The Boots Before Bootstraps in Recovery with Amanda Koplin

Care usually shows up when things are already on fire and then we act surprised when “stabilized” doesn’t mean “better.” We have a conversation with mental health pioneer and consultant Amanda Koplin to unpack a mental health treatment model that works in the messy middle of real life: jobs you can’t quit, families who are exhausted, and symptoms that don’t fit neatly into 50-minute sessions.

We get into what wraparound, in-home behavioral health care actually looks like, from designing a plan that evolves over time to supporting the entire family system, not just the person of concern. Amanda explains why she often starts with the one person who’s ready to change, how boundaries can coexist with depression, addiction, and eating disorders, and why many families “freeze” their parenting at the age mental illness first appears. We also talk about re-parenting through missed developmental stages, building emotional regulation, and creating structure that doesn’t disappear the moment the crisis passes.

Then we go straight at the hard stuff: the crisis trigger point in community mental health, the difference between safety systems and treatment systems, and the insurance math that pushes people out of care before they’re truly ready. Along the way, we explore what “success” really means, how building life assets reduces relapse risk, and why the right team requires the right personality match, not just the right credentials.

If you care about mental health outcomes, family systems therapy, addiction recovery, and practical solutions beyond the hospital revolving door, this conversation is for you. Join us and don't forget to subscribe and share with someone who is looking for options in their recovery journey.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello, folks. Thanks for joining us on Head Inside Mental Health, featuring conversations about mental health and substance use treatment with experts, advocates, and professionals from across the country sharing their thoughts and insights on the world of behavioral health care. Broadcasting on WPVM 1037, Independent, Commercial, Free Radio. I'm Todd Weatherly, your host, therapeutic consultant, and behavioral health expert. It is my pleasure to welcome friend and colleague Amanda Coplin to the show. Amanda is a mental health entrepreneur, a thought leader who creates innovative solutions to fill gaps in the mental health care system. In 2014, she created a created and developed an idea for a mental health urgent care clinic, which she sold back in 2016 to create Coplin Consulting, a nationwide concierge mental health treatment team service. Amanda is passionate about helping people achieve mental wellness and creating sustainable support systems and solutions which integrate seamlessly into real life. She is a speaker and nationally sought-after consultant who specializes in creating unique treatment plans and recommendations for individuals struggling with psychological concerns such as addiction, eating disorders, lack of motivation, and other issues impacting mental wellness. Amanda attended the University of Oregon for grad for her undergrad, where she received two bachelor's degrees because she's like, you know, has to top it off with two. One in psychology and one in women and gender studies, and a certificate in the substance use prevention program. She attended Yeshiva University, Albert Einstein's College of Medicine, where she received her master's in mental health counseling. Following graduate school, she did in-home counseling for kids in family court and kids charged with felonies in Supreme Court in New York City. This is where she learned the impact of working with people in real life and the impact of working with all of the systems involved with a person of concern. This is the experience and passion she brings to Coplin Consulting with a mission to help others recover their quality of life. Amanda, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Thank you. It's always impressive when someone else reads your bio. You're like, is that me?

SPEAKER_02 2:02

I know it's you know, you're like, who is who are they talking about?

unknown 2:06

What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Did Chat GPT make me look better than I am?

The Concierge Care Model Explained

SPEAKER_02 2:10

You know, they make us look good, right? That's what that's better in pictures. Um, although, you know, I you're you're very modest and I appreciate that. But you and I have gotten to work pretty closely together uh using this conscierious approach, um, which I think is fantastic. And and we had what I feel to be a lot of great success with the individual that that we worked with that was you know struggling with a variety of issues, familial issues, sobriety, mental health, and needing the kind of wraparound support. But but you know, and and you know, for this individual, which is not unique, they had to keep working. They couldn't just quit their job, you know. So they had to be able to like pull off what was ultimately treatment in their home and while they continued to work, make an income, pay their bills, and do all the things. And it's, you know, theoretically, there the series of systems in in what we would refer to as, you know, you and I work on the private pay side primarily, and the community mental health system supposedly, you know, quote unquote, is designed to do exactly what you're doing for people who, you know, live in our communities and suffer from mental health uh issues and challenges. They, you know, they they're supposed to get treatment, they're supposed to get, you know, bed management and coaching support and act teams, and and if you throw VR into the mix, they're supposed to be, you know, helping them get jobs and and sustain employment as well, not just get the employment, but sustain it, which is kind of the hardest trick to pull, so that they can, you know, pay taxes and contribute and everything else. And there's a whole world of politics out there. It's like, well, these people need to get to work. I'm like, I tell you what, I'm just gonna give you schizophrenia for a second and see how well it is you fare in getting a job. It's the compassion that people have, it's absurd and ridiculous these days. That's part of the problem. But you bring like all these services in and all the stuff in as a team. Tell me a little bit about the model. Let's talk about the model that works, the one that you've you use on a regular basis to serve the clients that come to you, and and we've been able to witness in our team as well. Like, tell me about the model that you're using for your concierge level support.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Well, first off, going back to your comment about like, okay, you know, here are all these expectations. Let me slap schizophrenia on you, and then you try to make those happen. Like, you know, I always say to people, it's like so many people are like, oh, you gotta pick yourself up by your boots, Jason, but they haven't got any boots. Like, you haven't got any boots.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

They don't have shoes. Can we just give them some boots?

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Can we start with the boots?

SPEAKER_02 4:58

How about we give them some boots first? And then we can ask them to pick up the boot straps, but right.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Um but but back to your other question about the model, I think it's really about designing programs around families in the context of their real life because each family, each person is going to deal with different obstacles. And um I think a lot about the country doctor who used to come out to each family and spend hours at a time. Um and they knew the family so intricately and each member of the family and their issues. And it wasn't this rushed insurance model that was like, okay, here's the code, here's the limit, next, next, next. And you had to see 200 people in order to just break even. And so being able to take the time to not only assess but design a plan and then evolve it with the person as they go along and use higher-level professionals who get that uh country doctor feel, right? Where they're super invested to the point of even living with people sometimes. Um it's a game changer. And I think that the other big piece is um very frequently people forget that a lot of the family members are traumatized people, they just didn't end up in treatment or at a point of such dysfunction that they spiraled down and caused alarms in the system to go off. They just are higher functioning and managing the day-to-day. But having somebody come in and help the whole system to put floaties on and you know, get their head above water and then not only stop drowning, but then say, okay, where's the life raft? We're gonna swim to the life raft, and then we're all saddled together back to shore. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 6:53

Um so Taylor Tomlinson talks about float her full her, you know, get your floaties, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:01

So being able to keep the family in mind, and it's one person, one family, um, and they're on a whole journey from the beginning of recovery until the end of like where they're in maintenance, and it slowly ties titrates down with them. I think that's the game changer versus a, all right, we're gonna start at 10 hours a week, or you know, we can't go above 10 hours a week, and then in two months we're gonna go to six hours. And, you know, my whole um beginning of my career, all my licensure hours were at community mental health. It was an alternative to incarceration program. There was a whole system that evolved. But what I realized is that a lot of these parents were those kids that just grew up and got older, but never got the skills that they needed to be equipped in order to facilitate positive emotional regulation, in order to give consequences that weren't involving physical uh, you know, altercations or hitting, or, you know, like everybody in the system was that kid just at different ages. And to be able to recognize that everybody's doing their best and not everybody's equipped just because they're a certain age or they have a title of parent, you know, it it's a game changer.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

