Demystifying the Therapy Process
We’re talking with Sara Sacada-Lovio, LCPC, who is a mental health therapist at LifeSpring Counseling Services. She'll be talking with us about demystifying the therapy process, which can be a great topic for someone who's been considering therapy or someone who has strong beliefs about therapy, even if you've never tried it. So this will be an opportunity to check some of the information that you already have about therapy.
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Melissa Wesner, LCPC: Hello, and thanks for joining us today. Today I'm talking with Sara Sacada-Lovio, who is a mental health therapist at LifeSpring Counseling Services. Today she'll be talking with us about demystifying the therapy process, which can be a great topic for someone who's been considering therapy or someone who has strong beliefs about therapy, even if you've never tried it. So this will be an opportunity to check some of the information that you already have about therapy. So welcome, Sara. Thank you, Melissa. So it's going to be fun talking with you today. Tell us what made this topic important to you or what made this seem like a topic that could be beneficial for people?
Sara Secada-Lovio, LCPC: Yes. So one of my former jobs was helping connect people with mental health services, specifically with therapists and psychiatrists. And I was at that job at an agency for about five years. So I got very, very well versed with helping connect people. And I was in the trenches with everyone. I totally understand that it is not easy to find care. So that is one of the main reasons I wanted to talk about this. Also working at Life Spring. I work with newbies sometimes, people who have never been in counseling or therapy before. And I get a lot of questions about how does therapy work?
Sara Secada-Lovio, LCPC: What's a psychiatrist? Do I need medicine? All of those are very good questions. And this is one of those things where unless you've been through it or unless you work in the industry, you probably don't know. So I do a lot of psychoeducation and I thought this would be a great way to give accurate information to people.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: Awesome. So let me ask, what are some of the common questions that you get at Life Spring from people who are new to therapy?
Sara Secada-Lovio, LCPC: I think one of the biggest ones is how does therapy work? And that's a big tall order question. And the best way that I like to answer that is by you show up and you do the work. So depending on what kind of presenting problem that you have, the reason you're coming into counseling, that's going to determine exactly what it is the content that you're talking about with your therapist, but also some of the interventions too. You know, so for example, someone who's coming into therapy for something like something like OCD or something like a phobia or social anxiety, their treatment is going to look really different from someone who's coming to counseling for issues of grief and loss or issues of trauma.
Sara Secada-Lovio, LCPC: But the short answer is how does therapy work? You show up, you talk, and you do the work. And that's how the healing takes place. It takes time. And that is something I always like to encourage people to is to be patient. Something that I've kind of come across in my journey of working in the field for, I think it's been nine years so far, is that there's kind of two different timelines going on. There's kind of like the reality timeline of, you know, today is a Thursday, it is 2023, and yep, I already dated this podcast.
Sara Secada-Lovio, LCPC: So there's that timeline, but then there's also the body timeline. Your body probably doesn't care that it's been three years. Your body probably doesn't care that it's been three years that the pandemic started. The pandemic is still happening. A lot of things are better, but the stress is still there and our bodies have been saturated in that stress for a while. So that's another reason why I like to encourage the patients and the self-compassion because healing is gonna take time. Our bodies like to go with their own timeline. And humans as being inpatient beings as we are, we don't like to wait.
Sara Secada-Lovio, LCPC: We want, sometimes we just want results right away. And I get that because I do too. But coming in with an open mind and with giving yourself some patience, I think that is gonna help a lot.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: Yes, lots of good information in there. And I think knowing that people come into therapy for different reasons, showing up and doing the work applies to everybody. We hear people say showing up is half the battle. And that would be true here, showing up and then also taking whatever those action steps are to implement the content or coping strategies that are covered in sessions. So you're right. We can be impatient and remembering to be patient with the process and to be patient with ourselves. So lots of really good nuggets in there. I'm wondering, not just at Lifespring, but in your previous job where I know you did a lot of crisis work, what were some other areas of maybe confusion around therapy, how to get started?
Sara Secada-Lovio, LCPC: Yeah, so in my old job, one of the ways that we would help get people connected, we would kind of just start with the basics of using health insurance as a way to help people get connected. And when I was doing that particular portion of my job, I wore a little bit more of a case management hat than a therapist hat. And I'm trying to think if there were any other misconceptions. The one that comes to mind is just a little bit of kind of, and this is just a little bit of information for our listeners, the difference between a therapist and the psychiatrist because there's a lot of different people under the umbrella of helping professions.
Sara Secada-Lovio, LCPC: And a lot of times consumers don't know who does what or why. And so that would also be a little bit of me teaching people of like, okay, well, this person's going to be your therapist, this person's going to be your psychiatrist, this person's going to be your case manager. You know, everyone has a different hat and they have a different role. And the good thing about that is sometimes it's really nice to have a treatment team because then you can spread the love. but also you have more than one person to go to and you have people who specialize in, you know, in different areas.
Sara Secada-Lovio, LCPC: So one of the big questions was what's the difference between a therapist and a psychiatrist? And so in the shortest way that I can describe the difference is therapists, those are the ones that you talk to, psychiatrists, those are prescribers. They're the ones that are gonna be really focused on the medication management portion for any folks who want or need medication management for any mental health symptoms. People who, and I'll get a little bit into the alphabet soup, credentials, not a whole, you know, we're not going to go down the rabbit hole, but I'll just give a brief intro for our listeners.
