The Consulting Room
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Conversations about the moments in psychotherapy that don't come with a script.
Richard Raubolt, PhD, ABPP and Shelley Dennis, PhD, ABPP explore the dilemmas, uncertainties, mistakes, intuitions, and moments of connection that shape the work of psychotherapy.
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The latest conversation.
Episode 03
What do you wish you had known before you saw your first patient?
Therapists have feelings about their patients.
Sometimes very strong ones.
Shelley and Richard talk about what happens when a patient irritates us, pulls us in, makes us anxious, leaves us feeling inadequate—or simply gets under our skin. Rather than treating those reactions as something to eliminate, they consider what might happen if we get curious about them.
What can our own reactions tell us about the patient, the relationship, and ourselves? And when does countertransference become less of a problem to manage and more of something we can actually use?
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What happens in this room.
Therapy rarely unfolds the way it does in training.
The most important moments often arrive without warning: a silence that goes on too long, a question you’re not sure you should ask, a mistake you have to find your way back from, or the unsettling realization that you don’t quite know what to do next.
This is a podcast about those moments.
We bring them into consultation—not to offer the right answer, but to think more deeply about the therapist, the patient, and what is happening between them.
Past Conversations.
There’s always more to the conversation.
Episode 01
How Did You Become the Therapist You Are?
Shelley interviews Richard about a lifetime in the consulting room—and what all those years have taught him about becoming a therapist.
What is consultation really for? What does experience teach us that training can't? After decades of practice, how do you answer the deceptively simple question: what kind of therapist are you, anyway?
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Episode 02
What Do You Do When You Don’t Know What to Do?
Therapists are supposed to know what they’re doing. Except sometimes we don’t.
Shelley and Richard talk about uncertainty in the consulting room—when to trust yourself, when to question yourself, and why not knowing may be more useful than we think.
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Episode 03
What Do You Wish You Had Known Before You Saw Your First Patient?
Therapists have feelings about their patients. Sometimes very strong ones.
Shelley and Richard talk about what happens when a patient irritates us, pulls us in, makes us anxious—or simply gets under our skin.
What if those reactions aren't just something to manage? What might they tell us about the patient, the relationship, and ourselves? And when does countertransference become something we can actually use?
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE →