Finding Your Way Through Therapy

#83 Coaching, Therapy, Self-Care With Amy Teumer

January 11, 2023 Steve Bisson, Amy Teumer Season 7 Episode 83
Finding Your Way Through Therapy
#83 Coaching, Therapy, Self-Care With Amy Teumer
Show Notes Transcript

 In this episode, I speak to my business coach Amy Teumer. Amy also is a therapist, a perinatal mental health counselor.  She has developed the Mom Boss Life Academy. Amy talks about her work in private practice, how she identified her priorities and how she follows through her needs, while taking into account the hard balance of work, family, and self-care. Amy also navigates us with the process of therapy/coaching and how to do more targeted goals, get individuals to warm up to the process, and make sure they are kept accountable (P.S. She is really good at that one, let me tell you!).

Amy can be found on Instagram here .

Amy's website is https://www.amyteumercounseling.com



YouTube Channel For The Podcast




Steve Bisson:

Hi and welcome to finding your way through therapy. I'm your host, Steve Bisson. The goal of this podcast is to demystify therapy, what can happen in therapy, and the wide array of conversations you can have in therapy. I also talked to guests about therapy, their experience with therapy, and how psychology is present in many places in their lives. They also share personal stories. So please join me on this journey about there. Hi, and welcome to episode 83 of finding your way through therapy. I'm your host Stevie. So if you haven't listened to Episode 82 yet it was with Jake Nichols and returning Pat rice. Jake Nichols has a great new book out called unfit for recovery. So please go listen to that and listen to that episode. But episode 83 will be with Amy timer. Amy timer is someone I know personally because she is my business coach. She is someone who works in the mental health and counseling profession and she has been doing that for about 16 years. She's worked with many ages, including different environments such as the therapeutic school community counseling day treatment programs, adolescent and adult residential facilities as well as psychiatric clinics. In 2011, she decided to open her own full time private practice and has been established in the Central Florida community for a while now. She does telehealth therapy and also is besides a licensed mental health counselor certified perinatal mental health provider. She assists individuals and families through fertility challenges, pregnancies postpartum and adjustment to parenthood, hopefully she'll talk about that. She's also a life and business coach. And she is a very interesting person. So I can't wait to do this interview. So here is the interview. Hi, and welcome to Episode 83, of finding your way through therapy. It's also episode 20. I can't believe I have 20 episodes on YouTube. And it's an honor and a privilege to have someone who I've worked with, personally on my coaching, I have no problem people knowing that I hope that's okay with you. But Amy tumor is someone I've known for about a year and a half on a coaching level, but followed her on social media for a couple of years, at least before that, maybe not a couple of years, but at least another year before that and really liked her energy and all that she is someone who has 16 years of experience in the mental health field. She is a coach, she does telehealth. She also maybe hopefully we'll talk about our perinatal mental health stuff. Love her energy, she has helped me tremendously. And you can thank her partially for this podcast being so successful. So I put that on her. But Amy, welcome to finding your way through therapy.

Amy Teumer:

Thank you so much, Steve. I'm so excited to be here today.

Steve Bisson:

I can't tell you how excited when you said yes. I'm like it's one of those when you send out like, Hey, you want to be interviewed? And you go Yeah, I'm like, Oh, I didn't think you'd say yes. So I really appreciate it, Amy and I put it out there. I'm not very shy as to what I do in my life. I think that's why it's hopefully that's okay with you. But I feel like I know you I don't really know you more than my coach. Know you from social media also. But how about you tell my audience a little bit more about yourself?

Amy Teumer:

Yeah, absolutely. Why everyone, my name is Amy timer, and I'm a licensed mental health counselor. And I'm located in Florida. And I've been in the field, like Steve said, for about 16 years. And I started out kind of in the trenches, like a lot of us therapists for different agencies and kind of bouncing around to different levels of care. So I've worked in clinics, therapeutic schools, inpatient programs, residential programs, I've worked with children, adolescents, adults. And I think that was really important in my early years as a therapist just to get all that exposure in different environments with different populations to really see what I was interested in, and the type of people that I really wanted to work with, and was most effective with. So I've been in private practice now for about almost 12 years. And I initially started just kind of doing it part time. And again, I think that's very common for a lot of therapists who are not quite ready to take that leap. So you're still working in agencies or maybe residential inpatient programs, but then doing something on the side to kind of see how that goes testing the waters. And so they kind of built my private practice over the years. And then finally, when I found out was pregnant with my first daughter made that leap, to go full time into private practice, I really was hoping to find more of that balance and prevent burnout as a new mom. So that's when I decided to go into my own business.