Sara Secada-Lovio, LCPC: People who are therapists are going to have credentials for things like professional counselor, social worker, psychologist, marriage and family therapist, stuff like that. Alcohol and drug counselor. those kinds of things. And all of those people are qualified to do therapy. We all go to therapy school and get our degrees and then we all pass, you know, we all go through our licensing boards to get our to get that extra credential so that we can practice. So those are all folks who can do therapy like you and I. And then psychiatrists, the prescribers. So that is a lot of other alphabet soups.
Sara Secada-Lovio, LCPC: So you can have people like MDs, medical doctors, DOs, doctors of osteopathy, nurse practitioners, MPs, physician's assistants, BAs. So pretty much folks who can prescribe but specialize in mental health. Those are going to be your psychiatry folks. And another question that I get a lot is, well, Sara, can I still see you for counseling if I have a psychiatrist? And I say, yeah, that's fine. I work with people who do take medicine and people who do not take medicine. There's a lot of different pathways for healing. which is something that I always like to let my let my patients know.
Sara Secada-Lovio, LCPC: For some people, medicine is is the missing piece. You know, a lot of the times I might encourage someone to consider medicine, if it's going to help kind of on that functional level, if it's going to help you get out of bed, if it's going to help you help put you in a place where you're going to be able to actually use your coping skills. So So I know there's a lot of stigma with medicine. And when I talk to my patients about different medicine, I also let them know I'm like, listen, I'm just the counselor.
Sara Secada-Lovio, LCPC: So I'm not the prescriber. I don't know all the ins and outs of those things, but that's why psychiatrists exist. We all have different roles and we can coexist together and work together as part of that treatment team. Someone who's gonna focus on the medicine piece and then I focus on the talk therapy piece. There's been a lot of research in the past that shows folks who do both medication management and counseling, they get the best outcomes in therapy.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: And that's important for people to know.
Sara Secada-Lovio, LCPC: Yeah, yeah, and some people don't want medicine too, and that's okay too. You know, a lot of people, they can get a lot of feeling just by doing the talking.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: Yeah, and you had mentioned the confusion between maybe a psychiatrist or working with a counselor and even at Life Spring, you know, even though we advertise very specifically, we offer counseling, we offer the therapy, we regularly do get phone calls from people who are looking for medication management with a psychiatrist. So there does seem to be a little bit of confusion that people have about, how do I find this person? if I want to work with them. And maybe also expectations when they're working with a therapist versus a psychiatrist and how those sessions might look differently if you're working with a therapist or if you're working with a psychiatrist.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: So can you talk maybe a little bit about that? Because sometimes people might go to work with a psychiatrist for med management and expect it to be similar to a counseling session and that is not necessarily what happens.
Sara Secada-Lovio, LCPC: Oh, that is an excellent question. Yes, I'd love to talk more about that. So one of the biggest differences that I can think of off the top of my head is kind of the approach in it. So when you meet with a counselor that you talk therapy, your appointments are gonna be longer because we're gonna be focusing on talking and processing and doing the work. But when someone meets with a psychiatrist, that's gonna be more like medical focused. And the prescribers are going to be more pointed into, you know, is the medicine working? Are you having any side effects?
Sara Secada-Lovio, LCPC: You know, kind of keeping it really focused on that stuff. Of course, focusing on the mental health system, which is why someone would be taking. There's medicines in the first place, but it's pretty jarring for someone who is expecting to have a long talk therapy session and then to meet with a psychiatrist and then have a 15 or 20 minute med management appointment, like a med check and appointment. You're like, we're done already? Yes, yes. So I just wanted to let folks know that that's normal to have, you know, once you get established with a prescriber and you get started on medicine, it's totally normal to have those much shorter med check follow-up appointments.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: Yeah, so I mean that's one of the things that I love about what we do is that we often get to see people on a weekly basis, we do have the time to spend with people were able to get the scoop all the details and ask all the really important question. And because we meet regularly, we're able to follow up with people, see how things are progressing, whereas someone who's doing management often has less contact with those meetings once you're set on your medication. Your meetings with a prescriber might be once a month, maybe even less if you've been on a medication for a while.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: But one of the things that I love about what we do is that we really get to work closely with people and we really get into the day to day and we're on top of what's happening. And if we need, we will coordinate with other providers, psychiatrists, if there's information that we need to communicate or we think that the psychiatrist needs to be informed of so we can help someone feel better.
Sara Secada-Lovio, LCPC: Yes, yes, absolutely. There's a lot of coordination of care that happens behind the scenes. And the whole point is just to make sure that everyone is being taken care of and everyone is feeling as they should be.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: Yeah. So Sara, speaking of providers and how people might be confused maybe about how to get started. Years ago at our office, we did a survey. We had an intern at our office and she did a survey to ask people how they would find a mental health therapist if they needed therapy. And I don't remember the percentage, but the majority of people said that they would find mental health therapy services by asking their primary care doctor. or that information, which I thought was really interesting, right? Because I don't really know how many doctors offices actually have close working relationships with therapists, someone that they actually know to say, hey, I work really closely with this practice.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: I know these people, they specialize in exactly what you're looking for. So it was kind of interesting to see that that's how people would find out about therapy if they had a question about getting started. In our experience, talking to people who are calling for therapy services, that's actually not how most people find us. So I'm wondering if maybe you can talk about the process of finding a therapist for someone who's like, I want to start therapy, but I don't have a clue how to get started.
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