Have you ever dreamed of traveling the world with your family while running a thriving therapy business? In this episode of The Traveling Therapist Podcast, I chat with Olivia Baylor, a therapist and founder of My Mental Health University, about what it truly means to worldschool as a therapist and how global travel has shaped both her personal life and clinical work.
Olivia shares how road-tripping during the pandemic sparked a love for travel and opened her eyes to the powerful role culture plays in therapy. From her time in Cuba to launching CE courses focused on current societal issues, Olivia shows how travel can deepen our understanding of human behavior. She also breaks down what worldschooling looks like in real life and gives practical tips for parents who want to blend education with exploration.
In this Episode, We Explore…
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Discount Code Access (50% Off) for immigration evaluation training: https://mentalhealthuniversity.thrivecart.com/immigration-evaluation-training/?coupon=TRAVELLIFE2025
Flyer for the Immigration Evaluation Training: https://exceptional-pioneer-933.kit.com/d65668f040
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Transcript:
[00:00:00] Kym: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Traveling Therapist podcast. Really excited today to have our guest. She's doing so much cool stuff and putting out into the world. I can't wait to talk about all of it. We have Olivia Baylor here with us today. Olivia, how did you go from being just your typical therapist to a traveling therapist?
[00:00:19] Olivia: First all, thank you so much for having me today. I'm so excited to be here. the journey from being a typical therapist to traveling therapist, really I wanna say started off during the pandemic. During that time you know, we're dealing with high anxiety, high worries, and I was not a person that liked staying indoors a lot, and so I said I have to do something.
[00:00:44] So we did a couple of, road trips as a family . And the trips that we did were ones that, you know, we didn't interact with other people, we were just driving. We in the car driving to one
[00:00:54] Kym: a anywhere, anything to get out of the house.
[00:00:57] Olivia: Just to kind of get out of the house. And as I kind of, explored that area and noticed that the world was starting to open back up and we can, you know, deeply start traveling I really explored traveling a little bit more.
[00:01:10] So, that transition opened my eyes. And I would say that as I traveled to different countries the way that I viewed working with my clients changed because I started realizing, oh my goodness. So I've been learning therapy through the lens of like an American.
[00:01:28] And I needed to learn therapy through the lens of understanding the different clients that come into my door and what those clients look like. And understanding by exploring the different cultures and actually meeting people from those different countries allowed me as a therapist to say, by taking this information, I can learn more, I can grow more, I can be better for my clients.
[00:01:50] And that really just sparked it. And I've been continuously traveling. I homeschooled both of my kids during the pandemic and basically world schooled them. So we were able to go to different places. We interacted with people from, you know, different countries and we learned about what was mental health to them, what was the struggles that they, you know, dealt with from their perspective and how they viewed it.
[00:02:14] And that really sparked just who I am now and just made that change for myself.
[00:02:20] Kym: Wow so much I even wanna talk about just in that little bit right there, you know, 'cause occasionally in the traveling therapist Facebook group, I'll drop that question. Like, how has traveling changed your perspective as a therapist? Like how has it made you a better or worse therapist, how has it changed things for you?
[00:02:33] So what, are maybe like some examples that you've experienced that have changed your worldview? I mean, I think of like different cultures, right? Like I'll go somewhere in Europe and the kids are sitting around drinking wine at the dinner table. You know, like that kind of stuff. just observing things that you wouldn't even pick up on in America.
[00:02:49] Maybe you might hear about it, but you don't pick up on that stuff. So is there anything you could think of that really did that for you that you were like, okay, I've totally like missed this. You know, based on this new understanding of this culture, that kind of thing.
[00:03:02] Olivia: So, I did go on a trip to Cuba, and I don't know if you've ever been to Cuba. Uh.
[00:03:06] Kym: I have.
[00:03:07] Olivia: beautiful country and really when I got there so, okay, so let me go back In America, right? When we see people on the street who may be selling water or, you know, selling goods, some people will ask, well, do they have a permit?
[00:03:20] Why are they doing this? I live near Baltimore City where there are young boys who are, they call the squeegee boys. They go out and off the front of the, of a person's car, and so. People view that in America as like a criminalized behavior. It's that question of why are they doing this? When I went to Cuba I viewed how behaviors that are often criminalized in the us so bartering, street selling or you know, something like unauthorized work
[00:03:50] Kym: Yeah.
