Our guest for today is Chase Wade, M. ED, LPC and VP of Clinical Operations at J. Flowers Health Institute. Host Dr. James Flowers and ch-host Robin French chat with Chase on the importance of building professional and trustworthy relationships with patients. Chase also shares some of his personal journey in the mental health industry and what drew him to J. Flowers Health Institute in Houston, Texas.
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Building A Trustworthy Relationship Between Therapist And Patient With Chase Wade
Welcome to Understanding the Human Condition with our host, Dr. James Flowers.
How are you?
I’m good. How are you?
I’m doing fantastic. We have Chase Wade here, Vice President of Clinical Services with J. Flowers Health Institute.
He’s our work family.
Work family, that’s a good way to say it.
You are. I thought I’d start as usual with a little bio about you for those who don’t know you. Chase is a licensed professional counselor who is currently the Vice President of Clinical Operations at the J. Flowers Health Institute. Chase holds a master’s in counselor education from Texas Tech University. He specializes with clients who suffer from chronic pain, somatic symptom disorder, depression, and anxiety.
That’s a mouthful.
Welcome. I was worried about somatic symptom disorder. I didn’t even know.
Maybe we can get Chase to talk about what that is in a little bit.
Absolutely.
Career Journey
Tell me how you came to J. Flowers Health Institute, and how did you meet our fearless leader?
Let’s see. That was eight years ago, almost nine years ago. I finished graduate school at Texas Tech. Most graduate students, after an economic crash, we’re all broke and living with our parents, and we don’t know where to go. I leaned on an old friend of mine who I worked with in security at Hurricane Harbor in Arlington, Texas, not the one here in Houston. He said, “Here, email this guy.” He gave me Michael Beard’s email address. I sent him an email, and probably about two hours later, I get this Houston phone number, and I sent it straight to voicemail.
Have you heard this story?
No.
I sent it straight to voicemail. At the time, I was substitute teaching in a junior high. For some reason, they put me in charge of science. I don’t know why. I get the voicemail, and I immediately called Dr. Flowers back, and I’m apologetic for sending it straight to voicemail. We set up an interview about a week later. I met him at this office in North Richland Hills, which turned into being my home for six years to follow that. The first thing when he went down my resume was, he’s like, “You ran track in college, so did I,” and we just instantly hit it off right there. That’s where I found my mentor after graduate school. That’s where I found this amazing father-figure type guy, this great friend that’s always there for me, so years go by.
I worked for him about three years, and then I carved my own path in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, mainly more Fort Worth area. Ran a hospital at one point in time because the rule of thumb, when you work at a hospital long enough, they’re just going to put you in charge. At 29 years old, they’re like, “Here’s a six-figure salary, and be the administrator CEO of this hospital.” It was a great job. I had a lot of great employees, a lot of great patients, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a therapist again, so I went back to being a therapist again and really sharpened my skills. The whole path between leaving health trust at the time to coming here has always been an ongoing conversation, “You’re going to come back and work for me eventually, you’re eventually going to come home. You’re going to come home.”
Last August, I’m already going to get emotional, I lost a client in a really devastating way. One of the first people I call is Dr. Flowers, and he goes, first thing you do is call your therapist, done. Next thing you do is you need to go on a vacation, I actually have one planned next week. The next thing you do is just take a couple of days off from work, I’ve already done that. He goes, you already know what to do, Chase. He’s like, so when do you come home? We talked about this project here and what this company’s grown into. I came down to Houston last August 2019, and I’ve been here ever since. It was on the drive down here. My girlfriend Courtney and I were already planning out plane tickets to fly to a football game. It’s like, we’re already going to be here. We already had it in our mind before we even sat down.
Here you are.
Here I am.
Great journey.
That’s a big mouthful.
Authentic Therapy
We wanted to talk about your relationships and your treatment with the families and what you specialize in. Can we touch on that a little bit?
Throughout grad school, you’ll always hear me reference back to that, throughout my time in the field, what I’ve learned is that people want authenticity. They don’t want BS. They don’t want a textbook. They want you to be authentic. I’ve always attempted to be that authentic therapist. In the first hour of meeting a patient for the first time, “My counselor’s name is Paul. I’d send him to you, but he’s full because he’s really good” because it’s the truth. Therapists have to take care of themselves too, and so them knowing that you’re also a human being is a big part of it. In working with families, I have no problem sharing my own family history as well, the scuffles between me and my brother, or the good and bad parts of my relationship with my parents.
People want authenticity in a therapist. They do not want BS or just a textbook approach.
Very good.
Very nice. Building those trustworthy relationships is so critical to patient success, and it’s so important to you. What would you tell other therapists listening about building an authentic relationship with their clients? How do you do that?
Don’t have an ego when you walk in, because it’s a working relationship. They’re employing you, but you’re employing them as your client. Really listen, and just give time to do that slow turn of the dial on every relationship that you build with a new client. Some clients come in and they’ve been burned by some school counselor along the way, or some therapist their parents made them go to. Your goal is to remember that you need to meet them where they are, hold their hand, and walk with them. There are parts where you drag them where they need to go, but there are parts where you might need to go slow, and you might have sessions where it feels like a step back, and it’s actually a step forward.
Therapists need to meet their clients where they are, hold their hands, and walk with them.
Kobe Bryant
I know earlier this year, Kobe Bryant’s death had a very significant impact on you. How did his death affect you as a therapist, and how did it impact your human condition?
It’s actually interesting because, as a sports fan, I can’t stand Kobe Bryant. I’m a Dallas Mavericks guy. I’m a Texas Rangers guy. I’m a Dallas Cowboys guy. It’s weird that I’m here in Houston, and so this has been an awkward year for all of us. At one point in time, Australia was on fire, we all forgot about that. There were murder hornets. The government told us about UFOs, and nobody even talked about it, but I always circle back to Kobe, because that was a moment in time. Courtney and I are actually driving down here. My dad always tells me about the time when Elvis died, to carbon date me, he remembers exactly where he was when he heard about Elvis dying. Kobe is one of those deaths too.
Just like Mike, I remember exactly where I was when Michael Jackson died, and we’re recording our driving to Houston too. She’s going to go to a job interview. We’re going to look at the house we just got, and we’re passing through the Woodlands, and we’re just driving along. She goes, “Kobe died in a helicopter crash,” and that made sense to me because I knew he went around in a helicopter. I was like, “Okay.” She goes, “Did you hear me? Kobe just died in a helicopter crash,” and I was like, “Oh my God.” A lot of different things were in my head at that time, and I just didn’t really quite think about it. Over the next month, we saw the way the leagues surrounded that, but it wasn’t stories about his jump shot.
It wasn’t stories about his championships, it was stories about him as a person, the stories about the relationships that he built off the court, and you start to see all the film that you never saw before. This one sportscaster said she was eight months pregnant, and the first time she met Kobe, he walked up to her and said, “How far along are you? You’re going to be a girl mom. I’m a girl dad.” That’s the best thing. Seeing Shaq, who he had a horrible relationship with, cry about how good the relationship actually was, brought everything back. It’s not about accolades, it’s not about things along those lines. It’s about relationships that you build in life.
That’s truly what matters, because a lot of focuses in therapy that we have with clients is people are so focused on how far behind in life they are. The next goal or the next car or the next house when it’s really just the person sitting next to you in the relationship that you need to build that moment in time right there.
People are focused on how far behind they are in life or the next goal they have to achieve. However, what they should be really focusing on is the person sitting next to them.
COVID-19
Very cool. Has your approach to therapy changed this year with COVID and everything else that’s going on in the world?
I’ll go back to that graduate school reference point again. I remember talking with Dr. Cruz, saying, “Teletherapy is going to be the future,” and then did a few teletherapy sessions over the years. I’m like, “It is not the future.” Here it is. It’s the future. I’d love to hear your perspective on this too. What’s really unique is that this is the first time in my ten years of doing this, that every patient’s walked into the office with the exact same problem.
It doesn’t matter what socioeconomic status, it doesn’t matter what race, gender identity, gender identification, sexual orientation, what member of the family you are, if you’re just there for support, everybody has been heavily impacted by whether it’s not seeing their grandkids, or not spending time with their families, or not going on a certain trip, everybody has been impacted by this in a certain way. It’s unique in how and what COVID has done with therapy.
What have you heard from your clients this year? What’s changed as far as drinking during COVID or using substances during COVID around the United States?
