Staying Curious to Achieve Professional and Personal Growth in Therapy Practice with Dr. Racine Henry

Racine Henry [00:00:00]:

Invest time and energy in identifying who you are as a clinician as a person and defend that like hell. You know, figure it out. Name it, get to know it, think about all the parts of it and stay true to that. Let that be like your home base and your guiding force, because it can be easy to get caught up, I think, in what feels right and make sense, whether it's let me get this full time job so that I don't worry about chasing clients or let me risk everything to be in private practice and grow that and build it. And whatever your path is, just be congruent. You know, figure out you can only be congruent when you know what it is you're being congruent with. And so I think it starts with like, just investing that time and energy into figuring out who you are and letting that sort of make your decisions for you.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:00:55]:

This is Heard Business School, where we sit down with private practice owners and industry experts to learn about the business of therapy together. I'm your host, Michael Fulweiler. Marriage and family therapists are the unsung heroes of healthy relationships. My next guest is here to change that. Doctor Racine Henry is not only a skilled marriage and family therapist, but also a passionate educator and the founder of Sankofa Marriage and family therapy. With a PhD from Drexel University in couple and family therapy and years of hands on experience, Doctor Henry is a trailblazer who's transforming the field. Her innovative approach, called ICT or integrative culinary therapy, blends her love for cooking with therapeutic practices, creating a fresh, relatable way to connect with clients and address their unique needs. In our chat, Doctor Henry dives into how she navigated the challenges of building her practice, finding her niche and embracing her authenticity to create a thriving business.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:02:01]:

She emphasizes the importance of staying true to yourself and your therapy practice by investing time and understanding your identity and boundaries. We explore the power of thinking outside the box to build your caseload and grow your practice by diversifying your offerings. This conversation is all about professional and personal growth as therapists, helping you stay curious and refine your skills to better serve your clients. Now, let's dive into my conversation with Doctor Henry. Doctor Racine Henry, welcome to the show.

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Racine Henry [00:02:33]:

Thanks so much for having me.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:02:35]:

People may not know this, but I'm actually your publicist.

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Racine Henry [00:02:40]:

Yes, my poorly paid publicist, actually not.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:02:43]:

On the payroll yet.

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Racine Henry [00:02:44]:

Not there?

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Michael Fulwiler [00:02:45]:

No, it's an unpaid internship. Thank you. But in all seriousness, we connected on Twitter a few years ago, I think, and have become friends and I just really appreciate you and grateful for you coming on.

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Racine Henry [00:03:02]:

Same here. Thank you so much.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:03:04]:

I also have a soft spot for MFT's. I spent the first eight and a half years of my career at the Gottman Institute. So just wanted to express appreciation for the work that you do as a marriage and family therapist. We're gonna get into that. I also wanna give you the opportunity at the top of the show here to plug a petition that you started. Could you talk about that? Yes.

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Racine Henry [00:03:29]:

So marriage and family therapists are the only helping profession without a national month of recognition. And I realized this when I saw, I think, social work month happened a few months ago and I kind of googled like, when's MFT month? And nothing came up. So I thought we should start one. And I arbitrarily picked August. I'm a summer baby. I didn't want to be in July where my birthday was, and so I just picked the next month. And so that was really the science behind it. There are some other things I found about, like Piaget and Freud and how August means something in the mental health field.

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Racine Henry [00:04:04]:

But that aside, I began a petition on change.org, comma, where about eight signatures shy of 1000 signatures. It hasn't been up for a month yet, which is great. I've been in contact with AAMFT or the American association for managing family therapy about them helping with the advocacy. I also have plans to contact my local assembly person who I know personally for help with getting it to Congress. So hopefully before August or the next year or so, we'll have August as national MFT month.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:04:37]:

That's amazing. I look forward to that. We will drop the link in the show notes. So if you're listening to this, if you're watching this on YouTube, hit pause right now. Go sign the petition. I signed it this morning. Share it with everyone you know. We'll get it out for MFT's out there.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:04:54]:

Would love to dive right in. You got your PhD from Drexel and couple and family therapy. You also did a fellowship, I understand, through the AMFT. Could you talk about what that experience was like?

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Racine Henry [00:05:10]:

Yes, I was a part of the minority fellowship program. It's now changed names to the Advancement for Human Systems Foundation, I think, for the advancement of human systems. And basically it's a support network for minority identified students or those who have a strong interest in working with minoritized populations who are pursuing MFT degrees. The fellowship is larger than just MFT's. It's in other helping professions as well. But my experience was amazing. I now serve on the advisory council for the fellowship as well. So I get to be a part of choosing the next round of fellows.

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Racine Henry [00:05:46]:

And I presented at their institutes a few times in the past as well. So it's for master's students and doctoral students. You can apply before you even get into a master's program as well. And there's a financial aspect to it. So you do get funding behind the fellowship, but the purpose is to support your interests in treating minor on high populations, but also those who are dealing with substance abuse issues primarily. It was initially funded through SAMHSA, which is a substance abuse organization, a federal organization. And really, substance abuse is unavoidable. It permeates all populations, all treatment issues, all cultures.

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Racine Henry [00:06:23]:

And so it's a really important presenting problem to know how to address, know how to assess for, to know how to treat, among other things. So my focus has always been on couples, but again, with couples, with any person, there's usually a threat of substance abuse at some level, whether it's in family history, personal history, present, you know, issues, whatever the case is, I learned a lot in that fellowship. We had different institutes that were, I believe, biannually when I was in the program, and they had guest speakers come. So it was like two days, two or three days intensive of learning in all these workshops. And then part of it was also going to Congress, going to DC, and lobbying for different things that MFT's were wanting to, you know, get past. And they still do that now. There's also a community service aspect to the fellowships. When you go to these intensives, you're also contributing to the community that you're going to.

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Racine Henry [00:07:15]:

And there are different locations out the country for each one. So it's a really great way to network, to meet other people who are in the same part of the journey as you are towards becoming licensed MFT's. And as a person of color, as a woman of color, it was great to meet other people of color and to learn from people of color in a field that is still very white, male dominated. And I think it was one of the best parts of my doctoral experience, for sure.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:07:42]:

That's amazing. Yeah. I was gonna ask if, you know, the percentage of MFT's who are non white. I imagine it's probably pretty small. I've seen the statistics on psychologists and I think it's like 2% or something of psychologists are black. So do you know, with MFT's, is it similar?

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Racine Henry [00:07:59]:

I believe it's probably less. MFT is a smaller field there are a lot more women in the field now, I think, than before. And I think it's also good that we're having a lot more men of color as well and people who are non binary, people who are from, you know, sexual minorities or gender minority populations. So that's really great because that's how we sort of be more culturally competent and get true diversity happening. But it also challenges the field, too, because mental health as a whole is rooted in white supremacy and patriarchy, right. There are a lot of ways in which how we diagnose or what diagnoses are come from institutions that supported racism and slavery and all those other things. So as the field, the clinicians, change, I think it brings more awareness to what our clients need, and then we can develop different policies, different best practices that are truly helping the people that we're serving.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:08:58]:

I'm glad you brought that up. I want to come back to that because you've developed your own unique method of couples therapy that we're going to talk about. I do want to ask, before we get to that, why you got into couples therapy in the first place. Have you always been interested in relationships, or was it something in graduate school that you decided to pursue?

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Racine Henry [00:09:20]:

I think both. So I've always loved relationships. And talking about relationships, it always fascinated me how these two people decided to be together and how they stay together. Right? Like that magic of meeting a complete stranger who you then 1012 years later, you know, you're with and have children with or a life with. Going into undergrad, I wanted to be a physician. I wanted to be a pediatrician. I did not do very good at, like, the sciences in high school, so getting into college, I was like, not taking physics again. There's no way.

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Racine Henry [00:09:49]:

I barely survived the first time. And so I sort of pivoted because I always wanted to be Doctor Henry. I always liked the idea of that. And I wasn't raised to believe in, like, limits or things being impossible. So I thought, okay, I'll define a different way to be Doctor Henry. And that was the PhD route. And so it was just a matter of, like, what would I get the PhD? In my junior year in undergrad, I discovered I couldn't get a double major by just taking three extra classes. And so I was like, cool, two majors.

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Racine Henry [00:10:15]:

Sounds like I did college good, you know? And so in the second majortain, my first was psychology. Second was sociology, social psychology. I learned about the field of MFT and that it was a thing I didn't know. Marriage and family therapists were not marriage counselors or not just people who, you know, dabbled in working with relationships. And I went into it because my advisor at the time was like, there are states that are making divorces more of a process that involves mandatory couples therapy before filing, and that would create a need for more couple therapists. So I was like, great. I have job security lined up. Let's just go and do it.

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Racine Henry [00:10:50]:

And I thought, very erroneously, that I'd be learning about love and relationships and learning about, you know, how to keep people together. And the very first day of grad school, it was like, nope, that's not what we're here to do. We're talking about the science behind how people interact, how people bring their past experiences and their families of origin and their belief systems into interpersonal relationships overall, not just romantic ones, but I was always focused on the romantic ones. I always knew I wanted to focus primarily on couples. I didn't get the chance to do that until about ten years later when I began my own private practice in 2018. But prior to that, you know, in internships and other settings, I was always finding a way to focus or know about the romantic relationships. Part of why I love being an MFT, specifically is that we focus on relational therapy. So I think the field is like a misnomer.

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Racine Henry [00:11:45]:

That's not about couples. It's not about families. It's about relationships. It's about how do you relate to the world as an individual person? How does that then impact the conflicts or issues that you're having interpersonally? How do you relate to who you identify as in the society you live in? So here in this country, what does it mean to be a black woman or a white man? What messages have you been taught about that identity? How have you experienced the world, that identity? And how does that also impact what you're going through mentally and emotionally? So even if we have an individual client, I'm still asking about your family, your work relationships, your friends. Right? So there's this global, humanistic aspect to the work that we do. And so that's what sort of sustained me from that very first day. I truly believed. I've always been an MFT.

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Racine Henry [00:12:33]:

I just didn't know it until I knew that language or that terminology. It felt and still feels so second nature to just who I am as a person and how I want other people to feel about themselves and their lives. So it's very strengths based, very empowering, very be who you are and as you are. And what does that mean about how you get through life and shifting some things, but at the core of it, being secure and confident that you're capable of whatever you want to have happen.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:13:03]:

It'S a great point that you're making. I think that mental health in the last four or five years, like coming out of the pandemic, has become a lot less stigmatized. Going to therapy has become a lot more normalized. But it seems like that's really limited to individual therapy. I think couples therapy is still seen as something that you do if you have a problem in your relationship. People don't talk about going to couples therapy with their partner because it sends the message like, oh, they're going to get divorced, or maybe there was an affair. I think there's still a lot of work to be done and a lot of conversations to be had around not just the couples therapy work, but the relational therapy as well. Right? There's this great Esther Perel quote that the quality of your life is dependent on the quality of your relationships.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:13:54]:

I may have butchered that, but it's that sense, right? It's like our lives are relational. We had Doctor Melvin Varghese on the show and he talked about how business is about relationships, right? Like, the way that we interact in the world is about relationships. And so if you can learn relationship skills, like, it's going to impact you in other parts of your life, not just in your romantic relationships. I feel very fortunate that I was able to work with the Gottman's for many years. And, you know, that's impacted how I relate to people at work, how I relate to my friends. So I definitely would encourage folks to look into couples therapy or relational therapy just to read up on it and learn some of those relationship skills.

