Clay: Hello and welcome to the podcast everyone. Thanks so much for joining me on our ongoing exploration of the world of online counseling, etherapy, telemental health, whatever you want to call it. Hope your day is going well and I just want to thank everyone for their ongoing support of the podcast. I love your emails and comments, and I really feel like we are building a family of learners. Thank you for that. I want to announce that I’ve decided to create a project for the podcast and I’m hoping I’m not breaking off more than I can chew. Here it is. There are so many questions out there about the state regulations about doing online counseling across state lines where you have to be licensed, etc., and it’s a rapidly changing environment.
I want the podcast to begin to shed some light on this issue. Now currently on our website, we have what I called the Therapist Tool Box and there’s a page in there about how you can contact your state license board and professional organization to figure out what applies to you and your particular client wherever that client lives, but that’s a lot of work for you to do. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could hear it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak? Well, that’s going to be the project. I’m going to go state by state and contact each state licensing board to come on the podcast and talk about their particular approach to therapists doing online counseling with their citizens.
For example, I just talked with someone who called Pennsylvania State Licensing Board the other day and was told there are no current restrictions. As long as you are licensed somewhere in the US, you can work with their citizens and don’t have to be licensed in Pennsylvania. Now, that’s kind of surprising and it’s also second-hand information, so I want us to have on the record what each state says and hopefully, we will clear it up. Now, this is going to be a massive project, so bear with me as I go through the process of getting folks to talk to us and you can help.
If you know of someone who works in the state licensing board office, send me their contact information. My email address is clay@onlinecounseling.com. I need some introductions and when we get to the state where Boston is, I’m going to really need some help because I can’t pronounce it. Every time I try, my wife loses it. She cracks up. She thinks it’s the funniest thing ever. It’s some mental block or something that I cannot pronounce the name of the state where Boston is.
Quick story, when I first got to New York, someone said I should do voiceovers. I thought, “Okay, I can do that.” Easy money, right, and there was a huge strike going on. All the union voiceover artists were refusing to work so they needed non-union folks, my big chance. Not knowing any better, I started going on all these big auditions. Long story but I got some work and started doing fairly well. I go on this audition and you never know what you’re going in for, what the product is until you get there.
I get I there and they hand me this script. It’s for a bank in the state where Boston is. I’m reading this, I’m realizing I’m in trouble when the casting agent opens the door and calls my name. I go in and I said, “Look, I really don’t want to waste your time here but there’s a word in this script that I have some weird mental block and I can’t pronounce it, so I think I should just go.” She’s all, “No, no. We’ll go slow. We can take a few breaks. We’ll do it a couple of times. We’ll get through it.” “Alright.”
I get in front of the microphone and it goes, “We serve all your financial needs here at the First National Bank of Mashashushes.” We tried a few times and each time, it gets worse and worse. Finally, she says, “Yeah. You can’t say that word.” I don’t know. To me, S’s and C’s, I apologize to everyone listening from Mashashushes and the wonderful state that it is, I can’t pronounce it. When we get to that state, I’ll need a little help.
Anyway, enough about that, let’s get to the interview. Today, I get to talk to Deanne Moore who is a licensed professional counselor and an LMFT Associate in Texas with Life Works, founded by Melanie Wells. Talk about a person with a business mind. She and Melanie had created something truly unique and include four locations and they also franchise what they do. Essentially, you can work with them to buy a practice in a box. They do all the work for you. We’ll get into that in the interview, but it’s a fascinating concept and I want to give a big shout out to Melanie Wells and 18 of her online counselors who have joined the directory. I’m really looking forward to bringing some new clients to this very exciting and innovative practice.
A quick note, you’re going to hear the word “Skype” mentioned a lot in this interview. If you are a regular listener, you know that we’ve talked about Skype ad nauseum here how it’s not compliant with HIPAA, etc., and I know a lot of therapists who do use Skype and they and their clients prefer. The encryption is enough for them. No one is ever going to break the encryption, etc., and I’m not the Skype police here. No judgment, but after we stopped the recording, I asked her about it and she clarified that when she uses the term “Skype” it’s really with the idea of brand, like Kleenex or Band-Aid. The term “Skype” has become so ubiquitous, it’s just a word for connecting over the internet and that they do use other platforms. I want to clear that up prior to the interview. They are doing wonderful work over there and I’m so honored to have Deanne Moore of LifeWorks Group, which is a division of Lifeologie Institute. Enjoy.
