incorporating faith as, as necessary, as needed, as requested, really by the client, you know?
Whitney Owens: And so it's, um, figuring out what kind of practice you wanna run and making sure if you're gonna call yourself a clinical based practice, you better be following the ethics of. That and not necessarily your faith first. You know,
Curt Widhalm: and I, I appreciate when people do identify as good. Christian based or faith-based practices or however it is, whatever denomination people do.
Curt Widhalm: Because on one hand, part of our ethics do encourage us to let clients know what it's like to work with us. And not just us as a profession, but also us as individuals. And you know, for people who check out our podcast, we do a lot of encouragement of use of the self in not only the work that you do, but also within the.
Curt Widhalm: Profession and but it really boils down to what is it like to work with you as the individual. And some of that branding can really end up helping you to get clients who are more likely to be successful with you in the first place. And in certain situations, if it is your own practice, maybe not be appealing to people who wouldn't be as likely to succeed with you, just based on large differences.
Curt Widhalm: And I think that there's a good level of just okayness about that. Now, not everybody is going to be okayness that that is an official term, but, all right, but. You know, not everybody runs their own practices. Sometimes where we see these problems come up is, uh, people who work in agencies or people who are still in, uh, graduate school and working in traineeships or practicums or those kinds of things that don't have as much authority over the practice that they have.
Curt Widhalm: And this is sometimes where. That does bring up those ethical quandaries, and this is where that decision making process ends up becoming super, super important, and being able to look at whichever ethics codes end up applying to help dictate what ends up being best in that situation. And it's looking at these codes.
Curt Widhalm: Totally and completely. You know, I think one of the most famous cases on this is, uh, Julia Ward at, uh, Western Michigan University. This is probably about 15 years ago at this point, or, um, but was a student in a counseling program who had a very faith-based idea of how to practice and, um, was assigned an LGBTQ client and.
Curt Widhalm: It ended up being into a big argument with the university over which parts of the ethics codes ended up applying, and you know, that ended up having to go to court and ended up taking several years. But part of why that is such an important conversation is on one hand, it's, we can get really focused on, well, here's the part of the ethics code that justifies what my action is.
Curt Widhalm: Without taking into account that it's an entire body of different things, some of which apply, some of which don't apply. And when we get into these situations, part of the decision making process is, who else are we talking with to help us get through these things? And it's not just making these actions of, well, I looked at the ethics code and I picked, you know, 3.5 because that's what is apparent to me.
Curt Widhalm: But it's also accepting that part of this is we might have, you know, just kind of holes in how we look at things and not being able to see the whole picture for ourselves. That consulting with other people definitely ends up helping us to kind of fill in the whole picture here.
Whitney Owens: So I'm kind of laughing because it's how people read the Bible.
Whitney Owens: You know, they take the one part that fits for them and they make it about them without looking at the whole context of what it's actually trying to communicate and do in the world.
Curt Widhalm: I had not made that connection and it absolutely holds true. I completely agree with you.
Whitney Owens: Yeah. Okay. So I wanna know what happened in that
Katie Vernoy: case though.
Katie Vernoy: See, that's what I was gonna That's what I was gonna say and I'm good at summarizing these things. I think. So I'll take the lead on this, Kurt, but we do have a whole episode and it's am I. Following my values? Or is it discrimination? So we do have a whole episode on this case, but basically what happened is this student said, I don't think I can work with this client because I, I've not worked with lgbtq plus folks before.
Katie Vernoy: I, I'm, I'm really struggling. I don't think it's good. It, you know, there's my morals and values. It doesn't really align for that. And so, She referred out and then the university, I think made her that she, she isn't a, she did not become a counselor and they sued her there. There was back and forth lawsuits that went back, went on and on.
Katie Vernoy: And so maybe I'm not as good at summarizing this as I thought, but basically what what ended up happening is one court found her at fault. One court found her not at fault, and basically because there was part of the ethics code that says, Don't do harm to your clients because of, of kind of what you're putting out there.
