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The Modern Therapist's Survival Guide with Curt Widhalm and Katie VernoyTherapy Reimagined Author: Curt Widhalm, LMFT and Katie Vernoy, LMFT
The Modern Therapists Survival Guide: Where Therapists Live, Breathe, and Practice as Human Beings Its time to reimagine therapy and what it means to be a therapist. We are human beings who can now present ourselves as whole people, with authenticity, purpose, and connection. Especially now, when clinicians must develop a personal brand to market their private practices, and are connecting over social media, engaging in social activism, pushing back against mental health stigma, and facing a whole new style of entrepreneurship. To support you as a whole person, a business owner, and a therapist, your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy talk about how to approach the role of therapist in the modern age. Language: en Genres: Alternative Health, Health & Fitness, Mental Health Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Suffering Is Collective, and So Is Healing: Belonging, Ritual, and Meaning in Uncertain Times - An Interview with Suzan Song, MD
Monday, 17 August, 2026
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 Join the Modern Therapist Community Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/mtsgpodcast 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/
