In this thought-provoking episode of Epic Begins With 1 Step Forward, Zander Sprague sits down with clinical psychologist Dr. Greg Obert for an engaging conversation about mental health, leadership stress, trauma, and the evolving role of therapy in today’s world. Drawing from more than 15 years of experience, Dr. Greg shares insights into anxiety, emotional regulation, executive stress, and the importance of finding the right support when life becomes overwhelming. Together, they explore the challenges facing the mental health profession, why quality therapy is often misunderstood, and how therapists help people uncover the patterns driving their thoughts and behaviors. The discussion also highlights the value of curiosity, self-awareness, and personal growth. This episode offers practical wisdom for anyone seeking greater emotional health, resilience, and clarity in their journey forward.
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What Therapists Wish More People Understood About Mental Health With Dr. Gregory Obert
I am so excited to be joined by Dr. Greg Obert. Dr. Greg, tell us who you are and what you do.
The Psychological Journey: Dr. Greg Obert’s Origin Story
I am so excited to be here with you. Thanks so much for having me. I am a clinical psychologist by trade. I am someone who has been working in mental health in some form or another for about fifteen years now. You name it, and I have probably been in the treatment setting. I make it my life goal to help people work through all sorts of issues that they have.
My specialties include mood, including executive stress. People often forget about a lot of the stress that people in charge or in leadership roles have in their lives. Trauma, PTSD and veterans’ issues. I talk a lot about mindfulness, the importance of emotion regulation, and how all of that applies to those areas of specialty. That is the briefest of spiels about me, but I am happy to talk more about any of that.
Also, I’m in the mental health field, so I’m like, yes, I have covered that, I have done that and stuff. I always love to get what I will call the psychological origin story. When did you know that you were really interested in psychology and how people work?
I fall into that stereotypical category, where I have heard over the years that people tend to get into mental health because they want to give back, because somebody helped them. I fall into that category myself. When I was in high school, there was a one-two punch. My parents were getting divorced at the time. Not only did I have a wonderful experience with a therapist who helped me work through that, but I also had, which I guess anecdotally is odd for most high schools, they had a psychology class, an intro to psychology class in my high school. Both of those things coincided at the same time.
After taking the psychology class, I was like, “Man, this is so interesting. I definitely want to do this.” For the longest time, I thought I was going to make video games. I love playing video games. I’m like, “I’m going to make these things, and it’s going to be great.” Of course, I had not taken a single day of programming in my life. I was somehow convinced I was going to magically make these games. I took that class, and everything changed. I had not looked back. As soon as I got to undergrad, I declared for psychology as soon as I could. The rest is history.
I get it. Look, my own path was I found that I was just intuitively curious about why people were behaving the way they were in relationships I saw around me, where I’m like, “Why are these people arguing all the time? What’s behind that?” It’s before I actually really knew I was probably, I do not know, 10 or 12. I had not thought about it, but I think for a lot of people who get into the mental health psychology field, we’re innately curious as to why that is happening. Why do people hate that?
Why do some people deal with stress really well, and other people seem to have very few tools to be able to do it? It’s cool. When I got into undergrad, I knew I wanted to do psychology. I got in there, started doing it. I found out that I actually have some family history on my mom’s side, some famous psychologists and stuff, who I’m related to. I was like, “Look at that.” I do not really think so, but I was just really curious about it. It’s great. I find it’s always so fun to work with people and try to figure things out. Like, “What’s behind that? Why is that happening?”
It sounds like you have psychology in your blood as well.
I would like to think that I do. Edward Thorndike, again, we look at it now and go, “Maybe those were not the greatest experiments,” but certainly he shows up in all your intro books. You’re like, “He did.” He was electrocuting dogs, which was not good, but that was back in the ‘30s and stuff.
The ethics were a little loose back then.
They were. I’m sure you’ve seen the Milgram experiment. Things that could not ever happen today, but are actually really good learning tools. Anyway, so you have a doctorate in psychology, correct?
Yes.
Awesome. I’m curious, what did you do your thesis on?
Traditional insurance shouldn’t dictate how many sessions you get. Your healing journey doesn’t fit into a corporate box.
Network Models: A New Way To Map Personality And Behavior
I had two papers I had to deduce because I had a master’s while I was in the program. My master’s thesis was on actual political affiliation and diagnosis. These were all results that needed to be taken extremely cautiously because the sample size was so small. Of course, I was only polling people who are graduate students. I wanted to see if doctors or any healthcare providers would diagnose patients differently if they came in with certain political markers on them.
