22 "It Was Very Mean Girl" and "The Collapse Of A Therapeutic Relationship"

Guest1: [00:00:00] If I had to choose a last meal. Honestly, I think my last meal would be a bottle of red wine and a loaf of bread and butter. Being a funeral director was a second career. So I worked in the nonprofit industry before, and then in like 2008, we had like a huge financial crisis, which is like kind of just every year now here, I think, like I literally worked at a place that serve the unhoused women population, like LGBTQ women population. And I kind of was just looking for something that I thought would be interesting or kind of just make me feel good at the end of the day, like what was something that I could do where I felt like I'd made a positive impact in the world.

And then I worked at a really large funeral home for three months as an embalmer, and I didn't enjoy it. The average cost of a funeral was like $20,000, you know, and it was very, I mean, girl, like, it was super catty and like, I felt like I was in high school, and I don't think that they should have the privilege of taking care of your mother or your father or your sister. Like knowing what I knew. You can look at it one of two ways. If I'm going to pay you $20,000 to do something, maybe don't be a jerk and, like, show some Joe some dignity and respect. Or if I'm going to give you my mom, the woman who gave me life, show this woman some respect.

And and so I kind of was just teaching people how to do it themselves. And, I ended up starting a funeral home with another girl. Like, just complete, completely polar opposite. Went from working in like, a very corporate home to just like just the two of us. And instead of talking about embalming, we were very focused on not embalming and doing home funerals. If you're starting up a funeral home, LA is a great place to do it because it's younger people. It's people who are more open minded people that are into things that might not be like the status quo. People are like, oh, I hate LA. Everyone from LA sucks. And I'm like, look here, very few people from LA are actually from here. Should something bad happened, they're looking for someone they can trust. And many of the cases, which is like the inside term for someone you're taking care of, we refer to them as like a case is that a lot of them were young and a lot of them were unexpected deaths. So I dealt with the coroners for 90% of my cases. They were all like people who are like my age. And when that ended, we went our separate ways.

And now I work for another corporate funeral home. It is like an astonishingly, astonishingly small industry. During my interview with this funeral home, they were like, tell us about your social media presence. And I was like, yes, definitely. In the funeral industry, they're not like, that girl's kooky, let's hire her. So there was that funeral home and then she, like, rebranded it, and then she did it with another girl who, funny enough, we both work at, like, the two competing funeral homes. I like, joke about that and like, well, well, well, look at where time has taken us. I think that advanced planning is so important. I think it's crucial. I think everyone should do it. I think it's really empowering. I think that when you do it, I think it takes a lot of the fear out of death and dying because one, you're you're acknowledging the elephant in the room, like you're saying, I am going to die. I am facing that, I am I. Whether or not you fully accept it, that's fine. That's not the point.

But I will say that for being the person on the other side of the table and sitting with a family whose loved one passed and they didn't know what that person wanted, they didn't know what to do. They didn't have any money. It is a horrific and heartbreaking thing to to watch, because even a simple conversation like this, where we're just talking about like, what do you what do you want? Like, look, I would love a green burial. I'd like to be buried in Joshua Tree, but if I don't have any money for it, then it's okay if you cremate me and you can live out the rest of your life and not feel guilt over that. And it sounds silly, but like people do feel guilty, they wonder for the rest of their lives. Did I honor my mother the right way? Did I do the right thing? And it's just you can just eliminate all of that by just having a five minute conversation. I'm terrible. I don't have any money away. Put away in my head. No, I'm the worst. I'm the worst. I like my example for everything is to not be like me. I told my partner that he can cremate me currently. Like the going. The average price for cremation in Los Angeles is anywhere from 625 to 995.

