Tag Archives: Voice of Experience

Voice of Experience: Swords and shields

By Gregory K. Moffatt May 30, 2023

Man shouting with abusive words at another man who has one finger on his lips asking for silence

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The lady who sat across from me was livid. Her fiery red hair was accentuated by her clenched jaw and loud tone. She was furious about a decision I’d made that she perceived had affected her son negatively. My decision had been the right one, but she wasn’t in a place where she could view things objectively. That was totally understandable.

Earlier, after a terse phone call with me, she had demanded an in-person meeting with my boss and me. During her 20-minute tirade in front of my boss, she stared through me as she assaulted my professionalism, my ethics and my competence. After she finished, she crossed her arms, sat back in her chair and muttered, “Hmmmph!” as if to say, “So what do you say to that, mister?”

I took a breath and quietly replied, “Ma’am, you are not my enemy.”

Almost anything I said could have launched us into a battle for which she was well prepared. I suspect she had run various scenarios through her head in anticipation. But she didn’t know what to do with someone who wouldn’t push back. I completely disarmed her.

“We both want your son to succeed.” I left it at that.

Her face fell and her mood changed almost as if a switch had been thrown. Within minutes, she was talking about solutions, and we actually made progress. When she left that day, she gave me a genuinely warm handshake.

In this verbal battle, she had led with her sword. Recognizing how people fight (use their swords) and defend (protect with their shields) with words and behaviors can be a powerful way to move past counterproductive actions.

People use their swords when they feel attacked, threatened or cornered and they believe that the best defense is a good offense. John Gottman’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (contempt, stonewalling, criticism, and defensiveness) are examples of swords.

People use their shields when they feel attacked, threatened or cornered and they don’t believe they have the skills to fight back successfully. Substance misuse and withdrawal are shields.

Albert Ellis once said that a therapist should never be offended by what someone says. That is hard to do when we feel attacked or threatened by our clients, but the point Ellis was trying to make is that it isn’t about us. To paraphrase Ellis, when our clients are using their swords against us, it should tell us something about them, our relationship or the topic we are addressing. It isn’t about us.

Many years ago, one of my clients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) challenged me every time we had an appointment. “I was reading a book by so-and-so. … Have you read him?”

“No. Never heard of him.”

The client would react to my comment with eye rolling, disbelief and, often, sarcastic responses such as, “I thought you were a professional.”

As is often true with BPD, she wasn’t trying to insult me exactly. She was trying to prove to herself that we were equals. The sword she used was intended to cause me to question my professionalism. If I had tried to use a sword myself or defend with a shield, the battle would have either escalated or at the very least ended in a stalemate.

By refusing to use my sword, while also refusing to cower with a shield, I disarmed her.

Ironically, passive aggression is actually a sword disguised as a shield. Its purpose is to cause hurt in the one being ignored, not to protect oneself from an attack.

Self-righteousness is another example of using defense as a weapon. Making the statement “I would never have an affair like you did” is intended to hurt another.

Therapists use swords sometimes. Confrontation is an aggressive technique — more of an epee than a sword. We don’t intend to hurt, however. We are forcing our clients to think rather than to raise their own sword or shield.

Recognizing who is using a sword and who is using a shield can help couples argue more productively (and, hopefully, less) in marriage and family therapy. It can also help therapists work with resistance and anger in teens and mandated clients.

Borrowing from Freud’s concept of defense mechanisms, I formulated the following statement that has helped me many times over the years. I believe that all behaviors that are dysfunctional, that are not physiological, are defensive. If I can figure out what people are afraid of, I can tell you why they are doing what they are doing.

In a way, if I can tell what they are afraid of, I can see clearly how they are using their swords or shields. In so doing, I know what to address in therapy and, equally important, how to address it.

Gregory K. Moffatt is a veteran counselor of more than 30 years and the dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Point University. His monthly Voice of Experience column for CT Online seeks to share theory, ethics and practice lessons learned from his diverse career, as well as inspiration for today’s counseling professionals, whether they are just starting out or have been practicing for many years. His experience includes three decades of work with children, trauma and abuse, as well as a variety of other experiences, including work with schools, businesses and law enforcement. Contact him at Greg.Moffatt@point.edu.

Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.

Voice of Experience: Building a career path

By Gregory K. Moffatt April 27, 2023

Hand arranging wood block stacking as step stair

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I started my career in 1983. Over the years, I’ve applied my skills in many areas. Here are a few: I have worked in private practice; consulted with businesses and schools; wrote more than a dozen books; consulted with authors, actors and directors; wrote regular columns for various publications; taught at the FBI Academy; and worked as a profiler for many years. The purpose of this article is to show you how a career is built. I did nothing by accident or luck. I hope this snapshot of my career will inspire you to pursue your goals.

After finishing my master’s degree, I opened a part-time private practice. I did general practice, but my passion was working with children. I knew over time I would develop my skills and reputation to where I could focus solely on children — and that eventually happened.

However, in the 1980s, there were few resources for those who wanted to do play therapy. I read every book I could find, continued my education beyond my master’s degree, and joined the Association for Play Therapy (APT). I went to the APT conference every year for years, soaking up everything I could learn from experts in the field. At the same time, I was meeting people and doors were opening for me.

When I finished my doctorate, I wrote my first professional article. I had previously done some research for an issue related to stalking (something that wasn’t even in the vocabulary of the average person prior to 1990). Additionally, I was intrigued by the potential causes of a series of shootings by U.S. Postal Service employees in the 1980s. My article addressed assessment of risk of violent behavior.

That article ended up on the desk of the former director of the FBI who had approved the original profiling research at Quantico, Virginia, where the FBI Academy is located. He called me in and asked if I would be interested in doing some training on the subject. We worked together for several years, including a decade in which I taught several times per year at the FBI Academy. That relationship also led to a very long consulting job with Delta Airlines and numerous other businesses.

I began publishing books, and almost immediately, my consulting jobs increased. I worked with famous writers such as New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner, who has become a very close friend. It also led to consulting work with actor/director Tyler Perry. Each writer or actor was seeking my insights as a violence expert and profiler so they could develop their characters realistically.

Over time, I moved through the ranks as a college professor, from instructor to full professor. Today I am the dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Point University, where I have served for almost 40 years.

I also began working with an agency that sent scholars around the world to colleges that needed their expertise. I eventually taught undergraduate and graduate students in more than 30 countries, sometimes literally teaching in a grass hut, as I did in both the Philippines and India. These experiences taught me many things and helped me to develop many lasting relationships. I even received a personal invitation from the president of Rwanda to train counselors to help victims of the genocide there.

Public speaking, writing, profiling, working with clients and providing supervision are just a few of the activities that rounded out my life for many years. Relationships with my professional associations also opened doors for me. I continue to serve as the editor of our state professional journal and was appointed just over a year ago to the Georgia Composite Board of Professional Counselors, Social Workers, and Marriage and Family Therapists.

I’ve never had fewer than two or three jobs since I was in the fifth grade, and I have worked very hard. Working multiple jobs has meant that I had to cut out some things. I don’t watch much TV, and my social life is minimal. But I don’t regret a single thing that I’ve done in my professional life, and despite being busy, I always had time for my children. In fact, each of them traveled with me multiple times on my international trips.

This is a short version of my career path, but here are the lessons for you. First, focus on the end game — where you want to be in 30 years — and work backward from there. Accept opportunities that move you in that direction.

Recognize open doors when they present themselves. I worked for 10 years as a consultant with Delta Airlines, and they never paid me a penny. But my association with them and the doors those relationships opened earned me thousands of dollars over time.

Recognize your deficits. I knew I wanted to be a child therapist, and I knew I had to be my own educator. I did the same thing with profiling. Professional associations are critical in this developmental process.

Finally, don’t be afraid to chase your dreams. One of my former professors said to me often, “Greg, I never worked a day in my life.” He loved his job, just as I do. And like my friend, I’ve never worked a day in my life.

Gregory K. Moffatt is a veteran counselor of more than 30 years and the dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Point University. His monthly Voice of Experience column for CT Online seeks to share theory, ethics and practice lessons learned from his diverse career, as well as inspiration for today’s counseling professionals, whether they are just starting out or have been practicing for many years. His experience includes three decades of work with children, trauma and abuse, as well as a variety of other experiences, including work with schools, businesses and law enforcement. Contact him at Greg.Moffatt@point.edu.

Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.

Voice of Experience: Transition to private practice

By Gregory K. Moffatt March 24, 2023

A calendar with a note that reads "start business" and has a dart above the words

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In years past, several of my associate licensed supervisees have transitioned into their own private practices right out of the gate after earning their full licenses. This wasn’t luck and it wasn’t accidental. Each of them invested a lot of planning — around 12 months — but it paid off with profitable businesses as quickly as three months afterward. A couple of them were even hiring staff within a year’s time.

Now is an opportune time if private practice is an aspiration of yours. COVID-19 changed our culture in two distinct ways that apply to our discussion. First, the pandemic magnified preexisting conditions. The effects of COVID-19 on mental health are still lingering today. Depression, addiction and marital issues that predated the virus only got worse as we went into lockdown, leading to more people seeking help.

Second, as I’ve written about several times in past columns, the virus pushed all of us into a digital world. Clinicians who had never previously considered telehealth were forced into it, and many subsequently realized how convenient it was and chose to continue offering telehealth services long after the heat of the pandemic was past. Many clients had similar revelations.

Telehealth has made it possible for a clinician to run a private practice without any brick-and-mortar office. Home offices are economical to operate and may also qualify for tax breaks. At home, you are already paying rent or mortgage, the electric bill, internet costs, etc. With a brick-and-mortar office outside the home, these costs are doubled. Plus, with home offices, there are no travel expenses and the child care options are potentially easier.

That being said, transitioning to private practice takes planning. The clinician must be willing to run all parts of the practice — scheduling, billing, taxes, etc. No more life of just showing up, seeing clients and then going home. But in exchange comes the freedom to carry whatever caseload you want, take vacation when you want, work whatever hours you want and specialize as you choose. Nearly all agencies take a percentage of client fees. In private practice, 100% goes to you — the owner.

There are several steps to launching a private practice. A first step is ensuring that you honor your current contracts and the limitations that might come with them. The Risk Management for Counselors column in the March issue of Counseling Today recently discussed noncompete clauses that are common in both public and private agencies. Transitioning to private practice will require honoring the specifics of any existing noncompete clauses. This can be onerous in some cases. For example, “No practice within 25 miles” might require the clinician to move or to rent office space outside of the noncompete distance.

A second step is marketing. How will people find you? Why should they choose you? You have to earn a reputation, but that takes time. The biggest key to marketing a private practice is having a referral stream. My most successful clinicians have built relationships with churches, schools, psychiatrists, physicians, the courts or other agencies that channel clients their way. Unless you already have a client base that you can take with you, starting out without a referral stream can be challenging.

Marketing will also require the clinician to examine the type of practice they want to run. Each practice will look a little different depending on whether it is a general practice or whether it is focused on marriage and family, trauma, children or any other specialty. This will also determine the direction the clinician takes for pursuing referral streams.

Licensing, certifications and specialties must be considered. Counselors are ethically bound to present themselves accurately to the public, but certifications such as eye movement desensitization and reprocessing for trauma workers or Gottman training for marriage and family therapists can improve your marketability.

Many clinicians have found success with rather inexpensive marketing through websites such as Psychology Today’s “Find a Therapist” tool. A website is critical and cost-effective. Other social media outlets might work for advertising, but clinicians need to ensure that they are complying with ethical standards regarding social media.

One last issue to consider is whether your practice will be cash-pay only or whether you will accept insurance. Most insurance boards have a standard pay scale. This means that while you might be able to charge $125 an hour in a cash-only setting, you might make only $85 an hour on an insurance board. Boards also require more time to manage in billing.

I’ve had a private practice for decades and have been cash-only since the mid-1990s. I don’t do any advertising at all because I don’t need to, but when I started out, I followed the suggestions in this article. I’ve never regretted not working in an agency. If this is something you would find meaningful, now is a great time to begin working toward the independence of private practice.

Gregory K. Moffatt is a veteran counselor of more than 30 years and the dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Point University. His monthly Voice of Experience column for CT Online seeks to share theory, ethics and practice lessons learned from his diverse career, as well as inspiration for today’s counseling professionals, whether they are just starting out or have been practicing for many years. His experience includes three decades of work with children, trauma and abuse, as well as a variety of other experiences, including work with schools, businesses and law enforcement. Contact him at Greg.Moffatt@point.edu.

Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.

Voice of Experience: Social media and mental health

By Gregory K. Moffatt February 21, 2023

person sitting in front of a laptop with negative social media icons coming out of the screen indicating cyberbullying

Image by Htc Erl from Pixabay

Earlier this month, viewers across the country were stunned by a video showing the assault of 14-year-old Adriana Kuch in the hallway of her New Jersey high school and to learn that she took her own life the next evening. The cruel attack on the young woman by her high school peers was broadly shared on social media. Adriana’s father said the pain his daughter felt in being attacked paled in comparison to the humiliation she experienced online.

Bullying has always been a problem. I was bullied off and on through many of my years as a student. It was frightening and temporarily humiliating. But bullying has evolved with the advent of social media. Three major changes have escalated the impact of bullying.

The first major change involves increased exposure to embarrassment and humiliation. In 1968, the first year a bully picked on me at school, most of what he did to me was either just between us or witnessed only by a handful of people. Once it was over, it was over. I don’t remember ever carrying my humiliation into the next day, and each incident was known only by those who had witnessed it or those who heard about it during its short-lived “news” cycle.

Today, seemingly everyone has a device to document events, to share events and to view/experience these events as often as desired. That allows not only the “news” cycle to remain alive but for the entire world to witness one’s abasement. I can’t imagine the weight of that kind of ongoing embarrassment.

Recently, an Arizona man ran naked across the green at a Phoenix golf tournament. In one video, I saw hundreds of golf fans in the stands on their feet, nearly all of them with their phones in the air, capturing the event. This is our world.

Second, cyberbullying can take place no matter where the child is. When I was bullied, it was almost exclusively at school. Otherwise, bullies had no access to me or I had options for avoiding them. Today, a child can effectively be bullied while alone in the middle of a desert.

Finally, online bullying doesn’t require the bully to face the consequence of the mean thing said. I wrote a newspaper column for 30 years. Comments about my column were often kind and thoughtful, but people — many hiding behind the anonymity of screen names — said some of the meanest things on occasion. I couldn’t imagine anyone saying in person some of what they said online. In person, the speaker would have to defend themself and see the effects of their hurtful words firsthand.

Social media has allowed thoughtless people to quickly find one another. One mean comment or post can seemingly serve as a ready-made invitation for other equally thoughtless people to add mean posts of their own.

Online, a thoughtless or cruel post requires absolutely no thought and no exposure to the pain being caused. I would like to think that the bullies in the Adriana Kuch case felt remorse for their behavior following her suicide, but if she had not done that, they would never have known the tears she shed and the pain she bore in the privacy of her personal life.

A 2021 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discovered that 30% of the teenage girls surveyed had considered suicide — a rate twice as high as among boys. That number was 50% for girls in the LGBTQ+ population. The study proposed that these rates were rising prior to the COVID-19 pandemic but that the isolation of the pandemic accentuated them.

Even before the pandemic, teens spent much of their time staring at their phones. For some teens during the pandemic, their devices were the only link they had to their social worlds. Like it or not, young people live much of their lives in a digital world. Bullying through text, video, Snapchat, Instagram or any of the other social media options is easy and quick — and the one doing the posting doesn’t have to face the hurt they are causing. What’s more, those hurtful words or images can be viewed over and over, not only by the rest of the world, but by the victim, leaving teens such Adriana feeling isolated, humiliated and hopeless.

These issues are not exclusive to teens, but the CDC study should ensure that those of us in the mental health community are alert to these frightening statistics for the teen female and LGBTQ+ populations in particular.

I encourage my clinicians and supervisees who work with these populations to include suicidal ideation as well as an overview of a client’s social media footprint in the intake process — something that was not even an issue 40 years ago when I started my practice.

