The Modern Therapist's Survival Guide with Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy

You Can't Pizza Party Your Way Out of Burnout: Moral Injury, Compassion Fatigue, and Treating Healthcare Workers - An Interview with Kimberly Johnson, PhD, LMHCD, and Lucy Li, MD

Kimberly Johnson, PhD, and Lucy Li, MD, of the Emotional PPE Project on healthcare worker mental health and moral injury.

Curt and Katie talk with Kimberly Johnson, PhD, LMHCD, a counselor educator at Touro University with more than thirty years of clinical experience in trauma, crisis, and disaster mental health, and Lucy Li, MD, a pediatric anesthesiologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Both serve on the board of the Emotional PPE Project, a volunteer-run nonprofit reducing the barriers that keep healthcare workers from accessing mental health care.

Healthcare workers rarely arrive in therapy looking the way the distress would suggest. They mask, they overcompensate, and they spend session time explaining the job before they get to what the job has done to them. Kimberly describes the trifecta therapists often flatten into ordinary workplace burnout: burnout, compassion fatigue and complex trauma, and moral injury braided together, frequently presenting subclinically. Lucy describes the same terrain from inside medicine, including what shifted for her after her friend and co-resident died by suicide during residency.

They also walk through the Emotional PPE Project's directory of volunteer therapists and its ePPE 101 training for mental health professionals who want to work with healthcare workers well.

In this episode, we discuss:

- Why healthcare workers are a heterogeneous population, not a single clinical profile

- How burnout, complex trauma, and moral injury show up together and subclinically

- The intake questions that surface occupational risk factors early

- Why moral injury sits where occupational, vocational, and personal identity stop aligning

- What stigma costs healthcare workers, their patients, and the workforce

- How the Emotional PPE Project connects healthcare workers to free, confidential care

- Why the same barriers show up for therapists as healthcare providers

Timestamps:

- 02:38 - What therapists get wrong with healthcare workers

- 07:11 - Professional humility and the questions worth asking early

- 09:24 - Burnout, trauma, and moral injury as a trifecta

- 15:30 - Where moral injury actually lives

- 17:43 - Stigma and the fear of seeking care

- 22:00 - The second victim effect and being sent home

- 25:10 - Beyond pizza parties: what structural support looks like

- 33:27 - Inside the Emotional PPE Project and ePPE 101

Guest Bios:

Kimberly Johnson, PhD, LMHCD is Director of Special Projects and Assistant Professor in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Touro University, a licensed therapist in New York, a certified Compassion Fatigue Therapist and Educator and Field Traumatologist, and a Diplomate with the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress.

Lucy Li, MD is an attending anesthesiologist in Pediatric Anesthesiology at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a board member of the Emotional PPE Project. She completed her anesthesiology residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was chief resident, and focuses on physician mental health and wellness.

Learn more at emotionalppe.org

Full show notes and transcript: mtsgpodcast.com

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Rest, By Force or By Choice: Burnout, Self-Care, and Sustainable Practice for Therapists - An Interview with Cecily Moore, PhD

Dr. Cecily Moore on burnout, rest as a clinical intervention, and unlearning the Strong Black Woman Narrative.

Curt and Katie talk with Dr. Cecily Moore, a licensed therapist, counselor educator, and clinical supervisor, about why the expectation of endless strength and infinite patience is an unsustainable ask for therapists and other helping professionals. As clinicians carry collective grief and moral exhaustion alongside their clients, Dr. Moore reframes what burnout is actually asking of us.

At the center of the conversation is a simple, uncomfortable idea: your body is designed to protect you, so you will stop either by force or by choice. Dr. Moore makes the case for rest as a clinical intervention rather than a reward, unpacks how self-care has been co-opted into something you buy instead of something that restores you, and explains why advocacy that runs on depletion is a ticking time bomb. Real self-care, she argues, is honest about limits, boundaries, and capacity.

From there the discussion turns practical. Dr. Moore shares how deeper values work (asking where a value came from and how it was modeled) opens the door to change, how her "BS Job" checklist gives clinicians a concrete mirror for what is draining them, and why systems will not shift until the people inside them do. She also connects this to her research on unlearning the Strong Black Woman Narrative and the survival-based beliefs about strength, productivity, and worth that keep so many helpers over-functioning. This is a grounded, hopeful conversation for any therapist trying to build a sustainable career without abandoning the work they care about.

