Welcome to the Mental Note Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Darrell R. Pulley. And I’m so glad to be with you.

For this episode of the Mental Note, I came to something on your mind to give you something to think about, something to pull apart and something to bring back together. On the Mental Note Podcast, I’m here to provide you with practical tips to live a holistically healthy, balanced and well rounded life. I’m a mental health professional and I am a minister.

And so what we do on this Mental Note podcast is we combine psychology and theology so that people can live that holistically healthy, balanced and well rounded life. On this podcast, we address the whole person, spirit, soul and body. So welcome again to the Mental Note Podcast.

Today’s episode is about homework. Yes, working inside and outside of the session. Now, I know when I say homework that brings up all kinds of things for people when they hear the word homework, but it’s not a dirty word.

I know that people in school say, the dog ate my homework. I was an educator in a previous life and people had all kind of excuses of why they didn’t do their homework. And so what I devised, even as an educator, was a system where some people were not as good at test taking and other people were not as good at homework.

So the students got to choose whether to put more weight of their grade on their homework or more weight of their grade on their test and depending on how they felt about homework, determine where they put the weight of their grade. So I know it’s bringing up all of those things about, about homework. But in order to get the most out of the therapeutic process, mental health professionals often give clients homework, something to do outside of the sessions and between the sessions so that they can
get the most out of the counseling session.

And it’s important that clients are actively engaged in the therapeutic process both inside and outside of the room, the office, or wherever therapy is taking place. Remember, all the answers are inside of you and the therapist is creating an environment to bring those answers out. All the solutions are inside of you.

And the counseling situation is providing an environment for you to be able to pull those answers, those solutions, those resolutions that are in you, out of you, somebody to listen to you, somebody to provide you with feedback on what it is that you’re saying. But remember, you are the professional on your life you’ve been with longer than anybody else, so you know exactly what you need to do. And so the therapeutic environment gives you that opportunity to bring it out, to be heard, to be
listened to and to not be judged.

And so there’s homework as you’re bringing your whole self to the session, where you’re fully engaged in the session, participating, thinking, expressing your feelings in the session. But there’s also things that you need to do outside of the sess. Everything cannot happen in a 55 minute, 50, 45, 35 minute session.

In order for you to really grow, to heal, to develop, to unfold and become, there’s going to require some work on your part outside of the session. I’ve been a therapist for over 27 years and I just started right away with the Adlerian model of giving people homework outside of the session. It kind of sets the tone for the next session where people know where we left off and it kind of sets the tone of where we’re going based upon the homework.

So in my practice, homework is a central part, an essential part, and a central part of the therapeutic process. And so today I am so honored and grateful to have my daughter, Brittany Robinson, who is an lcpc. Let me say that again.

Brittany Robinson is an LCPC in Baltimore, Maryland and I’m proud to call her daughter. She’s also a wife, a mother, and a phenomenal therapist making a difference in the Baltimore Washington metropolitan area. Good day, Brittany.

How you feeling? Feeling good. I’m happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

I am so honored to see my daughter grow up as a mental health professional. Really helping people to live their best lives and be their best selves. So let’s kind of introduce you to our audience.

How long have you been doing therapy? I have been a therapist since January of 2021. I actually just had to renew my license recently. So I’ll never forget I took the NCE test.

It was during COVID I cried when I passed on my first try. Wow. That I would be a one and done.

It’s known as a one and done because a lot of people had to take the test several times before they can pass. And I took mine on the first try and I was done on that first try. So once I became a therapist, I had someone reach out to me via Instagram.

Okay. Has a private practice and she found me on social media. She inquired about me being her first clinician on her team.

And I was honored and grateful that she gave me a chance. I didn’t have to search for that chance. She came and found me and I was really appreciative that this process was so smooth.

I also remember not being able to have an official graduation once I did become A therapist due to Covid. But then we were actually granted the opportunity about a year later. And I’m glad that I was able to walk across the stage because I felt like I deserved it.

So since 2021, I have been doing the mental health work. Wow. Congratulations.

