Recently, Dr. Garrett was interviewed by Christa Flitcroft. You can read the interview below, or if you’d prefer video format, click here.
Christa: If you want to go ahead, just start by telling me your career and what that looks like for you daily.
Dr. Garrett: I am a licensed professional counselor supervisor (LPC-S), and under that umbrella, I’ve also obtained registered play therapy supervision (RPT-S) credentialing. I have a doctorate in counselor education and supervision, and with that, I have the day-to-day that I run my group practice. Under that group practice, I have a team of about 40 employees. It consists of social workers, licensed professional counselors, and then, of course, support staff to run the office.
Christa: Do you have any advice or recommendations regarding if someone wants to be a therapist? What paths might you recommend, or what does the difference between those paths look like?
Dr. Garrett: Yeah, there’s a lot of overlap even though they are different fields. Whether it’s social work, counseling, marriage and family therapy, or psychology.
Christa: So, can you expand on that licensure process? Why does it take two years? What people are doing in those two years?
Dr. Garrett: Yep, so once I complete a program, we’re going to assume, let’s just take the counseling field because that’s where my licensure is. I can also speak to social work, but for me so, I’m going to get my Master’s Degree, and then you start your licensure process. So, finding a supervisor usually involves meeting with them. Is it a good fit? Because you will be working with this person for at least a few years. That supervision is paid either out of your pocket or, depending on if you’re working while you’re obtaining licensure then your supervise, your place may provide supervision for you as part of your contract. So that is going to involve continuing education after your Master’s, attending workshops, and will also include having face-to-face contact with clients. All of those go into a formula with your supervision: you meet with your supervisor weekly for an hour or two. All of that works to check some boxes, and then typically, once you’ve met all those in 2-3 years, you can get your license. Counselors also require you to take the NCE, an exam you take. Most programs in your master’s degree will have you take that during your master’s program. So you have to pass the test, you have to get your direct hours, and you have to have your supervision hours with your continuing education. Those components make up the road to licensure. Social work is the same except for some differences and other details. You take your test at a different time and have to have supervision for two years; it’s not set on how many direct hours you have, but it’s a very similar process.
Christa: And you’ve chosen to be a supervisor then, so can you talk about what drove your passion to take that route and take that extra step?
Dr. Garrett: Yeah, it felt like a natural next step because, from just the business perspective, it made sense because I needed to provide supervision for my employees. It was one way to keep that cost in-house. So that’s the practical piece of it. But I had already found myself in that role in all positions after getting my master’s, so it just naturally came that clinicians, my peers, were coming to me for peer-to-peer consultation, and for that, sort of falling naturally into that sort of quiet leadership role. And so whenever I obtained my license for five years, I could apply to be a supervisor. So, it was a natural next step. Many of us will go into the field thinking, “Oh, I don’t want to do that,” that’s okay, but as you get more comfortable. You build your confidence and have more practical experience; you thrive in that position and want to help clinicians help others. So your impact is more widespread for making a difference because I can’t see so many clients during a week, but I can see five supervisees that can see that many people. My impact can be wider spread to make some significant change.
Christa: You mentioned that your practice focuses on relationships and family dynamics. What was the driving force behind concentrating on that?
Dr. Garrett: Well, just like with any business, the need of the community you serve drives it if you’re going to stay in business. So, there is a very practical sense to my role, which is what people need and where there is an opening in the market. So, what do we need because we have so many clinicians on staff? Now, if I go back to when it was just me, and I was doing in-home therapy and working out of my car at the very beginning, I knew what I didn’t want to do when I came out of graduate school. I knew I didn’t want to work with children, and I knew I didn’t want to work with substance abuse. My first job out of school was working with children, and my second job was working with substance abuse. Okay, so right up front, I got put into the two places I didn’t want to be. I eventually became a play therapist, which people think specializes in working with children, and though I did, I also utilized that with adults. One is just being open because the market will initially dictate much of what you do. After all, you’re just out of school. You have minimal experience. You don’t have any extra credentialing. You’re not licensed. When you leave school, the expectation is you will have to take whatever jobs are available. Okay. Now, once you do those, and you do them well, then you have some wiggle room to say, “Okay, I like this population; I want to learn more about it,” or “I don’t like this, but maybe I’d like working with couples, so maybe I’m going to take some extra continuing education for couples.” That’s part of that licensure to help you try different hats and see what populations you want to work with. So, it wasn’t that I just found the ones I wanted to work with; I started pulling out those I didn’t want to work with. That’s going to be different for everyone. Still, if you’re a person who goes in – You love working with the first population that you do, I’m going to say, “Don’t stop there. Try on some of the other hats to see if maybe you would like to work with the military or you would like to work with couples”. If you don’t like your first job and don’t like working substance abuse, don’t stop there; don’t quit the field, try on some other hats, and get extra training. So that’s the piece; just don’t stop with the first one because there are many, many pockets out there that you could find. You may not have a full caseload of your ideal client, but you can have many of them and then build on that as you get more experience.
Christa: And you mentioned the continuing education credits and the fact that you also then eventually got specialized in the play therapy, so post this licensure process, I know that there’s still obviously a ton of things that you can do to expand your knowledge, and so can you talk about your decision to engage in those?