I do have enough in my bank account to pay for that so I can be cremated. And then my remains can my cremated remains are you know, I would. I don't actually want to be scattered. I'd like them to remain all together, but I'm okay with scattering. So my plans are just please don't go into financial distress because of me. And anything else you do will make me happy. I assume I'll die first. I mean, I'll never die. Sorry. I got to get that story straight. I mean, they're going to live forever because I'm full of rage, or I'm going to die first because I'm full of rage, and I'm going to get in a fight with somebody on the freeway over traffic because it's LA and I'm a very angry driver. I'm like, I just it's just a little redhead shaking her fist at everybody. [00:05:20][319.6]

Naty: [00:05:25] Hey, folks, it's Naty. We'll be back with more right after this break. What the hell is my job? [00:05:36][10.4]

Guest2: [00:05:37] And a lot of the young people I work with, if they were one on one with an adult, it was a teacher and they were in trouble, or it was a cop and they were in trouble. Or there was a lawyer and their parents were in trouble. [00:05:48][11.2]

[00:05:52] And so I wanted to create like this group play that I could inject therapy stories into. And I had been into like stuff like Dungeons and Dragons since I was about 17. So I just had this complete flare up inside my head of like, oh, okay. Yes. Let's go. And I sat down and started planning out a story where the players could learn about mental health stuff while they're doing a fantasy story. And it creates like a therapy environment that is like fun and interesting and compelling. The results are educational. And because we find teachers, especially because that's one of my interests, is education and learning that play based learning. If you learn something while you're playing, you learn like twice the speed because there's a lot of play therapy. And I used to like a lot of like Lego and action figures and like, let's, let's take it one step further and something for teens and adults. I didn't create the idea that as people have been doing therapeutic Dungeons and Dragons sessions for longer than me.

I was not aware of them when I started third. It was 2020, and I was seeing a lot of maybe four ways of doing therapy that were interesting to kids because a lot, a lot of the time when young people are one on one with an adult. They were in trouble never being punished for something like, because I was, I was working two jobs at the time. One of them was starting this private practice, started my personal clinic, and then during the week, I was working at a what Americans would know is like an elementary school, one in Australia, we call the primary school. Yeah. Seeing seeing this need for getting to therapy, that wasn't this one on one adult talking to a child vibe that wasn't cool.

So I have resources for people with, like, learning difficulties, people with dyslexia, people who may struggle with numbers. The preparation for me was making it as inclusive and accessible as I could, because I don't feel like there should be barriers to therapy, and I took notes and learned from every session. From there, I was really hesitant to be open about it at first because it's weird and I know the world isn't always friendly towards weird. It's like, I know that's like golf is just like a person who does, like some weird person. I know the world isn't always accommodating towards this strange, and it was really fascinating to when I got this started, I did this in secret. It was not attached to my name.

It was not attached to my block. It was completely separate. It was just a Facebook page that said The Nudge therapist. And then after about a month, people with letters after their name and job titles that I aspire to asking advice. So I'm like, okay, this is the right track. So I went all in nerve wracking to start with beer at this point. Now I'm running 14 group therapy groups a fortnight, and it's really helped me identify normally, like the kinds of people I want to work with, the kinds of people I do work with. You know, when I just started out, it was let's work with nuts. And then realizing that, like, it was attracting a lot of weird people, a lot of, like, neurodivergent people, struggling cystic folks, ADHD folks in the people like myself who are birth, who are oh three. And it was it was shining a light on some things that were happening.

One of the things my accidental specialty is helping people recover from the collapse of a therapeutic relationship. There's a lot of stigma that's going around that, unfortunately, some people in healing positions there continue to perpetuate, which is where I seem to have found a happy place. And I've had a few experiences with people who've had that situation. Of the person doing the therapy wasn't very therapeutic. I work with a lot of people recovering from therapists who have shamed them for their interests or being homophobic for by for transphobic and for like not a small amount of people I work with. I am them giving therapy one last try. And so my unofficial accidental specialty is post therapeutic rupture. [00:10:05][252.6]

Naty: [00:10:05] I hope you like the episode. Please help us out by rating us, sharing with your friends, or buying us a coffee at buy me a coffee.com slash. What the hell is my job? It costs us money and time to be here for you at the start of every single week, so please consider supporting us. See you next time. [00:10:05][0.0]

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