In this episode, we discuss:

- Why endless strength and infinite patience are an unsustainable ask for helping professionals

- How to tell rest as a clinical intervention apart from self-care that has been co-opted

- Why your body will make you stop, by force or by choice

- How to size your advocacy to your actual capacity so it does not deplete you

- What deeper values work looks like, and why it drives real change

- Why unlearning survival-based beliefs about strength and worth makes practice more sustainable

Timestamps:

- 01:20 - Who Dr. Moore is and what she puts into the world

- 02:49 - What therapists get wrong about endless strength and infinite patience

- 04:17 - Collective trauma and watching the world change in real time

- 06:37 - Moral injury, privilege, and truth-telling across lived experience

- 10:29 - How self-care got co-opted, and why advocacy runs on your well-being

- 13:07 - Why rest feels so scary

- 15:00 - Reframing self-care as self-maintenance

- 18:58 - Over-functioning students and learning to be human

- 22:49 - Insight versus implementation, and the systemic barriers

- 24:15 - Why systems can't shift until the people do

- 28:13 - Sustainable choices, by force or by choice

- 29:16 - Values work and the "BS Job" checklist

- 31:24 - The Strong Black Woman Narrative and questioning conditioning

- 35:28 - Where to find Dr. Moore

Guest Bio:

Dr. Cecily Moore is a licensed therapist, counselor educator, researcher, and clinical supervisor with a PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision. She is the founder of Dr. Cecily Moore & Associates and the creator of the Reappropriate, Redefine, Recover framework, which helps Black women unlearn the Strong Black Woman Narrative and the survival-based beliefs around strength, productivity, and worth that fuel burnout. Her work blends trauma-informed care, nervous system regulation, and culturally responsive practice, and reframes rest as a clinical intervention, not a reward. Learn more at drcecilymoore.com.

Full show notes and transcript: mtsgpodcast.com

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Suffering Is Collective, and So Is Healing: Belonging, Ritual, and Meaning in Uncertain Times - An Interview with Suzan Song, MD

Suzan Song, MD, psychiatrist and medical anthropologist, on why suffering is collective and healing comes through belonging, ritual, and meaning.

Curt and Katie talk with Suzan Song, MD about why the exhaustion so many therapists and clients are carrying right now is not only personal. Drawing on more than two decades of global mental health work with survivors of war, trafficking, and mass violence, Suzan makes the case that distress is often collective, shaped by culture and unstable systems, and that healing happens through belonging, narrative, ritual, meaning, and agency, not symptom elimination alone.

She names what American mental health training often misses when it treats suffering as something bounded inside a single person, and offers concrete, low-cost rituals therapists can use to stay grounded. The conversation moves from collective grief and moral exhaustion to the difference between functioning and healing, and to grounding in relationship: who you matter to, and who matters to you.

This is a grounding conversation for therapists feeling stretched by the current moment, and for anyone drawn to a global mental health lens on collective trauma, ritual, and sustainable healing.

In this episode, we discuss:

- Why the distress therapists and clients carry right now is collective, not only individual

- What American mental health training misses when it locates suffering inside a bounded self

- How belonging, narrative, ritual, and meaning function as healing

- Why functioning is not the same as healing

- Grounding in relationship as an alternative to purely individual nervous-system regulation

- How small acts of agency protect against demoralization

- Low-cost rituals therapists can use to keep moral exhaustion from following them home

Timestamps:

01:44 - Who Suzan Song is and what she puts into the world

02:58 - How a medical anthropology lens changes clinical work

05:34 - When the self is collective, not bounded

09:18 - Collective suffering and the loss of agency

12:18 - Moral injury and disengagement in therapists

17:23 - Finding your own rituals as a therapist

24:07 - Grounding in relationship

28:13 - Why functioning is not healing

Guest Bio:

Suzan Song, MD, MPH, PhD is a child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist and medical anthropologist, and a professor of psychiatry at George Washington University. She has spent more than two decades advising on mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) in humanitarian and conflict-affected settings, and is the author of Why We Suffer and How We Heal (Harmony / Penguin Random House, 2026). Learn more at suzansong.com.

Full show notes and transcript: mtsgpodcast.com

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Sustainability Is a Fundamental Responsibility: Therapist Burnout, Moral Injury, and the Systems We Practice Within

Therapist burnout, sustainability, and moral injury, and why fixing burnout can't land on individual clinicians alone.

Curt Widhalm, LMFT, and Katie Vernoy, LMFT kick off a series of discussions on modern therapist principles with the one that shapes almost everything they cover: sustainability is a fundamental responsibility, paired with the reminder that therapists are human first. Nine years into the show, they revisit a question they keep returning to. If therapist burnout is a systemic problem, why does the job of solving it keep landing on individual clinicians? It is a framing the show has argued for since 2017, and it still cuts against most of the advice therapists are sold about fixing their own burnout by charging their worth and tightening their own schedules.