I finished that in 2021, I think, when I collected the data. Maybe it was the beginning of 2020. I had different vignettes where it was all a vague mix of depression and anxiety. I wanted to see if someone wearing a MAGA hat or someone wearing a Bernie Sanders hat or something like that would sway the clinician to diagnose them differently. If I recall, there was one condition where anxiety, I think, was a little bit more prevalent.
That was based on one person. It was not anything significant. In fact, I was impressed with the number of people who, during the debrief, guessed what the study was about. Maybe that’s on me for a future study to make it a little bit more murky, so they cannot guess it. My dissertation was on network models. This was a relatively newish thing that was happening when I was in grad school.
I have not kept up on it since then, but it was this idea that certain markers that we have in not just disorders, mental health disorders, but also in personality influence each other in a way that we have not really measured before. Typically, things have been measured as, here’s your construct. For example, extraversion, it loads onto this, which is so stats-heavy. I cannot believe we’re talking about this right now.
Audiences, do not worry. We will not get too deep into the weeds on this one.
We will not be talking about chi-squares or anything like that. Essentially, there’s a construct like extraversion. There are all these pieces to it. They do not really connect all that well in previous models. Let’s not say they do not ever. Be careful because you’ll have a statistician out there fact-checking me. The network model essentially takes a look at all these different pieces and says, “Actually, they connect a little bit more than we think.” There are maybe certain ones that are stronger for people who activate their own personal network.
For example, if we’re talking about someone being extroverted, they gain energy by being around other people. Maybe that particular network in their brain is most strongly tied to going up to people and talking to them at parties. That is going to influence other things, like sharing a personal story. When you look at the spider web of nodes, if you are having someone who’s maybe having a tough time being extroverted, you could target their specific spider web, find their nodes that actually would help them be more extroverted, and target your interventions to focus on that. That’s going to help them turn on “their extraversion network” much more easily than they would have in the past.
It makes sense. I’m obviously very extroverted, so I’m like, “I love meeting people and being in front of people.” That absolutely energised me. I’m like, “That’s what I want.” It’s very interesting. Now you’ve started the Royal Oasis Psychotherapy Institute. Tell me about the Royal Oasis Institute.
Redefining The Private Practice: Improving Accessibility And Professionalism
As I said, I’ve been in mental health for a long time, and there’s something that has really been bothering me a lot about traditional mental health care. It’s no shade, as the kids would say, thrown at anyone who does these things because I understand it. One of the things that really bothers me is two things, really. Insurance and lack of professionalism from a lot of clinicians out there.
I say lack of professionalism because you probably have had this yourself. I cannot tell you the number of times people have reached out to me and said, “I cannot believe that you actually responded to me. I have been in psychology today. I have been putting out, I do not know how many different messages. The fact that you responded to me within 24 hours is shocking.”
Look, sadly, there are incredibly long waiting lists for people to get help. In my own practice, I do try to get back, but I only have so many slots that are available. I do not have a full slate of clients. It’s not the only thing I do. Actually, I do a lot around my Epic show, my Epic Begins TV show. I’ve got other things that I’m also doing. Again, I’m like, here are the time slots I have. I work with Rula, which is one of the platforms and stuff. That works out well for me.
They’re always going, “Can you open up any more? Do you have any more slots that you can open up?” I totally get it. I’m happy that I’m full. It’s a good problem to have. It is indeed as I’ve thought about this because again, I guess the psychology mind where you go, “That’s interesting.” Whereas mental health is now getting de-stigmatised. People are realising that, I believe, throughout someone’s life, there are times when they may need some therapy. It just helps them.
I tell people, “I hope you get unstuck.” There’s something that brings you into therapy. It’s usually because there’s some issue that you are not able to figure out yourself. Now, you reference that your parents were getting divorced. That’s a big one. How do I figure all of this out? Teenage Greg cannot, does not have the tools to figure out all those feelings, all those emotions. It’s not your fault.
A lot of times, we as mental health providers tend to undervalue our services.
I did not, and I got some great help from it. To be clear, it’s less about shaming therapists than saying, “How dare you not take on more and more because I know you are very busy with all the other projects that you have?” The thing that bothers me about these messages is just the fact that they’re not getting responded to. It’s not even like, “I’m sorry, I’m full up.” “I can put you on the wait list.” It’s just nothing. They’re just talking into the void. I really dislike that.
It’s my goal to put out a practice that is, of course, very professional and a little bit more than what people typically think of when they think of a private practice, because usually they think about me going, I see my person, and that’s it. Versus, I’ve decided to try to add on some new things. I have a store where people can purchase premium audio downloads, whether it’s affirmations or meditations, because I have a guided meditation show. Live streams where people can learn about different psychological concepts. I have something called Dark Psychology, for example, because true crime, of course, is fascinating to many people.