Katie Vernoy: And the other one was you have to be available to all clients. And so it was, it was these two conflicting parts of the ethics code that say, be accessible, don't discriminate. And other parts that said, don't treat clients that you're gonna harm. So it becomes hard, it becomes very difficult. Yeah, that's,
Whitney Owens: that's a very difficult one and, and I would definitely say that this is something I see with Christian counselors feeling like, can I see clients that have a different viewpoint than what I have with my faith?
Whitney Owens: And can I really counsel someone who's going down a direction of something that I don't believe aligns with my faith values? Like that's really common. If you have anything else to say on that, I'd love
Curt Widhalm: to hear. I think that this is the, the crux of a lot of the decision making that I imagine for a lot of faith-based counselors is not every single situation is going to be as big and contentious as the Julia Ward case.
Curt Widhalm: I think a lot more of them are going to a align more in kind of the space around. All right. I have a couple where there is physical abuse going on, and is divorce something that should be an option? And that goes against the, the counselors, you know, own personal beliefs in this situation. But what is the best option for the client in these situations?
Curt Widhalm: I, I think that a lot more of them of these ethical decisions are going to be. You know, not right out of the gate, but things that pop up along the way after a long and lengthy client therapist relationship end up happening. And you know, based on my experience in looking at a lot of ethics things, that's where a lot of this stuff comes up.
Curt Widhalm: It's not right up front, it's later in the relationship, and it's kind of looking at what are my values? What is best for the client in these situations and how do I, as the professional in this situation, navigate this for the client? And sometimes that's going to involve some self-disclosure. If it's working with somebody from a different faith, it's going to be, you know, my process on this might be different than yours.
Curt Widhalm: Because ultimately all of the professional organizations ethics codes say that it's really up to client autonomy. It's really up to their decision making process. Um, sometimes we might share what our own decision making process is, and for those who are faith-based counselors, you might, you know, disclose that.
Curt Widhalm: All right. This is how I would go about it, but I'm wondering if there's something that is parallel in your life of how you might go about a decision like this. And that's really the kind of thing that when we're looking at disciplinary cases, ultimately is. Are you giving your client all of the options that they have in front of them, even if they don't align with your values?
Curt Widhalm: Because if what you're risking is, I'm only putting my values and my options in, in this space, that's not being a fully ethical counselor. And that's what can put you at risk for some of these investigations or decisions if the clients end up filing a complaint.
Katie Vernoy: To me, I feel like there's this additional element of how we're supposed to behave as therapists from the get go.
Katie Vernoy: I have a lot of clients that are doing stuff that I think. It's very harmful to them that they continue to do for different reasons. Sometimes they wish they weren't doing them and sometimes they are fully on board and doing them with, with glee. Right. And I think for me to get in and tell them what to do or to show judgment towards what they're doing, whether it goes against my morals and values or my faith or not, it's bad therapy.
Katie Vernoy: And so it's, it's that element of being able to be present and, and. Meet the client where they are and being able to put aside your own beliefs, perspectives, unless the harm is life-threatening or, or, you know, whatever the threshold is to, to, to be a mandated reporter or to, to. You know, kind of put those external controls on how do we keep you safe.
Katie Vernoy: I think there's a lot of times that all therapists, regardless of their faith, regardless of how deeply held their beliefs are about things, that we're gonna all have those things where we, we, we have to hold our tongue and meet our clients where they are and help them to under understand their process and make decisions.
Katie Vernoy: I think at certain points, to Kurt's point, We're gonna have to be honest about a bias if it gets in the way of us having really full conversations or fully meeting our client. So it's being aware of those biases and being able to talk about them without kind of abandoning a client at, at first blush, like, oh, well, they might be getting divorced.
Katie Vernoy: I don't believe in divorce. I'm out. You know, it's, it's one of those things where it's like, okay, well let's actually think through how do, how do we help someone navigate their life without getting in the way? And when we are gonna get in the way, how do we make sure that we have the right conversation with our clients so they can opt in or opt out?
Whitney Owens: Yeah. I'm so glad you brought up the idea, sorry there of divorce, because I think that's super common. When I was a new, um, I was still in supervision getting my hours. I had that come up and as a Christian counselor, I was like, wait, I'm never supposed to encourage people to get divorced. Like, that's never good.
Whitney Owens: Um, but then through supervision and looking at the Bible and what the Bible had to say about it, I realized that I was so rigid. Right and what I was told things were supposed to be and I was not doing what was best for the client and she actually ended up divorcing the guy and it went very well for her.
Whitney Owens: And you know, I could go into a whole episode about why I thought that was biblical at the time, but I was able to like open the Bible and get clinical supervision and do what was best for the client. So I appreciate you brought that example up, cuz I think it's super
Curt Widhalm: common and I think that a big piece of this ends up being kind of how it's presented to clients.
Curt Widhalm: You know, I'm. Secular in how I practice my, my therapy practice. But I think that there's opportunities sometimes to bring faith in in any sort of situation, whether it's using your client's faith, whether it's talking about your own experiences in a way that benefits the client, but at the end of the day, you're making a decision of.
Curt Widhalm: I am working as a professional who is licensed by a state governing body, and that is ultimately whose decisions I have to answer. And this might come down to a question of, am I operating within my license or am I operating within my faith? And there's a sweet spot of overlap that really good work can be done, and it's on those edges of either side where you're putting yourself at risk.
Curt Widhalm: And you know, one of the things, I went to Catholic high school and was, you know, all, all raised in all of these kinds of stories, but a lot of times I kind of look at a lot of ethical decision making kind of in that parable of the weeds among the weed. Like there's only so much that we can do, but if it is a faith-based decision, I'm not God.
Curt Widhalm: I'm not gonna be the one who ultimately is the one making the decision. And that's kind of leaving some space out there for other people to be able to face the consequences of their own decisions. And it's up to us to be able to at least in enlighten people on here's what all of the decisions might be.
Curt Widhalm: Not all of them might be good.
Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm.
Whitney Owens: I love it. That's so great. Um, all right, so let's talk a little bit about what other problems that maybe y'all have seen specifically with faith-based practices, maybe unethical practices or decision making, that common ones maybe that you've seen and we can kind of address
Katie Vernoy: those. I think the first one that that is, I think for me the most egregious is incorporating illegal practices.
Katie Vernoy: In a lot of states, not all, but in a lot of states, conversion therapy is illegal and I. Obviously there is a faith, faith-based element for some folks that lgbtq plus folks, um, have experienced as far as the bias there. And to me, I feel like that that feels like a, an abuse of the system, especially there's, there's newer therapies that I think are, are conversion therapy.
Katie Vernoy: Light so they're not caught yet. And so people are still kind of putting those things into practice and, and designing them in a way that it seems to be, uh, Deep, wonderful therapy, and yet it's actually conversion therapy in disguise. And so to me, I feel like to, to put it in kind of a higher level theme, using therapy to promote your own mission and, and trying to change the world through changing.
Katie Vernoy: The individuals that come into your therapy room instead of being present for the process and the healing that they need, I feel like is, is egregious. That to me, that feels so wrong and I feel like I, I just had to say that. So first one, I appreciate that's
Whitney Owens: you saying it just, I mean, uh, we know what conversion therapy is.
Whitney Owens: Can you just say a little bit about exactly what that is in case somebody's listening and they're like, what exactly is that? Or am I doing something like that?
Katie Vernoy: Conversion conversion therapy is my understanding and Kurt you can certainly jump in, is therapy practices that are designed to remove any homosexual feelings, um, to.
Katie Vernoy: Make it so that you're quote unquote not trans. Um, there's a, a newer one that I've heard about Gen Gender Exploratory Therapy, which is supposed to be exploring your gender, but in fact is keeping you from taking any steps towards transition. And the goal is to no longer feel like you're trans. So it's converting those, or, or con, you know, kind of.
Katie Vernoy: Those unacceptable feelings, which there's a lot of studies that say homosexuality and trans and all those things are how people are born. And so there is a belief system and there's also science that says, Hey, wait a second, this isn't okay. But these therapies are, are trying to convert people back to heterosexual.
Katie Vernoy: Cisgender and, and that it's seen as a disorder that these folks are coming to treat. And, and I think the, there's some conversion therapy that has been just straight ahead, Hey, it's conversion therapy. You're coming to stop being homosexual. Um, but lately it's, it's actually more, um, hidden. It's like, well, you're not sure, so let's, let's explore and we're gonna find the reasons for why you're feeling this way and.
Katie Vernoy: Folks that are not even traumatized are saying It must be trauma. That's why you're trans and it, or you think you're trans. And so it's, it's very, very harmful practices. And it's not even straight out like, Hey, for folks that wanna try it, it's, here's a confused person wanting help and they're getting indoctrinated, so to speak, or, or there's an attempt to indoctrinate them in a different way.
Curt Widhalm: I've also seen some discussions on this in regards to working with clients, presenting with suicidality, and really kind of ignoring a lot of the advances that have been done in working with clients with suicidal ideation or suicidal intentions that. Can kind of exacerbate some of the problems of how the suicidality came to be in the first place.
Curt Widhalm: And I've heard some stories around, you know, trying to work with clients in this space that ends up talking about, you know, how suicide is looked at through God's lens and kind of eternal punishment sorts of things, which. You know, all of where suicidal work is looking at these days is you've already got somebody with tunnel vision, uh, and only being able to focus on ending the pain that they're in and trying to convince them that, oh, you're signing up for an eternity more of this.
Curt Widhalm: That does not seem to work with kind of the best practices of where we're at. And so I know that a lot of the discussions around some of these problems that arise with face ba, faith-based therapies, Does focus on lgbtq plus kinds of issues, but I think that it does tend to creep up in some other areas as well with, uh, other kind of clinical presentations just because it is not something that, um, We, we talk about intel, it's actually already happening.
Curt Widhalm: And I think that this is a, a really good space to, um, kind of embrace that there are, you know, different vantage points on being able to work. This is my pitch for like be in consultation groups, people and be in consultation groups with people who work differently from you so that way you can get kind of some of these round advantage points and.
Curt Widhalm: It's something that can help make us, um, be able to provide good clinical care. But I think sometimes in some of these discussions we tend to go to people who tell us that we're already right. And it just kind of ends up pushing us more into making some of these, uh, decisions that are just kind of more and more out on those edges that I was mentioning earlier.
Whitney Owens: Yeah. That even makes me think maybe a faith-based practice or a faith-based therapist should actually do consults with someone who's not faith-based.
Curt Widhalm: Right? Yeah. And, and, and go beyond just having like a token devil's advocate for your arguments, but somebody who actually believes something different.
Curt Widhalm: And that's what makes good professional decision making in consultations is, you know, embrace that there is differences and, and kind of be able to work through. Because then if it comes to something that more accurately represents the entire profession, uh, you're going to be a lot better grounded as far as whatever interventions that you do and the thought process that you go into with them.
Katie Vernoy: I think as far as, you know, to, to kind of go for, to the less egregious, I think it, it ties into what Kurt's saying here, which is. Assuming my faith is your faith, or assuming that you want faith to be used within our therapy together. I think those things are, are certainly less egregious than these harmful practices that we were talking about.
Katie Vernoy: But I think there's that element of, IM a faith-based practice owner. This is my identity, this is what I'm bringing into the room. Instead of identifying how to use faith as a resource or using faith when it's, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm. Mimicking what you said earlier, Whitney, but like using the, the faith as, as appropriate or requested within therapy versus having it be the whole frame of the work.
Katie Vernoy: Mm-hmm.
Whitney Owens: Yeah. I've got a lot of thoughts I have here as we're talking. You can probably tell I'm having some emotions. Um, I think what it makes my heart like so sad is when I see people who they legitimately think they're doing the right thing as a therapist, right? They legitimately think. Just to give an, you know, going with the divorce example, like telling the client, don't get divorced.
Whitney Owens: That's not biblical. That's not what we're supposed to do. And they think that's their way of loving the client. They think that's their way of the client being best cared for when it's not. And that's, yeah, when it's gets so tricky and heartbreaking. Yeah.
Curt Widhalm: And this is the go. Go ahead.
Katie Vernoy: I, I don't think it's coming from a, a pla a bad place.
Katie Vernoy: I agree with you, Whitney. I think it's something where people believe they're, they're doing what's in the best interest of the client. I think it's to Kurt's point, having someone that's not in the same faith ground you in, but what's good clinical practice?