Congratulations. We need more young people that are qualified therap. We need more people of color who are qualified therapists to be able to help our community, as well as people in various communities who desire to have a different voice and a different perspective in the therapeutic environment.

So tell us a little bit about. Why did you choose. Of all the things in life that you can be, why did you choose to become a therapist? Well, an undergrade at Hampton University, I was a psychology major, and my concentration was merging family therapy.

I was actually one of the first students to take on that concentration because it was fairly new, and I was actually honored to be one of the first. I always knew I wanted to be a therapist because I was influenced by my dad, Dr. Girolo Poly, who was also a therapist. I felt like being a therapist came naturally to me.

For as long as I could remember. People always loved to come to me, you know, with their problems, and I really enjoyed listening to them and being there for them. I knew that I was good at helping people come to conclusions that they couldn’t always come to themselves.

And helping them in that way always made me feel good. I felt like, oh, wow, I helped them, and it made me feel good about myself. And then after undergrad, I had no real plan in place.

I mean, I knew I wanted to be a therapist, but the plan wasn’t really laid out for me. So I had plans to kind of take a break from schooling. So I did take a break, but then I did about three years later jump into the master’s program at Warden University, and that’s when I took all of my courses.

And then I graduated. Actually, before I went to Walden University, I was a substitute teacher, and I thought that my calling had switched over to becoming a teacher. However, the Baltimore Teaching Academy denied me at the time, and I wasn’t used to denials, So I was really disappointed.

I was upset. And, you know, I’m like, well, supposed to be a therapist. That’s.

That’s what it is. I’m supposed to be a therapist. So even though I enjoyed sovereignty teaching, that wasn’t my true calling.

And it went right back to what I always knew I wanted to be, which is a therapist. Wow, look, a powerful journey to get into being a therapist and being able to help people in that particular way. There are always so many different ways to help people through education, through therapy, through community service and outreach.

And I’m glad that you chose this path to help people through therapy by becoming a therapist. So tell me, what do you find rewarding about being a therapist? I heard you say earlier that you like to help people, and you felt good about helping people. And so now that you’ve been a therapist since 2021, tell me what you find most rewarding about being a therapist.

The most rewarding thing about being a therapist is watching my client achieve the goals that they set for themselves. I’ve had some clients since I became a therapist, so four years now. And so it’s very rewarding to see the treatment plan really unfold.

You know, we set these goals and they accomplish them, and we feel like we really did the work. So that is what’s extremely rewarding. I also find great reward in seeing people actually graduate from therapy.

I think that some people don’t realize that the whole purpose of going to therapy is to be able to get to a point where you don’t have to go as much. I feel like everyone can benefit from going to therapy and having a therapist throughout their life, but the point of it is to be able to use the tools that you learned in therapy to not need it as much. So you go from needing it on a weekly basis, to needing it on a biweekly basis, to a monthly basis, and to the point where I can just, you know, set
up a session when I feel like I really need it, but not needing therapy as a clutch, as a crutch, you know, for yourself, and being able to use the tools that you actually learn in therapy.

So when my clients get to that point, it’s very, very rewarding because I feel like we’ve actually done the work and they’ve accomplished their goals. Yes. Therapy is the one profession where we’re always working ourselves out of a job, where some people want you to keep coming back and keep coming back.

But in the therapeutic profession, the goal is for us to work ourselves out of a job where you’ve got the skills, the techniques to be able to take what you learned in therapy and apply it to your life and to remember the goals that you accomplished before and to see the similarities in this situation, say, okay, I can use those same skills, those same tools in this particular situation, to be able to overco. To be able to process and to unfold even more using the skills and the techniques that I
learned in therapy and so one of those techniques that we do in therapy is homework. And I described to our audience already how I use homework in the session.

So tell me, do you give homework for clients outside of the session? Why or why not? Yes, I absolutely give homework to clients outside so that they can work on it outside of the session. I’m a firm believer that one must practice what they are learning inside of the session, outside of the session. So it’s important for them to actively work towards achieving their goals.

Every session may not call for homework every single time, but I feel like most of the time, I can figure out what a homework assignment would be after that session. I feel like there’s always something. Now, if there’s a session that was really heavy, and, you know, we talked a great deal about things that could be a bit overwhelming, then that may not always call for homework right after that, they might need some time.

The homework might be to just process the session that we had. However, that’s still homework in itself. And I do believe that, like I said, you know, there’s always room for some type of homework as you can.

Yes. And what I love about the homework, even if it’s been a heavy session, that sometimes, sometimes I might assign them the journal to keep processing their thoughts and their feelings about the big thing that we discussed or the big discovery that we came to in counseling. And so even like you said, if it’s no more than processing what we talked about in the session, that there is always something that they can do outside of the session.

I tease my clients. I say, I want you to be thinking about me when you leave. Think about the homework.

And I think that’s the educator in me, you know, because I’ve been a college professor, and I’ve been an assistant principal and a teacher. And so to me, homework is that ongoing process. It’s always something I can do to better myself every day.

And in the therapeutic process, I really try to hold clients accountable, that this is your life, this is your journey, this is your path, this is your voyage. I’m here to help you. I’m here to support you, I’m here to encourage you.

But at the end of the day, you got to do the work. I don’t have a magic wand that I can just wave and magically you gonna be better. You’ve gotta actually do the work.

And I’ve had clients to take a break from therapy because they weren’t ready to do the work. They weren’t ready to invest the time, the energy, the money, the work. Outside of the session, they just thought that I would just come and tell them what they needed to do.

They would just do it, and they would be better. So have you had clients that weren’t up for the work in and outside of the session that may have discontinued therapy for a while? Absolutely. And I feel like they would make other excuses as to why they, you know, would discontinue.

But I knew that the real reason was because they didn’t want to put in the work. I feel like putting in the work does take time. It takes effort, it takes energy.

So if you’re not willing to do that, it’s going to show. And you may not. Most of the clients may not always want to be honest about that, but we know that that’s the real reason why.

Yeah, that therapy is work, you know, and sometimes I’ve said to clients to support them in that decision to take a break. Maybe you’ve done as much with this as you can do right now. I often use the image of the onion, where there are layers to issues and layers to things.

And we peel back a couple layers, and maybe that’s far as you can go right now. And you need to take a break, a timeout, a huddle, to say, okay, let me build up some strength and go back and deal with this trauma or deal with this drama that’s happening in my life. Because in therapy, we’re here to help you cope, we’re here to help you change.

And sometimes people, they thought they wanted to change, and then they realize change takes work, it takes energy, it takes effort. So maybe I’m not ready to make that change right now. And so I tell people, I’m not just gonna keep taking your money every week if you’re not working in the session.

If you’re not. I’m not in this for the money. So it’s about you working on yourself.

And if you’re not up to that, it’s okay to take a break and say, okay, I’ve dealt with this as much as I can right now. I need to take a therapeutic break and then come back maybe in six months, maybe in a year, maybe in three or four months, to kind of get myself ready for the work that’s involved in healing myself. Absolutely.

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The therapeutic process is a healing process. You know, just like we have physical sicknesses and ailments and pains, we have mental and emotional illnesses and pains and ways that we’re not functioning. Just like with the body, it’s the same way with the soul, with the mind, with the emotions.

And so just like when you have a surgery, you have a recovery period and they might need that recovery period because they’re not ready to go to the next goal, they’re not ready to work on the next thing. And it’s like, okay, let me take a break and then come back and pick up with therapy. So I’m grateful that you also use that same tool of homework and what a big goal it is that I have for today’s session is to kind of prepare people mentally and emotionally for the work that it’s going to take
to really change that.

Therapy is not magic, it’s work. And whether that’s individual therapy or couples therapy or family therapy or group therapy, there’s going to be some work involved and some of that’s going to happen in the session. And some of that you’re going to have to do on your own outside of the session, because a therapist is not going to be with you.

