Justin Trosclair 0:01
Episode 22 advocate versus rehabilitation what’s the line with counseling sex offenders? I’m your host Dr. Justin trust Claire and today we’re Dr. Shiloh colonies perspective

for doctors who want a thriving practice and abundant home life, listen as your host, Dr. Justin rose Claire goes behind the curtain and interviews doctors and guess about real world

practical tips. On this episode of a doctor’s perspective, I’ve got something special for everybody. Well, the first on the episode 25 Episode 25 will be a solo episode, my first one kind of talking about why I’m in the chiropractic China answering questions that other people have had. So if you still have any questions, just let me know. Just another doctor’s perspective. net is the email we’re also going to have new artwork starting Episode 25. But what’s exciting is from Episode 22 through 26, it’s a month worth of spotlight on women. We’re gonna have to psychologist PhD, we have a Doctor of Chiropractic working one of the most expensive cities in the world, the most expensive actually, and also a wonderful multiple multi author and social media expert coach from Australia. So stay tuned. It was a 22 through 26 will be fun woman’s month. Let’s go. Today we have a great great guest Dr. Shiloh Cantonese, a licensed forensic psychologist aka a sort of real life sweets from the show bones. She is a doctor from the alien International University in Los Angeles. She has done training and facilitating with students lots of different law enforcement type of background. She counsels sex offenders and gets them prepared and their family for prison. She has a great view about that whole field. It should be really quite eye opening for you. Especially when you find out the percent of sexual offense repeaters. We also take it down a notch. Okay, that’s that sounds pretty heavy. With other half of the end of the interview. We talked about taking a break from work to get CPE credits abroad for traveling we talked about her blog that she has as well as ways to keep a relationship going strong that he also has a pretty cool app that she likes for purchasing airline tickets just throw that out there. You doctors out there would prefer to help their patients and he’ll in the most natural way possible we got diagnosed like the Paleo autoimmune protocol specific carbohydrate diet and they’re designed to help heal the body well primal health and nutrition is paleo perfection grass fed beef collagen protein was designed with these diets in mind so regardless of the diet that you decide to recommend products will comply comes in three flavors look is non GMO, no sugar added soy free, allergen free, gluten free, dairy free, plus the organic superfood blend in go to primal h in.com. Use the code primal doc as DLC at checkout so you can receive an extra 10% off. All the show notes can be found at a doctor’s perspective, net slash 22. Let’s go hashtag behind the curtain.

everybody welcome to the show. Today we have a very special guest. We have a licensed forensic psychologist. She holds a doctorate and master’s degree in forensic psychology from a lion international diversity of Los Angeles. She currently conduct intake assessments group treatment and individual treatment with individuals convicted of sexual offenses. She’s an independent level ca so in be certified sex offender treatment provider, she’s worked with this clientele for over 10 years at the county, state and federal levels for experiencing some substance abuse treatment, dual diagnosis, neuropsychology, and facilitating support groups for individuals going through the legal system. Now currently, she’s supervises practical students, interns and psychological assistance in providing them with initial trainings with Lisa revision meetings, and things like that. Now, she owns a private practice specializes in treating clients who have been convicted of sexual offense into anticipated incarceration. addition, she works with their family members of prisoners to adjust a life without their loved ones. And she’s also taught at the graduate level consulted with law enforcement agencies conducted trainings for law enforcement on various forensic psychology topics. On a side note, she’s the creator of the travel and career blog, a distant mentality, which focuses on how to integrate travel into your professional experience. Put your hands together for that to Shiloh Cantonese.

Unknown 4:15
Thank you so much. Thanks for reaching out. Absolutely.

Justin Trosclair 4:17
Okay. So forensic psychologist sexual offense that sounds like this could be a pretty heavy episode. So I think the best way to start is just to kind of talk about how did you get into this type of profession?

Unknown 4:29
Sure. You know, it wasn’t really on my radar to be a licensed psychologist, but it just sort of happened to me. I have a background in law enforcement and coming out of undergrad. And that’s what I wanted to do, actually, I started as a police officer. And then I was looking to go to the FBI. And I really got into grad school just to make myself a more desirable candidate for the FBI. And by the time I finished up, I really loved what I was doing. And I had gotten conditional job offer from the FBI and I also had a job offer from the company where I was interning. So I had these two wonderful things to pick from realized at that sort of segue in my life that my goals had changed. So I decided to pursue clinical and forensic psychology.

Justin Trosclair 5:16
Wow. So talking to on almost FBI agent, almost. You’re like bones on the TV show? I’m sure you heard that one once before.

Unknown 5:25
Yeah, I hear a bunch of that. It’s it definitely is not what the media portrays it as. But my interest in true crime and human behavior was always there. I think it started as with an investigative capacity, but working with offenders in the community, through grad school was something that let me really go hands on with working with these individuals. And it was really interesting to just turn from observing them and their behaviors and learning about that to actually working with them, and how to keep from reoffending. In the future.

Justin Trosclair 6:02
Do you notice that that actually happens, where they get kind of rehabilitated so that they don’t repeat when they get out?

Unknown 6:07
Absolutely. Especially with offenders who are convicted of sexual offenses, the reinvents rates are much lower than people think. If you could put a percentage on it, what do you think the response rate would be?

Justin Trosclair 6:20
For those actually get out of prison? I mean, gosh, I would probably not that. I’m gonna go. I’m gonna go think. I think that is probably more like, Okay.

Unknown 6:31
Yeah, I mean, the average answer is between 50 to 100%. refund, if you break it down by types of offense, it’s a little bit different. But generally, it’s about 15%. Really, overall. Yes. So once I learned that, I thought, Oh, my gosh, it’s so low, what can I do to make that even lower. And so that’s when on a case by case basis, you start working with individuals that the odds are, they’re not going to reoffend but those that are higher risk, we’re doing everything we can to help teach them skills to not do it again. Wow.