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Racine Henry [00:14:40]:

I think you make a good point about people coming to therapy more often. It's definitely true, even for, and especially for black people. You know, in 2021, how to find a black therapist is one of the most searched Google phrases. And that just speaks to not only the progression that we've made as a community, but also the impact of all the socio political things that were going on in the last ten years especially, and how that's impacted an awareness for mental health services or mental health health, right? Like, we don't have mental health physicals or we have yearly body physicals, and we've operated for too long on this. This idea that we can separate the mind from the body. And any therapist and physician will tell you that they're all connected, of course. And so how one part of your body is doing is going to impact the rest of you. And that's true for just your overall well being.

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Racine Henry [00:15:34]:

So if you're not feeling well physically, you may not have the best attitude. If you have a mental stress or emotional stressor, your body can reflect that in physical illnesses. And so if we don't start to treat all of us and all of our experience and all of who we know ourselves to be, we're going to continue to have all these different things that I think can be avoidable.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:15:57]:

Definitely. And just one more point here and then I want to move on, is that my understanding is the number one thing that clients bring up in individual therapy is relationship issues and challenges. Right. That's like, if not the biggest stressor, one of the biggest stressors. So as a therapist, doing some trainings, learning about couples therapy and relationship therapy, so you can start to apply some of those skills in your individual work as well. Of course, like referring out when needed, but I think it just makes you a better clinician as well.

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Racine Henry [00:16:29]:

Sure.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:16:30]:

You mentioned that you started your private practice in 2018. Can you talk about what that experience was like for you? What the process was? What were the steps that you took to start your own business?

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Racine Henry [00:16:44]:

Yeah. I was lucky enough to have an internship that began in 2014 that I was at for almost, well, for eight years. I left just before getting my most recent teaching position, and the internship was at a private practice with a wonderful woman who I'm still mentor, mentee and friends with to this day, who, ironically enough, is a licensed clinical social worker. But her practice was new when she hired me. I was her first hire. She now has, like, ten or twelve clinicians, and it's this huge, booming business. And so getting in at the very, like, ground level, I was able to learn so much from her. I learned a lot about the business side.

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Racine Henry [00:17:24]:

She was a wonderful supervisor. She was a great, just like, life, you know, mentor as well. And I think without that experience, I would have been floundering a lot more in my private practice than what I was, thankfully. So I could, I can call her right now and say, like, what about this thing? And she would give me, you know, a great answer. But I was also able to see how it happened in real time. I saw her get audited by insurance companies all the time. I saw her struggle with, like, having to meet payroll, but also having to, like, pay her own bills and keep lights on. I saw that when we grew and she rented a new space, what that cost meant and how legal things like with health insurance laws, how that trickled down to what we did with our clients in real time.

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Racine Henry [00:18:06]:

So the EHRs that we use, electronic health record systems that we use, people that we brought in to do trainings, I now go back there and do trainings, I now go back there and surprise other clinicians as well, just seeing how things can shape and move in a business, but then also learning different ways to make money and to create and generate, you know, income. I learned a lot from her. So the process for me was, I always knew I wanted to be in private practice to focus on treating black and brown couples and non monogamous couples and interracial couples. That wasn't the initial goal. The non monogamous, interracial couple sort of found me along the way. But the black and brown couples were always my focus, and a lot of that was because I was treating so many clients who were not black and brown throughout my entire career, no matter where I went in school, that I knew that I wanted to, as a black therapist, treat people who were. Who looked like me. And she was always a very big proponent of that, even though she's not black herself.

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Racine Henry [00:19:03]:

And that was really important, too. So that influenced everything from the name that I chose of Sankofa, marriage family therapy. Sankofa is a west african bird from folklore, and the word sankofa means, in order to go forward, one must use the best of what's in your past. So you can't go forward without looking backwards. Right? And the Sankofa bird is always pictured flying forward, looking backwards, holding an egg in its mouth, which I think is really great symbolism for what I believe to be true about therapy, too. Right? That understanding where you come from and who race and all those elements of how you got to be who you are, understanding that healing from whatever trauma may be a part of that, knowing how to use the strengths and the resilient qualities of that, is what's going to help us go forward in the best way and propel us forward. So that was how I named my practice. The process was very interesting, being in New York.

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Racine Henry [00:20:01]:

There are a lot of processes and policies in New York that are very antiquated, that don't exist in other states. So one of those being, when you start a new business, you have to advertise in a weekly and daily paper, like newspaper, a published physical paper, for six months straight. And as a new business, where do you get the money to do that? You know, like, how do you even afford just that? Getting the name was a big deal because New York has all these rules about what you can and cannot name something, but they don't tell you the rules. They just tell you that name won't work. Try again. And you have to kind of trial and error. And this is all happening through snail mail, at least in 20, 1617. It was when I was establishing all this.

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Racine Henry [00:20:40]:

So you're mailing things, you're signing things, you're taking copies and mailing other things back. It was just a whole bunch of myself. I refused to pay anybody to do it. I refused to, you know, sink more money into a new business before even seeing my first client, but got that all figured out, and I've been treating clients ever since. I also do other things, like consulting with other businesses. I supervise as other clinicians. I again do trainings, webinars, workshops, etcetera.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:21:10]:

I want to talk about those other income streams and really dive in. I'm curious if there was anything when you did go out on your own that maybe surprised you that you weren't expecting. It sounds like you had a great introduction to the business of private practice, working at the group practice. Recommend that to therapists. Like, if you have the opportunity to go work for someone else when you're first entering the field, it's a great way to learn versus just jumping right in. And some folks do that. They just jump right in. That's okay, too.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:21:44]:

But I'm curious, once you did go out on your own, was there anything that was surprising or unexpected?

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Racine Henry [00:21:50]:

So in my practice, I've never taken insurance. And part of that was seeing her go through all these insurance battles and just saying, I don't ever want to be a part of that. I was surprised about the guilt I felt having a private pay rate and saying that rate out loud to new clients, especially to black clients, who I felt like having a rate that didn't involve insurance that, you know, is three figures high could create a barrier to treatment. And the whole point of me being a black therapist was to remove barriers to treatment. So I really had to work through that guilt I felt around asking what I thought I was worth and treating the people that I wanted to treat. And that's not to pathologize and say, black people can't afford therapy, but therapy is expensive as hell, right? Like, I can't afford my own rate if I were to go to therapy every single week, necessarily. So just having the consciousness of that and balancing it with doing a lot of pro bono therapy, of course, offering sliding scale fees. But at the end of the day, this is a business I have to run.

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Racine Henry [00:22:56]:

And having to figure out where that ethical, moral, and like, personal values balance happened while also trying to navigate being a business owner.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:23:05]:

How did you get clients early on? Like, how did you market your business besides putting an ad in the newspaper?

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Racine Henry [00:23:14]:

Well, I had a lot of word of mouth from the practice I was in for all those years because I wanted to reach black and brown people. And I work and live in Staten island where it's a mostly a white dominated, you know, borough and city. I use things like psychology today, which I know is super controversial, but I, you know, use them. I use therapy for black girls, and that was fairly new back then as well. So that was exciting to see and to be a part of. And I know we both love doctor joy and she's amazing. And I just tried to learn marketing. I still feel like I'm horrible at marketing, which is why I don't pay you to do it to do it for me.

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Racine Henry [00:23:55]:

But marketing, I think, has been my biggest struggle as a clinician. Like, there are a lot of ethics around how we can market as therapists and what we can say and whatever else, but besides that, I think marketing requires like, consistency and patience. And I'm not a very patient person, so I like, have ideas about things I want to do and I want to do it tomorrow. And so I've had to learn of, like, creating a timeline for things and, you know, rollouts and how to be strategic about when and where and to whom I marketed. So over the years, word of mouth has always been my biggest marketing tool. But doing things like interviews, being involved in popular media has been really helpful. So I've been in different publications, you know, over the years, and that's helped generate clients. And going to conferences helps because you can network and then therapists will refer clients to you.

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Racine Henry [00:24:48]:

And so when I was seeing clients in person, I would be in office suites with other professionals, whether they were lawyers or physicians, whomever else, and we would kind of exchange business cards and talk about referring clients to each other. But since the lockdown of the pandemic, I have not gone back in person. So doing things virtually has been a huge shift in my business. And it's changed that marketing aspect, too, because I spend so much more time online that there are different and easier, I think, ways to market social media being one of them, for sure.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:25:21]:

I'm glad you brought that up because that's where I was going to go next. How has your business changed since the pandemic? Were you seeing clients in person before? Now you're seeing everyone online, like how you're marketing your business. You mentioned the networking aspect. Are you using software tools now, maybe to manage your business that you weren't using, say, five years ago? I'm just curious how the business has changed for you.

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Racine Henry [00:25:43]:

No, I'm really old school. I don't use any software tools. I barely type my notes. I like to handwrite them. I'm still back in that, the archaic way of doing things. But since lockdown, like I said, I haven't gone back in person. Before lockdown, I had offices in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten island. So, and I was using, like, peer space and those kinds of, like, rent by the hour things.

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Racine Henry [00:26:07]:

So I was literally in any given day traveling to all three boroughs, you know, trying to find parking and paying for toll, being in traffic. And so one of the best things I think about lockdown for me personally, has been like a better quality of life that I now do everything primarily online, which allows me to not be in a rush all the time, to feel like I'm not, like, running everywhere forever. I can do a lot more other non therapy related things that are businesses or interests or hobbies or whatever else. And I find that my clients also have a better quality of life. They're not worrying about babysitters or rushing to find parking and still getting that human to human interactions. So getting, you know, quality therapy. Prior to the pandemic, I was so anti teletherapy again, being old school training, you know, in front of a one way mirror and being in the physical space of the client. But I think having over a decade of those experiences definitely helped the transition, and that's been really key.

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Racine Henry [00:27:06]:

I think for my business specifically, it's been easier to connect with people virtually as well, because during lockdown, they gave out all these provisional licenses in different states. I was able to have clients, you know, a larger scale and again, connect with other people in different states as well, and network and that kind of thing. But I think it just exposed the need for mental health treatment and also, like, all the barriers that we have to it, like not having compact laws or not having reciprocity with licenses across states. So for me, it's just sort of empowered me to do more outreach and to do more things that bring awareness to what MFT's do and who we are and how valuable the work that we do. Is.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:27:49]:

Is there work that's being done to change some of those state licensing regulations? I know for psychologists, for example, they have PSipact, where it's like, you can see clients in 30 different states. Now, is it the same for MFT's, or do you see it going in that direction?

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Racine Henry [00:28:04]:

We're trying desperately. There are a lot of states that have started the compact agreements in legislature. We are constantly lobbying for that. It's difficult because there are some states that are larger, like California, who operate somewhat independently from other states when it comes to licensure requirements and all those other pieces of it. So I don't see it ever being like a nationwide compact. But I do think that there are steps being taken and advocacy happening to, you know, lessen some of those barriers because some states have very few therapists and others have so many therapists. So if we had some state line crossing, I think it would benefit the clients more than anything else.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:28:50]:

So you've developed your own unique method of couples therapy. I mentioned this earlier. It's called integrative culinary therapy. ICT. Could you talk about that? Like, how it came to be?

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Racine Henry [00:29:03]:

ICT is my second baby after my daughter. Integrative culinary therapy is. I talk about in this way of, like, I'm so sort of in shock that it's like a real thing and people are, you know, doing it and liking it, and it's, of course, effective because I created it. But again, another, like, irony of my life is I was always a big enemy of evidence based models, right? I felt like the manualizing and the structure of it was just so limiting and nothing true to the dynamic quality of being a human being. But here I am developing an evidence based model, right? So the basis of ICT is about treating black couples. And as I was talking about before, about identifying the unique needs of populations and then having methods and practices that fit those populations, right? So ICT for me is that I think black people, and black couples especially, I think black couples love differently and have different needs that don't align with eurocentric ideals or eurocentric standards of what a relationship is or looks like. And that's fine, right? We're all different people. It's not a matter of better or worse.

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Racine Henry [00:30:15]:

It's just different and unique. And rather than trying to mold and shape that into some other norm, I want to highlight that and celebrate that as what it is. So in this country, with all of our history of slavery, of Jim Crow laws, of dehumanizing the black family and demonizing black mothers and blaming the ills of what we know to be white supremacy on black people inherently being wrong or less than. I wanted to shift that narrative, and I wanted to create a way that black couples can be oriented to therapy. Without feeling like, this is not for me, this is not about me or meant for us. And that can happen in a multitude of ways. My way, though, is using cooking and food. I've always loved food and cooking.

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Racine Henry [00:31:03]:

I've always been interested in cooking to the point of like, almost going to culinary school for undergrad instead of going to a traditional undergrad. That's sort of the time, though. But in going to grad school in other states and being, you know, by myself in this apartment multiple times, I started cooking a lot for myself, and I found that was my way of expressing love to other people. I love feeding people. Anyone knows, they come to my house. You're not going to leave until you eat something. Even in college, I have an event planning company, and people came to parties early because they knew the food was going to be there. You come and eat pregame, you leave, get dressed, and you come back.

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Racine Henry [00:31:40]:

That was always the thing for my parties. It's been a part of who I am and how I've practiced self care and that kind of thing. But it really came to a head in merging the two loves of therapy and cooking when I had my own daughter. So my family is jamaican, my husband's family is black american, and my mother was our caregiver for my daughter's first ten months of life. Thankfully. We were so lucky to have her retire a month before my daughter was born. And it was always a joke her and I had growing up of like, I'm gonna, you know, give my kids to you when you retire. And it happened that way.

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Racine Henry [00:32:15]:

So my mother is very old school jamaican. She's an immigrant to this country, but, you know, she's americanized, she has her own PhD and, you know, whatever else. But Jamaican is her leading, you know, like, personality trait. She wanted to feed my daughter cornmeal porridge when she was watching her, which is very traditional, drink and, like, breakfasts. Right? It's amazing. My husband was like, no, I don't know what that is. I don't want her eating it. I'm afraid of her choking.

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Racine Henry [00:32:40]:

I'm not familiar with it. And it wasn't just a huge blow up, but it did. Cause I think it caused me an awareness of like, oh, he has an opinion about something that to me, feels so inherent and feels so unnatural, right? That. Not that I didn't consider him caring about what his kid ate, but I guess I didn't consider that it'd be a no. It's like, oh, she's eating. She's baby. Of course, everyone's gonna take care of her and be fine. So we had to have this conversation about, like, what this means, what it means, my mom, to be able to feed this to her granddaughter, what it means to me to have my daughter eat the things that I ate growing up and the things that I can remember just walking to school, like, holding my little cup of coconut porridge and loving it.

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Racine Henry [00:33:21]:

And we start to have these different discussions around, like, cultural identity. And he always, in my family, was jamaican, of course, because Jamaicans, you can't ignore the jamaican part of them. But I think that we started to discuss, like, what this means for our child, that I want her to know about her jamaican heritage, because I grew up knowing more about jamaican culture and history than I know about american culture and history. Right. Even though we were raised in this country, there's a lot of pride behind that. There's a lot of identity tied to it. And it was so important to me. And my daughter loves being jamaican.

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Racine Henry [00:33:53]:

You can ask her anything about it. She'll tell you. So in having those discussions with my husband, I realized that, like, it was a different layer of intimacy for us. Like, this cultural intimacy was happening, right? That we would go to his family reunions in the south, and she would get exposed to that side of her family of origin and her culture, and then she'd meet my family and have our Christmas traditions that were jamaican Christmas traditions and all these other things, like, you know, Patois and, like, all these other things. So I thought a lot about the couples I was treating at that time, who happened to mostly be interracial, ironically, but they all had a black partner and the black couples I was treating, and just the research I'd done and the other, like, work I had done around the needs of black couples. And I thought about, you know, how can I introduce black couples to therapy in a way that felt comfortable and familiar? And I think that food is, like, center for most cultures, especially for black cultures, right? Food holds so much, like, historical meaning as well. And so in, I think, 2019, I had the idea for a palette for love, which is, like, the event, the public facing event of integrative culinary therapy. So I had these three couples on Valentine's Day weekend meet at a brownstone in Brooklyn, and I assigned each couple the same recipe, but with a difference, like handicap, I called it, which is probably a very politically incorrect term to use, but an obstacle they had to overcome in the doing of this recipe.

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Racine Henry [00:35:27]:

And they weren't told beforehand what that was, but they were oriented to it as though it was a group therapy session, so they signed form consent forms. We had a group therapy kind of talk before about, like, what they wanted to address in their relationships and where they were at in their relationships. And then we did the cooking exercise. I had made my food prior to them coming, and so we were able to all sit together and eat. And while we were eating, we discussed what they had gone through, their thoughts and feedback, and I recorded all of it. I still have it to this day. And it was just like, oh, my God, this is how this happens, right? Like, this is what I've been envisioning, and here it is happening in front of me. So I really put a battery in my back to fully pursue this as a thing and not calling it, like, oh, my little project.

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Racine Henry [00:36:08]:

But here's my couples therapy model. I've held a few other palate for love events since then. You know, some for couples, I'm for single people, and then also for couples, whatever else. During lockdown, though, I had all this time on my hands, and so I was able to write a cookbook called a palette for love that had recipes and the exercises in it as well for individuals, couples, families, and then friends groups. And that kind of gave it a little more shape. Last year, I got a grant from northwestern, where I teach to do a pilot study with this model to really substantiate it. So I'm in the middle now doing that pilot study with three couples, again, three different couples, and I've expanded the exercises to four. So it's a nine session model.

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Racine Henry [00:36:53]:

Every other session has happens in a cooking space, and the sessions in between are just regular talk therapy sessions. And I'm recording all these sessions and just hearing and seeing these people, like, you know, have these conversations, do these exercises, and just watching, like, this thing that I created, you know, happen in real time, and it's taking shape as it's happening. So in every session, I'm learning more about things I want to change, or if I were to train other therapists to do this, what I would want them to remember or think or, you know, just think about. I've been lucky enough to present on this model at several conferences. I was in Japan in April presenting on it at the International Family Therapy Association World Congress. I'll be in Denver next month presenting on it at the American Family Therapy Academy conference. And in these presentations, I always include, like, a live demo of the model to have audience members come up and we do one of the cooking exercises. And so it's been really validating to see, like, my colleagues and peers ask really insightful questions about it, but also get it and just be, you know, so encouraging and positive about it.

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Racine Henry [00:37:58]:

I've been able to talk to students about it at different conferences as well. I have several people waiting for me to develop a manual so they can be trained in the model. And I imagine it being some kind of like two or three day, you know, training that people can then go and do this in their own communities. And I've been very intentional about it being focused on black couples or couples of color at the very least. Because the idea of it is, if you could have someone eat something that would make them know more about you, what would that thing be? Right? What would that dish be? And as it goes up further, if you have to make that dish, who in your family could you call? Who taught you to make that dish? Who can you not call to find out about a recipe? And so in learning more about who raised you, where you were raised, what they taught you about romantic relationships, we can then track how it's showing up in your current relationship. And then you can make these decisions about what pieces of this do you hold on to? What pieces do you change? How do you develop a cultural identity with yourself and your partner as effective for both of you and the things that you believe in? And how can we do all that while cooking? So how can couples get in this habit of using that time spent cooking and eating to address their relationship? You don't have to, you know, go and sit down in front of a therapist to do that. You can do that while making dinner. You can do that while having a meal out.

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Racine Henry [00:39:14]:

And eating, I think, always makes people a little more relaxed. You know, if you think about going to dinner with your friends or you're open to any kinds of conversations, you have all these debates and you're just enjoying yourself. And so I wanted that environment to be what people experience in therapy. Doesn't have to be the sterile office of, you sit there, I sit here and we talk. That works, too. That's a part of it. But it can also be in these really everyday, normal human moments that last and serve you in your relationship, you know, and you develop habits of addressing problems, mechanisms for assessing how we're doing in the relationship, a way of having those conversations that fit seamlessly into your life together.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:39:53]:

I love all of this, you know that. I think, I just think it's really amazing how you've been able to take something that you're passionate about and apply it to your work. In a creative way and to think outside the box of maybe how you were trained or what you learned in graduate school of what therapy looks like. And to your point earlier about these evidence based approaches, that's what, as a therapist, you learn. But when you look at the research that's behind a lot of that evidence, it's often studies with white in couples therapy, white, affluent couples. Right. So there's evidence based for who? Right. Yeah.

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Racine Henry [00:40:33]:

Right.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:40:33]:

Exactly. So I think there's so much opportunity for innovation, and, you know, I'm so glad that you're doing this, and I hope others, you know, it encourages others to do the same.

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Racine Henry [00:40:44]:

Thank you. Thank you so much.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:40:45]:

I want to talk about your teaching. So you've alluded to this. You're on the faculty at Northwestern. Could you talk about how you got into teaching? Was that something that you started as part of your PhD program and have just continued to do?

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Racine Henry [00:40:59]:

Yeah, that's part of why I got a PhD and not another doctoral degree in grad school. I had these three great professors at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Georgia, shout out to them, and they were amazing, and they still are. Right? We talk. I talk with colleagues all the time about how, like, I think that Valdosta just was the best and laid this amazing foundation for me, a clinician, but also a person, you know, the kind of person of the therapist that I want to be and all those things. And they knew I wanted to go to a doctoral program, and we talked about what would be the most advantageous program or degree to get. And it was a PhD at the time because psyds were new. And so it's like, you can get passed over for a teaching job if you got a Psyd over a PhD, whatever else. That was the driving force behind me getting that specific degree.

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Racine Henry [00:41:45]:

And I knew that I wanted to teach always, and I wanted to be for others what they were for me in a very large way. So in my PhD program, I was able to do a teaching assistantship, which allowed me to teach in that schools in Drexel's graduate program at the time. And I had a wonderful advisor then who kind of let me be the front of the class, like, go do your thing. I'll sit in the back. And, you know, you figured this out. So that was great. And that's how I learned as a person I love just kind of like, just jump in and. And sink or swim.

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Racine Henry [00:42:14]:

And so before I finished my PhD, I was able to adjunct at a few schools I worked for about five years at what is now national university, which is an online only university, in their MFT program teaching both graduate and doctoral students. I went back to Drexel for a year to teach as a professor there. That's my first like full time teaching position was at the school I came from, which was amazing to do. And I also adjuncted at Manhattan College in New York, and that was another great experience as well. So I came to northwestern because they opened a virtual MFT program two years ago and I was one of the three first faculty hired in the program. So we have our first class graduating next month in like three weeks. It's been really cool to just see that evolution, right? I love getting into things when they're like brand new and at the again, the ground level of it. Teaching for me is really great.