Dr. Garrett: Yeah, so for us, play therapy is a huge part of what we do in our continuing education program, which is called Brave Play. But the other things that I see, at least for my staff right now, that they’re interested in, anything with neuroscience, there’s a big push for it. Because that field is growing so rapidly that we can’t keep up with the research, we now have access to the tools to track it, and we can have the MRIs. So we’re getting a lot more information in our field. So anything with neuropsych you’re going to… that stuff is shifting quickly, so continual education is helpful. For the others, it just depends on the field you’re interested in. Things that are always going to be around that you see clients, no matter your setting, are depression, anxiety, and relationship issues, whether they’re coming in for couples or individuals. People struggle with relationships, especially in this post-COVID setting, with such an intense focus on people being bombarded with social media. So, people are struggling to make real connections with other people. So those come up in therapy. So, no matter what people are coming for, these things will tend to show up. Substance abuse is also another one. They may not be in addiction but may be self-medicating with alcohol, or they may be self-medicating with weed, and so a lot of times you may get clients come in who are depressed but who smoke weed because it makes them feel better, but really what it’s doing is just increasing the depression. So those are the kinds of things in which extra training can always be helpful because it will hit much of your caseload. We do see a more significant need to work with the military. So, you may have grown up in a military background and are passionate about that community. So, continuing education can give you that exposure without a time commitment or even a whole course. And it can get you excited!
Christa: Thinking about the career you have now and the most positive aspects of that career, the things you love versus the things that are not the most fun parts of the job, what are those for you?
Dr. Garrett: Well, one will be different for me as a practice owner versus a clinician. So for me, as a practice owner, I love the flexibility that I have. That was one of the reasons why I started what I did. I love supporting therapists in that clinical role, and I feel proud to be able to employ and provide for the community on that larger scale. We’re one of the largest privately owned practices in Alabama, so a lot of pride comes with doing that. But the biggest is the day-to-day flexibility. For a clinician, and me when I was a clinician, the positive is that you do get that ability to grow yourself, lots of opportunities for self-reflection and learning, but you also get to see the impact that’s happening in the session and for many of us that is part of why we’re doing it. Very few people go into a helping profession for the money. They go in because they want to help people and make a difference. So, clinicians get to see that regularly unfolding in their offices. The biggest struggle I see for my clinicians is going to be documentation. It’s going to be being able to stay on task. It will be completing all the updated treatment plans and documentation. So, people who are not organized tend to feel stressed about that piece.
Christa: Are there particular skills that you see that students would benefit from enhancing for themselves to be good at this career?
Dr. Garrett: Yes. So there’s two different layers to that. One is what works best with my temperament if I supervise them, and then there’s also the overall field. One is having a supervisor you mesh well with, are comfortable with, and can build rapport with, just like you would with a client. A relationship is helpful where you can be honest even when things aren’t going well; you don’t have just to put up a front that everything’s always okay. Getting over that piece with someone is very helpful.
Regarding characteristics, counselors thrive; the biggest one is that they’ve done their work. So that they’ve been in therapy, they have come to grips with some of their realities and seen where they need to make changes in their own life. Because anybody in therapy who made significant changes knows that it’s hard, they have respect and empathy for the change process because they have experienced it. That is the most important piece that I see. The other is the ability to be curious. Whether it’s curious about what’s happening in them or how their client got to where they are. I like to replace feelings of judgment with feelings of curiosity. So, learning and building that skill will go a long way in our field. It helps reduce your getting rigid, it helps reduce burnout, and it increases your self-care. So I think doing your work, remaining curious, and, of course, it helps in any kind of Master’s level program to develop good study skills that are self-motivating because even in a clinical role, you have to have some of that self-motivation to maintain documentation and update treatment plans and just to stay organized because there’s not someone there typically micromanaging all those pieces. So, if you naturally struggle with those, learning some good skill sets to manage will be helpful for any graduate program, especially as you move on to licensure.
Christa: Are there any particular experiential types that students would benefit from engaging in their undergrad or maybe particular coursework types that you would highly recommend?
Dr. Garrett: Getting involved in clubs. Sometimes, that may be hard if we’re not full-time students or don’t live on campus, and it can be a real barrier. I started at a community college and went to a community college for two years, then transferred in for my undergraduate degree. So, sometimes, there’s a barrier between student life, work, and home life. Try to breach that somehow with your community, whether through your school or local programs. The more you understand what’s happening in the community and the more you stay in touch with people and people who are also in need, the more it builds that way of being and thinking from the ground up. You may be drawn to this field for that reason; it’s already a part of your core. But just staying connected to people and knowing what people’s needs are is helpful. And then internship or shadowing. Sometimes, that’s hard because you can’t shadow in a room where there’s therapy happening because of HIPPA confidentiality. But you can do an internship at a practice. Usually, these are going to be unpaid. Still, you can volunteer and work in the office and get a sense of what it is like to be around those therapists or social workers—having conversations with them on break, building those relationships in that network.
Christa: Do you have any final words of advice or anything that you didn’t share already that you want undergraduates interested in this career path to know?
Dr. Garrett: The biggest is to get involved. Get involved not just online, though that’s a good place to get involved and make connections. Take those connections offline and make them in person. I’ll end with this story. The effort it takes to make connections outside can be life-changing and worth it. Three of my closest professional friends, who have now become personal friends, I met through cold-calling or cold-emailing, which means I searched “play therapist in Spartanburg” online when I moved to Greenville. I emailed every play therapist asking if I could take them out for a coffee and told them why. One of my best friends is now a group practice owner here in Spartanburg. We connected, we clicked, and it has changed my practice. It has changed my life personally. I have done that with a play therapist in Croatia. I just got back from going to Croatia in Europe for two weeks. The company paid for it, and I taught. And that was made through a cold call. And I have a friend in Alabama. So, three of the most significant professional relationships were made by just putting myself out there and getting rejected a hundred times, but I had three meaningful connections I’ve made. So you have to take it offline, you have to get personal, and you have to be in the same shared space. That can be hard for us in this day and age of social media, but it’s worth the effort. And especially if you’re a first-generation college student, which many of the people that I’ve worked
My friends and I were, and there’s no model even in the house to help in the family system, to say, “Think about these things.” Those network connections can definitely help with that.
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