Justin Trosclair 7:03
Are you finding that there’s this by a loaded question? Are there ways to know that you’re on the path to be in that type of individual? Or is it always sort of a random like, just sort of happened?

Unknown 7:14
Well, it’s, it’s divided, kind of in a two main categories, you can think of it that way. There are those that have deviant sexual interests

Unknown 7:24
that they are born with, or they discover some point in their life, that that’s what they’re sexually interested in. And the two main categories, I would say would be like a sexual deviant interest in violence, or prepubescent children. But then there’s other things like exhibitionism, if you think of all the other types of sex crimes out there,

Justin Trosclair 7:43
oh, that’s true. That’s counts too. Yeah.

Unknown 7:46
But there are a good deal of individuals, I would say most of the people I work with where it is more opportunistic, opportunistic, and situational. And it’s a combination of a bunch of different contributing factors. And the those are the ones that obviously have lower rates of re offense. But then we can also go back and say, hey, let’s analyze what happened, what was going on in your life at that time? And how do we make a plan that if those things come up again, you make better decisions?

Justin Trosclair 8:15
Now, is that done before before they go into prison, or it’s like a mandatory part of their sentence,

Unknown 8:19
it’s not done before prison unless they seek treatment out on their own as far as the treatment portion and being mandated to go to this type of treatment. It comes after they’re convicted after they go to prison. And then once they’re out on parole or probation.

Unknown 8:36
There are a few prisons in this country that do have inpatient treatment while you’re there. But most of it starts after the fact which can be I mean, five, seven years later after the crime happens. So it unfortunately, it’s a little bit backwards. They’re getting that really

Justin Trosclair 8:52
surprised me. Yeah. Yeah. With that lower recurrence rate, you’re like, wait that, huh? Okay. Do you find that either childhood abuse are getting addicted to porn at a young age contributes to this type of stuff.

Unknown 9:06
Both of those are definitely contributors. I would say again, it’s it’s kind of a myth that child sexual abuse leads to someone becoming an abuser themselves, there’s about a third of sexual offenders who have been abused in their own childhood. And it It definitely plays a role for a lot of them in the sense that it then skews their worldview of sex or sexual boundaries. And so that may be a component and their offending behaviors and adult. And then pornography is huge, especially with individuals that commit

Unknown 9:42
offenses that are facilitated by the internet. So possession of child pornography, or, you know, soliciting a minor over the Internet to meet up and have sex or something like that. Pornography addictions can really go down a deep, dark rabbit hole when it’s a compulsive habit. Wow.

Justin Trosclair 10:01
Interesting. What do you find most interested that you’re able to counsel the family members of someone who’s going to go away? Potentially, like you said, five years, 15 years, maybe for life? What are some of the top things that they’re worried about?

Unknown 10:16
I would say, right off the bat, you know, they’re worried about their love on going into prison. And usually, that person is not too familiar with the criminal justice system. So it’s not like they’ve been through this before. So they’re worried about their loved ones well being? How safe are they going to be in there? You know, just kind of the unknown, everyone’s afraid of the unknown. If you haven’t been to prison before, that’s what we work on is kind of wrapping your mind around all of those issues. So it’s their, their physical and mental safety and well being is what they care about first, and then, you know, it starts to sink in a little bit. What did my loved one do? And how did I not know about it? Are they a monster. And so we work on a little bit of psycho education about stuff fending and how it happens, things that they can do to help in the future, when their loved one comes home, how they can be a part of their support system and make sure they don’t reoffend and just helping and maybe being tuned into what some of those risk factors are. So they can help.

Justin Trosclair 11:16
I’ll be curious if if your loved ones going to go to prison or incarcerated for 15 years, maybe for life, do a lot of spouses if they have a spouse, or just choose to just kind of get a divorce, because I’m never going to see you again. I’m never gonna you’re never gonna interact with our children again, technically. Is that pretty high? I mean,

Unknown 11:35
I would say that they don’t usually go away for that long. So if we’re looking at probably like the max is around eight years for the type of offenders that I see. It’s, you know, there are some serious conversations before they go in, what are we doing here? How are we going to still maintain as much of a family life as we can? Is that going to be through visits and phone calls and letters? If there’s children and involved? You know, definitely, it’s like, how do I be a parent well being in prison, and it can be tricky, and different people have different views on it. Some people don’t want to burn their family at all, and say, please disconnect for me. Others have the kids come and visit and federal prison, you get to visit like, in a picnic setting with benches, and there’s toys for the kids, and it is actually very family friendly. But you could be shipped to somewhere else in the country. And so how often are they really going to be able to visit, but the best laid plans still don’t always happen, you know, you could plan to stay together, and it just gets too difficult. But for those that do the shorter sentences, you know, a handful of years coming back and reintegrating into the family life is really tough. And trying to be a parent when you’ve been absent for four years. And your kids are now four years older. And so those are a lot of things that people need support and therapy with.

Justin Trosclair 12:53
I didn’t realize that. So even in a federal prison, you have a system to where you can see your family. And it’s not just watch some documentary, and the guy went to prison for 30 days, the supersize me guy.

Unknown 13:05
Oh, right, right.

Justin Trosclair 13:07
It was just the big box, it means that you went outside for like, 30 days, almost. And I was like, wow, that’s prison.

Unknown 13:14
Yeah, it all depends. I mean, it there’s jail, which is usually where people go, and they’re waiting cord, or they’re serving time, less than a year. But prison, you know, people are anticipated either a longer time. So there’s different things to do. There’s activities and school and jobs. And and yeah, I mean, you know, better areas to visit with your family. It’s not just sitting behind Plexiglas,

Justin Trosclair 13:38
the more humane I would think. Yeah, absolutely. I know. Over here. They said they have a garden, they cook their own food, they make their own food. They really they they think we have a quote, pretty decent life, except you just can’t leave. Yeah, that was kind of interesting. Yeah,

Unknown 13:52
you just don’t have your freedom.