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Racine Henry [00:43:10]:

I think it's important to be close to the field in as many ways as possible. So part of what I do is I'm a site visitor for Co INF, which is the accreditation on the education for manager family therapy programs. So I go to different programs and assess if they're upholding the accreditation standards of how you're supposed to be teaching people to be. Mft's. Being a professor is another way that I can do that too. So I look at it as this like cyclical model of what my clients bring into therapy informs my research and then my research informs what I teach my students. So if we keep that kind of loop going, then we're always refining and improving things based on real people and real data in real time. Students are great.

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Racine Henry [00:43:55]:

It's challenging to teach in so many ways, which can be its own podcast episode. It's definitely challenging to be in academia as a black woman as well. At a school like northwestern, which is one of the top ten universities in the, in the country. And so there are implications about that and expectations that come along with that. So I've definitely had a lot of traumatic and hard experiences teaching, but I do love it. I do think it's great to be able to share my knowledge experience with other students. You come to my class to talk and so you know what they're like or what, you know what it can be like. Yeah, it's really fun.

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Racine Henry [00:44:30]:

It's really great to invite people that I know to come and talk to them and share their experience with them. And my goal is to expose them to whatever I can. That this field can be so expansive and it can be so dynamic if you go out and find it and you go out and do it and so I talk to them openly about being a mom and a wife and being a professor and a business owner and going to conferences and publishing articles and trying to balance and juggle all these things. They know about my model, and they're all excited for it and love it and give me feedback about it. I share clients with them, and they give me questions to ask my clients in next sessions. So that's the kind of professor I had. You know, I had people who were humans, and they're professors, and they were in the field, and these amazing, you know, experienced, wonderful people. And so I hope I can be a small part of that for somebody else.

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Racine Henry [00:45:18]:

And it's been a ride, but it's been good so far. Overall, I would say, what are you.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:45:22]:

Seeing from this next generation of therapists who are coming into the field? Like, what do they care about? What kind of questions do they have?

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Racine Henry [00:45:30]:

Well, they care a lot about everything. They care a lot about everyone, which is great. They have a passion for, you know, every identity for every population. And so I talk with them a lot about, like, niching down, right, about, like, picking your thing and getting really good at that thing and being okay with not doing everything because you can't do everything and you shouldn't want to. Right. You should want to focus on what you focus on and be okay with that, but then also, like, be really proficient at it, too. And so that's been really fun. I think that they are a lot less afraid about, like, shaking things up than I think we were as students.

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Racine Henry [00:46:11]:

I think the same policies and the same kind of structures are there, but they're kind of like, well, that's fine for now, but we're going to do something different, you know, or we're going to change this, or we're going to push that as far as it can go before it breaks, which is exciting and really, really cool to see. I have a lot of colleagues and friends who are professors, and we all talk about, like, these kids don't care. Like, they don't. Like, they don't care. These students don't care in a good and bad way. Right? Like, they're entitled and they're privileged, but they're also really passionate and really dedicated. So it's exciting to watch. It's exciting to know, like, kids are all right.

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Racine Henry [00:46:46]:

Like, they're gonna. They're gonna do really great things, and. And they're in it for the right reasons.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:46:50]:

Something that I've seen that I've appreciated from younger therapists, especially on social media, is just the authenticity. And these people just aren't afraid to be themselves and show up in, you know, who they are, obviously need to follow, you know, ethical guidelines of privacy and disclosure and all that. But I think when someone is looking for a therapist, especially now, they're looking for a therapist online, they're looking for someone that they feel like they can relate to and connect with. And if you're creating content or you're active on social media and you're putting yourself out there in an authentic way, that's going to attract clients who are looking for you, I think that's, that's a cool thing. Versus, I think, historically, right. Like, even, you know, probably you, when you're in graduate school, probably taught, like, self disclosure is not something that you do, right. And it's like, as a therapist, you're like totally blank slate, all that.

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Racine Henry [00:47:46]:

Yeah. I was taught that generally by the field, but in my programs, I wasn't taught that, thankfully. Right. I was taught the opposite, which I think is what made the programs I attended so unique. I loved being at Valdosta. I loved being a drexel when I was there for both places. Right. At the, at those times, it was really about, you can't be a blank slate because people aren't blank slates.

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Racine Henry [00:48:08]:

You need to be your authentic self, but it's also about knowing who the authentic self is. So who are you as a person? How does that impact therapy that you're doing? And is that aligning? Is that congruent? And if it's not, then what do you need to do to make it so? So there are things I kind of, like, ask myself in my head all the time that are in that same vein. Right. Of like, is this true to me as a person? ICT is so true to me as a person. My model is me. Right. And that's been a really great lane to be in and a great lane to create for myself. But because it's new and I have to get it out there, I have to also recognize, like, in marketing this or in talking about presenting on it, I have to be confident in it.

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Racine Henry [00:48:47]:

I have to believe in it and take criticisms or, you know, people who don't like it and be okay with that and, and still believe that this is what I should be doing. And I think if I hadn't been trained to honor the individual behind the therapy, it would have been a lot harder for me to do.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:49:05]:

You also work with therapists who are new to the field as a supervisor, could you talk about that and how you kind of integrate that into your business as an income stream.

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Racine Henry [00:49:17]:

Yeah, that's. Besides teaching, it's another way I'd love to be a part of the field is to help people find their identity. And again, I think I have, like, an old school mentality around it of, like, okay, but you're doing that clinically, that's fine. But who are you? Right. And, like, so I always ask them, like, what are you doing and why are you doing it? And if you can't answer those questions, then you should, probably shouldn't be doing what you're doing, even if it's wrong, if you have a basis for it and a rationale behind it, we can work on that. Right. So I don't want you to be the therapist that I am. I want you to be the therapist that you are.

