The Wedding Guest
Season 1, Episode 4
Our very own Kathryn Esquer shares her story of why she is a bad therapist. She tells us about her very first assessment at internship. She shows up prepared and ready to go, only to discover that she attended a wedding with the client two nights prior! Kathryn shares what went through her mind and how she navigated this unexpected situation.
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Episode Transcript - The Wedding Guest
Allie Joy 00:07
Have you ever asked yourself, am I a bad therapist? Well, you're in the right place. I'm Allie Joy, a licensed professional counselor and registered art therapist.
Kathryn Esquer 00:17
And I'm Kathryn Esquer, a clinical psychologist and you're listening to Am I a Bad Therapist?
Allie Joy 00:25
Join us each week for stories from behind the closed therapy door.
Kathryn Esquer 00:29
You'll hear experiences that made us ask, am I bad therapist? Including bloopers, jaw droppers and other difficult moments that normalize the unique struggles of modern day therapists.
Allie Joy 00:42
This is a space with no experts, no gurus and no hierarchies, just humans sitting in similar chairs.
Kathryn Esquer 00:50
And while we're not the gatekeepers for good and bad therapy, because we're about therapist too, we are here to shine a light on the difficult decisions therapists face on a daily basis and normalize that mysterious gray area of clinical practice that no one wants to talk about. So we have heard from three incredible colleagues in episodes one through three about their situations that made them question am I bad therapists or not? Hopefully you have gleaned some inspiration and some entertainment from them. But we thought, Allie and I thought, that it would be fun to share some of our own stories about why these OG bad therapists, why we, what situations we encounter that made us question our, our abilities as therapists. So we're going to be sharing our stories for episodes four and five.
Allie Joy 01:48
Yes, and today, Kathryn, you are in the hot seat.
Kathryn Esquer 01:52
I am and before we get started with my juicy story, this is a friendly reminder that everything we say here is for entertainment purposes and it is not intended, or should be used as a substitute for therapy, consultation, or ethical guidance.
Allie Joy 02:10
Hi, Kathryn, we already know a little bit about you that you are one of our hosts here on am I a bad therapist and OG bad therapists and all that fun stuff. But tell us a little bit about yourself and your clinical practice.
Kathryn Esquer 02:22
Thanks, Allie. So hi, I am Kathryn Esquer. I'm a licensed psychologist, also an MBA graduate. I previously had a career in organizational consulting, but went back and did a second residency to get clinically licensed. And I currently work and live in my very rural hometown in Pennsylvania, very proud of coming from Central Pennsylvania. And I'm really grateful to be able to serve the community clinically. We have a mental health drought, where I'm located we do not have a lot of providers. And so moving back and giving back to the community that gave me so much was incredibly important. So my practice is integrated into a primary care organization. So I work alongside of the amazing frontline providers that carried us through this pandemic, all of the physicians, nurses and administrative assistants that really did that did the grueling work. So I'm super proud to be part of my organization. And I am also founder of the teletherapist network, which is how Allie you and I connected.
Allie Joy 03:25
The Network is amazing. If you haven't already, check it out. I'm giving a shameless plug here because I love the network so much. I have no association with it, except that I love it. And I'm a proud member. We have incredible consultation, amazing peers, masterclasses, I run a great group called creativity in the clinical room. So absolutely come join the network because it's such a great support.
Kathryn Esquer 03:48
You are so amazing. You're gonna make me cry. Thank you for that little plug.
Allie Joy 03:52
Well I mean, it genuinely mean it. I love it so much.
Kathryn Esquer 03:55
It is my passion project. So that came out of COVID when I was feeling super isolated and clinically lonely. I say that clinically lonely because I lived in a full house like with two kids, my husband, my sister, like we had a lot going on in our house. Yeah, clinically, I was super isolated. And so the teletherapist network came out of that. And so it's just been this huge passion project that I'm just so grateful to connect with awesome people like you. So between the teletherapist network and my clinical caseload, I and my kids, I am I am full up to the max. But that's just a little bit about me. There's there's a lot of fun facts that I'm sure will come out over the series.