Yeah, I think that you you said something that, you know, I've had this conversation with lots of folks, and we're talking, you know, this great chasm, this divide between, you know, community behavioral health and state funded behavioral health versus private pay behavioral health with some insurance coverage in between that'll exist in between. And I think something that occurred to me as you were talking is that our trigger mark is off. We don't, you know, there's a lot of the person has to reach a certain level of crisis before the system is triggered to respond. And not only is the trigger mark off, and I think police would agree with this, the responder is off. Like the trigger mark is the person getting into trouble, right? Some kind of trouble. They're on they're running around on somebody's property or they're beating on a door or they're they're they're having an episode, you know. Um, and a lot of times they either end up in one of two places, they'll end up, you know, in front of the police, on in some version of in front of the police, or they end up in the hospital. Neither system is designed to actually provide care. They're designed to provide safety. So, you know, the person's theory, you know, they're gonna be they're not gonna do anything if they're incarcerated, they're not gonna do anything if they're in in in h in the hospital theoretically. So they're designed around these safety marks, they're containers, but they're not care, they're not treatment. I can dope you up with meds and sit you back on the street, doesn't resolve the problem. So the trigger mark is off because we we don't go individuals don't know when to go seek help, and the helpers don't necessarily get in front of the individuals who need it in a time frame that is going to be really truly kind of interventive. Um, and I you probably see this even, we see this even in conscierge level. Families come to us when they're in crisis. It's rare that I get somebody who's pretty proactive about what they're doing. I mean, I I I might be able to count, you know, on one hand the number of cases that we're truly being proactive about something. When you work with the families and they're coming to you in crisis, it's almost like, okay, yeah, this the system's had the trigger marks off and everything else, but you're diving into the family to find this root of the problem. Where do you start? Where do you usually start when you've got a client that comes to you and they're in need and they're in crisis and everything else? Like, where do you start?

SPEAKER_00 10:52

I start with the one who's ready to change.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

Oh, that's I like that answer.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Yes. And in family systems, the person who is the canary in the coal mine isn't always the person who's ready to change, right? And so I always say, as long as one person in the family is ready to change, people can't act the same way or react the same way if you're not acting the same way. And so um it sets off kind of a uh domino effect, but um I have I have worked with so many adolescent and young adult families um where I've gotten the person of concern to say a lot of uh you know, three-word phrases, like uh, you know, that were not very flattering. Um like I mean, it's incredible every single time that if I can set somebody who never talks to me more than if you get out of my house, um, don't make another little girl cry. I hate you. Having you in my house makes me want to kill myself, which I'm like, that is very dramatic. Um and that person could still be set on a path to recovery without ever really engaging with me because the parents were willing to engage and do something different. And um it shows the power that each person has in a system to facilitate the change that they desire. And I think the other big thing I've noticed in these families is that people stop parenting at the age their child got a mental illness and suddenly it's gonna be the depression. Well, yes, and everything becomes a product of the mental illness. Well, that's the depression, just love him harder. Oh, you know what? That's the eating disorder, just let that go. Oh, that's you know, that's the addiction. Um, you know, what he needs is help, not criticism. And if you got your mental health disorder at 12, 13, you're still a child who needs boundaries, guidelines, structures. And so a lot of yes, and a lot of these these parents, they, you know, they're like, oh, you're like the super nanny of mental health. Yeah, because I'm coming in and I'm separating out. No, that's bad behavior. Your 12-year-old is running the house, and like your child not looking you in the eye or rolling themselves in a rug or running about the house. That's not an eating disorder because we're not talking about food. That's a child who's running the household. And what would you do if your child didn't have an eating disorder and was doing that stuff? Oh, I'd take the phone, I would ground them, so start doing that, and then let's figure out how to support the eating disorder part, or let's figure out how to guardrail against the addiction. So then, you know, that person later becomes 20, 30, 40, 50. So depending on when they got whatever the thing is, that's where their development stops to. And um, there's you have to go back and start to reparent through those developmental stages, even as an adult, um, to help people get back on a track. And I think, you know, that's part of why this model works so well, because it looks on such so many deep levels of where a person is, who a person is, and um, you have the time to do it when someone's able to pay through what where their care actually needs to start and end, versus insurance saying medically stable, cut care. Oh, you know what, they've been in residential for this long, drop them down. But from a clinical sense, we all know they're not ready. Insurance is a monetary sense, not a clinical sense.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