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Racine Henry [00:49:49]:

But that has to be based on something that has to come from somewhere. And the book knowledge is great. The clinical experience is great. You have to know how to meld the two things, how to apply the book knowledge in a way that is unique for you because you'll be able to sustain it as well throughout your career. So I always encourage my trainees or interns or students, you know, to give yourself grace and time to be new and to not know and to sit in that discomfort and to get very comfortable with the discomfort, but also to know that youre person who can has. Who can have limits as a clinician, you can say, this is my therapy office. Here are the boundaries for that. Here are the rules for me being your clinician.

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Racine Henry [00:50:27]:

Take it or leave it. Right. And that it's important to know and to establish as a way to practice ethically and to take care of yourself, to prioritize your safety first and foremost, whether it's physical, mental, emotional, that you can keep doing this work because this work is difficult. It can be draining. Burnout happens. I've been burnout before. And so there are ways in which you have to maintain an awareness of what you need, to be willing to give yourself that and let other people be part of that, too. And to give you that, but to keep it in perspective, too, that you're not just a therapist.

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Racine Henry [00:51:03]:

Right? Like, you're so much more than the work that you're doing. And if it's your identity, it's all of who you are, then that's a problem, too, that that can become part of your downfall.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:51:14]:

And, you know, as a therapist, if you decide to go into private practice, you have the opportunity as a business owner to design the kind of business that you want. Right. I've seen you talk about online that just because you're a therapist in private practice doesn't mean that you need to grow your solo practice into a group practice and have this huge group practice and hire, like, for folks that want to do that, and that's their dream. I think that's great. We had Lisa Savage on the show. Who? The co founder of clinicians of color. She founded the center for Child Development in Delaware, now the largest black owned country. Right.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:51:51]:

It's amazing. Like, that was her journey, and, like, that was her dream for you. It sounds like, you know, seeing clients, it sounds like a lot of work, right? But, like, having a small kidney load, teaching, consulting, speaking, having more variety in the kind of work you're doing, it sounds like, you know, that's the kind of business that you want to build. Could you talk about that?

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Racine Henry [00:52:10]:

Yeah. That's me as a person. I never want to do the same thing every day. I never want to, you know, the monotony never appealed to me, and that's part of why I like, private practice is like, the nine to five thing was just never, ever my zhuzh. It just wasn't. But I've had to then be conscious of, like, you have to take care of yourself and pay bills and pay student loans and help raise this child. So there have been times when my private practice was my full time job and times when it's been my part time job, and then when it shifted, what other sources of income are supplementing that? So I know that I have a lot of privilege in having a full time salaried position while running a private practice. I'm not dependent on my clients to feed myself or pay my bills, but because I'm passionate about being in private practice and being a clinician, and part of my job requires me to still be clinically active.

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Racine Henry [00:53:03]:

Right. I have to maintain both things. I have to get ceus, I have to stay on top of my liability insurance. I have to renew my business license and all those things all the time. So it's not as harried as in the past when I've been really trying to get clients and really hustling to make my licensure hours or to make a certain quota fee for service hours in a week so I can get paid a certain amount. But things can change shift whenever they do. So there's no guarantee, there's a cushion, there's a safety net of having a salary. And so I think that makes, like, marketing efforts or other things you know, less of a priority for me.

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Racine Henry [00:53:39]:

But again, I still see it as my business that I still want to run and maintain. So there, you know, I think, like, the ebb and flow of business in different seasons, like, it's going to be summertime soon. People don't want to be in therapy when summertime. That's a concern for clinicians because what do you do with that loss of income? Well, I have my salary still, so I don't have that concern, but I still want to think about how can I at least create different income that maybe isn't salary, but workshops, webinars, whatever else that can supplement it, creating more passive income. So I have my cookbook, I have my couples planner workbook called better together, and I'm working on developing, like, webinars that I can put behind a paywall that, again, would be more passive income. And that's something that I think I learned, just like being on twitter and talking to people like you who are more business minded than maybe clinically minded to think about, like, that being a thing. Right? Like, oh, passive income is. It works, too.

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Racine Henry [00:54:40]:

So, yeah, it helps.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:54:42]:

One thing I hope that folks take away from this show is that there's not one way to build a therapy business. Right. It's unique to you, and you've talked a lot about your interests, and the business that you've built for yourself is because of who you are, which I think is great. We're coming to the end of our time. Do you want to do a segment?

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Racine Henry [00:55:05]:

Sure.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:55:07]:

Great. So we call this segment the footnote. And my question for you is, if you had one thing that folks would take away from this conversation today, what would that be?

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Racine Henry [00:55:20]:

I think for me, that would be to invest time and energy in identifying who you are as a clinician, as a person, and defend that like hell. You know, figure it out, name it, get to know it, think about all the parts of it, and stay true to that. Let that be like your home base and your guiding force, because it can be easy to get caught up, I think, in what feels right and makes sense, whether it's let me get this full time job so that I don't worry about chasing clients or let me risk everything to be in private practice and grow that and build it. And whatever your path is, just be congruent. You know, figure out, you can only be congruent when you know what it is you're being congruent with. And so I think it starts with, like, just investing that time and energy into figuring out who you are and letting that sort of make your decisions for you.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:56:17]:

Love that. Doctor Henry, thank you so much for coming on the show. How can people connect with you?

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Racine Henry [00:56:23]:

You can find me@sankofathherapynyc.com sankofa therapynyc is also my Instagram handle and I'm on TikTok as chefdoctorray, which is my alter ego. My Twitter, I can't remember. I think, I think it's rayrene 731. I can never remember that Twitter, but I think that's it.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:56:45]:

We'll drop it in the show notes here so folks can find you. Great. Thank you so much.

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Racine Henry [00:56:51]:

Thanks for having me.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:56:53]:

Thanks for listening to this episode of Heard Business School brought to you by Heard, the financial back office. For therapists, visit the Heard resource hub at joinheard.com to support you in your journey as a private practice owner. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you in the next class.

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