Justin Trosclair 13:55
So as far as forensic psychologist, what or I guess, maybe two or three minutes sessions about your profession, and then what are two or three things that you would like to highlight for maybe other people that considering going down the path of PhD?

Unknown 14:09
Um, as far as misconceptions, I think, specifically with what I do, a lot of the time, people think that we’re sex offender advocates. So I’ll tell somebody what I do. If I choose to tell them what I do, I tread very lightly, because it freaks a lot of people out. You know, they think that we’re sitting there holding hands with the sex offenders and being their advocates, and, you know, kind of this hippy, Dippy psychology, whatever people have worked up in their mind of what psychology and therapy is, when in reality, our number one mission is the same as law enforcement and everyone else, it’s public safety, and it’s preventing any future victims. So, you know, unfortunately, we can’t predict who’s going to be a first time offender. And so it’s not like we can work with those people necessarily until they’ve already done something and been through the system. So we are just a part of that main goal of keeping the public safe. Unfortunately, it’s a little bit of reactionary, but yeah, that’s the way it goes. We’re not fortune tellers. I think the other thing along those lines is with risk assessment. So risk assessments a big part of what I do. And it’s not a prediction of who’s going to offend and who isn’t. It’s a risk assessment, we look at the factors going on in their life, the factors going on in their offense. And through evidence based research, we try to say who’s at higher risk and who’s at lower risk, and the higher people should get more treatment and should get more monitoring by probation and parole, and the lower people should get a little bit less. But oftentimes, we’re asked to predict who’s going to commit an offense. And I’ve had really low risk offenders that have gone on to commit some terrible crimes in the future, and high risk offenders that, as far as we know, never do anything ever again. Again, we’re not mind reader’s reserved for to write letters, we can only do the best with what tools we have, and risk assessment evaluations that we have. So I would say those are probably the biggest misconceptions.

Unknown 16:13
As far as somebody wanting to go into this, I think, picking a grad school that has either a forensic tracked in their program, I went to a school that fortunately, they had an entire doctorate program that was forensic psychology based. But most schools, you’ll be going into clinical psychology, and then hopefully, they’ll have a forensic tract where you can go to your practice gums, go to your internship sites, and they will be forensic locations. And that’s how you get to know whether or not you like it, you know, some people again, have the media influencing them think it’s going to be this awesome job to work in a prison or what have you. And turns out, it’s not so great to be in a prison and not be able to leave and have to leave your cell phone in the car. And you can’t wear jeans, because the inmates were blue, you know, there’s, there’s benefits and perks to those jobs. But sometimes they’re not all they’re cracked up to be or what you think they’re going to be. So if you can get that experience, at a student level, when you’re not dependent on a paycheck, you’ve made that decision to jump in and get hired at a prison. That’s really the best thing to take advantage of, as far as like jobs, jobs available, or there’s only so many prisons, there’s only so many that probably staff, you guys. So is there a pretty good chance to get a job? Or is it gonna be more like a private practice, and you have to learn how to get connections with the different law enforcement agencies so that you’re called upon for your services versus somebody else? Well, with forensic psychology, it’s anywhere where psychology overlaps with the legal system. So I could be doing child custody evaluations. So that has to do with the court. It’s more in a family division of courts, but they hire some colleges to do that. It could be working in a state mental hospital, it could be something like the prison or it could be company, I work for a private company that contracts with parole, state parole and federal probation. And then we provide the services to those individuals coming out into the community. But then I also have my private practice, and that very much has been it’s small, I like it small because it helps me do my other stuff that I do with family and and I like to keep diversified. So but it has been about building connections with other psychologists, maybe psychologist want to do an evaluation for someone, but they don’t want to do the treatment. So they’ll refer them to me, or vice versa. Attorneys, you know, attorneys have clients that need evaluations or need treatment, or just kind of the connections with the parole agents and probation officers and the pre trial service officers, if they have clients that are saying, hey, point them in the direction for treatment? Again, those are some of the areas you can get for girls.

Justin Trosclair 19:00
Well, I’m curious, I don’t know, I don’t want to know numbers. But when you compare, like a salary that you have, versus just the regular clinical, either master’s degree or like the typical family and marriage person, you get paid better than they do or arise by the same?

Unknown 19:15
Oh, that’s a tough question. Um,

Justin Trosclair 19:18
if you want me to set it up, I know, I’ve heard that there’s not a huge paid jump to debt ratio of getting the Masters to the PhD. So there are some new they’re like

Unknown 19:28
$3, more, yeah, student loans or a tricky part and all of this. That’s why it’s a tough question. I would say forensic psychology can be very profitable. I guess, like anything else, you just have to really market and be willing maybe to travel, because again, it’s a specialized population. So you might have to travel to a couple prisons. And if you can find somewhere that will pay for you to do that, that’s great in that could be worked into it, the best money is probably going to be with a government agency, like going to work for prison, or a state mental health hospital, just because it’s the state and they have wonderful benefits, and they have competitive salaries. I knew that that wasn’t for me. So I choose to do a bunch of different things. So I work with my company, I have my private practice. Like you said, in the intro, I’ve taught at grad school, I do trainings on the side, I still keep my law enforcement connections and do that. So it just, it helps me from getting bored, because I get bored really easily. So but I can also work as much as I want. And if I feel like okay, I need a little bit more income, maybe I need to promote the private practice a little bit.

Justin Trosclair 20:38
That’s actually fantastic segue.

