Do Only Liberals Go To Therapy? Meet Dea Bridge, the "conservative therapist" Meghan interviewed for The New York Times

The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.7 • 855 Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2022

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Last fall, Meghan was commissioned by The New York Times to conduct an interview with a therapist who was politically conservative. The editors were curious about the question of whether most therapists lean toward the political left and whether this causes some some patients to self-censor because they fear judgment. They editors tracked down Dea Bridge, a licensed professional counselor in Colorado, and The Q&A-style interview was published in the October 4, 2022 edition of the Times opinion section. The interivew touched a nerve with readers, both positively and negatively. One of the central questions readers asked was also one of Meghan's questions: what about Dea's particular approach was "conservative?" Moreover, why should politics enter into therapy at all?

Given the huge response to the conversation, Meghan invited Dea to continue it on The Unspeakable. Here, Dea talks about approaches to (and definitions of) trauma, how her own time in the military influences her work with veterans, and whether an "up by your bootstraps" approach to therapy might be more useful than some people assume. She also talks about how valuable the Times experience has been, even though when the editors first contacted her she wondered if it was an internet scam.

Guest Bio

Dea Bridge is a Colorado Licensed Professional Counselor, Nationally Certified Counselor, and a Full Operating Provider/Evaluator through the Colorado Sex Offender Management Board (SOMB). She is also certified in Equine Assisted Psychotherapy through the Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association (EAGALA). Her counseling experience includes working with military veterans, law enforcement / corrections officers/first responders, adults involved with the criminal justice system, adults with cognitive or developmental disabilities, and community mental health crisis evaluation and management. She is an Army veteran and former first responder.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Unspeakable Podcast.
0:05.2	I'm your host, Megan Delm.
0:07.2	I am really excited about my guest this week.
0:10.3	She is not someone you've probably heard on any other podcast.
0:14.4	I think this may be the first podcast she's ever done.
0:17.4	She is Dee Bridge.
0:19.2	She's a licensed professional counselor that I interviewed for the New York
0:22.6	Times back in October of this year. This was kind of an odd assignment. I was approached by
0:29.0	some editors in the opinion section of the Times to do a Q&A with a conservative therapist
0:35.0	as part of a package they were doing on mental health in America.
0:39.8	They tracked down D and we had the conversation and to my surprise, it garnered a great deal
0:46.4	of attention, both positive and negative.
0:49.4	From what I could tell, my audience thought it was terrific.
0:57.8	The response was overwhelmingly positive. In the October Zoom hangout for the podcast, we spent a lot of time talking about the interview,
1:03.0	even though it had nothing to do with the unspeakable. So I thought it would be fun to actually
1:08.5	bring her in here. Just for some background, D has been a
1:12.5	practicing counselor since 2014. She's had several other careers before that. She did her training
1:19.2	through a program at a private Christian college. And in fact, much of her client base comes to
1:25.3	her through the criminal justice system. She works with sex offenders
1:29.5	in particular, and that's a whole other subject that we don't get into here, but that I've
1:34.9	covered previously on the podcast. She practices out of Grand Junction, Colorado. Her designation as a
1:43.0	conservative therapist came about because she is listed in a
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Meghan Daum, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Meghan Daum and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.