It’s definitely gone up from what I can tell on the trend. It’s something that’s happening that people aren’t even thinking about. When I ask a client, “Has your drinking picked up since COVID?” they say, “I guess now that you ask, yes, it has.” I find myself drinking earlier. We could just look at the sales of alcohol and know that. We can go to other states where marijuana is legal and look at the sales of that and see that that’s also going on. I remember you and I actually having a phone conversation back in March, and it was right when AA meetings were shutting down. I think it hit us at the same time about the amount of relapses that are about to happen because that community is gone.
Self-Care
It’s happened a lot this year. You have several clients a day that you see every day of the week, sometimes on weekends. The patients you see clearly have complex, comorbid issues, and helping them improve their quality of life is so rewarding to you personally. But this type of work can affect you as a therapist, your own human condition, and your emotions. How do you manage the stress of seeing the patients and hearing their problems day after day, what they’ve been through, and the complexities of their own lives? What do you offer other therapists coming into this field?
That’s one thing that’s definitely always at the front of my mind, taking self-care. But the hard part for me, unfortunately, is that my parents programmed me to just work hard and put my head down. I love riding my bike and cycling, really enjoy spending time with Courtney, spending time with my dogs at home, finding a show on Netflix to binge, but also trying to get out and do the proper healthy social distancing things, going to a restaurant that’s doing things the right way, going out to a picnic, or going for a simple walk at Memorial Park. I’m starting to take up golf again, which is not cheap. It’s really focusing on that side of it.
Also, after each session, when you’re there in the office, try to hit the reset button and remember that each client you have is in a different stage of treatment. There are different problems that are going on. Reset, write your note, get it out of your head, take a deep breath, and walk to the next one. Make sure that if you get stuck with this client, go back and look at their treatment plan. What are the goals we’re working on? Because I’ll use a quote I just heard in the last hour, sometimes when you’re trying to drain out a swamp, you get bitten by a bunch of alligators, and sometimes the alligators win. We need to go find the plug. Remember why we’re actually there, to get through the muck so we can see what we’re doing.
Do you find it difficult to take your counseling hat off at the end of the day when you go home into your own home?
Good question. You have to answer it next.
It’s funny because my uncle Tim, my dad’s oldest brother, is actually a counselor too. His wife always jokes, “Does he listen when he gets home?” For me, I like to think that I do, but you’d have to ask the audience around me. Do I actually shut that down? I know there are times when I do check out because I’m in trouble for not listening, but I know there are times that I absolutely put my counselor hat back on at home. I try to take it off as much as possible. In this field, you carry around a lot of your clients’ emotions sometimes, so you have to find the proper way to shed it. That’s either visiting with my own therapist or talking with a colleague to make sure I’m not dumping that information at home on anybody that’s just like, “I don’t care, Chase.”
Therapists must find the proper way to shut down the emotions dumped on them by their clients.
Chase shares the same philosophy as I do, Robbin, and that is that we all need a good therapist.
What do you do to shake it off at the end of the day?
Exercise and Netflix and mindless entertainment.
Sky and thirteen-week-old Italian Spagnini.
Somatic Symptom Disorder
Speaking of difficult words, let’s go back to somatic symptom disorder. For those who don’t know what it is, can you tell us what that is?
Throughout a therapist’s career, one thing I can always say, a good word of advice, is to find what your specialty is. Without that, you’re just showing up every day aimlessly. I always go back to my first-ever client that I ever had. You have briefly spoken about him. He was at Health Trust. Right before I started there, Dr. Flowers actually did the intake, and when he did the intake, I came down to Houston, and he’s like, “Here, I just need you to put this file together,” and so I scoured through this guy’s medical chart. I scoured through his intake. I knew this guy backwards and forwards, and he’s a 65-year-old gentleman from Waco. I’m working in North Richland Hills at the time.
That’s about an hour and a half commute, I would say. He would come up on Tuesdays. He would go see the orthopedic surgeon and get an injection in his knee. He would go visit with a physical therapist, and he’d sit down with me for an hour. He’d stay in a hotel that night. He’d do the exact same round again on Wednesday, and then he’d head back to Waco. He comes and sits down with me, even though I know all his information.