Gregory K. Moffatt is a veteran counselor of more than 30 years and the dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Point University. His monthly Voice of Experience column for CT Online seeks to share theory, ethics and practice lessons learned from his diverse career, as well as inspiration for today’s counseling professionals, whether they are just starting out or have been practicing for many years. His experience includes three decades of work with children, trauma and abuse, as well as a variety of other experiences, including work with schools, businesses and law enforcement. Contact him at Greg.Moffatt@point.edu.

Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.

Voice of Experience: Losing Summer

By Gregory K. Moffatt January 30, 2023

Blur photo of emotions moment of girl with flowers waiting for first summer.

Sorn340 Studio Images/Shutterstock.com

My client, a 22-year-old woman named Summer, sat across from me with a blank stare. (The client’s name and some details have been altered to protect the client’s confidentiality.) We had worked together for several months as she battled addictions, relational issues, childhood trauma and a host of other rapids she had to navigate during her relatively short life.

She described what she could remember of her most recent binge. It was a night of excessive drinking with three men she met at a club that led to a rape she couldn’t remember because of a blackout. She awoke to a gray morning lying in a parking lot. In pain, missing clothing and realizing what had happened, she blamed herself. No thoughts of calling the police or going to the hospital. She didn’t even know the first names of any of the three men.

This wasn’t the first time either. Some days, I felt that she was trying to impress me with her exceedingly risky behaviors, and other times, I felt angry — countertransference because I seemed to care more about her safety and her future than she did.

As one would imagine with any client struggling with this level of alcoholism, her life was in turmoil. She didn’t have a single stable relationship other than with me. She had lost several different jobs and been evicted from apartments twice during our time together. And on this day, in addition to the events a few nights before, she informed me her boss was considering terminating her from her current position because she repeatedly failed to show up for work.

She asked me if I would write a letter to him confirming that she was in therapy and working on her issues. It is one of the very few times I agreed to this request. With a release of information in hand, I wrote a short letter, confirming that she had been in therapy and that we were working on the underlying issues that led to her troubles at work.

In addition, I added a line I had never before written and have never written since: “If at all possible, I am hopeful that she can keep this job. It is the one stable and healthy thing in her life.”

Gratefully, the boss agreed to allow her to stay on a probationary status. She had four weeks to follow through on the conditions of her probation. I was hopeful.

Then, just one week later, Summer showed up for what ended up being our last appointment. She had failed to live up to her conditions for even a week, and she was terminated. With tears in the corners of her eyes and a shamed expression on her face, she informed me she was moving to Texas where she had a cousin who was going to allow her to stay with her until she could get back on her feet.

She left that day, and I never saw her again. I lost Summer. Given her trajectory, I wasn’t confident she would live to see her 25th birthday. It was one of the hardest terminations I’ve ever had to manage.

But, thankfully, that isn’t the end of Summer’s story. I thought of her many times over the years and wondered how I could have better helped her. Then one day, maybe 20 years later, a handwritten letter arrived in my mailbox. I recognized her name on the return address immediately.

close up of man holding envelope with a letter inside

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It was a long letter, nearly three pages, and much of it detailed her life after leaving Atlanta. In short, she stopped drinking, went back to college, married, became a nurse and had three children. Even as I tell you this story, I still feel relief that she survived and learned to thrive.

But the most meaningful part of her letter was the opening two sentences: “Hi, Dr. Moffatt. I don’t know if you remember me, but [short summary of our work together] and I’ve never forgotten what you did for me.”

I know that many of my clients have deeply appreciated the work that I did with them, and sometimes they tell me to my face. Many of the children I’ve seen over the years have become thriving adults, and I’ve crossed paths with them here or there. It’s always satisfying to see their lives moving on.

But I’ve never been so sure I lost someone as I was with Summer. That letter, the last contact we ever had, reminds me that we never know how we are affecting our clients in a positive way, even if those effects come about somewhere further down the road.

Gregory K. Moffatt is a veteran counselor of more than 30 years and the dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Point University. His monthly Voice of Experience column for CT Online seeks to share theory, ethics and practice lessons learned from his diverse career, as well as inspiration for today’s counseling professionals, whether they are just starting out or have been practicing for many years. His experience includes three decades of work with children, trauma and abuse, as well as a variety of other experiences, including work with schools, businesses and law enforcement. Contact him at Greg.Moffatt@point.edu.

Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.