Hello and welcome to the Online Counselling Podcast. I am thrilled to have as a guest today Deanne Moore of LifeWorks and their website address is actually wefixbrains.com, which just makes me smile. Deanne, welcome to the podcast.
Deanne: Thank you, glad we could make you smile already. That’s great.
Clay: You’re located in the great state of Texas.
Deanne: Yes, we are.
Clay: Tell us a little bit about you first, how you got into therapy and counseling, your degrees. Just let us know about you.
Deanne: Well, I’m Deanne Moore. I’m an LPC, LMFTA here in Dallas, Texas. I have two master’s degrees, one in Professional Counseling and one in Professional Development. I was married 16 years with a little bit of a train wreck, we’ll just kind of say that. It was a little bit difficult. We’ve got three beautiful kids out of it. He’s great. It just didn’t work and enough bad therapy kind of led me into wanting to join this field because when we finally found a good therapist, I realized what a difference a good therapist makes.
Clay: Wow, how interesting to experience the bad side of it and go…
Deanne: It can be done better.
Clay: It can be done better.
Deanne: It can be done better. I tend to be a little bit of a different type of therapist. I tend to be kind of direct and I feel like people come in because they want to get help, so let’s get some help. Let’s get some work done.
Clay: Wonderful. I’m just realizing that what I didn’t do before the podcast is turn my air conditioning off so I’m going to do that now or else my sound editor, he already has such all the hard time getting all the beeps and New York sounds out of the podcast as much as he can. I don’t need to give him more work with trying to get the air conditioner out. Okay. Tell us about Life Works because this is a massive practice that you all have kind of to fit the state, I suppose.
Deanne: Well, let me tell you about Life Works and what is so amazing about Life Works. Our founder is Melanie Wells and she started it maybe, I think 1999. She started it quite a while ago because she wanted to think outside of the box. She likes to say, “What box? Let’s shred the box.” It has grown over time that we now have four locations in Dallas and what we do, well, not in Dallas, in the Metroplex, I should say. We have Dallas, Fort Worth, then Highland Park or the Park Cities, and then we have Frisco. We shut down the office for three hours every Monday and all of our therapists come together for three hours and we collaborate on cases.
In that way, we have a lot of different brains that are working together for when each of us might have a certain case that is catching us or we’re not sure where to go, and we have different levels of therapists. We have the master’s level therapist all the way up to senior level therapist. Master’s level therapists are the ones that are finishing their master’s degree and they need to clock the hours in order to graduate and then you have the temporary licensed therapists, which would be called LPC interns, and then you have your fully licensed therapists and then our therapists that are also supervisors. You sit down three hours every week on a Monday, which now we all love coming to work. It’s like a family. You get to know everybody so well.
Clay: Oh wow.
Deanne: For example, if I have a client, if I have a couple that I’m seeing and then we start noticing the children are struggling because of the divorce, immediately, I’m like, “Here, I’ve got a therapist for you. Let’s set them up over here with my play therapist” or we’ve got an addiction specialist. Everybody has a different specialty. They are slightly varied so there’s no competition between the therapists. We’re all sharing cases and we can certainly do the best we can to help the family’s system as a whole. I met Melanie. I actually have a band. I’m an actor and a singer in my previous life.
Clay: Oh wow, okay.
Deanne: I lived in LA and then I was in Dallas. Melanie was my fiddle player. We hired a fiddle player. We replaced my fiddle player with Melanie and as we were like practicing and setting up, she was like, “What, you’re a therapist? Hey, I’m a therapist. I own a practice.” “What do you mean you own a practice?” Fast friends from there is what started where I went to work for her and coming from, like I said from my background in my life, we had decided to partner and we’re now franchising. We have our first franchise actually this month starting in Austin. All over the country, we’ve got where we’re starting and it’s going to be called Lifeologie. It’s taking off because we need to change how therapy is done, the training. We’re a training facility. We’re trying to change and turn out good therapists because the system we have now, it’s just not really set up for great training. Great schooling we have, we don’t necessarily have a great training for therapists.
Clay: That’s incredible.
Deanne: Agree then you’ll get to talk.
Clay: Well, I’m just overwhelmed because I mean, I talk to people all the time who are changing people’s lives and working with amazing clients, but you all are helping to change the profession. Somebody can come to you as in grad school, just out of grad school and learn the nuts and bolts of how to be a good therapist, but then also with the franchise, you can tell them how to create a practice and you’re giving them all the backend and helping them with billing and marketing and all that kind of stuff. Wow.