I’m doing a relational thing, “Tell me about yourself. Why are you here? What happened to your knee?” His story goes along the lines of, “I used to be a chef in a kitchen when I was in my early 50s, and then I slipped and fell. When I slipped and fell, I tore up my knee. We went and did some injections, and I was on workman’s comp. My pay gets cut, and then my life starts to fall apart, but then I get healthy from surgery. I’m starting to make progress in physical therapy, and so we then realized I’m actually backsliding, so we have to do a full total knee replacement.” So he does a total knee replacement. This has turned into a year-long journey for this gentleman.
After the knee replacement, they’re on the big bed in the physical therapy room. The physical therapist pushed too hard and pushed it down, and it actually popped the joint, like pulled the mechanics out of the bone, so he’s damaged. He is permanently disabled. Texas used to have a great thing called DARS, and the DARS program would help people achieve a bachelor’s degree, fully paid for, if they couldn’t go back to their previous line of work. Unfortunately, that program has since been defunded, but when he sits down with me, for the last ten years of his life, he’s hobbling around on a cane. His relationships have got terrible. He’s not active in life anymore.
He was able to earn a bachelor’s degree in social work though, and so he was able to volunteer at his grandson’s junior high as a counselor type. He was able to start reconnecting with his nephew that he had a strained relationship with, but each time he came in, he kept telling me the same story of how he got hurt, and here I am, brand new therapist, 25 years old. I can’t even grow a beard yet, and he ends up, at the fifth session, telling me the same story. I was like, “Dude, stop. Stop it. You got it. You got to stop,” and I’m thinking, I can’t believe I’m saying this. I’m saying this to a 65-year-old man. I was like, “Do you know how many times you’ve told me this story? What’s my fifth time here?” “Five,” I was like “Twelve. You’ve told me this story twelve times. You keep looping back here.” “Wait, how many times have you told this story to somebody in Walmart?”
How many times has your wife told you to shut up? “Every day.” How many times do we repeat the story, and you get back in the car tomorrow, and you drive back to Waco? “I will beat myself up the whole way,” and he just starts crying. It’s because somatic symptom disorder is like, “Your knee’s messed up, and I hate it.” However, I’ll get back to somatic symptom disorder. However, you’re wrapped up inside of this. Let’s look at the good things here. You got your bachelor’s in social work. You’re the first graduate from your college in your family. You get to be around your grandson more. You get to spend more time fishing with your nephew. You get to cook at home as opposed to in a kitchen, and you get to make these giant Sunday meals. You’ve told me a lot of great things about you too, and this was back in DSM-IV days.
This is before the DSM-IV, so somatic symptom disorder wasn’t fully there, really, it was under a different code. What somatic symptom disorder is, using him as the whole backdrop, is every part of his life. He put these lenses on, and he saw the whole world hyper-focused on that knee, his pain level, and what happened. “The next part of physical therapy is going to help me. The next injection is going to help me. I need this different cane because this cane is a shock absorber,” whatever it might be. As opposed to just saying, “Your knee is hurt. We hear you. The pain level sucks too, but let’s focus on the good aspects of life.” The next day, Dr. Flowers was actually in the office.
He came up from Houston that day, and him and I finished our session. We had a much different session than the previous five sessions. He’s like, “Dr. Flowers, what do you think of this guy? Should I keep him around? Should I fire him or not?” Because I had been around for probably about two months at that time. He’s like, “No, he yelled at me yesterday. He did a really good job, and nobody else hit me.”
Since that moment within somatic symptom disorder, within chronic pain syndrome, I get to be raised by Dad here in that area of the field, because that’s just what always has been my specialty. Going from there into geriatric psych and working with patients in nursing homes, don’t be upset here, north of 55, but that was just the demographic that was there. However, we worked with a lot of elderly patients that had a lot of physical ailments, and pain was a huge part of that. There are a lot of therapists who aren’t specifically trained in that area. I feel very privileged to have got that young in my career.
Board
I’ve always been curious, you do that board that we put in your office. Talk to me about that. You have this board that he draws on, and before we got it up on the wall, remember he used to take this big, huge sheet of paper on the floor, and they’d be drawing on the floor until we finally got it up on the wall. But tell me what you do there.
By default, I’m from a family of educators. I’m also extremely dyslexic. My second-grade teacher told my parents, “He’ll never graduate high school.” Why am I crying about that one? That was funny. We actually sent her an invitation to my graduate degree.
That’s amazing.