Allie Joy 04:32
Well, and we had to just throw a podcast to you know, be the cherry on the top of everything.
Kathryn Esquer 04:35
Yeah.
Allie Joy 04:40
Yes, but it's okay. I think it's worth sharing, we have amazing stories, and today we're going to hear yours. So this is episode four of Am I Bad Therapist? Kathryn, let's get into it.
Kathryn Esquer 04:52
Awesome. Well, spoiler alert. Yes, I think we're all bad therapists but that being a bad therapist isn't a bad thing. It's a part of being human and we say that tongue in cheek, the bad therapist line. So I'm proud bad therapist status over here. So the story I'm going to share today was the first oh shit moment I had as a therapist, where it was a moment where I thought, this is the shit you read about in textbooks. This is it like this is, oh my God moment. Um, and it happens to have occurred during my first semester of clinical internship. So a lot was on, what I perceived to have, a lot on the line. I don't know if it was a lot on the line or not, but I felt like it was, it was, hanging by a thread. Um, but so let me set the scene here. I am a doctoral intern, I'm finishing up. I'm starting, excuse me, starting my fourth year of my doctoral program, and I have a doctoral internship at a private practice. And this private practice does a lot of different things, very generalized. They see a lot of different outpatient presentations, but they also have a very specialized niche in pre hire assessment selections. So given my interest, and my then career to be career in organizational consulting, I was really thrilled to get matched with this internship where I got to do pre hire assessments for a very large international nonprofit organization, we had a contract with them. So what would happen is these potential hires would fly in from all over the country, sometimes world, they'd be put up in a hotel, and they meet with me for an entire day. So I can do a very rigorous full battery assessment. And this assessment included personality assessments it included, you know, some intelligence screeners included, the Rorschach included a lot of different measures. And so this was kind of like a very big battery for me to take on as an intern. And I had been working my way up to it, I had been, you know, sitting in with the other psychologists in the practice, taking over pieces of different assessments. And this, I was all set up, I was gonna get my first full assessment just on my own. Obviously, clinically supervised, but I was going to administer it, score it, write the report, everything start to finish, provide feedback, the whole nine yards. Super, super excited, I really loved this work. And so I'm like prepping for it, and I'm getting ready, and I'm getting myself pumped. And I roll up to the private practice, which was, I think I got there at about like, 7am. I'm an early bird. So I got there at seven. I think the assessment was scheduled to start at 730 or 8. No, I think it was scheduled to start at eight I got there at seven. But my pre hire was actually already there. Maybe about like 715 early, so like, ready to go. So I'm like, setting things up. And, and, I am setting things up the pre hire comes in with a partner. And you know, it's a little awkward because I'm also the only one in the building at this time. And the administrative assistant wasn't there yet. My supervisor wasn't there yet. It was just me kind of setting it up getting things ready. And I like had to do a triple take because this this pre hire who is not from this area lives out of state. I know this because I had all the biographical information like pre pre to the leading up to this assessment. I knew that I should not know this person. And but they look super familiar. And it dawns on me this person, I shared a table with this pre hire, this client, two nights ago at my college friend's wedding.
Allie Joy 08:58
Oh my goodness. Yeah.
Kathryn Esquer 09:00
So here I am. I am an intern with no supervisor in the house. I realized that this pre hire who traveled from very far away to be here and evidently for his for his I don't want to break confidentiality here and for a wedding as well, the same weekend the wedding happened to be near where my practice was. And so they traveled in for this wedding and for this pre hire assessment and here I am no supervisor and I know that they saw me consume alcohol at a cocktail table at a wedding two nights prior. So I am absolutely freaking out.
Allie Joy 10:56
Yeah, I mean, how could you not I feel like even not as an intern. Like if that happened now I would probably freak out. So I can't imagine how you felt as an intern.