Now you can you can answer this several different ways, whether you’re talking about promoting yourself to get more teaching gigs, your private practice, which is probably the one that I’ll focus on. And then even for the other company, I’m guessing that they have to do their own advertising. So what are some of your, some of the ways that you would market yourself to get more clients,

Unknown 20:58
there’s a few different ways. Again, my private practice is very small, I’ve had it for a couple of years. Again, it’s about networking and the connections, if you have those attorneys and those other psychologists that just know to kind of dish stuff off to you, because they have too much, especially as a new person starting in private practice, you just don’t have people calling you off the hook, because you’re the expert, you know, so make ties with those experts. And then when they have too much work, they can say here, I know you do good work, I’d be happy to refer there’s, you know, something that’s really simple. That’s, you know, sort of advertising ways, but there’s websites, the magazine, psychology, today.com has their own website. And I actually refer clients to this, when they want a specific type of therapy is you can go in there, plug in the type of therapist you want, plug in your zip code, and it will pop up with people with that specialty near you is how I found my own therapist when I was in grad school. You know, there’s lots of internet type of search engines that you can market with and that people go to because people don’t know how to really get started, if they’re reaching out to go to therapy for the first time. So you know, I like to put myself in their shoes. And if I were the loved one of somebody facing prison, or, you know, somebody facing a sex offense, oh my god, where do you reach out for help? You know, that’s, that’s a really tough thing to market for. Or if you are the person trying to seek help for that, you know, maybe just the normal therapist or even sex addict therapist isn’t going to be able to really specialize. You’re not asking your Betty’s that

Justin Trosclair 22:41
right question. Hey, who do you know, in general, most people aren’t asking that kind of question like, Hey, who do you go to your counselor? What? You know, you’re depressed, then you have a horrible marriage, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want to see one, right? Everybody wants to share,

Unknown 22:54
like if it had to do with sex, that’s even more embarrassing and shameful and what people don’t talk about. So yeah, you know, I think in the future, we need to D stigmatize sex a little bit more in this country. Because when people are hurting, and they need help, and maybe even before they harm somebody or have harmful behaviors for themselves and their, their relationship, if they could seek that type of help, that would be you know, really wonderful thing rather than us just kind of shaming them and to never coming forward.

Justin Trosclair 23:23
You know, I’m a big proponent of taking care of yourself whether you’re reading books by psychologists or you know, for yourself or even like if you’re going to get married or in those type of relationships, it’s okay to go see a counselor You know, I’m it’s completely different field our dear, but it’s okay, go learn some skills, especially if you find yourself already bickering and doing things that aren’t healthy. Sure, go for go. That way. If you have a relationship later on, if things do get crazy, you have a kid, you can have somebody that kind of knows your background, where you from what’s going on and get the help that you need, and just can carry over to just about anything. That’s right.

Unknown 23:55
Yeah, I mean, mental health all, we all know that it does carry a big stick around as well. And if we treated it like going to the gym and keeping our bodies healthy therapy could be seen in the same way one day

Justin Trosclair 24:08
agree. I’m going back real quick to the marketing. would you suggest just literally walking into different Attorneys Offices, shaking hands, trying to maybe take them to lunch? And this is who I am, this is what I do. You may need it as that you’ve done it before. Is that helpful?

Unknown 24:23
Um, I haven’t what, but what I would suggest would be like going to the court and going to the public defender’s office, you know, that’s something that’s really easy to do. Stop by the public defender’s office, hey, here’s some cards, if you ever have clients that are seeking therapy, you know, they can give me a call. And that’s, that’s really a good way to do it. There are courts, if someone is more into like evaluations and doing the psychological testing for people going to courts, usually different counties, at least here in California, have panels that you can get on where the courts will then kind of refer out to you could always seek something like that as well. But as far as the therapy part, yeah, just getting in contact with public defender’s office is a really good way to do it.

Justin Trosclair 25:09
And like I said, I think it’s great that you’re diversifying because I can imagine the wrong politician comes in starts chopping budgets, and all of a sudden, you’re like, I had a job for 20 years. And now I’m done.

Unknown 25:19
Absolutely.

Justin Trosclair 25:20
Okay. What about you five year 10 year goals? How do you know they’re worthy of your pursuit? what’s what’s on the docket?

Unknown 25:27
You know, that’s kind of been on my mind being that this is going to go on my 11th year of working in sex offender treatment. I’m a big proponent of self care and preventing burnout. I’ve done a lot of research in that area. And I work with my students who are coming up in this field on that. And I’ve kind of been taking an inventory lately and deciding, you know, what’s next for me, because I, I love what I do. But I don’t want to be in a position where I’m burnt out. And now I’m kind of stuck. I think goals are great. And I think that I actually am going to change directions a little bit. So I have some things in the works. I don’t want to talk about yet. Okay, I don’t want to jinx them. And they’re not for sure. But I actually might might take a different direction in forensic psychology, I definitely going to keep my private practice. So that’s another great piece about having it on the side is that I can keep my toes in that pond. But yeah, it’s not prescribed to the put it out there in the universe, and then the positive energy come into your life by sharing. Give your heart

Justin Trosclair 26:34
into it. But I thought that was kind of interesting getting a psychologist and I

put it,

Unknown 26:40
I I’m terribly superstitious.

Unknown 26:43
But no, I, I am 90% sure that I’m moving on to something else, which maybe I can come back and do a podcast on that.

Justin Trosclair 26:51
Please do congratulations on whatever it is. That’s cool.

Unknown 26:53
But yeah, I mean, I, I, it’s tough at this crossroads in my life to think about, Wow, I’ve invested there’s so much time into this. And I found a place where I really love teaching new students and being mentors and being a clinical supervisor, and passing on that knowledge. But at the end of the day, you know, I have to make sure that I’m happy and healthy. And there will always be other people coming up that can teach them. And so I’m actually really interested in being the newbie again and learning something new and learning from other people. And yeah, just again, adding to the diversification in the field.