This episode holds a both/and at its center. You are responsible for practicing competently and staying well enough to do the work, and yet shrinking reimbursement, vertically integrating insurance companies, inconsistent platforms, and constant collective crisis sit far outside any one therapist's control. Curt and Katie talk honestly about martyrdom, moral injury, and the polished corporate language now reshaping the field, then name the four places where sustainability tends to break down: too much work, not enough of the right work, work that betrays your values, and isolation. They also name what is shifting fastest right now, from AI and insurance chatbots to platforms that lower fees and fragment how clinicians document their work.

Burnout is not a personal failing, and sustainability is not something you can white-knuckle alone. This conversation makes the case for navigating the system as it is, a refusal to accept that it has to stay that way, and building community on purpose, through consultation groups, networks, and professional relationships, as one of the few reliable protections therapists have. It is honest company for a problem the profession has not solved, plus a look at the collective work that might eventually move it.

In this episode, we discuss:

- Why therapist burnout is a systemic problem, not an individual failing

- How to hold the both/and of working within the system while working to change it

- The four ways sustainability breaks down, and how to spot them in your own practice

- Why moral injury and isolation can be harder to carry than sheer overwork

- How consultation and community become a real strategy for sustainability

- What collective action, including guild-style organizing, could eventually require

Timestamps:

- 01:17 - The principle: sustainability is a fundamental responsibility, and therapists are human first

- 04:41 - Nine years in: why systemic burnout still isn't fixed

- 06:47 - Martyrdom, sacrificial helping, and band-aiding a broken system

- 10:21 - What years of burnout and advocacy episodes have taught us

- 16:31 - Seductive corporate language and the insurance chatbot future

- 20:33 - Four ways sustainability gets hindered

- 23:36 - Isolation and strategically building community

- 26:31 - Building the plane while flying it: delayed competence and shared trauma

- 32:10 - No more therapist martyrdom, and a word from Audre Lorde

Full show notes and transcript: mtsgpodcast.com

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What It Means to Be a Modern Therapist: The Principles That Guide Our Work

Curt Widhalm, LMFT, and Katie Vernoy, LMFT, on the principles that define a sustainable, ethical, modern therapy practice.

After nearly nine years and almost 500 episodes, Curt and Katie step back to name what the Modern Therapist's Survival Guide actually stands for. This episode lays out the guiding principles behind the show, the standards they hold and the practices they refuse, and reintroduces the hosts and the experience that shapes how they show up.

Across nearly a decade of conversations, the same themes keep resurfacing. Therapists are human first, and neutrality is more myth than reality. Sustainability is a professional responsibility, not a luxury, which means martyrdom, self-sacrifice, and exploitative business models are no-goes rather than badges of dedication. Clinical depth matters more than ever in an era of influencer psychology, short-form content, and AI. Representation and inclusion strengthen the field, while gatekeeping and elitism weaken it. Systems shape practice in ways no amount of self-care can fix. Therapists are stewards of their own profession through advocacy, leadership, and calling each other in. And the work has to keep evolving, met with critical thinking rather than fear-based rejection or unexamined enthusiasm.

Curt and Katie also explain why they are naming these principles now: to frame a run of upcoming deep dives that take these themes further with guests and conversations built to move past lip service. Taken together, the principles work less like a mission statement and more like a filter for the decisions therapists face every week, from which job to take to which trend to adopt and which one to let pass.

Whether you have listened since the beginning or found the show last week, this is a clear look at where Curt and Katie are coming from, and an invitation to build a practice that is more human, more sustainable, and more connected to a community of therapists working through the same questions you are.

In this episode, we discuss:

- Why "therapists are human first" still matters in an era of corporate consolidation and AI

- How to build a sustainable practice free from martyrdom

- What keeps clinical depth relevant against influencer psychology and short-form content

- Why representation, inclusion, and systems awareness strengthen the whole field

- How therapists can act as stewards of the profession without shaming or policing

- What it looks like to evolve with the field through critical thinking, not fear or hype

Timestamps:

- 00:15 - Nine years in: why this episode now

- 02:54 - Curt and Katie reintroduce themselves

- 06:46 - The modern therapist principles and no-goes

- 07:09 - Therapists are human first

- 10:26 - Sustainability as a fundamental responsibility

- 12:49 - Clinical depth over simplification

- 16:21 - Representation and inclusion strengthen the field

- 18:57 - Systems shape practice

- 20:49 - Therapists as stewards of the profession

- 22:55 - Evolving with the field through critical thinking

- 25:21 - An invitation to join the community

Full show notes and resources: mtsgpodcast.com

Join the Modern Therapist Community

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/therapyreimagined

Modern Therapist's Survival Guide Creative Credits

Voice Over by DW McCann: https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/

Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano: https://groomsymusic.com/