Curt Widhalm: Mm-hmm. And this is the benefit of the communities and hanging out with other therapists in a way that helps us to kind of present in a very unified sort of way as a profession.
Curt Widhalm: And, and that's what keeps us in check because it's, when we isolate that we tend to. Make mistakes. It's when we tend to be more vulnerable to doing things outside of that licensure sort of thing. And I love coming back to this point of what's part of your licensure and what's part of you as the person and.
Curt Widhalm: Sometimes we do get into that space where, and, and it's not just the faith-based people, it's sometimes we do get into that space where it's, I'm operating just a lot from the personal side of things and I'm not taking care of this in a professional way. And the ones that you're identifying are the ones that can be the most risk of harm.
Curt Widhalm: And first and foremost, in our profession, we're taught do no harm.
Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm. Definitely, you know, and even going back also to what Katie was saying about. Kind of the variety of different ways that we integrate our faith. And I even see, especially among denominations, it's like someone who's Presbyterian might integrate in a different way than someone who's Catholic or someone who's Methodist or Baptist.
Whitney Owens: And so even going back to even that small part of the therapist shouldn't be there giving theological advice to their clients and telling them how to do that, that's what pastors are for. That's what theologians are for. Like we are there to integrate the clinical piece. And then if, and then let them teach us what they believe, you know, and then we move into what they're sharing, what they believe instead of us telling them what we believe and expecting them to do the same thing.
Katie Vernoy: To me, that goes to really deep understanding of where the clients' beliefs sit. Cuz I think about Presbyterian and how it's all. It's all preordained. And I grew up in the Presbyterian church and, and you know, obviously things happen for a reason and we, we, you know, like there's no choices to be made.
Katie Vernoy: It's all, you know, it's all, it's, there's a plan. There's a whole plan that's that's in, in place. And as therapists, that's kind of hard to, to work with when, when there's not. There's not a lot of choice to be made. There's not a lot of things to be done. And, and it all is. There's, there's this whole plan that you have to figure out.
Katie Vernoy: Right. But if I believe that strongly, and my client does not, I'm missing so many opportunities. Right. Or, or vice versa. I'm, I'm completely missing it because I'm not, I'm not actually exploring. Their belief system, the way they, they relate to the world. And so it requires so many questions and I think that when we're in a practice where we feel like we have a lot of lived experience that's shared between us and our clients, we may not do that investigation as deeply as maybe we should.
Katie Vernoy: And I think part
Curt Widhalm: of what ends up coming out of a lot of good ethical decision making processes is the last couple of steps, which is how do we evaluate what the outcomes are going to be? And that piece needs to involve the client 100% of the time. And I think that this is inherent in looking at what the different sex of religion that we're talking about here ends up.
Curt Widhalm: You know, if it's, you know, here's a preordained, you know, outcome that's going to happen, versus how is the client going to evaluate whether or not this was an effective strategy that has to be a part of this decision making process. And then once, whatever outcome ends up happening, how are we taking that information in as the practitioners and adjusting our future approaches to things?
Curt Widhalm: I've. I've seen some cases where you know that the outcomes turned out badly, but the therapists end up being like, you know, I made a mistake. I learned from this. I implemented these as new practices within how I interact with clients. That tells us that, okay, you're, you're reconciling that this did not work.
Curt Widhalm: This is something that's potentially harmful and that becomes something that makes it to where the. The ethical, you know, um, outcomes from, from the committee ends of things ends up not being as punitive, but more of kind of an educative piece of the whole process. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Whitney Owens: Yeah. This is great. Well, is there anything else, um, that maybe y'all prepared or you wanted to make sure to mention on ethical and unethical practices in a faith-based
Curt Widhalm: practice?
Curt Widhalm: I mean, most of this boils down to. Have an ethical decision making process and identify and check yourself that, you know, we can feel like we're doing really good things, but a lot of it just comes down into how often do you reflect on, all right, here's, here's the ethics code. Does this apply in this particular situation?
Curt Widhalm: Am I giving people their own options? A lot of where the Ethics codes updates have been in the last 10, 15 years, place more and more emphasis on the clients get to make the decisions. We're just here to bring the therapeutic principles to help them get there. So have a process and continue to evaluate it
Katie Vernoy: and meet the clients where they are and understand where your bias sits so that you're meeting their needs versus inflicting your faith on other folks that don't want it.
Whitney Owens: Yeah. Those are both great, great things to take with us as we're kind of closing up here. And I have just personally loved this discussion, so thank you for it. Um, and looking forward to, you know, I, I don't know if y'all are like me. Sometimes I go back and listen to my podcast, the ones I really enjoyed.
Whitney Owens: I'll go back and listen to this one. So, but hey, we should always be going back to our ethics. Like that's the whole reason we get ethics hours. We need to be listening to ethics all the time. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, let's, um, talk a little bit about how amazing y'all are so that people can get in touch with you.
Whitney Owens: So the Modern Therapist Survival Guide podcast. I said it right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes, yes. Okay. Um, it's wonderful. And so y'all have some CEEs that come with some of the episodes. You know, you're really on the cutting edge of talking about things going on in the therapist world and being practice owners. Um, so, and we're gonna release our episodes the same week, so if you check out their podcast, You will find me on there.
Whitney Owens: Yeah. Cause it's about the same week as this one. I think it's the third week in July. So that's really cool. Um, and then y'all have some other cool stuff going on. You kinda wanna share a little bit about what you had going on and how to get in
Katie Vernoy: touch with you. Um. Sure, sure. You can find our podcast@tsgpodcast.com.
Katie Vernoy: The, the business that we have together is called Therapy Reimagined. So it's like some of our, like, I think our Instagram handle, actually that one might be the podcast. And then Facebook, I think you can find us on Therapy Reimagined, but we're not that hard to find. Uh, but we're. Doing, uh, you know, we've, we've been doing podcasts, weekly podcasts for five years, so there's a lot of content there, a lot of different topics.
Katie Vernoy: And then we're also doing, um, our pod courses. So sometimes we do hour plus long episodes. And when you listen, you can come on over to our, our CE site, which is, uh, modern therapist community.com and, and get some CEEs. We're still working on additional CE providers, so not. Not all of them are gonna apply for everybody, but we're definitely working on it.
Katie Vernoy: And we've got stuff on dual relationships, ethical decision making, lots and lots of of these topics. We like to do some ethics ones, but we also have others that I think are pretty interesting.
Curt Widhalm: And we have a really good, uh, back catalog of a lot of non CE podcasts too, that, you know, we really set out to kind of be like, you know, we hear a lot of the same conversations going on in our field and set out to kind of create a consolidated space for a lot of.
Curt Widhalm: All right. We, we've been practicing for a while now. We've got our takes on things. We've been involved in the profession at a lot of different levels. Um, advocacy work. I am a professor and also have, you know, a lot of experience in working in the supervision world. So, uh, We've talked about a lot of things, including the things that it seems like nobody else had talked about.
Curt Widhalm: And we get comments from time to time of like, you know, like, uh, you know, somebody had a client who died and it was just like, oh, we, we already had a podcast out about that. That was you. That's awesome. Yeah. So, um, yeah, we have a really wonderful back catalog too. So I'm glad to be a resource and, um, and we also respond when people reach out to us.
Curt Widhalm: Yes,
Katie Vernoy: yes. We have a you do Facebook group, the Modern Therapist group. So that's, we try to continue the conversations over there so you can find us there as well. That's awesome.
Whitney Owens: Yeah. And then I have to brag on Katie for just a second because she is gonna be one of the speakers at the Wise Practice Summit talking about leadership within your faith-based practice.
Whitney Owens: So looking forward to that. So the summit is October 5th through the seventh, and all that information's at whitney owens.com. But I'm excited to finally meet you in person.
Katie Vernoy: Yay. Yeah, I'm so excited about it. It's gonna be such a cool conference. I'm really excited. Thanks for inviting me, Whitney. Oh,
Whitney Owens: well it's my honor.
Whitney Owens: Well, I appreciate both of you and what you're doing in the therapist world. Whenever some new thing comes out, I go to your podcast cuz I figured you've already talked about it and can actually gimme the real information. And so if you are not following their podcast, please go do that right now. And I appreciate both of you being on the show today.