Deanne: Absolutely. The whole concept of franchising is its own animal or a tamed animal because it’s literally a business in a box. Where Melanie has spent time and years, she likes to say she was building her plane while she was flying it, she’s already made all the mistakes for you, so now when you become a franchisee with us, you’re like our child. First off, we’re going to make sure you don’t fail because it’s in our best interest to have them all over the country.
If you’re going to start Lifeologie Boston, it’s going to be a business in a box. You come five days. We’re training you. We send people to you. It’s from the back office information to the billing. We don’t take insurance. We help the clients file insurance, so it’s a cash pay. We take credit cards and checks, but it’s a cash pay system. We get all of that set up along iwht the training and what type of people you should have there, how many offices, the decorations. It’s just as if you bought any franchise, it’s already done for you.
Clay: That’s incredible. I don’t think there’s anybody else out there doing this.
Deanne: There’s not. There’s not. We are innovative in that way, which is what we do best because like I said, it’s a well oiled machine because you start with the interns who work and they need to be there working, so they help with the back office stuff. When you first start off, you don’t necessarily need an office manager. We do, we have four locations and so we do have an office manager, but it’s just a system that works and it’s a system that’s needed. To put out better therapists, our master’s level interns are trained in the first six months what other people would be trained for years only by the nature of sitting in a room for three hours collaborating on cases. It’s training you can’t find anywhere else and you get to know everybody. It’s like a family.
Clay: Oh, that’s incredible, just the support, because so many people in our profession, we work alone. I work alone and I don’t have like to bounce ideas off of like you would in a mental health center, so to have that…
Deanne: And the burnout rate, the burnout rate is really high because while you’re running – for me right now, having a heavy caseload that I have, if I’m having to run the back office, I’m exhausted and I have three children. They are older now, but I have two at home and one in college. I’m trying to run a home, run a business, and then see clients and then work on my website. All that is done for you on the franchise side but it’s also done for you as the therapist that works under Lifeologie/LifeWorks. We do all of that for our therapists as well.
Clay: The marketing, all of that.
Deanne: Yes.
Clay: You keep it by the hand.
Deanne: Right. The individual therapist is responsible to help with some marketing for themselves but we do all the SEO, the website, and the Google Ads and all of those kinds of things we do for you.
Clay: Incredible. Now, so Austin is your first franchise.
Deanne: That’s our first franchise.
Clay: How’s it going?
Deanne: Great. It’s great. It’s a new concept. Like I said, that was our first one. We’ve got other ones coming down the pike that are, they are not legally signed yet but we’re days away.
Clay: They are coming.
Deanne: Days away before we can legally talk about it.
Clay: This is a national, even an international podcast. You mentioned Boston, so this is not just a Texas thing. Somebody in Boston, Michigan, or someone else in the US could come to you and say, “I want to open up LifeWorks.”
Deanne: Yes. Two and three that are in the pipeline right now, they are not in Texas.
Clay: Okay.
Deanne: We’ve got some all over the country that are starting to do.
Clay: How about some of my listeners internationally, in the UK, Australia?
Deanne: Absolutely.
Clay: Really?
Deanne: We don’t have them yet, but we, you have to have an FDD and we’re licensed in every state where there’s different rules and things like that, but we are set up to be international.
Clay: That’s incredible.
Deanne: That’s the goal. The goal is to, again, it’s a business model that works in an industry that could afford to have a little more training and better therapists. You get to feel good while you make money. What other business do you work your whole life and you don’t have an asset at the end to sell because when you’re an individual practitioner, at the end of the day when you’re done, you’re done.
Clay: Right. It’s not like a hardware store.
Deanne: Exactly, exactly. This just makes it, it’s just it’s needed. We have a nonprofit that comes from the franchise. It’s called bethebug.org and its’ based off of the Dali lama quote that says “if you think you’re too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito in the room.” It’s our nonprofit that we know we’re trying to put back into the community as well.
Clay: Excellent. We have a lot in common because here at the Directory that I run, we’re contributing our proceeds to nonprofit arts groups. Yeah, we’re going to talk about that a little bit, but first tell me, how many therapists work with you in your four locations.
Deanne: I think right now we currently have 32 or 33, I forgot the last count between the four offices. Again, spread over between master’s level therapists all the way to the senior level therapists, which what that model does is it provides a sliding scale without each individual therapist having to slide their own individual scale. If your price is whatever that may be, let’s say you’re a therapist at 1:30, you can stay at 1:30 because somebody that calls in that needs an economical rate or they are not as concerned with having the most senior therapist, they just want to get in but they can’t afford, our therapy starts at $55 because you get our master’s level intern, but our master’s level intern is going to have the brains of the other 30 clients because when we go in that room, I mean, senior therapists bring up cases, master’s level interns bring up cases, there’s no egos in the room.
I do a lot of relationship, I mean, a lot of individuals, a lot of relationship, a lot of co-parenting, divorced families, blended families, last ditch marital, and I ended up in a domestic violence situation –not myself, my client – it turned into a full blown domestic violence situation and I kind of felt like whoah, wait, this was a little out of my wheel house. It felt bigger. It felt big to have her. The 911 was being called and it’s like a serious thing, and I have at my fingertips 30 other therapists that I’m able to kind of contact, “Hey, what about this or this? Do you know any apps?” There’s a secret app that you can use that will immediately call for help that women or men, I guess, could use, but I was able to bring that case up in our, we call it supervision or our leader, the meetings on Monday, and there was so much information thrown my way whereas if I had been by myself, it just wouldn’t have been as accessible to just have someone’s attention for that one.
Clay: Absolutely.
Deanne: We have people that bring up cases from, you’re just thinking how? Sometimes, we’ll laugh and we’re like, “I’m glad you got that case” or “Hey, I don’t know how I got this hand but here’s my case to bring up.” We really know each other in the room which makes its great because they can call you out on things like, “Do you think that’s really about because your dad’s been sick” or “Do you think it’s touching you because…?” The first part of our meeting, we kind of go around the room and do a check in so we get to really know what’s going on in the lives of all the therapists around you, from getting married to deaths in the family to someone getting a divorce. We really know the therapists when we refer people to them.
Clay: Yeah. Wow, this is really exciting. One thing I wanted to touch on. This is the Online Counselling Podcast and I don’t know if it’s a majority or maybe half of your therapists offer online counseling. Tell me a little bit about that. How long have you been doing it and how is it going?
Deanne: We do it as we’re trying to keep up with technology basically. For me personally, it started off that I had several clients just over time that would move and we had established a nice relationship. They knew my flow. I knew all about them and one of my clients moved to San Francisco, one moved to Atlanta and they are like, “I don’t really want to go start over with another therapist,” and I’m like, “Well, let’s keep talking.” It can be anything from phone to Skype to Facetime to whatever technology is offering, we’re able to still get the one on one time into process and then we’ve actually had people that will actually call into our office from our website. Our website’s very creative. If you go to it, when it says “meet the life workers” you’re going to see our baby pictures. It’s going to be baby pictures.
Clay: I thought that was so cool.
Deanne: And then you’re going to scroll over and you’ll see the adult picture and it will give the credentials and the biography. So, people will call in and email. We have a specialist for trichotillomania which is like the hair pulling and body focus repetitive behaviors, and she’s one of the top in Texas for sure if not in the nation. There are people that will call in even for that or couple’s work or individual work that will say, “I want to talk to you” or “I want somebody in your practice because I know you guys are good,” and then we can pick up the phone or pick up Skype. I’ve had several clients that I’ve never met face to face, but I’ve met them through Skype. It’s still the same. You can get just as much done. It’s tricky getting the couples because they kind of have to sit closer and sometimes, they are a little upset with each other, like, “It’s okay, sit and get on together. Now go to her. I can’t see you both.”
Clay: Get on camera together, that’s right.
Deanne: Yes. “I got to see you. I know you’re mad at her but scoot on over” which can lighten the mood a little.
Clay: Yeah. The technology is really opening things up a bit. I talk to people all the time that there are people living in rural areas who may not have an expert near them like trichotillomania and need that and go online to seek it out because they don’t have somebody in their small town that has that specialty. How many of your providers or therapists are working online?
Deanne: I don’t know the number off the top of my head how many work online. Out of the 33 I know, at least a third if not half do online and online therapy, I guess, is what we can call it, nonphysical face to face, I guess.
Clay: Okay. Are you all talking and you’re bringing those cases in as well, and kind of having supervision for them. Are there any things that come up specifically for those online cases or do you do any specific training on how to do online counseling for, you know, just like a camera, lighting, etc?
Deanne: That’s really a good idea. We might need to do that. I think that when you’re trained as a therapist, you’re not really thinking about lighting or whatever. If I can’t see the client’s face, I’ll tell them to scoot over or things like that, but you just want to make sure that you can hear them. If you’re on the phone or if you’re doing like a Facetime that you can see them. You just want to be able to see them and they probably need to see you so they can get a feel of what’s going on, but there’s not really a whole lot of training other than the technical side. Most people that need training just need to know how do you dial to get someone on Skype or do I have a Skype name.
Clay: Yeah. There’s a lot out there and I think that maybe looking into that a little more because it can be a different dynamic at least from what I’ve experienced from face to face, just small bits of these are things to consider when you are when you have dog barking in the background or if the connection loses or workarounds on the tech end but also on the relationship end because you’ve seen people, most of the time in their homes.
Deanne: Right and I’ll preface that with my clients especially if it’s going to be a Skype call. I’ll say, “I’m in my home. I have a dog. If the dog barks, will that be okay? I’m going to put him up,” or “Hey, I have kids but they know that I’m in here. They are not going to be bothering me.” I call them kids. They are 20, 18, and 16 but I’ll tell them, “Mom is going to do a Skype session. I’ll be back in an hour,” but I do let them know that so that they have the opportunity to know because they are a little bit more – that’s not proper English – the potential is the, not the compliance, but the privacy that you just want to give them the information that this is where I am and this is what is around that there’s no surprises and they have the opportunity to say, “Yes, I’m fine with that” or “No, I’m not.”
It’s still private. It’s still completely private, but you just want to let them know this is my setting. This is where, “I am at the office” or “Hey, I’m at my home.” I was out of town one time and I had a client in crisis and I said, “I am at a hotel at a convention but I can go to the hotel room and talk to you.” You just want to give them the opportunity to know exactly where you are and what your surroundings are so that they have that opportunity. I have never had a problem with that when I preface exactly what’s going on.
Clay: Yeah. As a therapist, how has it affected you and your practice, some people say that to be able to work from home is great, to be able to travel and take my clients with me has been helpful for a lot of therapists. What has it been like for you personally being able to go online with your practice?
Deanne: Well for me, it opens up my schedule tremendously because you don’t have the drive time, the commute time, although for me, I still go into the office every day, but I can talk to clients earlier in the morning, so maybe before work. When they find out that I do online, we’ll call it online therapy, I have a lot of clients that it helps them because they then don’t have to take off two hours because usually, the drive time to get to the appointment then you sit there and then the drive time back, so it’s even hard for people to come on their lunch break because they don’t have, that’s their full hour is the session and so a lot of clients, especially once I’ve met them, that’s when they start saying that, “Hey, can I just call you” or “Hey, can we do a Skype?” I always tell them, “Hey, I can go outside of a lot of business hours that way.”
Clay: Okay, great.
Deanne: Early morning and late at night works great for people.
Clay: Yeah, it really does and it does help from a therapist’s end to come and free up your schedule and I just like the connection also of working with someone who is in their safe environment, whether it’s their office, their home, they feel more relaxed, I think, versus coming into the doctor’s office kind of thing.
Deanne: Yeah and we really try to knock that down to begin with. Melanie, our owner that I keep referring to, she’s like a lifelong kidney patient and so she feels like she’s been in sticky waiting rooms her whole life. When you step into a LifeWorks practice, you know it’s different. We offer Dr. Pepper, Diet Dr. Pepper, and water. We have cool magazines, cool music. She loves to call it a groovy vibe so we try real hard to cut the shame factor out but you are right. There’s still a huge stigma with going to therapy. People still struggle with “something’s wrong if I’m going to therapy” things like that.
Clay: Yeah.
Deanne: But for sure, people, they can sit there and talk about whatever is bothering them from whatever place they want to and they don’t have to go or someone can see them.
Clay: Yeah. Actually, I was talking to a therapist the other day that they felt like this was increased confidentiality because in their small town, everybody kind of knew everybody else’s car and so if you saw that person’s car parked out front of the therapist’s office, like, “Oh, Sam Jones is going to therapy,” and confidentiality is gone, but with Skype, you’re in the comfort of your own home.
Deanne: Yes.
Clay: We’re throwing around the word “Skype” and I know some of my listeners are going, “Hey, what about that?” Talk to me about Texas and your specific regulations for online counseling and encryption, and what are some of the regulations there in Texas?
Deanne: My understanding is that you can do Skype with other states as long as you’re licensed in your state, like, we’re allowed to do therapy with someone else in a different state even though we’re licensed in Texas as long as the client knows. Most of it, just the client, you just have to give the client all the information. You have to let them know so that they are aware of what’s going on and then it’s in the client’s hands.
Clay: Okay. This is all in your informed consent. You let them know and Texas says as long as you say you are based in Texas, Texas regulations apply to this interaction.
Deanne: It’s for me. Yeah, for my roles because I’m licensed in Texas so it’s important for the client to know. You know that I’m in Texas. I have a client that’s in New York and as long as they – everybody just needs to be on the up and up, which most people that are doing it on unconventional or the uncommon way usually don’t have much of a problem with that as long as they know because it’s in the client’s hands to decide.
Clay: Right. Have you had anybody express any kind of concern about the technology, about encryption, security, or confidentiality? In your experience or in your supervision, anybody brought that up and said, “Hey, I’m a little concerned about this”?
Deanne: Okay, wait. Repeat the question.
Clay: Have you had anyone that has come to you for counseling, for online counseling express any kind of concerns about security or regulations?
Deanne: I have not personally had that. I’ve not ever had anyone ask me that when they do it. They are usually so excited to just be. They’re just usually so excited to not have to come in and take that much time and then when I preface it with what I’m doing. We talked about it in our supervision meetings before and just try to research making sure we’re doing on our end what we need to do to be compliant and just in the best care of the client.
Clay: Absolutely, which sounds like everything comes down to the best, the needs of the client and serving them in the best possible way.
Deanne: Right. That’s what we address.
Clay: Great. We’re talking about all the great benefits of online therapy. Any challenges that you or anyone else in your supervision have brought up any kind of difficulties from glitches to, I don’t know?
Deanne: There’s always going to be the internet connection. You do everything you can to make sure you have the best internet connection. Most people that are doing that have experienced technical difficulties. Sometimes like the sound like go out. I was doing a Skype the other day and the couple, the guy sound kept going out so they kind of moved to a different area of their house so that I could hear them better, but typically, it can be annoying if that happens, but like, I think we’re all just used to that. That could potentially happen. I just try to make sure it’s not going to happen on my end as best as I can. If it’s on their end, but technology is technology. If there’ a rainstorm, there’s always a risk and things like that.
Clay: Absolutely. I had a couple in Nigeria that I was working with and sometimes, the internet just didn’t work. We’d have to be a bit flexible. I’ve got like a little checklist that I send to my clients saying, “Here are some things I want you to do in preparation. 1) You need to be in a closed room. No one else is going to overhear you and that you need to have some kind of light on your face and that you need to close out all your other browsers and anything else that might be eating up your broadband connection. What are some other things? I found that if you talk with them with ear buds in your ears with a little microphone, that seems to help the connection.
Deanne: I do that a lot.
Clay: I don’t know if that’s…
Deanne: Oh really?
Clay: Yeah and I don’t know why.
Deanne: For me I do it so if I’m ever in a place where I’m in one room and someone is in the other, even at my office I do that even though if they were physically in my office, their voices carry, but I always go, like at least if I have the ear buds in, no one else can even possibly hear anything that’s said. The only thing anyone could possibly hear would be me.
Clay: Okay. Do you put any kind of boundaries or structure around who you will or who LifeWorks will work with online? You mentioned domestic violence. There are some therapists that say, “I don’t feel comfortable working with that type of situation online because I’m not physically there,” although my question would be what would you do if you were physically there?
Deanne: Yeah, I know. With our practice, they do such a good job of trying to get us with the clients that do fit us best whereas when you’re a solo practitioner, rightfully so or fairly enough, you tend to take, you’re a therapist and we are licensed to do all kinds of stuff so you tend to take what comes in the door and so you could end up with a lot of different kind of cases. What’s really good about where I work is I feel like since we have little niched specialties, most of the time by the time I get the clients, they are within my wheelhouse like I said before. I have not come across one. When we do come across people whether Skype or face to face that we don’t feel like we’re the best therapists for them, if I find out one of my clients is an addict, like we have addict specialists that that’s what they do.
I would simply refer them. I would say, “Hey, you really ought to talk to this person and let’s get through the addiction process, and then let’s work on the relationship. I would send them down to one of our other therapists. I’m not sure that that’s any different via Skype and online. I’d refer them out just as much as I would keep them depending on what’s going on in their current situation. We even have a grief specialist. If something happens and they just really can’t get over a death then I would send them to the girls in our office that deal with grief.
Clay: Wow. This is one of those things where I had a question and as my lips move, the question went away. Oh, I know what to ask. The specialties, tell me a little bit about some of it. You mentioned trichotillomania, a grief specialist, addictions, what are some of the other specialties?
Deanne: We have eating disorders, we have EMDR, which is that eye movement desensitization, we do that. We have adolescent specialists, mindfulness. We also have yoga therapy where actually our training facility for yoga which is the mind, it’s all about the body with the mind. It’s not just like doing yoga therapy, I mean yoga by itself. I mean, this has to do with the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems so, I mean, it’s really effective for clients when they do yoga therapy. We have that whole part of our company that we work with. We have play therapists that do for the little kids.
I’m trying to think of anything we wouldn’t have more than the things that we do have because we pretty much cover a lot. There’s a whole lot and what’s so great about it, Jennifer Landon, she’s done trichotillomania forever and then she’s taken under her wing one of the LPC interns. She has been training her and she’ll sit in with the clients and she’s getting this amazing training so we now have someone at a lower price point that also does the trichotillomania that’s completely right under Jennifer and learns straight from her on a daily basis. What is amazing about this is that we can turn out, we have eating disorder like I said, that’s a whole specialty in itself, a different type of addiction.
Clay: Absolutely. Do you run groups?
Deanne: We do. We definitely. We constantly have different groups running yoga groups, mindfulness, adolescent, teens, divorce recovery, women. I mean, there are always groups like that.
Clay: But those are face to face not online groups.
Deanne: Correct.
Clay: Okay.
Deanne: Yeah, I don’t know that anybody is doing any groups online.
Clay: Yeah. Somebody was asking about what platform they would use for groups and we’re still trying to research because there’s a couple of platforms out there.
Deanne: I know Google can do too. I know like you can have couples in different places. There’s a way like, I know Google has it where you can have three, like, you could see on your screen, you would have the two faces and put them side by side, but I don’t know how. I’m sure there is a way.
Clay: There’s something out there.
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Deanne: I’m sure if it’s not, it’s coming up soon and we’ll all be doing it. Like I said, we’re trying to stay up with technology as it grows.
Clay: Yeah. It’s incredibly cutting edge. What about the band?
Deanne: Yes, we have a lot of fun. It’s Deanne Moore and Group Therapy is what we call it. I did an album and Melanie is a trained fiddle player. She’s amazing and the musicians are amazing. We have a lot of fun. We’re not making a living doing that but we have a lot of fun in Dallas. We’re having a grand opening. We’re moving offices, changing the name to Lifeologie and the franchising. We’re going to have an open house party and the band is going to play so it’s going to be fun.
Clay: That’s incredible. People can find you all with wefixbrains.com but also LifeWorks at Lifeologie. These are terms that people are going to be….
Deanne: Yes, like Lifeologie franchising. It’s IE, LIFE-O-L-O-G-I-E, Lifeologie franchising. There’s links but the we fix brains website is definitely a must see. It’s great.
Clay: It’s just fun.
Deanne: It’s innovative. It’s everything that we are. It encompasses everything that we are.
Clay: It just made me smile, the whole website.
Deanne: Good.
Clay: When you go and you look at all the staff and it’s not the typical headshot. It’s baby pictures and then you hover over the baby pictures then you get the headshot of what they look like now.
Deanne: That’s right.
Clay: It’s so personal.
Deanne: Yes and Melanie picks all the pictures that she puts on there, like, we have to give her and then she picks it. I was last. Mine, I’m making a funny face while I was singing or something. She’s like, “No, but I want everybody to have personality and fun.” I know one of our child therapists is holding a parakeet on her hand. She just definitely tries to make it just different, warm, and friendly, which is everything we are.
Clay: Yeah. Deanne, I can’t thank you enough for coming on and sharing what amazing work you all are doing, not just for your clients but for the entire profession.
Deanne: Thank you.
Clay: I hope to keep up with you and I’m sure whatever is coming up for the cutting edge, you guys are going to be right there riding the wave.
Deanne: Well, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.