I decided to throw my hat in the ring. Just a few weeks ago, we talked about, I still cannot believe this is a real thing, we talked about a cult that worshipped a satellite created by the Chinese Communist Party. It was very bizarre, but I want to try and expand the offerings of what a private practice can be, starting with not just better communication, but also products released. The other thing that I mentioned earlier was insurance.
I do not know about you, but I know in my life when I have been in practices where I’ve taken insurance, it’s been really frustrating because for a lot of people, they might have some change in their insurance, and then all of a sudden they feel like they cannot see their provider, or this is the worst offender. I’ve had people whose insurance dictates how many sessions they get. Some people may only need twelve sessions a year, but once a month, really, that’s the best that you can pay for.
I’ve made it my goal to educate people about out-of-network reimbursement, super bills, and how they can still see good quality therapists while also maintaining their privacy. With insurance, of course, they get to know a diagnosis. If you do not want to use your insurance, they do not need to know what diagnosis you have, and they also provide just really great care for people. Hopefully, all that makes sense. That’s really what I’m trying to go for with my practice.
The insurance part of it, I have my own private practice. I do not actually accept insurance on that side because I do not have the wherewithal to try and get myself individually certified to accept all these different insurances. You’re right, many insurance plans do limit. They have a time limit. Look, I have a client that I’ve had for about a year, and I just had to go through the whole thing of saying, “No, this person still needs therapy. I’m working really hard to help them, but there are ongoing issues, and no, they’re not ready to conclude.” I say to my clients when I begin, I am here to help you. When we complete that, I move on.
I can say that there are times when I am sad because I get to come in, see this fascinating story, but then I have to leave, and I have no way to know how this concludes. Like, “I’m so curious to know how they’re doing.” I cannot. That’s part of being a mental health provider. You get to come in, see a portion of someone’s life. It’s like a really great movie where you come in, you see this, and then it ends. You’re like, “I want more.” It’s for me, the end of Field of Dreams, where they’re panning out and they’re all the cards. I’m like, “No, I do not want it to end. I want to know more.”
I leave you hanging, as this is one of the bittersweet pieces of therapy. It’s knowing that people can walk away feeling so much better, but then you do not actually get to know what happens next. I like to paint the optimistic story in my head and hope that everyone just goes on to live happily ever after.
Talking about, when you’re like, “Now I can only see this per this person can only see me once a month. Sometimes, if it’s just on a maintenance thing, let me check in. You’re okay. We can check in once a month. For the people who, unfortunately, it’s financially based. You’re like, “I feel bad. You need more help. I need to talk to you every week because there’s so much going on for you.” It’s hard. We are supposed to have time-limited therapy.
It’s not therapy that is not ongoing, but there are certainly people with anxiety and depression for whom twelve weeks is not enough. You’re not going to be able to provide enough tools for someone who perhaps has anxiety. Sometimes you’re hard pressed. I’m trying really hard to give them the tools so that they can recognise what is triggering their anxiety, how they may lessen the effects or cut it off. I recognise this is, “I’m feeling anxious.” Here are tools that will help me calm myself down and not spin up into a huge anxiety attack. For a lot of times, it takes longer than 12 weeks, 12 sessions.
It does. I’m the type of guy who says, “Listen, I want to be respectful of your time and your money. I will see you for as long as necessary and then no more.” Whatever necessary means, it’s going to differ from person to person. As an example, if I’m working with PTSD, I might see someone for, if I’m doing prolonged exposure, 8 to 12 sessions is typically the average. They might need a little bit more than that, but usually about 8 to 12, and then we’re done. That’s it. I do not need to see you. I’ve also seen people, exactly what you said, dealing with anxiety, identity issues, complicated relationships with parents, on and off, for years. It just depends on the person.
The Value Of Mental Health: Business Acumen And Professional Training
This idea, though that insurance dictates, has to be one way for one type of client. That’s just not how humans act, and not everyone can fit that exact mould. I think this ties into a little bit about business acumen in mental health, because I do not know about you, but I had no business training whatsoever. A lot of times, we as mental health providers tend to undervalue our services. I would not be surprised if that bled into the modern health care system, where the people who are advocating for insurance reimbursement and all that, just said, “I guess that’s fine. It’s okay. It probably should be more, but we’ll take it.”
