E.98 Podcasts, Neurology, Private Practice, And Networking: How Gordon Brewer Makes It Work Together

In this episode, I talk to Gordon Brewer. He talks about how he decided to become a therapist, his upbringing, his family, as well as his highly successful PsychCraft Network, which I joined a few weeks ago. Gordon also talks about neurology and how it relates to the brain. I truly enjoyed our conversation on spirituality, starting a business of any kind and how difficult and fulfilling (yes both) it can be.

Gordon is the voice behind the Practice of Therapy Podcast and blog which provides resources for clinicians in private practice. He is also group practice owner in Kingsport, TN.  He is a licensed marital and family therapist with 20 plus years experience in the field.  Gordon loves helping people find meaning and purpose in their lives and relationships. He is also the founder of the PsychCraft Network of podcasts and has another podcast called the Kindness and Compassion Podcast.

The PsychCraft Network can be found here.

His website can be found here.

His other podcast, Kindness and Compassion, can be found here.

Transcript

0:00

The hi, and welcome to finding your way through therapy. The goal of this podcast is to demystify therapy, what can happen in therapy, and the wide array of conversations you can have in and about therapy. Through personal experiences, guests will talk about therapy, their experiences with it, and how psychology and therapy are present in many places in their lives with lots of authenticity and a touch of humor. Here is your host, Steve Bison. Thank you and welcome everyone, to episode 98. If you haven't listened to episode 97, please and go listen to it. Pavel's story is of tragedy and human resilience, and I hope you enjoyed as much as I do. He had a lot of great things there. But on episode 98, I'm going to talk to Gordon Brewer. Gordon someone I've been on this podcast before. His podcast is The Practice of Therapy, and he provides resources for clinicians and private practice through his blog as well as his podcast. He is also a group practice owner in Kingsport, Tennessee. He is a licensed marital and family therapist with 20 plus years of experience in the field. Gordon loves helping people find meaning and purpose in their lives and relationship. He is also the founder of the Psychcraft Network of podcasts and has another podcast called Kindness and Compassion Podcast. I have a slight announcement during this podcast in regards to the Psychcraft Network. So I wish I had some little music that can go or exclusive or something like that. So just use your imagination. We created one just now. So here is the interview. Well, hi everyone, and welcome to episode 98 of Finding Your Way Through Therapy. I'm so excited to have someone that I was connected with, with a former guest of mine and a friend, Lisa Mustard. And Gordon is someone that I got the privilege to be on his podcast not too long ago. And there's so many great opportunities that Gordon and I discussed and we're going to definitely talk about it during this broadcast. But I also really appreciate Gordon as a human being because I've heard his stuff, obviously before this, but you guys don't know and I'm going to ask some of those questions. But I just like Gordon's story in general. He offers a slew of services, but it's hard to find a genuine human being sometimes. And just being a human, we're always human doing, and he's a human being. And so I want to introduce someone I consider a friend at this point, Gordon Brewer. Gordon. Welcome to finding your way through therapy. Thanks, Steve. It's my pleasure to be here. I've been looking forward to this. I can't tell you how excited I was to be on your podcast and now you're on mine. And I feel like we've got to know each other for the last two or three months, but maybe my audience doesn't know who you are. So how about you introduce yourself? Okay, well, I'm always kind of not sure where to start. But my name is Gordon, and like Steve, I'm a therapist. I'm also in private practice, and I'm located in Tennessee. You might be able to detect a little bit of something in my voice that maybe gives that away, but I'm in northeast Tennessee in a place called Kingsport, and we're right in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains, as I like to say. So it's a small area, a small metropolitan area called the TriCities. And right where Tennessee and Virginia and Kentucky and North Carolina kind of come together up there in that little corner. I've been a therapist. I'm actually a licensed marriage and family therapist. Been in this field for probably oh, gosh, let's see. Golly, it just now dawned to me at least 22 years, so it's been doing it a while. But I grew up in North Carolina. As I mentioned, I'm in private practice. I have a practice called Kingsport Counseling Associates. And kind of my niche with my practice is I do a lot of work with couples, but also with men struggling with sex addictions and pornography addictions and those kinds of things. And so that's a big part of what I do. And then also, as Steve mentioned, I have a podcast. I've actually got two podcasts now. One is called The Practice of Therapy, and it's really geared more towards therapists and helping them navigate kind of the business side of running a practice and all of those kinds of things. And then my most recent podcast started last year, is called The Kindness and Compassion Podcast. And really that podcast is about exploring the intersection of psychology, spirituality, religion, and those kinds of things and how we can live into more kindness and compassion in our lives. And really my whole goal with that podcast was to help us kind of navigate moving away from all of the polarization we're all sensing and feeling in the world here lately. So that was my purpose in starting that, and that's an ongoing project for me. Well, I haven't listened to the second one as much as I should, so I'll say that honestly. But I also have listened to your podcast for a while, really enjoy it, and obviously gives a lot to therapists. But I also would argue with my audience that I think a non therapist can get some stuff out of that because I've heard many people say their stories. Avel, who was on the show last episode, is someone that was also on Gordon's podcast. And you don't need to be a therapist to truly hear the compassion and a true story, as you probably have heard from mine anyway. But just wanted to mention that, too, because I think it's not exclusively therapist, probably more geared towards therapists, but nonetheless wanted to give you that you have a broad stroke in regards to your reach. Right, thanks. I also love the fact that you work with addiction, especially behavioral addiction. And I know that sometimes can be a controversial subject. I do believe there is such a thing. Personally, I think that I've come from a school of and you can give me your feedback on that. I think we're all addicted to something. Some of it is healthy, some of it is not so healthy. But as any addiction, when it goes beyond health, that's when the problem lies. What are your thoughts about addiction in general? Not only about behavioral, but just in general? Yeah, so it's a great question, Steve, in that in working with the clients that I work with, I always tell them that I don't really have a way to measure if somebody's addicted to something or not. I think that's something each person has to determine for themselves. But what you can see is that if there's a pattern of being involved in any behavior that interferes in their life in such a way that it's disruptive to their relationships, to their work, to their life and that sort of thing, it's probably something to look at. Also, if it's something that becomes a preoccupation where somebody is constantly thinking about how are they going to get the next hit, next high, or whatever you want to call it with those behaviors, it's probably something to look at and something you probably need to explore. As I like to say, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. And so most of us have known people in our lives that have been addicted in different ways, whether it's alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex addiction is one that has become, I guess, in more recent years, more people are becoming aware of it. And particularly with the advent of high speed Internet. And I'm dating myself because I realize there are probably listeners out there that that's always been a thing. But when that came into being, our access to things like pornography, to gambling, I would say, and any of those kinds of behavioral kind of addictions are much easier to get your hands on. And so it makes it much more of a problem for people. Dating yourself would be calling it 2400 Bod or something like that. That would be really dating yourself. But high speed Internet or DSL, I think we're still a little on this side versus the I do think that that's a good point. I like how you said it's our own measure that we got to think about, not what other people say. And I certainly see that in a whole lot of people. And you do seem very passionate about your therapy. I think you have a lot of stuff you're passionate about. I think that when you talked about how do I introduce myself, I have the same issue sometimes. But let's start about the basics because I think I go back to what started you and all this is being in therapy. So how did you become a therapist? What was the process of becoming a therapist for you? Yeah, so that's a great question. When I think about my story, I grew up in a home where my dad was a pastor, and so my whole life kind of centered around in my formative years, around going to church and being with all of that sort of thing. But something along the way, I always had this kind of tug to want to help people, and it was probably reinforced, and that when I was helpful at home or was the good boy, so to speak, that got reinforced in some way. But when I was growing up, I'd always wanted to be a doctor because I thought that was how I get what I needed in.