They're trying to control dollars, not people's health outcomes. Unfortunately, you know, it's a it's a whole, I mean, talk about a topic, we can get in a rabbit hole on the revenue-based outcome, yeah, revenue-based approaches to health care versus health outcome-based approaches to health care, are routinely, you know, it uh I get why insurance companies want to want to put parameters around you know how much it costs to give a person the care that they need. But you know, my like my mom, you know, she's 80 something. She if you you know, when she was in her 70s, she broke her hip, right? So there's a protocol for, and it's a long-established protocol. Like it's, you know, a person in their 70s something breaking the hip is like the most one of the most common injuries that ever happens, right? They fall, yep, they're not as bones are a little brittle, etc. So you go through this protocol. They get a surgery, they get the replacement, they have to go through PT. They may take some time to be in assisted care so that the healing can take place because they don't want them to go back in the home. They found that when they went back in the home too early, what did they do? They fell over again, right? Give them all the the walker and all the equipment and all the stuff and send a PT person out to them and all these other things. It was really well done, you know. But it's something that over time they've learned somehow that if they don't do these stages of care, they end up paying for the surgery again. Again and again, it gets more complicated, etc. It's a far greater cost. Now that that, you know, you're talking about something that exists over a period of two, maybe three months. What do you think it's gonna take for them to see like behavioral health care and mental health care? Because what you're talking about and where you're starting with families, which is a largely where insurance companies back off and stop covering anything, right? In-home care, concierge level, you know, behavioral health adjustments for families, family systems, et cetera. Like, you know, finding an insurance company that's gonna pay for that. It's like, well, you're not a hospital or residence, or you know, there's no license associated with, we'll pay you for therapy, but that's it, you know, whatever, right? What do you think it's gonna take for them to because the the period of time is so much longer, I think that that's part of it. What do you think it's gonna take for them to understand where the actual rubber meets the road in behavioral health care? Because they they killed it in the 90s. Like we're we're still reeling from the managed care decision that was made back then, and here we are in the situation now. What what's it gonna take to convince them otherwise, do you think?

SPEAKER_00 17:47

I've asked myself that a million times because I do think from a revenue model, you know, in the long-term data from clients who have schizophrenia, bipolar, addiction, eating disorder, a variety of different disorders, right? When we see them through the extent and drop down with them at a rate that's good for them, not good for uh an insurance company, we do see the sustainability of the model over time. And I've asked myself a million times with the high relapse rates and the amount of rehabs they're paying for again and again and again, balancing between different levels of care again and again and again because they've been dropped too early. If it makes more financial sense to pay longer for a first time, because we know the more times people are in treatment, the harder it is uh for them to recover. And um, from a dollar amount, it makes sense to me to pay longer for a first time than it does to keep paying for frequent relapses.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

Yeah, I mean hospitalization is not cheap. You know, residential residential treatment ain't cheap. And if a person does, I mean, if you did it right the first time, you could stay in well under, you know, say$100,000. You know, if an insurance company is paying and that sort of thing, like you really can do some good treatment with that amount of money. Yeah, I've seen people spend$100,000 staying in a hospital.

SPEAKER_04 19:24

Yeah.

Defining Success And Preventing Relapse

SPEAKER_02 19:25

And so, you know, I don't I don't know. I think that they don't understand the math because the amount of time that it takes for it for the resolution to happen. You know, I had somebody say, well, you know, they'll never do it because most most insurance prescribers, most, you know, people are paying for their insurance, they'll stick with their insurance company like two or three years. So then nobody wants to take the hit. Because it's gonna take for us to change the system, if you somebody's gonna have to take a hit, you know, for a minute, you get it back, but it if you got you got to take a hit in the beginning. So I I mean, part of me believes that with companies like yours, and as we see it, you know, the thing is is that we we all talk about evidence-based practices, right? But the truth is we had evidence-based practices about this model before managed care came in. We we had we had like act teams that really gave the time, and we had care models that had a continuum of care. We had those things in place, and then we killed them because everybody felt like they were too expensive. All of a sudden, we're in this situation with people coming through, including like you're talking about, the people, the kids I worked with back when I graduated from my undergrad in psychology, are now like they're in their 40s, you know what I mean? And they still need care. Like, but the complications that happened over the period of time, you know, they're incarcerated and they're homeless and they're like reliant on the system, but it never quite catches up. So you're doing work that helps people catch up. Do you do any what like do you do any data? Like, what's what's the data in your in your system as you do concierge level work? What do you see? And and maybe you don't do any formal collection of data, but like give me some success rate numbers for you. Like when you really work with someone, I've seen you work, I've seen you already be successful, but it took a while and it took a staggered, you know, progressive levels of care approach. What are you seeing on the success numbers with the people that you work with that really get to kind of have the systems approach?

Insurance Math Versus Clinical Reality

SPEAKER_00 21:34

So I I think the really hard part for me is that when I start with each family, I ask each person, what does success look like for you? And then we start to standardize it into like, okay, this is what it looks like for things to get better, this is what it looks like for things to get worse. And um, every month we're reviewing it to see where we are. On the chart and what's a how close we are to their definition of success. I think that so often people, whether it's clinicians or uh insurance or treatment center, like different systems are constantly defining what your success should be. So I I'm very, very much into allowing families the agency to define success for themselves, which then makes it harder to track across everybody. But you know, what I've realized, I don't know the exact number of, you know, this amount of percentage of people are successful, but I can tell you that the ones who have not been successful are typically family members. There's an enabler who can't get on board, um, and whose identity and purpose is tied to the sickness and facilitation of well-being of the the person who's struggling. Um there's Munchausen's ask. Very much so. There's um such deep institutionalization of the person of concern that there's no assets in life to stay for, so they don't mind going back and they know and like the structure and actually have purpose, passion, and community within institutional structures. Um and those those are really the two big things um that I've realized undermine people's success rates. But this is what I love about keeping people in real life is that we build assets in their life instead of losing assets and trying to come back and rebuild. And um, if people have one thing that's worth not losing, I know that we can be successful. The scary part is when people say, take it. And you're like, oh no, there's real like it's a power struggle where I'll give up everything just to keep the autonomy of saying F you. I'm you know, you can take everything you think matters to me, and the one thing you can't take is my dignity and ego, and I'm gonna I'm gonna hurt myself just to hurt you. Um but if people have one thing, even one thing that's worth keeping in life, I know they're gonna be okay.

SPEAKER_02 24:24

And and something that is that can be redefined. You know, I find that um a lot of people, this thing that you're talking about, whatever it is that's that's that's important, working with a client right now, and um they suffer from you know suicidal ideation and they've had some hopelessness and trauma and the whole nine yards. Like a story is not unfortunately it's not new, right? And and but they're bel they want people they're having trouble with relationships, they want people to change their minds about like how serious this is and how they're regarded and everything else, but they believe that this kind of behavior is gonna cause these people to change their minds. I'm like really you so they're just gonna change their minds because you do something awful or you say something awful. It's like so let's flip this a little bit. Their math is off, you know, like how they're calculating what it is that's gonna happen as a result of their own behavior or choices, and they're skipping it. It's like that person who walks in the room, it's like, you showing up here makes me want to kill myself. It's like, well, first of all, I can see that you're having a feeling about the fact that I am here. I want to kill myself is not a feeling, it's an action. And maybe you have a feeling that causes you to believe that that course of action is going to be the way that you should proceed. But let's first let's do all the math. You know, let's like in school, I want you to show all your math, show all your work. What's the feeling that you're having right now? And that one, it's my favorite question. It's like it really just it forgive the expression, it kills a lot of that reactiveness. It's like we're gonna identify the feeling first and then see if you've got other choice besides just that one for this feeling.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

My favorite is the sassy ones that are like, I feel like I want you to get out.