I know where I live. I know what the rates are. I made a trade-off when I went with Rula, and I’m okay. I’m not complaining. I show up, I do my therapy, I write my notes. They’re finding the clients, and they’re dealing with all of the insurance. I get paid less than I would like on the private practice side. There’s that trade-off. You’re right. That business acumen. I spent 22 years in the corporate world, so I have some exposure to all of that.
I advocate heavily with the people I work with. Do not sell your knowledge, your services. If you have Lamborghini services, do not sell them, and I’m going to date myself, but Pinto prices, Hugo prices, or smart cars for a more modern one. Do not take something that’s really good and sell it for less than its value. The fact of the matter is that the value overall is what we set it at. Since we’re talking about cars, let’s take a Honda and a Mercedes.
The actual cost of materials for those cars is probably close. One costs like 35,000 or 40,000, and the other one’s 150,000. Why is it 150,000? Mercedes says, “Here’s what we’re selling at. If you want it, that’s what you get at it.” For mental health, sure, we could go sell for $35 an hour. We’d be really popular. I do not know about you, but I spent a lot of money and a lot of my own personal time getting licensed. I live in California. I needed 3,000 hours of internship. That’s a long time. It’s a lot of effort.
That’s the thing, it seems like a lot of people continue to want things for cheap, and I do not blame them for it. I get it. I’d rather spend less money on things, too. The fact that mental health is not always seen as an investment. Probably in California, a little bit more normalised in certain areas, where you have to go and invest. Across the country is why is it so expensive?
Why does it cost so much money? It’s exactly what you said. I mean, “Yes, I took the long way through school, but I had four years of undergrad. I had three years for my master’s from DePaul. I took a break, tried to get a good job. Could not get it. I went back for six years for my doctorate and a second master’s. It’s like, “That’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of time.”
To get licensed.
The standardised testing includes all the application fees and continuing education. There’s a lot that goes into it. When people come up to me and say, “Why isn’t it cheaper? Why is it so expensive? Why can’t you charge like what BetterHelp charges?” It’s because I have a better quality of service, just as you do. One thing that I’m hoping starts to go away in the mental health field, though I suspect it needs to start with providers like us, is that our services are, I’m from Chicago, so my example is our services are Michigan Avenue services. If they’re Michigan Avenue services, expect to pay Michigan Avenue prices.
You do not go into Gibson’s steak house and go, “I do not understand why I can go over here, and I can go over to one of the casinos and get a steak for $5. Why is it $50 here? It’s a much better cut of meat and stuff.” I get it. Part of that is, you’re right, that’s part of the psychological community doing a better job of educating people because people get, and I’m going to be careful here, cardiologists or a neurosurgeon, people go, “I get that person had a ton of training.”
Rightfully so. We, too, have had a ton of training. I’m not saying it’s medical training. I can assure you, 3,000 hours of internship is a very long road. That’s probably similar to what a doctor has if you add up all the hours they do. Why are my services worth less? If I have literally put in a resident, like a resident probably has 3,000 hours of training. I do not know for sure, but I’m going to guess. It’s a lot of training.
It is, and just because it’s different training does not make it less valuable. I cannot tell you the number of times in my career I’ve had medical doctors, psychiatrists come up to me and ask me questions about this psychological test. This MMPI, or what do you think about this type of therapy? They need psychologists to help fill in the gaps that they have, just as we need them to fill in the gaps that we might have with medicine. When you look at the vastly different pay, it’s crazy. As an example, fresh out of grad school, a lot of people tend to work for the Department of Veterans Affairs at the VA.
Just because it’s a different training does not make it less valuable.
Fresh out of school, a lot of times you will see starting salaries between 70,000 and 85,000. For the average audience, they might hear that and go, “That’s a lot more than what I’m making.” Think about all the years of schooling. Think about all the hours of training. Compare that to what I’ve seen just glancing through job listings with a psychiatrist starting at, I saw the other day, $300,000. It’s very different. This idea of, yes, mental health is being de-stigmatised, which I love, yet the problem is that the appreciation for it has not caught up yet.
That’s where I think the APA and all of us who are in the field need to do exactly what you and I did. Let’s talk about it. Let’s educate that, yeah, there is great value in the people who come to us, unlike a cardiologist who can do an echocardiogram and can see your heart, and I can see what’s going wrong. I cannot see into someone’s mind. I can only use my own innate skills and training to try to figure out what’s going on. I know I’m adept, I know you’re adept at reading between the lines. What is not being like what’s not what is not being said? To then ask those insightful questions that have our clients go, “Right.”
You’re exactly right, because a lot of times people tend to get caught up in the noise of the details, but then they do not always understand what’s underneath the details, motivations, habits, automatic thought patterns, and yourself, me, others who have the training we have are able to see that and point that out. A psychiatrist, as an example, by the way, I’m not trying to just say psychiatrists are awful.
They have a very specific job.
They’re supposed to “know to do some therapy.” Every teacher that I’ve ever talked to who teaches psychotherapy for psychiatrists, it’s a one or maybe two-semester series of courses, and everyone I talk to says, “They were all sleeping, or they just did not bother to show up because that’s not what they’re supposed to do, “they’re supposed to” prescribe medication.
Collaborative Care: Why Therapy Requires A Team Effort
I have a friend of mine who’s a medical doctor. When I was going through grad school, I was talking with her, and there were a variety of things. One of the things she says, she’s like, “Do you think you’d ever, there’s such a need for a psychiatrist.” You do not actually get to do talk therapy because you have these fifteen-minute appointments, and you’re like, “You have anxiety, let me give you a prescription.” You’re writing a lot of prescriptions. There is a great need for, we talked about this, how she’s like, “I wish I could have conversations with people like you, a therapist,” because she’s a pediatrician.
I was talking about my internship at the school during the day. It was middle school and high school. I had a middle schooler who, when I would meet with him in the morning, had really bad ADHD, and he was on medication. When I met with him during the second period of the school day, he was so medicated that I would ask a question like, “How was your weekend?” It should be a fairly simple question.
A minute and a half to two minutes, he’s just literally looking off into space. He’s like, “Good.” I observed this. I went, and I talked to his teachers and found out that in the morning the kid was like, and I hate to use this word, gorked out, like just was not there. By his afternoon classes, he was bouncing off the walls. Why? It’s because he had a huge amount of ADHD medication in the morning, but by noon, it had worn off, and then the ADHD really got out of control. I talked to the parents, and I said, “Can I talk to the pediatrician?”
I had a conversation with the pediatrician, “I just want to let you know, here’s what I’m observing. I wonder if an adjustment in splitting up the medication would help.” They did that. The kid was able to focus a lot better. My friend is a pediatrician who is like, “I wish I could do that.” If I know a kid has ADHD and I give them medication, I do not know. I see them once every six months. I can ask the parents, but the parents are not with them all day. I would love to be able to talk to them. I want that. It should be collaborative. It takes a team to treat someone.
Mental health is being de-stigmatised, yet the appreciation for it has not caught up yet.
What you did for that kid, I mean, are we going to sit here and say it’s the same as doing brain surgery? No, of course not. I suspect someone out there is going,” These guys are just talking about how they should get paid as much as brain surgery.” No. You provided an incredible service that raised that kid’s quality of life so much. You were able to do that not only with your training, but also with the way that you were interacting with him, unlike a prescriber who, as you said, sees him once every 3 to 6 months. To me, that’s something that should be valued more, and I hope that we as a society can get there at some point.
Greg, I know you, and I can probably talk all day long about mental health and how we can make it even better and raise education. This is our time. My question that I have for you is, if people want to work with you, reach out, find more, get some access to your content, how can they find you?
How To Connect With Dr. Gregory Obert
Thank you for that, and of course, thanks again for having me on. People can find me at my website, Royal Oasis Psychotherapy Institute. I did not want to make anyone type all that out. It is just RoyalOasisPI.com. You can see more about how I do therapy, see all the stuff that I do, my show, my book, my live streams. It is all there. I am licensed in 43 states thanks to PSYPACT, so good chance that I would be able to work with you virtually. If you like what you hear and you’re looking for really good therapy, please feel free to reach out.
Thank you so much for joining me. An epic conversation to get to talk about mental health for over half an hour.
Thank you so much. It was so great to talk to you as well.
I want to remind everyone that if you’re ready to begin your epic journey, go to EpicBegins.com. As always, remember, epic choices lead to the epic life that you want.
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About Dr. Greg Obert
Dr. Gregory T. Obert, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and the founder of the Royal Oasis Psychotherapy Institute, where he helps motivated individuals rebuild their lives through evidence-based psychotherapy and practical mental performance tools.
He has spent more than 15 years working with thousands of clients and currently serves as a staff psychologist supporting trauma and mental health treatment in high pressure environments.
Greg’s work focuses on teaching people how to regain control of their attention, emotions, and decision making through concrete mindfulness techniques that work in real life, not just in theory.
On podcasts, he breaks down the psychology behind stress, burnout, and identity disruption while offering step by step methods listeners can immediately apply to calm their nervous system and think clearly under pressure.
He is also the host of the long running podcast Meditations by Gregory T. Obert, where he translates psychological insight into practical mental training for everyday life.