[00:03:50] Olivia: actually an act of survival.
[00:03:53] In an area that had resources limited and it was viewed differently. It wasn't viewed as a person doing these acts that are criminal and then viewed negatively. It was viewed as somebody is trying to make ends meet, figure out how to just eat day by day, and they were viewed in a different limelight.
[00:04:12] and, you know, in a Western framework, if we wanna think of it in that way it actually forced me to kind of reimagine how we define crime. Kind of like the pathology of it and like deviance and. Especially when we're working with clients who immigrated over. So I do work largely with immigrate immigrant and first gen based clients.
[00:04:31] And so survival sometimes does have to bend the rules for them and what that looks like for them. And so for me as a therapist when working with these clients, it gave me a better insight . I've always looked for those trainings to kind of give me that better insight, and those trainings didn't exist.
[00:04:47] So Cuba was one of the trips I have. You know, other trips I've been to the Dominican Republic, I've been to Trips and Caicos, The Bahamas. And so being able to actually interact with the people from the community and explain to me what mental health looks like to them. I remember when I spoke to uh, one of my guides in Cuba, he explained to me we just have to figure it out. And that just kind of spurred this whole conversation.
[00:05:13] Kym: Wow. That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, I remember being in Cuba and you know, lines of people like outside of the drugstore and then there was another outside of the store that gave away bread and basically I was like, what are they doing? And it, I figured out, somebody told me, I think one of the guides, like those are our rations.
[00:05:28] we literally get a certain amount of rations per day or per month or whatever, and you've gotta make that last until your next ration, you know? And it, it's like a whole cultural thing. I was just like, oh my gosh.
[00:05:40] Could you imagine? And that ties into what you're saying, like whatever it takes, I mean, if you run out of bread on the first week of the month, what do you do now if you can't get anymore? You know, it's like, yeah, no, I totally hear you on that.
[00:05:52] So that leads into you not finding trainings that helped educate about that. So I wonder, does that tie into this other amazing thing that you do which I'd love to talk about.
[00:06:02] 'cause part of this podcast we talk about like entrepreneurial spirit and developing other, you know, ways to support therapists, other income streams, that sort of thing. So I would love to talk about that. What the other amazing thing that you've created on top of everything you're doing clinically.
[00:06:16] Olivia: So, you know, like other clinicians out there, I've had a shift, right? This business, actually, I started it eight years ago and when I first started it, I just wasn't prepared, you know, I was like, okay, I'm gonna get it started. And the business I'm talking about is I started a CE business called My Mental Health University . And when I first started it, I said, oh, I just wanna learn about different things. You know, I'm fresh out of school and, you know, you wanna learn everything. And then I got my license and, you know, that other business took the backseat. And it wasn't until recently that, as I've gotten into more of a different phase in my clinical world and worldview of things that I realized that those training weren't there.
[00:06:59] We do focus on a lot of our trainings that, that we go to typically based off of what we need to meet for our CEEs, for our, you know, our education. We're like, okay, we gotta get 40 hours.
[00:07:10] Kym: many ethics, this many
[00:07:12] Olivia: let me just check this off the box. But then at the end of the trainings, I would always go back and say to myself, what in the world did I get out that training?
[00:07:20] I already knew this information. Nothing can I take from it and literally put it into action when I'm working with my clients, unless you're work doing something like a brainspotting or you know, MDR based training. But our everyday clients. We're not really receiving trainings on everyday related issues and how we can work with our clients, what knowledge we need to have you know, with ourselves to be able to interact with our clients.
[00:07:47] And so it really just took a transition point for me. And so with this new business that I started to do and using the combination of that travel right, it just really helped me to understand that we don't dig deep enough into the diversity of our clients
[00:08:03] and really understand how and why, you know, our clients are going through some of the things that they're going through.
[00:08:09] If we use an example, we consider, now I live in Maryland. I'm right next to, you know, Washington, dc We have a lot of government employees that come out for therapy, right? So now we're talking about. Some people who are struggling with employment and you know, finances and what's, what's that's gonna be for them and their lives.
