Most Therapists Disagree With Me About This… Do You?

When I was in college, I was an athlete. And being in Texas, we would play games all over the state of Texas. My university was in Fort Worth, Texas. And we would go to San Antonio, we’d go to Houston, we’d play schools outside of the state. We’d play in Louisiana, we’d play in Arkansas, we’d play in Colorado, we played all over the south. And we would drive around in these charter buses.

And my coach had a big problem he had to solve every time he took one of these road trips, which was, “How do I feed a bus full of hungry 20 something year old athletes?” 18 to 22, somewhere in there. And the way that he would solve that problem is throughout this part of the country was a restaurant called Golden Corral. So everywhere we stopped, we would eat at a Golden Corral. I can’t even tell you, I think I’ve been to every Golden Corral in the southwest of the United States.

And what it is, if you’re not familiar, it’s a huge buffet style restaurant that has like every food you can imagine. When you walk into this restaurant, there’s just this massive lineup of food. To the right it’ll say like Asian food and then Mexican food and then Italian food. And then there’s a steak grilled (it wasn’t at the time, but there is now). And then there’d be pizza, Southern food (like fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoe). And then there’d be vegetable, like a salad bar, right? And it was like 15 bucks per person. And us kids, we can go in there and eat a mountain of food, and that’s how he kept us fed.

Now here’s the thing about Golden Corral, is it was a ton of food, for not a lot of money, but it was all super duper mediocre, because they just kind of cooked everything.
They weren’t specialists in any one particular thing.

Now fast forward. And now I’m a little older, and I have my own career, and my own life, and I can make enough money to go to restaurants that are higher quality. Now one of the things I noticed with restaurants with the absolute highest quality, is they’re really, really good at what it is that they do.

For example, one of the best restaurants I’ve ever been to ever was at this place where the chef made dumplings. And it’s called the Dumpling House. It was in Hamilton, New Zealand. And a buddy of mine really loves dumplings. So he was like, you want to come here to this place? They literally had four things on the menu. Chicken dumplings, beef dumplings, pork dumplings and vegetable dumplings. But they were absolutely phenomenally delicious.

And they had this big window, you can see into the kitchen. And I look in that big window and I look into the kitchen and there’s this older guy and he is folding dumplings. He’s going like a thousand dumplings an hour. Like he is just making these things so fast, so fast, so fast.

And I was like, man, look at how good he is at this. I asked him how long I’ve been doing this. I mean, the guy looked like 80. Said, I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. My mom taught me, my grandmother taught her. It’s just kind of what it is that they did. And I cannot describe to you how good this place was. A little tiny dumpling place in Hamilton, New Zealand. And it was packed and there was a line outside and was always crowded.

I think about that in relation to psychotherapy, because too many of us are taught to be Golden Corral buffet style therapists, where we know a whole bunch about all kinds of theories, but we don’t specialize in what it is that we do. And I think that’s such a relevant comparison because in order for you to be really good at what you do, you have to really hone in and focus and study one approach. And we don’t do that enough. We don’t spend enough of our time focused on those things.

And shockingly, I made a social media post recently about this and the comments, like, people just wanted to argue with me and defend. No, no, no, there’s no one problem that you can use this, different approaches on. No, there’s no one approach that all clients will respond to. And my question is always the same to all these people. Where are you basing that opinion? Where did you get the idea that we have to change approaches based upon client needs?

Research is very clear about this. The single most impactful thing, the single most predictive factor, whether or not therapy is going to be effective or not, is the relationship between the clinician and the client. How connected are they? That’s it.
It’s not, “Did you match their problem with their approach? Did you find the right approach that works with that person?” It’s not that. It’s not that at all. So why do we do it? Like why are we doing this? It makes no sense to me. I don’t understand it.

So here’s my what I advocate for. I teach Solution Focused Brief Therapy because that’s what I do. And that happens to be what I know well, what I’ve dedicated my intention in study to so I can be an expert in this. But I want to ask all of you professionals to make sure you are focused on learning something. It’s not good enough to be a chef that knows how to cook some of everything. You have to master the craft that you are doing.
That’s the challenge, that’s the skill.

And if you’re not doing that, I’m not saying you are ineffective. I’m not saying you’re practicing wrong. What I am saying is you’re not practicing in relationship or in line with best practice. You’re not optimizing your clinical abilities. And, you’re not getting as consistent positive outcomes as you otherwise could. And I think we have a responsibility to pursue those things.

I also frequently ask therapists, when they tell me that “You can’t use one approach with everybody.” Or, “No one approach works with all people.” I always ask them. So explain to me where in graduate school, where did you study some of the gurus of our approach, some of the gurus of our field, where did you study them saying, “When I have a client who’s like this, I use this approach. But when I have a client who’s like that, I use that approach.” Right? We’re never taught that. So why are we doing it?

And I think that’s a question we have to ask ourselves.

Look, it is harder, much harder to dedicate yourself and learn the skills in the way that I’m describing. But isn’t improving our clients lives worth it? Isn’t being the best clinician you can possibly be worth it? I think it is, which is why I’m making this video, and advocating for you professionals, to practice in line with best practice and get really, really good with an approach, and stop trying to be Golden Corral, when you were meant to be a master chef.