24, 7, 365. So some of these skills that you’re learning in therapy, you go out there and you implement them in your life and then you come back and talk to us about how did that work? What did you learn from that experience? What can you do better next time? So it is a learning experience. The therapeutic process is a healing experience.

It’s a learning experience so that people can grow. All right, so how do clients benefit when they do the homework outside of the session? What do you see as the benefit to the client to do the homework outside of the session? I feel like there are several key advantages of doing homework outside of the session. So one of them is definitely reinforcing the skills that we learn in the session.

So it allows the clients to practice and reinforce those skills. The strategies, the calm side introduced during the sessions, and it helps to solidify the skills and make them more accessible to their daily lives. Good.

So it’s a reinforcement. I like that. It reinforces that, it takes it deeper.

I like that. A reinforcement outside of the session. It also helps them to apply what they learn in real life.

You know, it gives them the opportunity to do that and bridges the gap between therapy and everyday life. So it encourages them to apply what they’ve learned in the real world situations where it’s going to actually matter the most. So we can talk about it in therapy and it can sound great, but you have to be able to apply it in real life.

You got to be able because the therapeutic environment is like a healing environment and it’s a supportive environment, but you may not get that same support and unconditional positive regard outside of the therapeutic environment. So it’s important that you put those sk to work, as you say, in the real world, so that you really know how to navigate what it is that you’re learning in therapy. Yes.

It also serves as self awareness and reflection as well. So like how you mentioned the journaling piece, mood tracking, increasing your self awareness, helping to identify the patterns and the triggers and progress over time. So when they do the homework, they.

It can be very beneficial to help them become more self aware and help them to reflect. Absolutely. One of my equations that I do with clients is the self love equation, that self love is based on self awareness, self acceptance, and then self actions.

And so with the work that they’re doing outside of the session, it helps them to be more aware of themselves, as you said, their mood, their thoughts, their feelings, and their responses to different stimuli outside of the therapeutic environment. And so once I’m aware, then I can accept it. I can accept, okay, this is what I know about myself.

This is where I am. I accept it. I give myself that acceptance, and then once I accept it, then I can take action.

I can’t accept what I’m not aware of and I can’t take action on what I have not accepted. So to really love yourself is that self awareness, that self acceptance, and then those self actions that it must result in an action that we can say, I love myself, I love myself. Oh, I just love look in the mirror and tell ourselves how much we love ourselves.

And it can be this airy fairy concept. But self love is really about self awareness, self acceptance, and then taking actions to take care of yourself. Because anyone, anything that you love, you take care of.

And so if you’re going to love yourself that means that you’re going to be aware of yourself, you’re going to accept yourself, and then you’re going to take care of yourself. And homework helps you to track that self awareness, that self acceptance. And the actions.

Am I taking the actions? Faith without works is dead. You can believe and feel good about it, but at some point you got to take some action. You got to give feet to your faith and actually move in the direction of your good.

But faith with action, it’s alive and it keeps you alive and it keeps you growing and unfolding. So I’m glad to see that you two find benefits in clients doing work outside of the session that it benefits the clients to do. So now, how does it detract from therapy when, okay, we’ve given a homework assignment to the client from the process outside of the session.

And like school, they didn’t do their homework, they didn’t do the work outside of the session. How does that detract or take away from the therapeutic environment when people don’t actually do the homework outside the session? One way is reduced accountability. So if they’re not doing their homework, they’re not holding themselves accountable for their actions and their behaviors.

So when they do the homework, it. It’s like a sense of responsibility for their progress. But if they don’t, it’s going to reduce the responsibility and in turn reduce the accountability for their behaviors and their actions.

Another point about that is slowing the progress towards their goals. So if they don’t do the homework, then they won’t see the progress the way that they would want because they’re not putting in the time to actually practice what they’re learning in the therapy sessions. So if homework isn’t being completed, it’s gonna delay the achieving the milestones, the goals, and the whole therapeutic timeline in itself.

Exactly. Because remember, this is your life. These are your goals, this is your journey and your path.