[00:08:29] And they're coming into therapy with anxiety, but it's not just anxiety, it's deeper than that, right? They may have some, with finances that they've had in their life for years, how we as therapists can just learn, okay, let's look at some of the other variations and other issues that this person might be having and peel at those as well as tackle their anxiety.
[00:08:52] Kym: It's like that bio-psychosocial, it's like, okay, I know I've learned anxiety techniques, but like how are we gonna fix all the stuff causing the anxiety? Yeah. Mm-hmm.
[00:09:02] Olivia: It's kind of tapping a little bit into like, sociology in a sense, like looking at the environment and all of those things. We look at that in therapy, we do, but how far deep do we look into
[00:09:11] Kym: Yes. Exactly. Then it's out of our wheelhouse or whatever. You know, the therapist, well, I don't wanna touch that. I don't know anything about it or, right. Mm-hmm.
[00:09:19] Olivia: So what I tried to do was create trainings that are based off of what's happening to our clients right now, right here in our society, and how we can help them with resources that are available to them right now, right here.
[00:09:32] Kym: Amazing.
[00:09:33] Olivia: You know this, now I've made that opportunity to start working on that business and I said, now is the time.
[00:09:39] I feel like now is the time to really start. Open it back up. I've started one of the classes I did was an immigration evaluation one
[00:09:46] Kym: Oh, nice. Oh, I see people doing those. Yeah.
[00:09:50] Olivia: And so, and with that class, you know, I've had that class for years. I just didn't put that work into it, really put it out there.
[00:09:57] Kym: Yeah,
[00:09:58] Olivia: but now I have that as one of the classes. Another class I'm gonna be talking about. You know, desperation and how we can help our clients who may be struggling with that right now and understanding just the history of that. And then I also am gonna be doing classes on premarital counseling and what that looks like for our clientele now.
[00:10:18] And also a, a healthy dating class. There's a couple of different classes I'm be doing, but just looking at what dating looks like now, we have different, an array of ways that people date.
[00:10:27] Kym: That's amazing. I love that. Now. Okay, so well, I wanna ask a lot of questions about that. Like one, Like how do you even, like the backend, decide like, I'm gonna do a course, and then how do you get it set up? Like I think that stops a lot of therapists because I think you're exactly right.
[00:10:41] That's what I've done with my courses and everything that I offer. It's like you have a passion about something, you're teaching it every day. People are asking for it. It's like, how can I scale this? So it's like. reaching more people, and I'm not stuck in this one-to-one. I'm just teaching one client to one client, to one client.
[00:10:56] What have I taught it to all these therapists and then they could teach it to all their clients and it just like expands your knowledge, your worldview and all of that. But it's like that process I think of like getting it out of your head, putting it into a course, putting it somewhere where people could actually buy it.
[00:11:10] what was that process like for you? Was it just kind of like easy or how was that for you?
[00:11:15] Olivia: it was a little bit easy, so I'm a big love of a worksheet type
[00:11:20] Kym: Oh, okay. Cool. Yeah. So you've already got it in there?
[00:11:22] Olivia: so I, I've always, you know, whenever I've worked with clients and they're like, you know, listen, I don't get to see you for another week. What am I gonna do for this
[00:11:29] And so I would create basically an outline for them. And I guess that came from my teaching background. So before I did therapy. I did work in the criminal justice field and I worked with juveniles. And so, I would always kind of give them a step by step plan. 'cause with a lot of the kids, I realized they needed step by step. And I transfer that over to therapy.
[00:11:50] And when I'm waking, making, like my courses, I do it the same way. I actually make a worksheet. And from that worksheet. I develop a course.
[00:11:58] So if I go back to, I have a book, a premarital counseling book. It's basically the session that I used to have with my clients. I would create worksheets on things that they can work on differently.
[00:12:10] And so after you've worked with multiple clients, and let's say you've got 50, 60 worksheets, you have a curriculum, you just have to. Add the rest of the material. Yeah. And so that's what's been my passion and my path is I create a, a worksheet or I create a curriculum or outline in my mind, and then I say, okay, I'm going to figure out how to turn this into a course.
[00:12:31] The biggest thing I remember though, when I'm doing and creating my courses is that people don't wanna know everything that I know. They just want to know enough so that they can leave with that information.