Justin Trosclair 27:30
Yeah. So you mentioned burned out, yeah, the audience could be thinking themselves, you kind of glossed over the fact that she works with sexual offenders all day, we didn’t even talk about what it could be. I mean, it can be a person doing something horrible to like an infant, to a five year old, it can be a serial rapist doing on the thinkable things and maybe doesn’t even have guilt over it and just talks about it. How do you shield your own heart, your own brain from such potentially horrific things? And likes it kind of contribute to the burnout? So can you address that a little bit for maybe other people in your field? Or for just curiosity sake to? Sure,

Unknown 28:06
sure. So all those things you mentioned? Yes. I mean, on a daily basis, I’m either reading about something like that, and a police report or talking with the offender about the offense, I know that I just happened to be a really good compartmentalize. So I don’t know if that comes from my background in law enforcement, or if it’s just kind of a natural part of my personality, but I’m able to be present and in the room with the person and working on whatever our treatment goals are, despite these terrible things they may have done. And again, keeping the goal in my mind of this is for the greater good to find out what happened to prevent any future offending, I very rarely bring it home with me, sometimes you can’t help it. Sometimes you have these intrusive thoughts about this terrible report you read or you know, the smile on offenders face while he was retelling his story to you, you know, that stuff is going to bother you are human beings at the end of the day, it’s kind of twofold. I think, having creating a work environment where my staff, we are able to use each other for self care where we can have a really terrible session and go plop down in someone’s office and say like, Oh, I just need to talk about what happened. It’s nice, because in a clinic and with the staff, you can talk about a little bit more because confidentiality is in place. Because those people all we all work together. And so we we sometimes work with the same clients. So we can talk about a little bit more in detail oriented, I guess, about what happened or how it’s making us feel. And so we keep an open door policy at our office, we have lots of time during the week, where we kind of check in with each other, we call them process hours, where we will just come in and talk about, you know, if something’s bothering us, or just a client is being really obnoxious, and how do I handle this, and we just kind of bounce the ideas off each other. And then we do trainings on how to prevent burnout, and how to how to deal with these things that may come up. And I still don’t think we talked about it enough. I know as Yeah, I mean, we try to be proactive. But I know when I had my child, I had no idea it was going to affect me like it did, I thought I will be fine. And fortunately at the time, I worked with two wonderful female psychologists who had had children and been in the field and I sat down and I talked with them. And they said, yeah, it’s rough. You think about things you never thought about before. But it will go away We promise to you. And it did. I mean, after time, it kind of dissipated. But I wish someone had told me that beforehand to kind of give me the heads up of what to expect. And we have a lot of good research in the area, just knowing that all different types of professionals who work with this population, how they can be affected from judges to you know, court reporters in the courtrooms you don’t think about that the people they hear this, and it may affect them. So you know, it’s keeping a workplace that is really supportive. And then a home life as well. It’s a little tricky with psychology, because you can’t come home and talk about details of stuff because of confidentiality. But at least in my home, I’m married to a homicide investigator. So he deals with some heavy stuff as well.

Unknown 31:24
But so I think that’s our common bond, you know, we can come home and, and talk about stuff from work and how it’s affecting us. And we’re both kind of coming from the same place. So it’s it, it doesn’t freak out the other person when we’re talking about something, but he also needs his people at work that he can talk to you. And maybe he doesn’t want to bring something home. So it’s definitely a balance. And I think we always need to keep updated, just as professionals on how it can affect us and try to prevent that as much as possible.

Justin Trosclair 31:57
I think this is true. Like when you’re in school, you get taught how to do some of these things as a foundation. And you have to go to your from what I was expecting was told was you have to do your own counseling part of those schooling is actually to go through all your own crap. Yes, process in a lot of stuff so that you experience what the clients going to experience in different fashions. Is that still true?

Unknown 32:18
Yep, still true. When I graduated in Oh, nine, we had to do 30 hours of individual therapy with a licensed psychologist. So that’s a good yeah, it was it was great. You know, I went in there thinking I don’t really have anything to talk about, except for maybe how stressful grad school is. And then of course, just kind of life things came up if I was going every other week, or once a month. I mean, that’s a good amount of time, if that’s 30 sessions, so yeah, stuff kilometers. Yeah, it was great to talk with somebody about it and have that sort of unbiased person to bounce it off of. So it, it was good. I mean, I still think back to my therapist, and how wonderful she was, and some skills that I would like to still have and aspire to. So yeah, it was a great experience.

Justin Trosclair 33:02
Very good. Well, I’d like to talk about because you talk about burnout, talking about these type of things, you have a blog, tell us about that.

Unknown 33:11
So it really started is just kind of a way to have a travel diary, traveling is really important to my family. And I thought I need to document all of this somehow and go back and do our past trips and have something that my kid can look back on. And being in a digital age. I mean, what better way to kind of do it with except with blogging, and then it really turned into I was noticing how a lot of my trips, especially these last several years, five years, seven years or so have revolved around work and how I have been able to make that happen to go to some really wonderful destinations around the world and do it in the course of my work. I I like to present conferences, so so there’s the there’s usually national and international conferences in any field, but specifically in sex offender treatment, we have our share of them and forensic psychology. And I really kind of got the bug for it. And grad school, I had a wonderful dissertation chair that came to me with some research that ended up being my dissertation. And he took myself and a couple other students that were working on the same topic. And we went to Australia and presented our research, it was just an amazing experience. And so of course, we were in Adelaide for the week. And then my husband and I took another two and a half weeks to go visit more of Australia. Because if you’re all the way over there, why wouldn’t you? And it was just it was so great. So I found that people that are my students and that I work with were like, how do you get to go to these great places? And how do you do it while weaving it into your work. And so it’s really the best platform, I mean, to be able to go to a conference and learn and see what’s up and coming in the field and stay on top of things and then also get to travel and go to some really cool places.

Justin Trosclair 35:06
So let me see if I’ve got your blueprint for this correctly. Sure. You got to have continuing in yellow color continuing education now my call it something else, but it’s same thing, the same thing. So you got to continue in that you gotta do you have to take off a work typically, a lot of these professional companies give you the time off to do that, because you have to know some of these places will do in house, our local but as you plan your vacation to go around the conference, is that what ABC right there? I think that’s it pretty much,

Unknown 35:33
pretty much. What I always like to do is, you know, conferences are in great destinations anyway, because they want people to come. So every doctor, are you listening

Justin Trosclair 35:41
to this? This is a cool vacation, and you just spent an extra week this is how you do it.

