{"podcast":{"title":"You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist","slug":"you-must-be-some-kind-of-therapist-5142473","podcast_index_feed_id":5142473,"rss_url":"https://feeds.transistor.fm/you-must-be-some-kind-of-therapist","website_url":"https://www.sometherapist.com","image_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/kKSwO8C4wLrjRyUIWjlyIr2zfV-lqxogMZ4PRqp_ams/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:1400/h:1400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzI1NzQ0LzE2NDQy/NzA3NjktYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.jpg","author":"Stephanie Winn","episode_count":221,"summary":"A podcast at the intersection of psychology and culture that intimately explores the human experience and critiques the counseling profession. Your host, Stephanie Winn, distills wisdom gained from her practice as a family therapist and coach while pivoting towards questions of how to apply a practical understanding of psychology to the novel dilemmas of the 21st century, from political polarization to medical malpractice. What does ethical mental health care look like in a normless age, as our moral compasses spin in search of true north? How can therapists treat patients under pressure to affirm everything from the notion of \"gender identity\" to assisted suicide? Primarily a long-form interview podcast, Stephanie invites unorthodox, free-thinking guests from many walks of life, including counselors, social workers, medical professionals, writers, researchers, and people with unique lived experience, such as detransitioners. Curious about many things, Stephanie’s interdisciplinary psychological lens investigates challenging social issues and inspires transformation in the self, relationships, and society. She is known for bringing calm warmth to painful subjects, and astute perce…","last_synced_at":"2026-07-20T16:18:10.386697+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/you-must-be-some-kind-of-therapist-5142473"},"episode":{"title":"214. Too Buddhist, Not Self-Hating Enough: Counseling Whistleblower Suzannah Alexander","slug":"214-too-buddhist-not-self-hating-enough-counseling-whistleblower-suzannah-alexander","published_at":"2026-05-18T08:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/you-must-be-some-kind-of-therapist-5142473/214-too-buddhist-not-self-hating-enough-counseling-whistleblower-suzannah-alexander","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/you-must-be-some-kind-of-therapist-5142473","url":"https://share.transistor.fm/s/c6979a24","audio_url":"https://pdcn.co/e/media.transistor.fm/c6979a24/a20e0747.mp3","summary":"In this episode, I sit down with Suzannah Alexander — counseling-education whistleblower, writer of the Substack Diogenes in Exile , and now organizer with the National Association of Scholars. Suzannah enrolled in a Tennessee counseling master's program after 25 years as a stay-at-home parent, only to discover that what was being taught wasn't psychology at all. It was demographics, identity politics, and what she eventually came to call a totalitarian philosophy dressed up as \"multicultural competency.\" We unpack the moment that broke her trust in the program: when she described the Buddhist practice of the non-self — focusing less on your own identity so you can extend loving kindness toward an aggressive client — three separate professors told her, within 48 hours, that this was \"invalidating to other identities.\" She was ultimately deemed unsafe for practicum because she hadn't sufficiently absorbed the program's values around whiteness, privilege, and cultural deference. From there, the conversation widens into the structural picture. Suzannah walks us through CACREP, the accrediting body that's been quietly building a near-monopoly on counseling education, the ACA Code of Ethics that's now baked into most state licensure boards, and the consortium of organizations that decided — without testing whether any of it produces better clinical outcomes — that critical social justice ideology would be the \"professional identity\" of American counseling. We talk about why this matters for patients, what it does to the people who would have been excellent therapists, how we might build alternative training pathways and apprenticeship models outside the current system, and why the problems of the 21st century — including AI psychosis — will demand the kind of pioneering, fr…","meta_description":"In this episode, I sit down with Suzannah Alexander — counseling-education whistleblower, writer of the Substack Diogenes in Exile , and now organizer wit…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":6486,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/you-must-be-some-kind-of-therapist-5142473/episodes/214-too-buddhist-not-self-hating-enough-counseling-whistleblower-suzannah-alexander/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/you-must-be-some-kind-of-therapist-5142473/214-too-buddhist-not-self-hating-enough-counseling-whistleblower-suzannah-alexander.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}