We recently connected with Kelly McCullough and have shared our conversation below.

Kelly, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s go back in time to when you were an intern or apprentice – what’s an interesting story you can share from that stage of your career?

I credit the majority of my technical expertise to my second year internship at Rady Children’s Hospital, Outpatient Psychiatry. It was definitely a sink or swim clinical placement, with very high expectations on interns to provide quality, evidence-based treatment to a pretty acute child and adolescent population. While still learning the ropes of how to even be a therapist to begin with. Ouch!

So as you can imagine, it was a high stress, high stakes environment, where we are all learning while doing. I remember being particularly worried about how to engage one parent during an upcoming family therapy session. I spent the entire week prior preparing, researching best clinical practice, seeking clinical supervision and consultation, and in a general internal state of panic and disarray (of course).

I hyped myself up for session that day by repeatedly rehearsing the one parent training strategy that I was convinced would completely shift the family dynamic. After a brief check-in with the kiddo, I prepared internally to switch gears to the parent. It’s go time! I turned around and found the parent sitting at attention, hands folded in their lap, eyes closed, and 100% asleep.

This is a hilarious anecdote in hindsight, and also a monumental teaching moment to meet the client where they are at. What I have in my head as the “perfect” family-based intervention will only succeed if the family is ready for it. A key clinical skill as a therapist is the ability to pivot as we go along. Therapy is an intricate dance of clinical treatment planning with client’s readiness for change. One cannot happen without the other.

While I don’t think “nap” will ever come up on any Google search results for top effective family therapy interventions, maybe on that day, for that parent, that nap was the most effective use of their therapeutic hour.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a San Diego-based therapist and the director of La Jolla Therapy Center, a group therapy practice. I started La Jolla Therapy Center in 2018 to provide science-backed and research-based treatment to children, families, couples, and adults. Our practice is centered on building strong, trusting relationships with individuals and families in order to make change happen. Our team balances integrating evidence-based practices with the development of an empathic relationship in order to help others create a life that is fulfilling, rewarding, and worth living. We specialize in treating anxiety/OCD, depression, trauma, behavioral problems, and relationship issues. We currently have a staff of four licensed therapists who work collaboratively with individuals and families to help prioritize well-being and mental strength.

What sets us apart from other private practices is our internal collaborative approach and capacity to treat multiple members of the family simultaneously. We often may have one therapist treating one child, another treating the sibling, and a third treating the parents for couples’ work. As we are a small, boutique practice with an intentionally curated staff, both quality of care and coordination of care is at the forefront of our work.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Anything worth having is worth struggling for! La Jolla Therapy Center is both one of my biggest accomplishments and most challenging opportunity for growth. While I felt more than confident in my clinical skills as both a therapist and clinical supervisor, the administrative side of running a small business with multiple full-time employees has been rich with learning. Securing an office lease, filing quarterly taxes, and running payroll, unfortunately, was not taught at my graduate program! I often feel like I wear many different hats during the day. Fortunately, I have a wonderful supportive network of colleagues who have experience in the private practice realm and have been incredibly generous with their advice. I have learned that the only “stupid question” is the one that you don’t ask. My dedicated husband has also been my late-night Google partner for the questions I still couldn’t quite find the answer to. And believe it or not, Chat GPT has also come in handy when we are brainstorming how to address the administrative side of running the business. The road to success is a steep learning curve.

If you could go back, would you choose the same profession, specialty, etc.?

100% without hesitation, yes! I have always been drawn to the art of relationship building. This has taken on many forms throughout my life, from nannying, to tutoring, to mentoring, to in-home behavior therapy. I realized I wanted my future career to center around using the relationship as a mechanism to help others create meaningful changes in their lives, so I sought my undergraduate degree in psychology at UCSD and my master’s in clinical social work at SDSU. Internships at both UCSD and Rady Children’s Hospital helped provide me with a clinical foundation of science-backed, evidence-based treatments that have been proven to work both in and out of the therapy room. Treatments like cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxiety and depression, parent-child interaction therapy for children with ADHD, and dialectical behavior therapy for emotion dysregulation. In my hopes to help expand access to these evidence-based treatments to a wider population, La Jolla Therapy Center was born.

I am a relationship person, and I love that my career is focused on building relationships. Even as I have transitioned to more of an administrative role in managing the group side of the practice, I continue to keep my own full-time clinical caseload so I can have the privilege of working side by side with clients on their healing journey. Now as a group practice owner, I also have the ability to cultivate a different kind of working relationship with my incredible team of licensed therapists.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lajollatherapycenter.com
• Instagram: @mytherapistkelly
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/lajollatherapycenter
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-mccullough-lcsw/

Image Credits
Zoetic Photography Vladimir Khalafian, MD Kelly McCullough, LCSW