26. Puking up Rocks and Treating Animals with Radical Acceptance (ft. Liz Stein, LPC)

This week Jazmin goes into the impacts of being ill-equipped in graduate school to properly identify and assess for personality disorders. It’s been such an eye-opener to get out into the actual work of counseling and find high-conflict personalities, disordered personalities, and attachment disordered folks just running amok and wrecking havoc, while also feeling shell-shocked and ill-prepared to handle that. Let’s all get more educated on this stuff together!

This week we are sharing our conversation with Liz Stein who is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Texas. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Texas A&M. She also has a Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Texas State University. Also, along with her co-counselor, Rusty the poodle, she has a certificate in Animal Assisted Counseling from Texas State AAC Academy. 

Liz currently works at a partial hospitalization program, primarily working with adolescents and their families. With Liz we explore what it’s like to work at a higher level of care with higher acuity clients every day, including notes on crayon wrappers, managing parent expectations, and collaborating directly with outpatient clinicians. While Liz’s job sounds like a ton of work, she affirms that she is enjoying the chaos of it right now. 

Liz often works with Rusty the poodle as her co-counselor and so we dig into what that’s like, including the differences between a therapy dog designation and an animal assisted counseling certification, how she handles setting boundaries with her clients and her dog, and her pet peeves about others’ treatment of animals. 

Resources mentioned: 

• Animal-Assisted Therapy in Counseling 4th Edition by Cynthia K. Chandler
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Animal-Assisted Counseling Academy at Texas State: https://aac-academy.clas.txst.edu/ 

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Disclaimer: This podcast is not therapy and does not establish a professional, therapeutic counseling relationship. All statements made on this podcast by hosts and guests are their individual personal perspectives only and are not necessarily shared by anyone else. The hosts and guests on this podcast are not speaking on behalf of all mental health professionals or the profession as a whole.