Going Rogue: Doing therapy counter-culture

Mainstream healthcare and human services takes a shape we’ve all come to expect. One helper and one helpee, in a room for 45 minutes (or less, if it’s medicine), sitting, talking about the problem. The helper repeats this as many times as possible in a given work day, and the formula focuses almost entirely on the client or patient as the person in need of evaluation and rehabilitation. The same basic model applies to education.

But what if this old model gave way to a new helping paradigm? One where we collaborate, support each other moment-to-moment, and concentrate on a mutually life-affirming process of healing? Therapists need each other in order to stay oriented and alert, co-regulate biobehavioral states, and share the heavy emotional load of hearing and working with client distress. We get ideas and energy from each other and we keep each other out of trance . . . so why not work together? Deborah and Tracy talk about reversing burnout and reinvigorating practice through interdisciplinary co-therapy and propose a new model for it.

Read more about co-therapy here:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270172164_The_Experience_the_Gift_in_a_Model_of_Co-Therapy

https://familytherapybasics.com/blog/best-practices-for-co-therapy