Kathryn Esquer 11:06
Right? And this is like, at this point, I maybe like 24 I want to say I was like 24, 25. So it's not too far past 21 where I still think people shouldn't see me drink. Like very, like, oh my gosh, what are they gonna think of me? type deal. And I do you know, like to tear up the dance floor at weddings. So I was dancing, not totally wild. I was actually quite grateful. My, I think we were engaged at that point, my now husband had a work trip the following day, so that Sunday, so we actually didn't stay super late at the wedding. And so I was looking back saying, Oh, thank God, thank God I didn't stay late. But this person and I actually shared a cocktail tables. So what I ended up having to do was stall and stall I did. I stalled and stalled and stalled until my supervisor made it to the practice, which was maybe like 830. So we're already behind schedule. And I'm like, questions while I'm waiting for her to get her just running through my head of you know, can I do this, like I did not have any interactions, but it was so drilled into me in graduate school, that dual relationship should be avoided. This is my own interpretation that I now do not practice this way. But dual relationships should be avoided at all costs, right dual relationship, refer out, don't do it. Don't mess with it clean, clean cut, and you're done. Right. So I'm sitting here thinking, oh my goodness, like this pre hire traveled in probably scheduled this assessment for this weekend because of this mutual weddin we wereat two nights ago. And I'm going through, my first was like heartbreak of one I've prepped for this forever. I was so excited, ready to go. And two, how inconvenient and maybe this is my own stuff showing but inconveniencing others really triggers me. So how inconvenient of would it be to have to cancel and reschedule? Because I knew that all the other psychologists that could do this battery, they'll have clients throughout the whole day like they their days were booked. They weren't gonna I would assume they weren't gonna drop everything and pick up this case.
Allie Joy 13:17
Yeah. So give me the timeline one more time. So you get there at seven. He gets there, or they get there at 715. Yeah. And you said you stalled till eight. So what time do you think you estimate like that you realized that you knew the person what around time do you think that was?
Kathryn Esquer 13:32
I would say probably around like 745. So like 15 minutes prior to us starting. So they knew that they were earlier and they were fine waiting. But I realized that it was one of those things that it had to sit for a while because he and I didn't have interactions at the wedding. We shared we like we had excuse me, we had one interaction, I asked if this table was free. And if my husband and I could stand next to him and his partner. And so we did. We asked how they knew the bride and groom. We shared our stories of knowing the bride and groom and then we went on our merry way that was it. And so we didn't it wasn't this big thing, but because it was so like, honestly, if it had been two weeks after I probably would not have put two and two together. But because it was two nights after did
Allie Joy 14:15
and it was all like what did you do to stall for 45 minutes?
Kathryn Esquer 14:20
You know, honestly, I came clean. I you know, I don't know if he recognized me. But I went up to him and I said, you know, hey, I recognize you from the wedding two nights ago. And I think I think I think he was being polite but said oh yeah, I thought I knew you from somewhere. And so I said listen, I'm gonna have to consult with my supervisor. I have a call into them. They should be coming in soon. They should be arriving soon, my supervisor was most likely on the road at this time. And you know, would you mind waiting? I would hate to have to reschedule. So I want to see what we can do here. here. And during this conversation, I did ask like, how, you know, comfortable are you? You know, if you were to do an assessment with me, and he didn't think anything of it he said no, that's totally fine. I mean, I don't know if he really knew the type of detail that we were going to get into with the assessment, so he might have you answered differently had he known that the level of intimacy we were about to share. So, um, yeah, he was fine with it.
Allie Joy 15:28
Awesome. Well, I have to commend that you just named it and said, I need to just wait on this, that kind of thing, just trying to cover all the bases. So I feel like that was such a good choice. So it's 830. Then kind of waiting, your supervisor comes in what happens next,
Kathryn Esquer 15:46
Oh, my gosh, I like shuffle step to her very quick I ned to talk to you, let's go in your office, because it wasn't a big private practice. So like the client and their partner, were still in the waiting room. And she was very calm, cool and collected. My supervisor first was caught off guard, because she just walked into the office not expecting anything. And here I am having like, I need help, major help. And she talked me through it, she was you know, she does a lot of work for this organization. And so she has a lot of contacts in this organization. And so she has had to manage dual relationships, not like this, but dual relationships, similar, maybe not be similar. I don't really know she's had to manage your relationships for many years. It was also a kind of small community that we worked in. So So she, you know, gave me you know, asked me questions like, what did you do at the wedding? And I said, well, you know, I definitely drank I had, it was an open bar and ate food and, you know, I danced on the dance for that, for some reason, I was really hung up on dancing on the dance floor, like, to me that was like, well, now you can't be a psychologist, you danced at a wedding. I was really hung up about that. And so she, you know, was like, well, it doesn't sound like you know, you wouldn't have done any of those things, or it doesn't sound like you did anything that you wouldn't have done in public. And I was like that that is true. I don't think that's a hard and fast rule. But that was a good litmus test. And, you know, she said, what were your interactions like with him? And I said, we shared a cocktail table, we exchanged pleasantries. But, you know, that was it, I didn't, I think she was gathering that me being in this situation with this person did not put them at a disadvantage for the assessment, I did not have knowledge or experiences with this person, that would potentially make me biased. She also asked about my relationship, we because we were both at the same wedding, there was obviously some overlapping relationships there. And thankfully, we kind of explored that and the overlapping relationship of the bride and groom, where it was not something that would warrant that we would the the pre hire, and I wouldn't have any connections elsewhere. Like it wasn't like we were going to run in it was a very distant connection for both of us. So. So we kind of explored all that. And she said, well, you know, you need to go back and you need to ask him what he remembers about you, because I was still very hung up on dancing. And so I go back and I asked him, you know, I know you're comfortable, ad you know, I'm, I'm comfortable like assessing you. Like, I just remember I shared my what I remembered of him from the wedding. And he shared yeah, that was that was really all I remember of you, too, was sharing that cocktail table exchanging pleasantries. And you know, that was it. So we left it at that we continued on the assessment.
Allie Joy 18:37
Wow. Well, I'm glad that you guys were able to continue. What so you did the assessment and what ran through your head afterwards, were there thoughts that came up anything else that came up like post doing the assessment with that client, what happened?
Kathryn Esquer 18:52
This was a tough one. Because I was I, we talked about bias a lot in our work. And I really had to work through and I was really grateful to be under supervision at this point, because I was able to spend a lot of time working through potential biases in this because this wasn't just an assessment for diagnosis. This was a pre hire assessment, where he had a connection to my friend from college. And so I needed to make sure I needed to check myself that you know, I'm working for the company that may or may not hire him, right, we're contracted with them. And I want like, I attended this friend's wedding like I want the best for her and all of her connections like I'm a very like loving giving, like my my wealth is your wealth type of person. And so it is it really I needed to work through like I want the best for this client but they're not actually my client there are pre hire my client is the organization that's hiring me to do a good assessment on if this person would be a good fit. So knowing that, you know, this potential hire would probably get back to my friend. And he knew that I knew my friend, we were both at the same wedding, he could easily go back and tell my friend, hey, I, your friend assessed me and I didn't get the job, and what would that do to our relationship? So I ultimately knew, nothing. We had a very long, good relation, my friend did I. And I knew that she would understand and respect my, my clinical and ethical boundaries. But you know, all of that played through my head, what is the fallout going to be outside of this assessment experience like this? I think it also really helped me hit home, the magnitude of what we do as clinicians, especially assessment clinicians, the magnitude of what we do impacts people's lives so deeply. And so. And not only the client lives, but the clients family's lives, like the clients partner, the clients, family, you know, it affects, it affects all of them. So, it I think I thought I was in the clear when I finished the assessment, and then my supervisor was like, so do you think about this, and this and this? And how are you going to write it? And, you know, it really hit it home? Yeah. So I had a lot of processing to it was a very, very good clinical experience for me.
Allie Joy 21:13
Yeah. And looking back on it, do you feel like you would have done anything differently? Would you want to change anything? Or what are your thoughts like reflecting now on it?
Kathryn Esquer 21:23
That's a good question. I, I would still dance at the wedding, I still do dance at weddings.
Allie Joy 21:28
Of course. We are humans, like we always say, and we will not stop dancing.
Kathryn Esquer 21:34
I I don't know if I would have done anything differently. I might have. I think my my supervisor did encourage me to go through with the assessment. And I think that that was one it was, you know, part of the workload, it would reflect potentially negatively on the practice, if we had to reschedule and someone had to bear the company had to bear the cost of having this person travel and again. So I think that even though I went through with it, I would still probably go through with it. But I think that having an option to get out of it would be, on my own now, with my own license, I think I would have maybe weighed that a little bit more heavily the option to reschedule when I felt a lot of self imposed, and also, you know, supervisory imposed pressure to continue with the assessment. I do think it was an okay ethical decision to continue. And, you know, I still might choose that again. But I do think that weighing the rescheduling part or transferring to a different clinician would have been felt like more of an option if I if this were to present itself now.
Allie Joy 22:41
Yeah. And how about if this was happening to another clinician, someone who's listening to this podcast, they're in a similar situation? What advice would you give them and what would you say to them?
Kathryn Esquer 22:53
I would say this is just part of the practice like this is part of being a human and having a life and supporting your friends and growing a big network. I'm an incredibly social person. And this was not the first or the last time I ran into someone where I did not a client, a potential client or pre hire assessment, where I didn't expect it. And my philosophy, I mean, it's obviously bendable, but my general philosophy is I live my life as I do. And if it comes into the therapy room, we work with it, we address it, and we mitigate it. But you know, I don't necessarily change my life, given the what ifs, right. And so I would encourage other people to do the same. Don't change your name, or change your name. Sure. Change your change your life for the what ifs. Obviously, if there's a clear potential, a clear dual relationship, you definitely have to address it. But you know, I would still go to the wedding. Absolutely.
Allie Joy 23:58
Awesome. Well, I'm so happy that we get to hear your story. Our listeners get to hear your story. We hope it helps people just get to know us a little bit too. And why again, we are the OG bad therapists and why we love to talk about it because we're humans, and then we're therapists.
Kathryn Esquer 24:13
Oh my gosh, absolutely. And I do have a follow up with this story. Oh, yes, that is at my own bridal shower. My girlfriend came up to me and she nudged me and she said, hey, so and so told me he got the job. And I just had to ignore it. I said, I don't know what you're talking about. But she I think she knew and I knew it. So it it did come back up outside the therapy room, but I did maintain that confidentiality. So it was his it was his assessment to share if you wanted and he didn't.
Allie Joy 24:47
Yeah, that's another part that's so tough, of course, but it's I'm glad like, I guess personally that you get that little extra tidbit, but it's so hard that we have to say like I don't know what you're talking about or you know, things like that.
Kathryn Esquer 24:59
Or I did I just wanted to say like good for him. Yeah, you want to celebrate something. But I don't know what you're talking about.
Allie Joy 25:08
Well again, thank you so much for sharing. I'm so good to hear your story and we will be back next time with my story.
Kathryn Esquer 25:15
I can't wait to hear about your bad therapist story.
Allie Joy 25:18
Oh, it's a good one. Thanks for listening everyone.
Kathryn Esquer 25:22
I and that's it. The OG bad therapists ally and Catherine are signing off for the week.
Allie Joy 25:31
Make sure to subscribe and leave us a review. If you include your Instagram handle. We just might send you some bad therapists swag.
Kathryn Esquer 25:37
Are you a bad therapist and want to be on the show? Go to a bad therapists.com and tell us your story.
Allie Joy 25:44
Our podcast is produced and edited by my amazing husband Austin joy. He also created the music for intro and outro you can find this song along with many others on any music platform under the artist air for effect. And if you're a bad therapist, starting your own podcast, contact Austin for his full suite of podcast and sound production services. You can find him on Instagram at air for effect and don't
Kathryn Esquer 26:07
forget we’re all bad therapists