Steve Bisson:

We definitely have that in common. I have two daughters myself. So we definitely have that also in common. 12 years of private practice, you might have to do it because you want it more time for yourself where you like going into trenches. I've learned what I liked and what I didn't like to do. I don't know if that kind of have influenced you going into private practice, or? Oh, absolutely.

Amy Teumer:

And I think after having that type of experience, you feel a lot more comfortable and confident in private practice. Whereas if you jump right into it after grad school, you don't have all that experience. So now I mean, anyone can really walk into my practice, and nothing's really going to catch me off guard, or surprise me, because I've had all that exposure. And you really appreciate their private practice world where people are motivated, right to do the work, and they're there voluntarily. So it definitely has a different vibe. But you know, that in combination with like I said, being a new mom and wanting to have that work life balance, wanting the flexibility, wanting to have agency over my schedule, and my time, I think that was definitely a big force.

Steve Bisson:

You've helped me also understand how to manage our time, what you talked about being in private practice managing your time better, is that because we're in private practice, because it's more personal or something else? I mean, why are we able to manage your time much better in private practice?

Amy Teumer:

Yeah, well, I think obviously, there's a lot more freedom, flexibility, being your own boss, and being a business owner, right, versus an agency or program telling you when you have to work are telling you how many people you have to work with, or how to work with them. So just having that freedom is really important. And then looking at your schedule, especially as a mom of two now and figuring out what's going to work for me, right? As far as when do I want my first client? When do I want my last client? How many days a week? Do I want to work? How many hours do I want to work per day and making sure that that vibes with my family, and there's other priorities that I have outside of work.

Steve Bisson:

And that's the thing that I really stress with a lot of people is that we have a lot of other obligations in our life. And that private practice gives us that flexibility. Definitely, like my private practice. I don't like my boss, he can be kind of a bum. Sometimes he really pushes me hard. But ultimately, I think I enjoy being in private practice. And I think that what brought me to private practice is a lot of stressful events that happen in an agency work. And I went in for me while going to therapy was really what kind of like helped me get to that point. The question that I asked everyone in finding your way to therapy podcast is, have you ever been in therapy yourself?

Amy Teumer:

Oh, absolutely. All throughout my life and actually started pretty young when I was a teenager. You know, I was one of those angsty teens, I would say I was emo kids that, you know, just all my feelings very emotional. I struggled with a lot of insecurity, anxiety, depression, and luckily, I was able to talk to my parents about it. And they got me help right away. And so I think it was maybe 13 When I started therapy, and that was a very, like, profound thing. For me, it was life changing, to have someone that I could talk to get that validation, get that support outside of friends and family. And that experience itself, I think, really pushed me into psychology, and therapy, because I really enjoyed it, it really helped me then I started to think, hey, this might be something that I want to do when I get older.

Steve Bisson:

You know, it's interesting, because usually people go into therapy, and they're like, oh, that's something I would like to do, and I'm older. But the one thing I've heard before and because you've been in therapy, it just I definitely want to ask you this question. So people say like, I listen to myself talk sometimes in therapy, and I'm like, how the hell does a person listen to us on the other side? Did you ever have that experience at any time? And how did that go for you?

Amy Teumer:

Yeah, I mean, it definitely takes getting used to I think, you know, when you're in there, and you start to share all these things, and you're not maybe quite sure how therapy works, or how the other person is receiving the information, especially as a teenager, you're a little guarded. Initially, it's hard to open up and get comfortable, like, Can I really trust this other adult, and learning that my therapist was going to turn around after every session and report things to my parents, you know, takes a long time to get comfortable and build that rapport, but you know, then you do get comfortable opening up being vulnerable, sharing things. And I think the biggest part of therapy that is so powerful is just that validation, where someone really validates your feelings and your experiences and you learn that emotions aren't right or wrong, good or bad. They just are and accepting those emotions and learning how to manage them.

Steve Bisson:

Well, I think about it as guarded. I mean, I'm 47 years old. I think I still am guarded in therapy. I'm definitely am actually I know that for a fact. Inside the break. I think it's helpful. At the end of the day, you said you started getting interested in therapy because of your own therapy. Were there other factors that made you interested in therapy?

Amy Teumer:

Yeah, so my senior year actually took an AP Psychology class as well. So I think that in combination with my own personal experience, really got me interested. I was very artsy in high school. So I was into like photography and graphic arts. So initially, I started out that route when I went to college, but I always had psychology kind of, in my mind as well. I'll so after taking a few courses, I realized that the artsy side of me was maybe more of a hobby. And I really wanted to pursue psychology more as a career. So I, you know, fairly soon in my college career, figured that out maybe like the second semester, and then kind of switched route and decided to get my undergrad in psychology and then go on to grad school.

Steve Bisson:

And where did you go for your undergrad and your grad school?

Amy Teumer:

Yeah. So I went to UCF for my undergrad in Psych. And then I went to Nova Southeastern for my masters. So my master's is in mental health counseling. And then I went on to get licensed. I'm a licensed mental health counselor.

Steve Bisson:

And you're licensed in Florida. Yeah, it's in Florida, because I know now people get licensure everywhere else. So yeah, I'm fine with just staying in mass, I'll be perfectly honest with you. And then basically going from our to therapy. I think that to meet sometimes Art Meets therapy, because we have to in psychology, there's an art to talking. When you talk about art, I imagine you and maybe it's my own thing. Imagine you're singing or imagine you painting, but I then like did you integrate some of the art practices for lack of a better word to your work as a therapist? Or how did you manage it?

Amy Teumer:

Oh, absolutely. And I still do to this day, and one of the residential programs I worked at, we actually had like certified art therapist, and I worked very closely with them just learning different ways to incorporate art. So whether that's poetry, music, photography, graphics, I mean, there's so many different ways to incorporate art in therapy. And so that's still something that I do today, because I think a lot of people connect with art and expressing themselves and it feels less threatening, right to maybe draw a picture or write a song or a poem about how you're feeling versus just talking about it, especially with my younger clients. I think that helps them kind of break through that resistance they have to therapy.

Steve Bisson:

And I think that that's the good way to do it. I mean, maybe maybe I can draw a picture next time I go to therapy, because that will help. But I also think that art therapy in general, or expressive therapy, as I have learned to say it now really helps individuals just get out of their shell. I think that that's a good way to do it. Is there other techniques that you use as a therapist slash coach to help people get out of their shell? Maybe there's stuck points?

Amy Teumer:

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of times it is just building that relationship and that rapport. So just being patient with the process and meeting people where they're at, versus like forcing them to open up in that first or second session. And so sometimes we might just work on rapport building, right, and just getting them comfortable and helping them learn the process of therapy. I think a lot of people come in and they're intimidated. They're like, I don't know how to do therapy. Right. So just using humor, and kind of levity and allowing them to get comfortable in the process first and letting them know, there's no judgement, there's no like timeframe, there's no pressure that they have to open up and identify everything right away.

Steve Bisson:

And when you go to therapy, you sometimes become a coach. And I know that was one of the transitions that you did. That's how I we know each other. Let's maybe maybe start off because a lot of people sometimes mistaken therapy and coaching as the same. I've heard I've said it, I've had a few guests who are coaches, and they said, how do you explain that to people? So I'd like to hear your explanation as to how the differences from a therapist versus a coach?

Amy Teumer:

No, absolutely. And, and I'm sure there are a lot of different ways that you can describe it. But with coaching, obviously, it's less clinical, so you're not going to be diagnosing and getting into very like heavy clinical topics from or severe depression. Obviously, if someone is really struggling with just like basic levels of functioning, therapy probably is a better place to start than coaching to me is more like action oriented. So we're not going to sit there and process your childhood, or your trauma, we're focused more on like what's happening right now in your life? And what direction do you want to head in? So identifying, you know, goals, priorities, values, really looking at what is not working? Like? What are some of the challenges or obstacles that are getting in the way what is working and then developing a really concrete action plan. And I think that's where a lot of people struggle, they have these like broad abstract ideas or goals that sound great. Like, oh, I want to do more self care. I want to be less anxious, or, you know, I want to have more balanced in my life. I want to be a better mom. Well, what does that mean? Right? I think a lot of people just get stuck with that abstract idea. And they don't know how to break it down to something that can actually be implemented in their lives as time oriented. And that's realistic together piece of it. I think often we have these unrealistic expectations. So we kind of set ourselves up for failure and self sabotage with that. They're really helping people identify goals, right and make sure it matches the values and priorities they have in their life. and really auditing how they're spending their time and energy. Because sometimes when you look at that it doesn't match up what you want. And that's where the disconnect is. And so it's very targeted. With the goal setting accountability is a huge piece of it as well. I think sometimes with coaching, you have more freedom and flexibility, you know, the techniques and things that you can incorporate. Obviously, sometimes you can be a little more confrontational, right, versus like, let's spend a year processing this one thing, it's like, okay, what are you going to do about it right now? Right. So it's very kind of in the moment, you know, obviously, there are a lot of great advantages as far as accessibility. So with my therapists license, I'm only able to work with people in the state of Florida with coaching, I can work with people all over the world, you don't have those same restrictions or regulations that you would with your license. So I think there's a lot of great benefits to it. And, you know, initially when I got into coaching, it was kind of right in the midst of the pandemic. And like a lot of therapists, I was just feeling really burnout, you know, my caseload was increasing to the point where I was seeing 3540 clients a week, and it was just a lot, you're trying to help everyone and just keep taking more and more on and then in my own personal life started to feel just really burnt out and overwhelmed, wasn't excited to get out of bed, and start my work day just start to kind of dread work and just had a lot of signs that something wasn't working, that something had changed. And then at the same time, I had people reaching out to me, from my Instagram, following other therapists saying, hey, I really like what you're doing. It's really interesting, the way that you built your practice the way that you market things, it seems like you have it figured out, have you ever thought about coaching? So that kind of at the same time got me to start to look into that? And what would that look like, as a therapist? You know, how would I incorporate that or kind of make that part of the work that I do and got me really excited about it?

Steve Bisson:

I think there's a lot of people who go into coaching, because it is exciting, and it's a change. But you know, when you have 30 to 40 clients a week? How do you manage the stress for any human being to do that during a pandemic? I mean, it's just very tough in general, did you find yourself working? Because you wanted to stay busy? Did you end up working more? Because the demand was there or something else?

Amy Teumer:

Yeah, I think all of the above, you know, it's hard as a therapist is her clients away. And I think in the last couple of years, I've gotten really good at setting boundaries and prioritizing my own self care and mental health. And that really got my attention when I was at that point of burnout overwhelm, so something has to change. So incorporating coaching, to have that balance, really lightening my clinical caseload, and looking at my schedule, and prioritizing the things that fill up my cup, and make me feel good, looking at the type of clients I was working with, and making sure that it was more of my ideal client, versus just taking on everyone because I can have a more of a niche or a specialization. So I think all those things kind of played into having that healthier balance.

Steve Bisson:

And when you talk about ideal coaching, the thing that comes to mind for me is you have a lot of different coaching programs. So how about you go through some of these coaching programs and what they do?

Amy Teumer:

Yeah, absolutely. So like I said, it first started out, which is other clinicians reaching out and wanting some help with their business and their private practice. But you know, different elements are involved in that. So of course, helping them reach their business and financial goals, but at the same time, preventing burnout, and incorporating self care and family life. So I have a lot of clinicians that are maybe moms or parents. And so they're like, Well, how do I do all the things? How do I run a successful practice, but I also want to be with my family and my children, I want to take care of myself, somehow, I want to maybe have a relationship with my spouse or my partner, I want to have friends, like how do I do all the things. So then that kind of expanded to my mom Boss Life Academy, which essentially it's business coaching, but also life coaching kind of combined, where other moms that are trying to run businesses need that help balancing it all. So I have a special track just for those mon bosses that really need that guidance and all those different buckets and finding that balance. And then also I found that there are some clients that maybe have specific goals or certain habits that they want to incorporate. And it really is more of like life coaching, habit coaching or mindset coaching. So it's not so much clinical, right, it's really more they need that action planning goal setting accountability, but it's very targeted to those behaviors. And those goals, whether it's certain behaviors or mindset changes they need to make so that was another aspect that it added to my coaching as well. So when someone comes in kind of assessing which coaching program they would fit best with.