And so all the work that you do in the session is helping you. All the work you do outside of the session is helping you. All the work you don’t do in the session is hindering you.

All the work that you don’t do outside of the session is hindering you. So it’s up to you to decide. It’s up for the client to decide how much energy, how much effort, how much time and attention am I going to give to my holistic health and development.

It’s just like washing your face and brushing your teeth and taking a shower and putting on deodorant. There are things that you do to take, take care of yourself physically? What are you doing to take care of yourself mentally? What are you doing to take care of yourself emotionally? You know, we eat, we drink beverages, we get sleep. All these things we do for our physical well being.

But we are whole person, spirit, soul and body. So what are you doing to take care of your soul, to take care of your, your heart, your feelings, your mind, your thoughts? What are you doing to care for yourself and to really show yourself how much you love yourself by investing in you. And people sometimes feel like they’re too busy to put the work into themselves.

But you deserve it. You deserve to live the best life you can. You deserve all the good that life has to offer.

So invest in yourself, put time and energy and money into yourself so that you can live the life that you desire and the life that you deserve. You deserve it. You deserve to be happy, you deserve to be prosperous, you deserve to be successful, you deserve to have happiness in your life.

So do the things that are necessary to manifest that, to bring that into expression in your life because you’re worthy of it and you deserve it. And you also deserve to not feel disappointed or frustrated with guilt because you didn’t do your homework. You didn’t, you know, follow through.

So you want to be happy, like you said, you want to feel at peace, you want to feel like you’re making progress. Absolutely. And I have some of those clients that are like the teacher’s pet.

They going to do every assignment, they’re going to do it on time, they’re going to do it to the fullest. And then I have those clients that don’t do their homework and they try to skirt around it, you know, they try to, you know, circumvent it, but you didn’t do it. And it’s okay to say I didn’t do it.

How do you handle it when the clients do not complete their assignments outside of the session? How do you handle it? What do you do as the mental health professional? Well, one thing that I do is remind them of the importance of it. I think some people, like we stated, have busy lives, have a lot of things going on. So maybe they did want to do it, but they just didn’t make time to or they didn’t put it at the top of their priority list.

But it’s my job to remind them of how important it is to do their homework. It’s also my job to show them, hey, since you didn’t do the homework, this is the consequence for that you didn’t get a chance to practice what we learned. You didn’t get a chance to see if you made any progress.

So there’s consequences for every action. So I remind them of the importance, I explore the consequences, and I try to motivate them. I think motivating them is very important because it builds up the momentum.

Because when people do their homework, they’re excited for the next session, share what they learned, because they are happy that they did what they were supposed to do. So I think helping to build that momentum is very helpful because it gives them some type of something to look forward to for the next session. Absolutely.

I love those strategies that you use to remind them how important it is to also let them know that the consequence of not doing your homework is you giving yourself those consequences. I’m not here to judge you, to beat you up, to make you feel bad, but these are the consequences that you are bringing about yourself as a result of not doing the homework. So one of the things that I do when they don’t do the homework is sometimes I say, if it’s something that can be done in the session, I say,
well, let’s just take a moment to do that.

You know, maybe it was a journal entry. Let’s just take a moment to start out, you know, doing that right here. If it’s something that can’t be done in the therapeutic environment that needs to be done, I reassign it and say, okay, let’s try this again this week.

You know, this was a busy week. This was the holidays. You were with family, you were traveling, and you didn’t get a chance to put in the time and energy and effort to the homeless.

So let me reassign. Let’s try it again this week and ask. Sometimes I might take the homework and say, okay, maybe that was a big chunk.

Maybe we need to break this down into smaller pieces because the therapist is your is on your side. We’re like cheerleaders. We’re like coaches.

We’re like people egging you on and encouraging you to succeed. So when you don’t do your homework in therapy, you know, we’re willing to help you to win. So let’s break it down.

Let’s take this thing into smaller parts. Or maybe it was something that you said you were going to do every day. Let’s just try to do it once this week.

