Dr. Keith Sutton, Psy.D., is a SCV-CAMFT member who is also the host and founder of the podcast Therapy On The Cutting Edge. He has a private practice while also the Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy (where he has 31 licensed, experienced clinicians and teaches workshops on various subjects), the Director of the Bay Area Community Counseling, and Director of the Family Institute of Berkeley (where he trains associates in family therapy and other evidence-based treatments.)   

An East Coast transplant to the Bay Area, Dr. Sutton shared that his life path really started when he received a school assignment in 7th grade to write about what you wanted to be when you grew up. “ I really enjoyed talking to friends about their problems and helping them. I was really interested in the way the mind works. At that time there was also a TV show called Growing Pains, where the dad was a therapist and worked from home, which I thought would be a great career.  So I wrote a paper on becoming a psychologist and basically got on that track,” Dr. Sutton explains his early interest in psychology.

Initially working with teenagers individually in a teen shelter and residential treatment program, it wasn’t until he worked at a teen shelter where the families came in for sessions that he saw how critical work with the families was.  “I assumed I'd be working with teenagers individually, doing individual therapy. I hadn't even really thought about family therapy,” he states. “But I quickly learned that when you put the kids back in the context of the families, a lot made sense - both their strengths as well as some of the maladaptive patterns. So I got really interested in family therapy and working with children, adolescents and families”

Having worked with teenagers and their families for over 25 years in his decades-long practice, he is a self-proclaimed systemic thinker who has  integrated various modalities and approaches into his work.  “I quickly learned that if you're going to work with a family, you need to know how to work with a couple, because oftentimes the parents are really struggling,” he notes. “I think that when people think of family therapy, they think of the whole family being present for every session.”

Dr. Sutton believes that “with systemic thinking, we can really move in and out of individual therapy to couples, couples therapy to family therapy and so on, and really help create this larger shift because in systemic thinking, we make small changes in different areas of the system. It has big impacts because we have these reverberating, ripple effects. Yet there are a lot of professionals who facilitate family therapy, but come from an individual therapy perspective, rather than a systemic perspective.”

“So they are doing, say, individual therapy with a child or a teenager,” he continues. “And they might occasionally bring the parents and the therapist supports the teenager or child by helping them to talk to the parents, which is very helpful of course. Sometimes, the parent gets defensive, since they don’t have a relationship with the therapist, and the therapist and child or teen determine that the parent is unworkable, and go on to do individual therapy.  As a systemic thinker, my goal is to really put myself out of the job and really to help that system change. So, not just being the advocate for the child with the parent, but really helping the parent learn how to draw the kids out and helping the kids feel that comfort to be able to talk more.  Also, by doing work with the parent and making them feel that you understand them, they are more able to hear their child or teen’s pain, knowing that you as the therapist are holding who they are, and they don’t have to get defensive.”
 
The quintessential lifelong learner that he is, Dr. Sutton has equipped himself with learning different approaches and modalities while simultaneously looking through the lens of multiple theoretical perspectives. “I integrate Family Systems, EFT, EMDR and the CBT into my work and really, my kind of overarching grounding is working systemically,” he states. 

As an extension of this wish to learn, integrate and stay up-to-date with the new ideas in the field while sharing this passion for advancement with other practitioners, he started the podcast Therapy on the Cutting Edge in 2021 where he interviews clinicians who are doing interesting, innovative, integrative work in the field of psychotherapy.


Question: Do you recall the moment you decided to start the podcast?

I enjoyed podcasts and loved Dr. David Van Nuy’s podcasts.  I had always thought about doing a podcast, and towards the end of 2020, I was so busy juggling my kindergartener and fifth grader at home, I didn’t have time to read all the books and research I wanted to. So I thought, maybe I could interview the authors and learn about their work, and make a podcast out of it. 

Question: Where do you see yourself 5 years from now, esp. with teenagers?

In 5 years, I’m hoping to have written about my Attachment Based-Cognitive Behavioral Systemic Therapy (AB-CBST) model and teaching workshops on the approach.  I’m also working on adding to our Institute’s workshops, covering various approaches to psychotherapy, building our library of on-demand training.

Question: If you could share three “nuggets of wisdom” to newbie therapists, what would they be?

I would say, follow your interests.  I was led by my interest in learning, and collaborating with other professionals, and creating the training environment I wanted to learn in.  Wanting to improve my skills and understanding of individuals and relationships led me to get lots of training to help my clients as best as I could.    

Don’t wait for it to come to you, instead, build it yourself.  When I wanted to learn Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, but wasn’t sure if I wanted to commit to a 4-day training that was over a thousand dollars, I hired someone to teach a 6-hour workshop, advertised it so people could come and pay for the workshop, allowing for the costs of having the presenter be shared.  Not only did I get to be trained but so did others. Also,  part of the model of our Institute’s training is to cover the theoretical groundings of an approach, learn techniques and have a felt sense of a particular approach. Then, it's easier to decide which treatment approaches you might want to get more in-depth training and/or certification in.   

Meet and learn from the people in your community.  Networking can be one of the best ways to build your practice, but don’t just go out there and sell yourself – learn about others, find out what the resources are out there, and connect with like-minded people. We all grow when we share ideas and knowledge, when we come from a place of curiosity. Collaborate with others. We are social beings, and we affect each other, positively and negatively.  Surround yourself with people who share your interests in the field, and those who are doing what you’d like to be doing.  Early in my career as a therapist, I started a peer consultation group called “the Collaborative Consultation Group” which met once a month to discuss cases amongst ourselves. Every other month though, we pooled our money together to hire a therapist we were interested in learning from, and had them consult on a case.  It was a great way to learn, as well as form deeper relationships with more seasoned professionals who could be great referral sources, as they got deeper into your client work through consulting on a case.  Finally, I was on the board of the San Francisco Psychological Association, Marin County Psychological Association and Association of Family Therapists of Northern California at the same time, involved with the programs committees, which gave me the opportunity to reach out to folks who were doing interesting work I wanted to learn from. They would volunteer to speak at these organizations, so I not only got to learn from them, but developed personal relationships with clinicians who were doing great work and speaking about their approaches.  


W. Keith Sutton, Psy.D.
www.drkeithsutton.com
Pronouns: he/him/his (What’s This?)
Clinical Psychologist, PSY 22439
Private Practice with offices in San Francisco & Corte Madera and available via Zoom throughout California
https://www.facebook.com/drkeithsutton/ 
Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy (IAP)
Director of Bay Area Community Counseling (BACC) a 501(c)(3) nonprofit    
Director of the Family Institute of Berkeley
Certified Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) Supervisor
Past President of the Association of Family Therapists of Northern California
Founder of Bay Area Therapists Specializing in Adolescents (BATSA)
Host of the podcast Therapy On The Cutting Edge
To learn about my work, check out this interview from Shrink Rap Radio