[00:12:43] Kym: I love that. Yeah. That's such a good tip. Yeah.
[00:12:46] Olivia: I try to keep my courses condensed. I, there's times when I'll overwrite and then I have to go back and I don't, they don't need to, all of this stuff. They don't need to know what they're, the main goal of the course is them to find out this information at the end. If I was to take this, these questions, would I say, I definitely know how to do it.
[00:13:04] And then I asked myself, now, if I wanted to put this into World World Action, how would I do that?
[00:13:09] Kym: Oh, that's amazing. So they're, they're making a lot of progress using your content too. It's not just a bunch of words. You've really thought about the process and how, how is this gonna apply to them? And they're gonna be able to like, see fast long-acting change based on what I'm teaching them.
[00:13:23] Mm-hmm.
[00:13:23] Olivia: Yes.
[00:13:24] Kym: That's amazing. So you, you said, I have a book. What's your book like, tell us about that. That's so cool.
[00:13:30] Olivia: So it's called before I do. It's a premarital counseling workbook. I actually made this book in 2017 2016 actually. Yeah, 2016. I, I had the book officially launched and prepared. I actually created the workbook because I was working with a lot of lgbtq plus couples and polyamorous couples.
[00:13:49] And when we were looking for resources on like homework that they can work on as a couple, when they went back home, the information during that time. Did not talk about lgbtq plus couples or couples that are inter-religious or, you know, couples that may have been in a, a two party relationship.
[00:14:09] And now we're opening up to a third person coming into their relationship and they wanted to have that marriage. And so I just couldn't find resource, so I started creating it. I just. Here we go. You're gonna do this assignment and we're gonna write it out step by step. You'll fill in the blanks.
[00:14:22] You'll do this once a week. And it was one day where I just said again, I'm just gonna put this into a book. And I just had all the material already doing it, and I put it together. I also did the book because, um. I have, of course, that is on my life revision website. That's just for clients. And I primarily did this because again, I work with sometimes low income clients, clients who don't have insurance, who may be immigrant, and they want to learn.
[00:14:49] They wanna take these courses, but if the resources aren't available to them or easily accessible to them, they're not gonna do it.
[00:14:56] And so I would say, okay, listen, if you can't, because you don't have either a health insurance or you are on limited time or times don't match up you could take this course,
[00:15:06] do the homework of the course, and then at least be able to come in and just talk about one or two key things that you didn't talk about in the premarital counseling you know, time that you had together.
[00:15:18] And so that was. Develop there. Again, it really just came from the interactions that I've had with clients work that I created by sitting down with them, having discussions with them and the homework that I gave them that I just kept developing and creating things, and I just keep putting them in books or curriculums.
[00:15:37] Kym: That's awesome. And I love that idea of just like, okay, well just, I've got a course then you can take. If you can't work with me like full-time or, or afford my rates or whatever, don't have insurance, whatever it is that's preventing them the time or whatever. I talk about all that all the time.
[00:15:50] It's like you literally have this knowledge base in your head. What if you just popped a course on your website? You know? I mean,
[00:15:56] Olivia: And I mean, I always tell other therapists, I'm like, listen, we you know, we look at this field and we have to remember that so many people will view it as such a competitive field. And I'm like, there are more than enough clients .
[00:16:06] Kym: Yes.
[00:16:08] Olivia: you know, we don't have enough therapists. Let's help support one another.
[00:16:11] Let's help build each other up. And so if you are knowledge in a particular area I would rather pay for that knowledge to get that training from somebody than not work with that clientele or even hold myself back,
[00:16:25] So, when, you know, when I create these things for my clients, I always remind them, listen, if it doesn't work for me, like if they take the course, they say Your hours don't work up for me, or I don't speak, you know, their native tongue.
[00:16:36] That that does happen. A lot of times I don't speak their native tongue. I'll refer them to somebody else that I know that has either like taking the course and they're aware of like different topics to talk about. Then I will say, you know, I know this therapist definitely has gone through this course, I've talked to them afterwards.
[00:16:54] Here's a referral to them.
[00:16:56] Kym: Amazing. Good for you. So in, my mh university.com. Is it all your trainings, are there other providers that give trainings on there too, or just curious what type of content's on there? If anybody wants to go check it out, we could let them know what all's on there.
[00:17:09] Olivia: So because of the relaunch, it's just starting off with mine, but I am opening it up to other clinicians. So it is an nb national Board of Certified Counselors approved CE providers, so we can offer CEEs for other agencies. And the hope is to start opening it up to them. CEEs that are gonna tackle
[00:17:30] Kym: Yeah.
[00:17:31] Olivia: and what's going on with them now.
[00:17:32] Like we don't want just the basic one, like intro to anxiety. We want you to talk about what's going on right now. You know, that that's what we want to be able to have these conversations with other clinicians so that they feel like when they leave there, my clients have been complaining about egg crisis, you know, that they leave there and finances.
[00:17:50] Maybe there's a therapist that.
[00:17:54] Kym: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:55] Olivia: They can then do that training and provide those resources to clinicians so when they work with their clients, they actually understand where could that anxiety be coming from.
[00:18:05] Kym: I love that. Yeah. Thanks for sharing all that. Can we switch a little bit? 'cause I have a question about the world schooling and all of that. That comes up all the time because you've got the, all this other stuff, but this is really pertinent to this audience too, is like the world schooling.
[00:18:19] People are like, what do I do with my kids? Like, I wanna travel. How do I manage that? So I'd love if you would. Talk about that a little bit, like how do you navigate it and do the, the homeschooling, the world schooling and all of that.
[00:18:31] Olivia: So actually combining it I use an example of when we went to Japan. So when we went to Japan, one of the things that we did for the world, schooling doesn't necessarily mean that they have to have like a notebook or a computer in front of them where they're following this complete system. Because you don't really have as much control.
[00:18:49] Like the educational aspects of it. So when I took my kids to Japan, we went to their museum and we would have it where we'll take a tour and that would be their history lesson. We're learning about Japanese history in that museum. And afterwards, what my kids would do is they would write a report about what they learned.
[00:19:06] They could take the photos that they took in there and they put it into a PDF or a PowerPoint presentation, and they would actually do a public speaking presentation to me about what they learned in Japan. When it comes to math, we could either use a compass, we could also, there's so many different methods that you could try to use to make sure that you're bringing in different aspects of just learning uh, what writing they had in Japan is, you could sign up for, like there's a, a place that you can go to and actually write in Japanese writing styles and that actually helps out with their writing. Um, Music, we went to a couple of events and also museums to learn about Japanese music. and then when it came to language, my kids actually are they're at a fifth grade level, level of speaking Japanese.
[00:19:54] Kym: Wow.
[00:19:54] Olivia: we were there, they had to talk in Japanese, they had to interact. They're, they're very big into anime. So they had to interact in Japanese with you know, individuals. They had to follow the practice of cultural norms. So what world schooling really is, is taking them to other countries, figuring out how.
[00:20:13] They can engage and interact in that country and learn. So they would have, if we would've had a history class here and let's say it was on Japanese history it's gonna be very different
[00:20:24] what we learn here as opposed to what Japan is gonna say. Their history is based off of, because our, we're looking at it a different
[00:20:32] Kym: Yes. Mm-hmm.
[00:20:34] Olivia: So by me taking them there, they were able to learn history according to how Japanese wanted their history to be explained. And so we went to different museums. We went to their science museums. They have a very large airplane based museum outside of nta. And so that, again. World schooling.
[00:20:54] So I turned a trip into an educational adventure.
[00:20:58] And you're getting both the best of both worlds. You have a, a trip to Japan, you have fun, and you interact and you eat some great food. You get to see how food is made great food. But at the same time, they get educated. They're also aware of how to respect other cultural norms when they're in other countries.
[00:21:16] So before we had to go there, they had to understand the proper, how to use proper words, talking to somebody depending on their age and. you know, learning about the laws, that was also a part of their I had my kids take a law class, so one of the things that they had to do was read up Japanese laws and understand.
[00:21:36] So you can really, when you're world schooling, you have that freedom to, gear the curriculum to what you feel would be best. And you can do that even at home. You can plan your trips and they can plan the trips. They can look at the finances and set up, okay, this trip costs 39 99, but I can find something for 20% off.
[00:21:57] Write it out. How do, what is the 20% off of that gonna be?
[00:22:00] How much is your budget? Manage the budget now. And that's really world schooling for me. That's how I've planned it out.
[00:22:07] Kym: practical life advice too. I mean, versus what a lot of kids get.
[00:22:11] Olivia: Yeah. And I've loved it and they've loved it. They've been exposed to just a diverse you know, array of different people, languages and cultures and food. And I think at the end of the day, it makes them a little bit more accepting of just others, but also more thankful of the things that
[00:22:28] Kym: Yeah.
[00:22:29] Olivia: world countries. You know, some places that may have limited resources, they've been able to say, okay, so I'm not going to, you know, throw out this amount of food. I'm gonna figure out now how to use this for something else. Or maybe I'll, you know, package this up. Usually when we go to restaurants, if we don't eat all the food, we'll package it up and my son will say, I'll take it to, you know, the person that I know is over here that's in need of food.
[00:22:54] Or I had some extra money left over, let me go get some cans and donate it. To this organization to help out. So it gives them a different viewpoint on life and acceptance of, you know, what they have.
[00:23:05] Kym: How does it work? I mean, I've had a couple people in here talk about homeschooling and world schooling and stuff, but I.
[00:23:09] I mean, could you like take your kids in and outta school? Is that something you like if, because you had mentioned you're back home right now and, and that one of the kids was back in school.
[00:23:19] Like, I'm just curious like, is that a process? Is it hard to do that or is it like just some paperwork and you can just take 'em in and out and be like, okay, now we're world schooling, or now we're gonna put you back in? Like, is that, is that tough or am I simplifying it? Like, I just don't even know 'cause I don't have kids, so I don't really know how that works.
[00:23:34] Olivia: So it's, it's very different with world schooling when we homeschooled, which is the, you know, what the education system calls it. Um, They're not going to traditional
[00:23:44] Kym: Okay.
[00:23:45] Olivia: So they were world schooled from middle school onto, I have one older son that's in high school and my youngest son is now, and he's still being world schooled in
[00:23:56] Kym: Oh, okay. Nice.
[00:23:57] Olivia: And so what you do is whenever you wanna travel, you just travel when you're homeschooled because they're not in traditional schooling.
[00:24:04] Kym: Right.
[00:24:05] Olivia: Well, my oldest son, whenever we do go somewhere now we will travel either with him or without, he's in high school, so
[00:24:14] Kym: Nice.
[00:24:14] Olivia: he, he enjoys the time with his nana and Pop Pop. So, he gets extra, extra things during that time. But. Know, usually we will either wait for like spring break trips or the summertime gets, you know, we're doing a lot of traveling during that time. If we have like a three or four day weekend, we'll try to go somewhere that you know, only the flights are only a couple hours and they may get a little bit of a taste here or there.
[00:24:39] But you can't take 'em in and out of the schools. Now I'm in the state of Maryland. And in my state, we also do offer online based schooling. So I do know a lot of parents who still have their kids in public school, but because they are online only, they can take 'em anywhere. And so they'll do a class log off and they'll be in, you know, this country.
[00:25:03] And, and they, you know, just kind of go back and forth, but when you're doing it, when you're homeschooling, they're completely under your, the parent is the teacher. And so, the school systems meet with us typically. Every semester to just get like a little bit of an update. They wanna see what curriculum we're using.
[00:25:21] We have to provide in my county, we have to provide written proof. So it would either be like for me, sometimes I do like the video recordings or I upload their presentations that they may have
[00:25:34] Kym: Oh,
[00:25:34] Olivia: And then they can see like the math work and they can see that. Doing schoolwork. And we, you know, send that in like a Google Drive and they have all that resources for them.
[00:25:45] But you can also do workbooks. So I've flip flopped. If I've had to do like law books or something, they'll go and read those and then we'll send that to our coordinator and she will see, oh, okay, so you did this assignment. Okay, lemme look at the work. Okay, great. And that is kind of pretty much it.
[00:26:02] Kym: What a cool thing for kids. I just think back when I was a kid, it's like, oh my God. Could you imagine if my parents had had done that type of education with me? How amazing would that have been? Yeah.
[00:26:12] Olivia: I mean, homeschool it, it's not really it, I wanna say it blew up more during the pandemic, but it's been something that families have done for years. But you know, I said to my mom, I would've loved to homeschool. And she's like, no.
[00:26:26] Kym: She's like, I wouldn't have,
[00:26:27] Olivia: Yeah, she said You need to go to school. But I would've continued homeschooling my oldest son, but he really did wanna go back to a traditional school only because he felt, he was like, you know, I've traveled a lot and you think about this at like 15, soon to be 16 years old. hear them say, I've traveled a.
[00:26:46] Kym: Yeah. I've traveled the world. Mom,
[00:26:49] Olivia: Yeah.
[00:26:50] Kym: it's time for me to settle down. I'm 16 or 15. Yeah.
[00:26:55] Olivia: it's like, okay, if that's what you wanna do, that's, that's understandable, that's fine. But um, you know, he just wanted to, you know, he said, I'll give it a try and see how it is. And like, if I don't like it, we'll go back to a sophomore year. I'm like, well, okay, but make a decision. But, you know, I'll support you in your, your adventure and, so far he's been, you know, he's been okay with it, but they socialize. Homeschool kids actually socialize a lot, so, socialization wasn't a part of it for him. It was just he wanted to, I guess, sit in one area, was sick of going around so many different places.
[00:27:28] Kym: right. so right now he's in school and then you're traveling during spring break or summer or whatever. are you like strictly like just vacationing at that point? Or are you also seeing clients and still working on your business and that sort of thing while you're doing that stuff?
[00:27:42] Olivia: So I try to offset and meet my clients on the days that I'm not traveling. So what I will do is I will either, if I'm traveling, let's say Monday through Friday I'll see them on the weekend. I try to condense it. I don't see as many individual clients. I do either a lot of assessments or I'm doing like consultation related work.
[00:28:03] But I try to make sure that I move it around that time for two reasons. One, I wanna make sure that I give all of the attention that I can to my children. They're only gonna be kids for so long. And once they go through like teenage phases, they become completely different people. So
[00:28:17] Kym: Yes.
[00:28:18] Olivia: you try to enjoy the time that you.
[00:28:24] Kym: Yeah.
[00:28:25] Olivia: But I also, I learn at the same time, so I see that not just as a vacation, but I see it as
[00:28:30] Kym: Expanding your worldview and, right,
[00:28:33] Olivia: and I learn from them and I gain information and I come back and I say, Hmm, is there training about that? And I do my research to see if there is, and. Then I create a training. I always try to find the most talkative person possible when I go to other countries,
[00:28:48] Kym: that's awesome.
[00:28:49] Olivia: um, Because they'll just talk about anything.
[00:28:51] Kym: That's amazing. And being a therapist, right? they already will talk about anything to you if you just sit down next to somebody normally it seems like, so you're like, oh, this is a good one. She's, she's local. I can tell. She probably sits here all day and she's got tons of information to give me.
[00:29:06] Yeah, Oh my gosh, what a cool, cool life you're living. And inspirational probably for people listening, you know, with everything you're doing.
[00:29:14] Olivia: You know, I always tell people that travel doesn't have to necessarily, you don't have to. Leave the country to travel. We could travel right here in our own country. You know, just getting in a car and driving down to a festival, like a cultural festival. Again, we have like an a Asian fest that always happens at our area.
[00:29:32] We have a Korean Fest, a a Japanese fest, and just go to the festivals and talk to the people there. You'd be surprised about what you will hear and where you'll hear people are coming from. Because sometimes people come from outside the country just to go to those festivals.
[00:29:46] Kym: Oh my gosh. What a good tip. Yeah. I always say, I mean, there's so much just to even do in the United States, you could just spend like 10 years just doing that, you know, and just going around all the different places, you know?
[00:29:57] Olivia: there's gonna be people that probably are from different parts of the US here, and I always tell people if you talk to somebody who may be from like Idaho or you know, even Washington State, they're gonna have a little bit of different issues with somebody who's calling in from maybe New York.
[00:30:11] And so, you know, you can learn from that and you can create trainings from that. You can create worksheets from that. You don't have to necessarily say that, you know, you can't afford to travel, because I know a lot of people, you know, they'll say, oh, I can't travel. I can't really have that lifestyle. But you can, you just have to figure out different ways to, to do it.
[00:30:31] Kym: Get creative with it. Yeah, it is possible, right? Oh my gosh, thanks a lot. I can't wait to go check out your site to see what trainings you have there that maybe I could take, because when you said that about the CEEs, I'm like, yes. I mean, I barely even comprehend what these CEEs are, you know what I mean?
[00:30:49] I just like, you know, I'll go to the test and be like, okay, let me just see if I could kind of answer these as we go just to get it over with, you know? And it's, it's pointless. It, it really is pointless in a lot of ways. So I like that you've created this. It's really cool.
[00:31:01] Olivia: Yeah, and I think that therapy has evolved. I mean, if we look at what therapy was even 10 years ago, right? It's so different. It is so, so different. And our clients have evolved. Our clients are getting more educated. Our clients are also you know, speaking up more for themselves and, and really just wanting more out of therapy.
[00:31:21] And so we have to be able, as. Clinicians and providers to be able to work with our clients, making them feel like they are not just another diagnosis, which we see a lot, a lot of clinicians that just say, oh, you're, you know, dealing with depression, or you're, you know, diagnosis having bipolar, and it's like, what, what is outside of that.
[00:31:43] Because if you're only focusing on just that when you're working with our clients you're not really seeing them as an individual. A lot of clients know that and they feel that, and they say, I just don't feel seen. I don't feel heard.
[00:31:53] And so my goal is really to just make all of these trainings where our clients at the end of the day will say, oh, you learned about this and you knew that this was something that, you know.
[00:32:05] I was struggling with, or the clientele that you're working with has been struggling with. If we think about just the things with Cuba, just being able to understand that mindset and that viewpoint of not putting them into this bubble as, is assuming like this is a criminal behavior, but understanding that it's deeper than that, it's a survival behavior.
[00:32:24] And if a client knows that you using words and different language that makes them feel validated in their feelings and validated in what they're going through, you're gonna get more success out of your clients that you're working with.
[00:32:37] Kym: Oh, love that. Thank you so much for being here today.
[00:32:40] Olivia: Oh, thank you for having me. You know, I really, I really am. So I love your group.
[00:32:45] Kym: Oh, thank you.
[00:32:45] Olivia: I love everything travel, and I think that really when us as clinicians travel, I think that, you know, in general our stress levels are lower. You will see that a lot of us probably can give more to our clients. We're more present, right?
[00:32:59] We're, we don't have that. Weight that's on our shoulders so much. And so I'm a big proponent, a big person that really believes that therapy, travel, work should all be able to be merged together in order for us to just feel happier in life.
[00:33:14] Kym: Yes. Shout it from the rooftops. Yeah. I mean, yes. I met somebody the other day that had never left their hometown, never had a passport, never flown on a plane, and it's just like, oh my gosh. You know, it's just, oh, it's just, there's like a whole world waiting, you know? It's like, like you said, just go to another county or something, check out, just something different, you know? Just expands you so much.
[00:33:35] Olivia: Yeah. I tell people, just get on a train. I say Amtrak has deals sometimes during the year where, you know, they do like the $50 train ride. Just get on the train. Just go, just see where, you know, you stop, get out, make sure it's safe, get out. Walk around, go to a new spot. And I do understand that there are struggles for some people when it comes to traveling and having that financial or other responsibilities that sometimes give them barriers, but try to find a way to make that method happen, that maneuver happen. Or if you can't go today, make the plan for, you know, a year from now when you set it up and say , okay, a year from now I'm definitely gonna do it.
[00:34:15] Start with saving a dollar a day. Start with saving, you know, $10 a month, just start. And I feel like once a person actually makes that first step or makes that first start of going somewhere, their eyes will really be open and they'll really then, in my opinion, I feel like start really just experiencing life.
[00:34:35] Kym: Yeah. Thank you so much. we're gonna put all your resources in the show notes. You guys can go check out all the amazing stuff Olivia's doing, and thanks for being a guest. I can't wait to go check it out myself.
[00:34:46] Olivia: Oh, thank you so much for having me. And you know, I really appreciate this.