When she said to my parents, “Chase won’t graduate high school,” my mom goes, “That’s sad that a lot of parents believe you, but we don’t.” Where I love using that board is because it helps me to not run down rabbit trails. It’s really my tool to help me guide a patient. But also, so many patients, when they get wrapped up in an emotion, it’s really hard for them to remember exactly what they’re saying or how they’re saying it, they get caught in these tentacles of the issue and not what they’re actually feeling on the inside. If we can write down, “You just said this, tell me the feeling that’s there,” I don’t want to talk about my feelings, Jason. That’s why we’re here. I am the guy in the office that will make jokes, as I am the guy that will cut up and have fun and laugh and call you out, I am the guy that always circles back to that emotion because that’s what really drives us all.
Many patients, when they get wrapped up in emotions, find it really hard to remember exactly what they are saying or how they are saying it.
Did you guys ever hear from that school teacher?
My mom bumped into her in a grocery store, and she said, “Do you remember saying that?” She goes, “I said that to so many parents,” which is really scary. She’s retired now.
Houston
Let’s talk about Houston, coming from Dallas, and then there’s that huge competition. Tell me how the transition’s been.
Courtney and I were really excited about coming down here. This is an amazing opportunity. We were really excited to go on this adventure, and we get down here February 1st that afternoon, and then the world shut down. It’s been us getting out of our comfort zone and being able to go out and feel safe, but we’re trying to find the areas of the city to enjoy. We’ve gone to Galveston several times. We go to Memorial Park pretty much every weekend. There’s been a transition for me because I was off at school for six and a half years, but I was home once a month, once for a couple of months. This is the first time in my adult life where I’ve been gone, and I haven’t seen family, and then throw a pandemic in there.
It’s made it even harder for people to see, and so it’s been, for me personally, a really hard transition in my personal life because I’m huge into family. You’ve seen me tear up a few times, but my family support is tremendous. I have Dr. Flowers and Michael to lean on. I’ve made some friends in the office. It’s been a great experience for me in this young part of my career to grow on my own and have support at home with Courtney, but to just know there’s somebody a phone call away. But it’s different when you don’t have that hug, when you don’t have that.
Exactly, and it’s got to be hard because it’s hard to make friends during a pandemic, right?
Yeah.
Rapid-Fire Questions
Let’s throw some of these questions out there. What do you do for fun, speaking of the pandemic?
Eat Courtney’s baked goods?
Yes, she’s a phenomenal baker. Definitely love to go cycling and taking up golf again. Going for walks, things along those lines.
Nice.
What’s your favorite leisure activity?
I guess that’d be the same things, cycling, golf, going for walks, going for runs, things along those lines.
What’s on your bucket list that you haven’t done that you want to do?
Bucket list I haven’t done? There’s two, really, start and finish my PhD. That’s a goal of mine. The other one is getting married and having kids.
There you go. What’s your ideal vacation, post-COVID?
Post-COVID ideal vacation? A national park that doesn’t have cell phone signal.
Nice.
That’s how I always try to plan something, where there’s no cell phone signal.
What music is in your playlist?
It is all over the place, from either, like, Red Dirt Texas Country to Post Malone. We just bought a record player too. Fleetwood Mac has been played a lot lately, John Mayer, and then there’s some podcasts out there too.
Episode Wrap-Up
Thank you for being with us. I really appreciate that. I think it’s important when you see something like this, as they get to know you and as they get to know Chase, and they go, “That’s my therapist. I want him to treat me,” once they get to know you. Thank you.
You’re doing an amazing job, so glad that you’re part of J Flowers Health, and so glad you’re right here in Houston.
Dr. Flowers, you know this, but I always like saying it to you, that you’ve been such a pivotal part of my career.
Thank you.
Pushed me hard in bad and in good ways. Always giving me the butt chewing when I need it, but always telling me “I love you” afterward.
That’s right.
Without you, I’m definitely not sitting here in Houston, that’s for sure. I’m very honored to be able to try to follow in those coattails that you leave behind.
Thank you so much. I love having you here, and I love you and Courtney, and can’t wait to see what’s ahead for you guys here in Houston, so thank you. Thank you, Robbin.
How do folks find us if they would like to talk to either one of you two gentlemen?
JFlowersHealth.com or 713-783-6655, there you go.
Thank you, everyone.
Thanks, everyone.
See you next week.