Unknown 35:46
Absolutely. I like to call them side trip. So I will use them schedule another place to hit up you know, depending on how much time we can take off from work and how much time we have. Yeah, I’ll sneak in another place or two as well. So we had I was in a had a conference in Copenhagen in September. And I had been dying to go to our house Denmark, we did both. I brought my husband I brought my kid I brought my sister, she was my nanny for the trip. Yes, my husband and I could have some date nights. There’s usually you know, some conference dinners and things like that. But I still wanted my daughter to come she’s five and she’s been out of the country more than I had by the time I was 20. Exactly. So we just we had a wonderful time. Yeah. So on my blog, I kind of talked about how I do that the blueprint, like you said, and then how I set up some of these side trips. So now with the blog, it’s turned into a bit of not just travel, which is the primary purpose of it. But it’s turned into, you know, career tips and mentoring and tackles topics like how do you narrow down the field that you’re interested in? And how do you find somebody to mentor you, you know, I would guided towards people in college, even grad school that are kind of starting to narrow some stuff down. But I’ve mentored students as young as still in high school, I wanted to figure out what they want to do.

Justin Trosclair 37:11
That’s very good. That’s a great way to give back and feel good about yourself as well. So what was it a lot who are who

really wanted to go there? Like why

Unknown 37:25
bother? Well, so this year, 2017, there named one of Europeans, cultural capitals of Europe. They have some wonderful museums, they are right on the coast. And one of my favorite Netflix series is filmed there. It’s a it’s a Danish series. It’s called dicta. And it’s a it’s like a crime show, but it’s on Netflix. And so I got to see a lot of the city in the show, heard all these other wonderful things about it saw some write ups and Travel and Leisure. And it just looked like a really cool place to go. So we took the train up there. It’s about three hours from Copenhagen. And it was a wonderful little side trip

Justin Trosclair 38:03
show Netflix called Bruce. Not a great show, I wouldn’t recommend watching it. But the city, I want to go

Unknown 38:10
now. So that my that’s like my number one bucket list is to go to bruise at Christmas time. Oh, I’m hoping to do that in the next couple of years.

Justin Trosclair 38:19
But How fun is that? Because if you see it, you know, this is where they start this part of the movie, or this is where that scene happened. And it was really climatic. And this is really cool.

Unknown 38:27
Yeah, I actually stumbled across a couple of filming locations while we were in our house. And they weren’t filming at the time. But I was our hotel was right on the same block is the police station where they film and I was like, Oh my god, there it is. I know that. And here I am. so forth on. And it’s kind of funny. When we were in Copenhagen, I saw the main actress, the star of the show, just when we were out to dinner one night, and I thought oh my god, here I am all the way from California. And I ran into this lady.

Justin Trosclair 38:59
Did

Unknown 38:59
you get a picture? No, I didn’t want to bother her. I’m from LA me. So

Justin Trosclair 39:05
you’ll see a lot of celebrities just kind of hanging around. And it’s pretty common. There’s a lot of celebrities out there.

Unknown 39:10
Yeah, they’re they’re kind of everywhere. I mean, if you’re in LA proper, it’s pretty dense. So you’ll see somebody somewhere, that’s good way to constraints.

Justin Trosclair 39:21
So we kind of talked about most of these things. So let’s see here on a day to day basis, week to week, how do you start to have a home and work life balance,

Unknown 39:27
I don’t know how I got it so good. But I really I only work three days a week at my main employer. That’s wonderful, you know, talk about the heavy nature of my job, I think that really contributes to my mental well being, I have four days off. And I usually do a little bit of private practice on those days off, you know, spend as much time with the family as I can, when the family’s busy, then I go and spend time with my friends. And we tend to socialize with people that are in very diverse jobs. So we’re not calling constantly talking about all of this heavy stuff that we both do. So that’s a really big part of self care to is getting outside of that when you’re not at work. Okay, so you’re married,

Justin Trosclair 40:10
give us a hint, what are something that you can do to with your spouse to make sure that the love stays alive, and that you guys don’t like drift apart over over time.

Unknown 40:18
So we’re going on 13 years. You know, what we did this last year was we started doing this hiking challenge here in Southern California, it’s called the six pack of peaks. So it’s the six highest peaks in Southern California, it was just so amazing to set out with this goal with him. You’re literally hiking for eight or nine hours a day. And it’s just the two of you on a trail, you can talk about deep stuff, you can talk about the random stuff that just pops into your head.

Unknown 40:50
Talk about whatever you guys need to work out for the week, or what you have to do it the house, it was just so nice to have this huge block of time that you’re spending together, doing something really wonderful and challenging and accomplishing it together. But just having the time to just talk or not talk just to walk next to each other and not talk. And fortunately, we have wonderful family that’s able to, you know, babysit for a full day. But

Justin Trosclair 41:17
you didn’t wear on your boat.

Unknown 41:18
Oh, no, I could barely drag myself up there. So we finished this great accomplishment. And, you know, it just it did kind of start out as being about the challenge. But I think at the end, I’m really grateful for the time that it gave us. And so aside from traveling, which were really good travel partners, thank goodness, we travel well together. It was just a really neat way to kind of get in this and do something together, but have this wonderful quality time. So I think just changing things up like that, you know, that’s not something we’re going to do again this year, I mean, will still continue to hike, but you know, we’ll find something else. It’s kind of a challenge, but that we can do in our free time together.

Justin Trosclair 42:00
Good. Let’s see here. Do you have any sort of morning or lunch routine that just excites you or ground you for the rest of the day? I’m

Unknown 42:08
not really I would say coffee, coffee is my passion. That’s my other passion?

Unknown 42:15
Yes.