Building Life Assets Outside Institutions

SPEAKER_02 26:24

Okay, let's let's play with that a minute. That's an interesting feeling that you're having. Let's talk about that for a minute. No, you know, like I mean, and and in many ways, like you're you you hope that they have some of that, right? Because that means you got something you can engage with. It's like now we got something we can work with, right? Yeah, it's like I want you to have these feelings and be willing to express them because then we can work with it, then we can do something. People who are quiet, internal processors and imploders, they're a little more difficult. You got to see it before it comes out, right? Because a lot of times it's gonna come out in the explosion, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:09

I don't know if you you knew this, but um I'm a certified hostage negotiator. So I went in, I got my level two school.

unknown 27:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 27:21

I got my level two hostage negotiation certification in January. And um, so I'm doing this with the police force. And I guess, you know, with the police, they have something called an OODA loop. Observe, orient, decide, act, and then you loop, right? You keep doing it. I'm like, oh, that's cool. Okay. Um, so you know, during the like final kind of exam, it's a practical thing. You're it's a role play and all of that. But you know, the guy who was the role player, who was the hostage taker, he was like, Yeah, you kept throwing off my oodaloop. And I was like, you know, that's that's exactly what I want to do in life because people come in with these scripts that they want you to play out and they're unspoken. This is gonna be my line, this is gonna be your line. And if I can throw off someone's oodaloop, now there's room for a new story to evolve because you haven't filled in that blank yet. And so now we get to co-create a new narrative. And um, you know, if I come into a house and a young adult or a kid is like, you know, thinking I'm there to change them and I'm there for them, and I don't even and they're gonna lock themselves in their room and I don't even don't even talk to them the whole first day, second day, and then you know, they start getting confused, and we're all downstairs laughing, and now they're getting angry because you're now laughing with my family, and you're having a good time with my family, and we're playing poker, hanging out, and they come downstairs. Now the whole thing has to shift, right? You know, it can't be you're here because you're trying to force me to change and my parents hate me and blah, blah, blah. Now they're confused. They come down and figure out what's going on and what you know, they they think I'm there for them. I say, oh no, actually, I'm here for your parents. They're ready to change and they don't want the things to continue the way they're they're happening. And so they decided they're gonna do something about it. But if you're open to changing and you want to change too, happy to work with you. But I'm here for the ones who want to do something different, and like it just disorients you so much you're not even sure how to respond. Um, and you have to reorient. But think about how that conversation ends up playing out for somebody who's angry, resentful, always the problem, right? Like it's it's different.

SPEAKER_02 29:52

With my oodaloo.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

You go back to the script I had in mind for you.

SPEAKER_02 29:59

That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:02

I I I really we're we're gonna have to that that I'm gonna have to take this term now. It's and use it. The because I call it pat pattern disruption, you know. It's just like, hmm, so I'm just gonna ask you some questions about what you just said and not react to them. Like this, you know, the kid that's got, you know, or the person who's talking about suicide. Oh, you make me want to kill myself and all that stuff. They make those statements like, hmm. And you don't you don't immediately go, oh, you know, react or you know, become concerned for their safety. The first thing you do is like, let's talk about that for a second. Um, I and I just want to ask you some questions because I'm I'm unclear about this statement. And then then they're like, wait, you're not freaking out because it said something.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

So sometimes I made myself want to kill myself too. And here we are. So where do we go from here?

SPEAKER_02 31:00

Get in line. Oh wow, I mean, you know, the as serious as it is, I think that the that to me, and this is what makes us right for the work is that the work is fun. Like, I enjoy doing this with people. Yeah, I enjoy helping them lift them, you know, having conversations that cause them to lift themselves out of in, you know, improper thinking, improper identification of feelings, improper alignment to family systems. Like I enjoy that work. I enjoy watching people start to realign, you know, re-orient, reorient, right? Towards a place that's gonna aim them at well-being.

SPEAKER_04 31:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 31:51

That's cool to do.

SPEAKER_04 31:54

Yes.

Pattern Disruption And The OODA Loop

SPEAKER_02 31:54

Um the other thing, and I I like this is so let's go out on the limbs here for a second. Um because you've got, you know, you work with teams of people, so you've got to pull people in that are, you know, at least, you know, half as good as you at doing what we're talking about, um, and can follow, you know, can be with a person and and follow some directions from the team and those kinds of things. Not everybody's cut out for this work. You know, there's a lot of people who get there's a couple of different ways. You know, there are some people who want to help others because the the driver is they they experience a person, say, who's having anxiety, and that causes them to have anxiety. And when they go to help that person, what they're really doing is they're trying to resolve their own anxiety.

SPEAKER_04 32:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:50

They try like your anxiety is causing me anxiety, I want to help you because I want to stop feeling anxious, which yeah, which is a terrible equation for helping other people.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

The contagion of emotion.

SPEAKER_02 33:01

The contagion of emotion. So you've you gotta have some immunity to that. Um, it comes with experience, but also there's there's also a kind of person that is automatically like I carry and an immunity that I've had it since I was a child. I didn't know I had it as a child. I just as I became as I oh, you know, I this has got to been cool because I've had this ever since I was young. It's just something I had, which is great for the work that I do. But the other, you know, this this other piece that that I see in the field, and I'm wondering what what you do to kind of like choose team members and everything else is this this Chiron's disease, is that you know, I am fulfilling it's the other side, I'm fulfilling my life by helping others. And I'm not saying that what we're doing is not purposeful and fulfilling, you know, like sure it is, but I'm not getting juice, you know. This person's process of healing is not juicing me. I'm not like I don't I'm not looking for credit, you know what I mean? Like, I'm gonna open some doors for you. I'm gonna really love seeing you walk through a few of them and find a way that you can embrace wellness for yourself. And I could, I really don't care whether I get credit for any of that. I have to I'll play the bad guy for you, if that's what you need, in order to walk this path differently. I'll play my role, whatever that role is, and then you can believe mom and dad are great again for some reason, and I was just a terrible evil person that came into your life, and all of a sudden some things got better somehow, and my parents are wonderful again, but that guy, he's awful. And I've got a client's like just like this. Like they said, their life is much better, but I was a terrible person who made them go to treatment. Like I will live in that role for as long as I do. You know me.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

That's the story I have.

SPEAKER_02 35:03

Right. We we we have a we both have t-shirts with with bus tracks on the back of the shirt. Um where somebody just threw us at the bus and we were totally okay with that role. How do you like what is your what is your experience with finding people who kind of have this magic, but their their egos in healthy check? Like, what is your how do you find that? What do you look for in people that are part of your team?

SPEAKER_00 35:30

Years ago, I um was watching a Netflix documentary on the greatest coaches, and I also read this book called The Talent Code. And what I realized from all those things is that it's not skill set that matters, it's the psychological profile. And you cannot cultivate a psychological profile, you can cultivate a skill set. And so I designed a whole psychological profile that we use to rate different candidates that we go through the interview process with. And we first do, you know, a talk interview where we ask questions, and everybody gives good answers in interviews, and then the um, so we have our first round interview, the second one's a panel, the third one's a role play. And so the question is can they actually apply what it is they've been talking about and how it works out when you have a personality fighting back, or you have conflict and family dynamics? And um the thing that drives me more crazy than anyone else is when somebody is trying to look good for the family or look good for you because you're the big boss or whatever. And I always say it's like, you know, no one wants to go into fire, like uh fighting a fire with a firefighter. It's like, am I like, do I look so good at fighting this fire right now?

SPEAKER_01 36:50

Like, are you proud of me fighting this fire? Oh my gosh, I'm like, the water's going right there at the fire, just like you taught me. But I like you're okay with me, right? Like you're you're happy.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

I'm gonna say right.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

When you're focused on how you look fighting the fire, then the fire's raging out of control and it's gonna swallow you whole. So it really bothers you.

SPEAKER_02 37:15

Because you're not paying attention to what's actually important.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

Right. And when you're like when you're not focused on the fire, now my life is on the line with you. And and that's not a good feeling to fight a fire with someone who cares more about how they look fighting the fire than the fact that the fire is about to like swallow us whole um if we can't get it under control. And so being able to test those things from a variety of different angles from asking questions to the pressure of a panel to the pressure of a role play, and then our subsequent training process allows us to be able to see who has the psychological profile, to focus on what's important, to admit when they made a mistake and come back from it and actually have the courage to apologize rather than gaslight somebody and to call it gaslighting when it's not. Yeah. Um and you know, like be able to move forward in a way that's focused on the client rather than them, that that's the person I'm looking to hire. Everything else can be cultivated.

unknown 38:25

Yeah.

Hiring The Right Psychological Profile

SPEAKER_02 38:26

Eckhart Hole said something when uh he was doing one of his like, you know, audience interview kind of things, and person got up to the microphone and's like, Well, I'm asking about the situation because a friend of mine's in it. And, you know, they tell the situation, and Eckhart goes, Well, I can't speak uh to your friend because I might say something entirely different if they were the person asking this question. But I'll answer your question for you, and like it was just brilliant to me. I was just like, you know, every person has this nuance, and there's a connection that we share, an energetic one that is, you know, out beyond all the mechanisms and psychology and everything else, being able to read a person has got a feel to it. You know, there's a real intuition and an art to doing that kind of work. And it's like, I mean, uh, I you how would you respond to this situation? It's like, well, give me a profile about the person first and everything else. I mean, I I've literally yelled at a client. You won't talk, you know, just like I've yelled at him because that was the mechanism at that time. I had to like match them, and then and then and then we started the process of bringing it down. And I didn't think about that when I did it. Like it wasn't something that came out of me. I just some part of me knew this is the thing that they need from you now, so that you can get here and we can co-regulate down.

SPEAKER_04 39:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:57

And it's hard to teach people that.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

It is because you have to empty yourself of yourself so that you could be attuned to what's in front of you.

Closing Thoughts And Sign Off

SPEAKER_02 40:07

Correct. Correct. Attunement. That's a good one. So you've given me like terms and stuff. I'm gonna like I'm totally stealing half of this interview for myself. Do it, Amanda. It has been awesome having you on the show as I knew it would be. Um, I really love your work. I love what you're doing. I'm glad you're out there in the world speaking and doing good things and everything else. I can't wait to run into you at a conference here soon. I'm sure that we will, but um, until then, this has been Head Inside Mental Health with Todd Weatherly on WPVM 1037, the voice of Ashell. Amanda Copler has been our guest and she's fantastic. We'll see you soon.

unknown 41:02

I've not been out there, I've not been out there, I've not been out there, I've not been done, it became a pillow, if the nuts, I don't know. I'll be not paying our pen, I'll be on the pick I don't think I'll be a bad pen, beat up, I'll be a pen, I'll be a pen.

SPEAKER_03 42:11

I'll do so no eat the last in here, I need to find our way home, I want to so no eat the last in here, need to fly my way home. I'll feel so lonely last in here, need to fly my way home, I want it home, I want I feel so lonely, and last in he asked me I need to find my way home, I'll find my way home.