The Unexpected Skills You Learn as a Therapist

During the past several years, my life has taken a turn for the surreal. If you’ve been following me for the last few years, you know exactly what I’m talking about. And even more recently, the way things have been going on in social media, it’s just gotten really odd. And I started realizing this to a very concrete degree earlier this year.

Earlier this year I went to L.A. and I shot season one of what will become The Elliott Connie Show. We’re going to release it soon. I know you guys been waiting, but legal things happen, and we gotta release it when the legal stuff is all sorted.

When I was doing those interviews (and I interviewed 15 people for season one of the show), and when I was doing those interviews, I realized something after literally the second one, and I was like, “Oh, wait.” And I was so nervous before I did it.

I was interviewing these celebrities about their mental health. I was so nervous, I’d never done this before. And somewhere between episode two and three, interview two and three, I realized, “Oh my God, I can do this, and I’m pretty good at this.” And it started to really flow, and each episode got better and better. And the feedback I was getting both from the guests and from the people in the studio that were running the lights and sound, they were like, “This is amazing. This show’s gonna be great.”

I started realizing, all of those years of doing therapy not only prepared me to be a better therapist, like, that experience increased my clinical abilities, but it also allowed me to build other skills, like, while I was doing that, that I could then use in other areas without even realizing it was happening.

Now I find myself in situations where I’m going live on these panels, and I’m doing these guest spots, and I’m hosting my own show, and I’m doing all these things. And it was just like, “Wow, man. So much is happening and so much is going on.” But I was prepared for this by doing all of that clinical work.

And I’m bringing that to you here to say, if you follow me and the SFBT Moments series, then you’re probably thinking about Solution Focused Brief Therapy. And I wanted to say, when you work at it, understand you’re going to get better at clinical skills and abilities, but you’re also going to build these secondary skills that may benefit you in other areas of your life.

So you’re not just building this to be a better therapist. Of course that will happen. But there’s other things related to that. And I want you to think about, “What other things could I be doing?” And, “What other things would this make me better at?”

I never would have imagined that I’d be in the position that I’m in doing the things I’m doing, and that doing Solution Focused Brief Therapy for all these years has helped me to do it.

So I want to help you dream bigger and broaden your scope. And I want you thinking about what other things would I’d love to be great at, and how are my clinical skills that I’m building my focus on being great at Solution Focused Brief Therapy helping me to do that.