Unknown 42:17
Strangely, it is very relaxing to me to have the ritual of having my coffee in the morning. But it’s stimulating the same time that kind of just gets me going. And again, working three days a week, I’m kind of up, you know, life’s crazy, getting the family out of the house, and then get into work and then coming home and getting home around seven o’clock at night. So those three days are pretty packed. I mean, there’s not a lot of time for luxury routines in the morning, that definitely just comes with spending time with each other on my four day weekends.

Justin Trosclair 42:50
When it’s his job. He’s got to be just you got your store sort of your normal hours and then probably on call. Yeah, yeah, as well.

Unknown 42:58
Yeah, fortunately, wild hours, you know, there can be weeks of just kind of the normal schedule. And then the weeks that he’s on call, he may not be home for the weekend, just depending on how hard they’re working on their investigations. Throughout the day, even in a regular day, we just like to keep in contact with each other. You know, whether it’s a quick text, or if I’m on my way home, and I call to say, Hey, I’m on my way home, and he’s cooking dinner, you know, I think it’s, it’s just tactful to kind of keep each other in the loop and let you know that the other ones thinking about each other. And it does come to those weekends where he just lays in bed and then he has to get up and go to a call. You know, we don’t feel completely out of touch. Because we keep in touch throughout the day. And little bits and pieces

Justin Trosclair 43:52
are good. I am curious because there’s so many ways to have coffees, what is your style, you have the international delight with the cookies and cream and ketone in their

Unknown 44:01
black, black coffee all the way to go. You don’t need to ruin it with any cream or sugar

Justin Trosclair 44:08
or this energy.

Unknown 44:11
Um, but you know, I do love my specialty specialty coffee shops to and they have some good concoctions so But usually, it’s got to be at least one good strong cup of coffee with nothing in it.

Justin Trosclair 44:23
My brother, he was in the Navy and he said that’s when he learned how to drink black coffee is when you have to the CFO or you just run out of sugar in three. Yeah, what are you going to do? And you’ve got this addiction. He’s got a black and he’s like, I need to get used to it. But I guess you could really observe the flavors and actually can tell you know, this is a horrible piece of coffee. And this. These bees are just delicious. Absolutely.

All right, here we go favorite. So you got books, blogs, podcasts, do you have any that you secretly love, and some you just have to share with everyone?

Unknown 44:53
Oh my gosh, I’m sure everyone knows about it. But my favorite podcast is called my favorite murder.

Unknown 45:01
So it is two gals here from LA. And they love true crime and they are hilarious. And they basically just kind of read off a different murder story every week. Summer really well known famous ones. Some are totally obscure ones from the Victorian era. But they are hilarious and is such a wonderful way to have this interest of mine. And hear it in such a light way. It’s really cool. I love it. They’re just hilarious people. And it’s funny to see. I mean, just it’s wonderful to see how successful they’ve been. But all these other True Crime lovers out there just seems like they’re coming out of the Woodworks and they’re like, Oh my god, I thought I was the only one that had this weird obsession with your cry.

Unknown 45:55
But it’s really great. It’s like on the there’s a podcast on

Unknown 45:58
the top. iTunes for comedy all the time. So I think it’s

Justin Trosclair 46:04
man, that’s amazing. I have to check that out a little bit. Yeah,

Unknown 46:07
good for driving.

Justin Trosclair 46:09
Any books

Unknown 46:10
or anything like that? You know, I haven’t been reading any books lately, because I’ve been kind of studying up for this new endeavor that I alluded to earlier. So I’ve been hitting the academic books again, wanted, which

Justin Trosclair 46:25
is there. Is there like a self help book that I don’t call it self help, per se, but then you know, yeah, everybody should probably read this either. Just it’s very helpful. It’s, it gives you insights inside your own head and how to maybe manage your time or manager thoughts this to be a better person. Anything that comes to mind when I say those types of words, like an overall hair, you got to read this book. So you’re not such a big person.

Unknown 46:48
Know and I think you and I should write that book.

Unknown 46:53
No, I not the top of my head. I can’t think of anything. But the the one book that came out this year last year that I now that I gave some time to think about it is a book of short stories, which I’m kind of new to. But it’s called Dodger blue will fill your soul and it’s by Brian Allen fear. Oh, and it I’m a huge Dodgers fan, Los Angeles baseball here in California. Oh, that’s what is that sport. But the bring a book. Oh, man we do.

Unknown 47:28
It’s not about baseball. It’s it’s a stories about people in the Los Angeles area. And it’s, it has the thread of baseball, maybe in the background on the radio or on the TV. And it’s just beautifully written. You know, I used to be again, so into true crime and fiction stories. And it’s really nice to read a beautiful piece of work that is short stories, which I haven’t really been into before. So that’s kind of neat.

Justin Trosclair 47:56
That’s good. So last question. Any apps on your phone you just

Unknown 48:00
love to use on a regular basis? Absolutely. So snap seed is what I use to edit all my photos for Instagram?

Justin Trosclair 48:08
Yes, yes, absolutely.

Unknown 48:11
Without it.

Unknown 48:14
digit is a new financial app that I’ve been using. So it’s all done through text and images, which might freak some people out. But you can set up accounts like a rainy day account, and goals. So like we’re going to Maui in June, and I set up a goal amount that I want to save. And what you do is you give it access to your bank account, and it will pluck out little pieces at a time that you are stashing away and these little accounts. So it’s working out? Well. I give it good reviews, is it

Justin Trosclair 48:43
coming one of those rounds up, you’re spinning up the nearest dollar type of thing, something

Unknown 48:47
like that. Yeah, based on what your balances, it’ll take a little piece out. But I can say that I want to spend X amount or save XML for this vacation by this date. And so it’ll make that happen. But anytime you can pull it back out if you need to. So

Unknown 49:04
what else Oh hopper for airline flights. Hopper is amazing. If you put in your dates and where you want to go. And the algorithms will tell you the best time to buy the tickets. And it’s been spot on for like the last two years and trips I’ve done. Come on. Yes, it’s great.