Steve Bisson:

And it's always hard to find the one that works for you. So how do you decipher which one the person goes into

Amy Teumer:

Yeah, so I have them come in, do some initial paperwork as far as what they're looking for and their goals, and then we'll have a console and talk through it together and by the end of the meeting typically have a general sense of what's going to work best for them. And then we talk through that together and set up a plan.

Steve Bisson:

I know that definitely that we all have different needs, and like, you know, the mindfulness and moving forward in our own social life. I think that there's a lot of stuff that goes with that. I think that it's also about burnout. I mean, one of the things that I found myself and and other people who work in our field when the pandemic started really affecting a whole lot of people closing schools and stuff like that. Therapists ended up being you know, and I won't maybe talking only for President company, but I think for a majority of them, they had family obligations, whether it is mom, dad, brother, sister, daughter, son, what have you. And then you had the obligations of work. And then you had, where to how am I going to go because, you know, at one point, we couldn't even leave our house. And for me, the burnout really occurred. And I think burnout for this podcast, too. But I ended up seeing the same number of people. And I just like, my, I didn't deal with my own stuff. So I ended up being a little burnt out, I felt like it was a, as I've discovered, with my therapist, a trauma response to stay busy, because I didn't want to deal with the stuff. But how do you prevent burnout, not only in for therapists, obviously. But for mom, boss, as you talked about, and other people in general, because it is a very tight rope to run?

Amy Teumer:

Oh, absolutely. And I always say burnout prevention is a lot easier than burnout recovery, right? So if you can be preventative and intentional and make sure you're constantly checking in with yourself, to prevent that from happening, that's going to be a lot easier than having to recover from it. Because it takes a really long time when you've had prolonged burnout, which so many clinicians have been in that position, right? It's like years and years of burnout. And then they're like, Okay, something's got to change. So the more preventative that you can be, the better. But definitely, you know, looking at how are you taking care of yourself, we're in a industry that has a high burnout rate, because we are giving so much of ourselves to other people sitting and listening to people all day and their issues and being so invested in that often our own needs, and our own self care and mental health gets lost in that. So I think really prioritizing that and making that a non negotiable, having carved out self care time, I'm a huge advocate for therapists in therapy. You know, I really think that if you're a therapist, you should be in therapy, or having some type of support system, whether it's business coaching, life coaching, any other support that you can have is going to be so important to prevent that burnout, so that you can participate in all those other elements in your life and not feel that sense of dread.

Steve Bisson:

And I think that when you talk about therapists being in therapy, I'm 100% behind it. I think that when I was in undergrad, we learned about it through the psychoanalytic history, where basically you had to have your own psychoanalytic sessions in order to become a psychoanalytic therapist. And in time, it was seen, you know, we pushed it against Freud, we pushed against a lot of these psychoanalytic behavior, therapists or theoretic people. And we kind of run away from being in therapy ourselves. And I think that with time, we've really changed the way to get back into therapy. I frankly, could not do my job if I wasn't in therapy. How do we get through to someone with that? Because I think that it's hard for some therapists to say, Well, no, I'm a therapist, and this is maybe my own projection, I'll guess. But I've seen another therapist. I'm a therapist, I got to handle my own stuff, right. At the end of the day, I go back to me my one size, they were as screwed up as any other human being, which is screwed up differently. But how do we, we tell therapists to really get into not only therapy, coaching or whatever to find a balance in their life.

Amy Teumer:

Oh, absolutely. And that's one of my biggest missions on social media, I'm sure you're aware of is constantly trying to break down that stigma, and talk about the fact that I'm a therapist, and I've been in therapy all throughout my life for different reasons. But we're human right, and we have our own stuff or own trauma, our own lived experience, our own daily struggles. And we need a support for that we need someone to talk through our own stuff and have that awareness and also to understand what it's like to be on the other side of therapy. You know, how can we be a good therapist, if we don't know what it's like to be a client and to be vulnerable and to have that experience, I think that can be very humbling and grounding, to go in as a client to have to find your own therapist and start that process of building a relationship with a therapist and trusting a therapist and opening up to a therapist and incorporating those elements in your own life. I think that will make you a much better therapist. So I think just talking About it talking about your own experience and promoting that to anyone that will listen right on any platform that you have. That's how we break down that stigma and normalize it. And I think sometimes there is this idea that we're therapists or coaches, and we have it all figured out that we're perfect, our lives are perfect. And that's not the case. Right? Like, that's like the biggest running joke of all, we're all human. We all have our own struggles. And we all need help.

Steve Bisson:

Now I remind people, I have my own history, and he has their own history, everyone has their own history. And that brought them to xyz, or ABC, or whatever letters you want to choose doesn't matter. And we all have that unique story. So that doesn't make us more screwed up, less screwed up, it just makes us different. And that's a way of talking about it. The other part that I do is I'm hoping that this podcast helps not only people who are listening, who want to go to therapy, but therapists who might be listening to go to their own therapy, because I think it's so important. I cannot think enough, the three or four therapists that I've had in my life, to get me to the point where I'm at today, which I'm very happy about. But at the same time, I go to therapy every three weeks, and it's not going to stop and I don't see an end to it. And that's okay. But for some people, they that's kind of imposing how do we suggest to someone that therapy is not a six week program, or 12 week program?

Amy Teumer:

Mm, yeah, I really think it can be lifelong. There's always something to talk about, there's always something to process or work on. Even if you're just maintaining certain things in your life and having that support system that accountability, I just don't think you can replace that. And you can always, like you said, kind of spread sessions out or have it more as needed, but to still have that connection to therapy and have that resource available. I think that's so important. And I don't ever see myself not going to therapy,

Steve Bisson:

right? I don't see myself ever stopping therapy, frankly. And that's not a bad thing. And maybe in time, I want to work on different things and want to change therapists, and maybe the same therapist can do it. But I also say people just go that and one of my clients choked around and asked me who's your therapist, I'm gonna go ask them who their therapist is, I'm gonna get to the top of the food chain, I was thought that was a funny line

Amy Teumer:

was something about like your grand therapist or great grand therapist. So it's like, you know, your therapist therapists. And it's always interesting to think about it that way, where it's like, what's your therapist telling you? And what's your therapist therapist telling you? And, you know, it's always interesting to see that chain of command.

Steve Bisson:

I always think that eventually we'll get to somewhere where it rotates back, someone looks like all right. It's a big circle, in my opinion. But you know, the one thing that you mentioned there right before that is your social media. That's how I met you. Your social media is amazing. You decided to be very vulnerable and authentic in your social media, talk about your family talk about a lot of different things. How did you get to that point? To say, Look, I'm going to just be myself on social media, I'm not going to just put unicorns and butterflies and not against I'm not against unicorns, and butterflies. Don't get me wrong. But I'm just saying not just doing that, because sometimes that's the tendency for some of the social media stuff that therapists do.

Amy Teumer:

Sure, yeah. And I think I just got to that point, like you said, where I just was ready to be real and authentic. And I think that's how you reach people and connect, to break down that stigma to normalize it, to not just show up and talk in clinical terms, but to also say, Hey, I'm a human being. And I've had my own struggles. And I go to therapy. And this is how I try to figure things about my own life or find that balance or take care of myself. And I think that's a lot more motivating than just showing up and not being connected to your audience in that way. So it started out where I just had a small following. And it was just a lot of other therapists and clinicians. And it was more just like networking, and I just figured out how to add some presence. And then it just started growing. And like you, I would experiment with different things to see what got the most engagement. And it really was when I was showing up authentically, as myself and sharing some of that lived experience where people were really connecting and engaging. And I was seeing that response. And that's ultimately my goal, right to break down that stigma to connect with people to promote mental health awareness. And that's what started happening. So I've just stuck with that this whole time. And I'm seeing more and more therapists kind of breaking out their shell and showing up more authentically and I think that's a great thing.

Steve Bisson:

The other part that I love about your social media is that you talked about it in this interview, obviously but your emphasis of self care and you share that a lot on social media. Are you doing that for any particular reason like breaking the stigma breaking the barrier or something else?

Amy Teumer:

Well, I think all of that but also accountability, believe it or not, a lot of it is sorry followers, but a lot of it is really for me because I know if I don't post my 5am workout or my mental health walk, I like to call it that's like on me, and then I'm going to start to feel that and it's funny I even have have followers that will start to reach out and be like, Hey, is everything okay? If I'm not on there for a couple of days, like posting about myself care. So a lot of it really is for me to almost like have that documentation and to be accountable for the things that I'm doing for myself.

Steve Bisson:

I tend to agree a lot with that. And you certainly have helped me in regards to that. So thank you for that. But one of the things that I also find is that you'll always be surprised when people get engaged with. So I did a meet as social media posts, I think in December, that was like, here are three pairs of glasses that I'm looking at. And that got a lot of engagement, a ton of engagement with regards to what I look like. And they'd be like, Oh, you look too serious in your picture at all that? Do you find? There's anything in particular that really like you go, Wait a minute back got that much engagement? Is there something that like that that happens to it is

Amy Teumer:

surprising, because you'll have certain like reels or posts you put a lot of thought into, and like it was just going to be gray. And, you know, you're like planning it. And then it's like, yeah, you know, it kind of flops and other times, it's just like, very, like sporadic. And the moment you get inspired, you just had a session and you thought about some quo or some message that you want to put out there. And you just jump on and do that real quick. And then you get a really high response. So sometimes it's just that in the moment, stuff they don't have to plan for or think about that people respond to because then you're more authentic to your more real, we just kind of show up and say, Hey, I would just be thinking about this. There's something that I just did in my life. And people really connect with that.

Steve Bisson:

I have a little pad here. One of the things that I've learned to do is in therapy, sometimes you're like, Oh, that was really good. And I don't know if I'm breaking a wall here, but I'm sure that happens. So therapists, that's great. What the hell I just say, well I love like people like oh, you know, you said last week that was amazing. Great. Can you tell me when I said last week, because that'd be great. And what I've done is now if they're going to like, pad and like, Oh, that was good. Let me write it down. And what I do is sometimes I use it in my social media posts, as a way to kind of like connect with people. And like you said, sometimes, you know, you're like, Oh, this one was really thoughtful, and there's no engagement, there's no one that's really thoughtful, it gets a ton of engagement. And you know, reminding myself that the worst they can do is I'm authentic. So what do I have to lose?

Amy Teumer:

Absolutely. People can take it or leave it right and recognizing that you might not be for everyone. And that's okay. That's not my goal. My goal is to reach the right people and hopefully bring some meaningful content to the right audience.

Steve Bisson:

It took me a while in my career to figure out I'm not everyone's cup of tea. I mean, I'm so freaking adorable. I thought everyone would like me. But that's not how it works. But I think that that's where it's good to have connections on social media. And like you I've met a lot of people through social media that are either therapists and what have you. Do you feel like that connection with other therapists during the I talked about the pandemic, but other moments really help you also kind of like feed your soul?

Amy Teumer:

Oh, absolutely. I've met so many amazing clinicians through social media, I started some even consult groups and support groups and a huge referral base to and that's where I find a lot of great referrals. If I'm looking for someone in a different state, across the country that maybe has a certain specialization. I think social media can be a great outlet for that.

Steve Bisson:

And so where are we going to find you on social media? I know, I know, but I'm just asking for my audience. Yes, so

Amy Teumer:

I'm definitely on Instagram. Just Amy timer. I have a tick tock as well, Amy timer and Facebook. So it was in my three main platforms.

Steve Bisson:

And you have a website also? Yes, so

Amy Teumer:

it's just Amy timer. counseling.com.

Steve Bisson:

As we wrap up here, I was gonna ask you, can people reach you through those those platforms? First of all, and that would be my first thing. Oh, well, when you are done with this interview, is it self care time? Is it going to take care of the family? Is it another session? What goes on with Amy's life after this?

Amy Teumer:

Well, it's self care time actually have some workout time planned after this?

Steve Bisson:

Well, you know, no one's gonna see this because they were recording on a different date and the day it's going to be there. But I guess that on that Wednesday, when that's released on January 11, maybe they will see your workout video, or what did you did for self care that day. So, Amy, I can't thank you enough for coming on to finding your way through therapy. Thank you so much. And I know I'll see you again soon and I hope people go check out your stuff.

Amy Teumer:

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

Steve Bisson:

Well, this concludes episode 83 of finding your way through therapy anytime or thank you so much looking forward to seeing you again. But obviously we work together. Episode 84 is actually going to be a little bit about me. Someone pointed out that I've shared tidbits about myself, but I've really not talked about why I do this job and stuff like that. So I'm looking forward to sharing that in episode 84 With you Please like, subscribe or follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful. And as a reminder, this podcast is for information, educational, and entertainment purposes. If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor or therapist for consultation.