Sometimes it’s breaking it down and reducing the homework to make it attainable, and then we can build up to that goal over time. If they didn’t reach that mark or that benchmark that first time. So there’s always a way to talk about and to renegotiate and to make it more beneficial if it didn’t work the first time.

So homework is certainly an important part of the therapeutic process. Anything else you desire to say about homework in the sessions? Well, the last thing I wanted to address is that you know, why it may be avoided. I feel like you touched on it, but I wanted to kind of like elaborate on that just a little bit more.

Sure. So they might feel overwhelmed or unsure about where to start. We talked about the lack of time or motivation.

Anxiety about addressing the topic is also something that should be considered as well. And then some people might not believe that the homework is useful or relevant. And I think when that is the case, there are different ways that we can address the issue.

So we explore those barriers. We might want to reframe the homework, make it manageable, like you said, and then collaborating what you stated in the beginning, like, okay, so you didn’t do the homework, let’s see if we can collaborate and do it now together, or let’s make time to do that now. So I just wanted to address the why it may be avoided and how to address the reasons why homework may be avoided with the clients.

Absolutely. And the therapeutic place is a safe space. You don’t have to lie, you don’t have to hide, you don’t have to.

You could just say, I just didn’t do it. And you know what, we’re gonna love you and support you and encourage you as well. And so I’m just so grateful for homework being a part of the therapeutic relationship, because it is a relationship and it’s an opportunity to grow and to heal and to change.

And like I said before, everything can’t be done in the 50 minute session. It’s going to call on you to do something different outside of the session to try those things out and see does this work, does this need to be adjusted? And so I’m inviting you to give yourself what you deserve, to really work on yourself and to see yourself as a work in progress, to be patient with yourself while you’re making the changes. Sometimes, even if you fall back into an old pattern, to give yourself grace, to
give yourself mercy and to try it again, and knowing that you’re gonna come to therapy and be supported and encouraged with reaching your goals, because again, these are your goals and this is your life.

Thank you so much, Brittany Robinson, LCPC from Baltimore, Maryland, for being our guest today on the Mental Note the Mental Note Podcast so glad to have you with us today. And as such an enlightening. You were just so enlightening to our audience about what this therapy is about and why therapy is so important and just kind of give them a little bit of taste of they’re thinking about therapy.

It’s giving them a little bit of taste of, okay, how can I prepare myself? What can I expect from going to therapy? And you were just amazing, sharing your experiences, your strength, your hope as a therapist. And we just. Is there any way that it’s maybe there’s somebody in that area that might be looking for a therapist? Is there a way they can get in contact with you or learn more about you and what you do as a therapist? Do you have any information to be able to share? Yes, I can definitely
share my email address.

So I have a few email addresses depending on what insurance you have, but I believe that email is the best way to get in contact with me. So the first email is B robinsonuelsolutions.com so it’s J U e L L s and the other email address is b.robinsonive benevolent.

org so it’s l I V E Benevolent B E N E B O l e n t.org so if you connect with me via email, I can help you to get the resources that you might need. All right.

It looks like you take insurance. What insurances do you take? I take Care First Insurance and Medicaid. So the Care first insurance is linked to the email address and the Medicaid is linked to the live benevolent.

org email address. Wow. Grateful.

So grateful that you’re out there making a difference and helping people to succeed in life. Life is creatable. We can co create with God the life that we desire and the life that we deserve.

Thank you again Brittany Robinson, LCPC from Baltimore for sharing with us as our guest on the Mental Note Podcast again. I’m so exc about all these wonderful guests that we have on the Mental Note Podcast that are helping us to get those practical tips to be able to live holistically healthy, balanced and well rounded lives. We’re marrying psychology and theology and looking at you as the whole person, spirit, soul and body so that you can live your best life and be your best self.

This podcast has come to put something on your mind, to give you something to think about, something to pull apart and something to bring back together for. This is the Mental Note podcast and I’m Dr. Durrell R. Pulley. Stay tuned for our next episode on the Mental Note podcast, Sam.