Justin Trosclair 49:21
I had downloaded it at once I definitely have it in my used to own list on iPhone. Oh, that’s really cool. So that’s what it does. It doesn’t buy your tickets, it just kind of gives you the heads up,

Unknown 49:32
not buy your tickets through it, it will link you to that airline if you find when you like but I’ll tell you, it gives you the best algorithm. So it’ll say, you know, the price is this right now. But if you wait three more months, that’s the best time to buy. But don’t wait three months in one week, because it’ll go back up again. And it’s been pretty right on so

Justin Trosclair 49:53
that we can do that because I travel a time. Okay, very good. Well, Dr. Shiloh, what a great hour. Thank you so much for your time.

Unknown 50:02
Oh, you’re welcome. Thank you for having me, it’s fun to talk about the work that I do. And I hope that a lot of people find it interesting. And know that, you know, you can do some really heavy stuff. I mean, a lot of even, you know, different types of work that doctors do, you’re not around the happiest stuff all the time. So people usually aren’t coming to you when they’re in perfect shape and fully, you know, happy and fulfilled. So we all can deal with that stuff. But you know, being able to find ways to give back and to keep yourself diversified and happy and what you’re doing. So you’re not just collecting a paycheck and going to an office every day. I think that’s the best. So happy that I could get that out there for my field. Absolutely. How can people get in touch with these, my website, the blog is, if you just Google a distant mentality, you can find it there. But it’s a distant mentality dot blogspot dot com. On Instagram, it’s a distant mentality. And Facebook, same thing, a distant mentality at gmail. com, it’s a good way to get ahold of me.

Justin Trosclair 51:10
There we go, well, wish you the best of luck with your not even look, because I say that it’s not look, because you actually have to work at it. And you have to create your own luck. So congratulations on whatever it is that you’re going to next and succeed in 27. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for coming on the show I’ve been in. And I’m pretty sure the guests have to what a fascinating career choice that you made somebody to be able to deal with, with what you do with every day is to be commended. And I’m so glad that you have a partner that you are able to share that with. I almost said partner in crime, but that is way too cheesy. So I will not thank you for your tips about texting throughout the day. hiking trips. That’s pretty cool. There’s lots of ways I think people can implement that to help their relationship whether it’s hiking or you know, be creative doing art project that takes a while. You know, it takes a while to complete. So I really appreciate your advice on that. As always, travel tip is coming up at the end of the episode.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s episode. want to make you aware of a couple of things a doctor’s perspective. net, we got a few things to talk about. We’ve got some free handouts for nerve pain, numbness in the arms and legs and also a 12 exercises. If you experienced back pain and want your core stronger experience and neck and shoulder tightness and pain, these are free to download. Okay, it’s under Resources. Also under the Resources tab is my new book, Neil is acupuncture self treatment God for 40 common conditions stop the hurting with no needles or meds, your roadmap to self treat your condition painlessly. We’re talking things like anxiety, insomnia, neck pain, back pain, possibly some knee issues, stomach issues, tired arm and leg pain, even a little bit of sinuses, to take all those types of things. This book really is for those, they’re busy, they don’t have time to draw it to an office, spend an hour and go back to work. Alright, so allow this book allows you to do it from the from your house, it’s also the person that maybe doesn’t have an acupuncturist within like a 90 minute drive just to go see one. So that’s pretty inconvenient. It’s also for the person who is afraid of needles. So there’s alternatives to that method that we show you in the book. And lastly, for the person who’s like, I really can’t afford as much care as I need. So this is the way invest in a book. And now you’re able to do it at your house with pictures with words and even videos, things that I’ve learned from working in China, Western references, Eastern references and practical experience. So check it out. I think you’re gonna like it. The first book today’s choices tomorrow’s health, again, is version 2.0. We got everything from what is chiropractic, what is pain, some exercises and stretches lots of lessons learned from my time in China like portion control, is it okay to feel hunger secret recipe tech, and I love talking about it. I haven’t got a whole section on finances like budgeting creative, the budget how to scale back if you overspend, which is a huge problem for most people. So I’ll cover that he’s got some really good reviews. So hopefully you will take a look at that. You can get it as a PDF for free or you can pay for it in different areas. Lastly, of course, we’ve got some chiropractic tongue in cheek t shirts about being a mixer, you do rehab, you do adjustments you think the adjustments, really a powerful thing. But you also believe that you need to do muscle work and those types of things, which is pretty cool shirts, mixers, and under the Resources tab as well. Well, as always, wherever you listen to the show, if you rank it five stars, that would be awesome. And of course on the top right of the website, there’s all the social media icons, pick your flavor, follow me interact, and I interact back You got any suggestions? Email me.

travel tip this week, take your continuing to edit cool places we talked about on the episode. Just want to stress it. You know, the other day someone said you could take a cruise and learn about marketing. You’re not going to continue we did there. But that’s still pretty cool. But there are huge conferences and other countries in other cities that you can go to take an extra day or two Friday, Saturday or Saturday Sunday, take the take the hours that are necessary in the next couple days go tour just like she did. I think that’s a fantastic idea. Something I will implement and really I’ve always had to travel from ice based on where I live and my schedule. So I’ve seen parts of the country that I normally wouldn’t have seen which is kind of cool, but yet to do the European one so that’ll be my bucket list. Hope you guys get the girls get to scratch that off your bucket list as well. Why not see Amsterdam and do a conference sounds perfect to me.

We just went hashtag behind the curtain and this episode has come to an end. I hope you got the right dose for your optimal life. Please spread the word about this podcast by telling to friends, share it on social media and visit the show notes on a doctor’s perspective. net to see all the references from today’s guests. A sincere thank you in advance. You’ve been listening to Dr. Justin throws Claire giving you a doctor’s perspective.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai