Dr. Christopher S. Taylor, PhD, Taylor Counseling Group | The Jeff Crilley Show

Jeff Crilley sits down with Dr. Christopher S. Taylor, founder and CEO of Taylor Counseling Group, to talk about the ongoing mental health fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and why so many people—young and old—are struggling with loneliness, identity, and purpose. Dr. Taylor describes how his practice nearly closed during the early days of lockdown before telehealth opened a lifeline, and how Taylor Counseling Group has since grown to over 55 therapists across 10 locations in Texas....

Show Notes

Six years after the pandemic shut the world down, the mental health crisis it triggered hasn't gone away—it's just quieter. Dr. Christopher S. Taylor, founder and CEO of Taylor Counseling Group and an existential psychotherapist with a doctorate in counseling, joins Jeff Crilley to talk about what he's seeing in his practice and why he believes we're still in a "loneliness pandemic."

Dr. Taylor shares how his practice nearly folded during lockdown before telehealth saved it, and how Taylor Counseling Group has since expanded to over 55 therapists and 10 locations across Texas. He explains his values-based therapy approach—the idea that small daily choices that conflict with your core values quietly compound until you're asking "who am I?"—and tells the story of a client named Brooke whose total transformation after divorce left him unable to recognize her when she walked back into his office years later.

The conversation gets into the quarter-life crisis hitting people in their twenties, the pressure on 12-year-olds to plan careers decades out, and the link between Instagram's 2009 smartphone launch and the first meaningful tracking of preteen suicide. Dr. Taylor also previews his upcoming book, "You Are Here," built around real client stories of self-discovery.

https://taylorcounselinggroup.com

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Coming up next on The Jeff Crilley Show, you're going to meet Doctor. Christopher S. Taylor. He is the head of the Taylor Counseling Group and his purpose in life is helping other people find their purpose. His journey just ahead. Many are predicting that the worst is yet to come, which is unfortunate, said one person here. Until now, they've enjoyed the reputation of being the nation's icebox. Watched a burglar in his home this morning by webcam. As a journalist of over twenty five years, stories are what make my world turn. Reporting live from The Dallas Newsroom tonight, Jeff Crilley, Fox four news. But in 2008, I took the jump from my familiar life and started a PR firm from my home. We're talking about anyone with a camcorder like the one I'm using becomes a television network. We started slowly growing the company and we now have over a 100 clients and we've branched into the world of live digital broadcasting. I now own eight different TV studios and have a huge team. And the stories that I now get to share are sometimes the most important of my life. Life has a funny way of coming around full circle. This is The Jeff Crilley Show. Well, it's hard to imagine the pandemic was six years ago. We're celebrating the anniversary of the pandemic, I think this month. And if you think about it, had the world shut down. You had everybody go to a Zoom camera. They weren't interacting with anybody. One of the greatest diseases on the planet is loneliness. So our seniors took took a toll. Some of our young people did because they were separated from all their friends. And then we said, okay, never mind. We're back. We're open again. Go back to your normal life. So I would submit that we do have a mental health pandemic going on right now that is still being diagnosed. Doctor. Christopher S. Taylor is in the studio. He is the founder and CEO of the Taylor Counseling Group. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me, Jeff. I'm really excited to be here. Well, let's let's talk about the pandemic since Let's get into it. We we mentioned that. What happened to your practice during the pandemic? Well, at first, we thought we were just kinda toast. You know, like, I think everybody did. I mean, when it hit and we we all we all had to, you know, what was the order? Shelter in place. Right. And all that. I mean, we couldn't go into the office. Lots of patients were, you know, canceling for obvious reasons. Didn't nobody knew what was going on. You know, those first few months were really, really rocky. And, I mean, we were we were thinking about maybe just closing shop or or just, you know, converting into a nonprofit or something, just trying to figure some some way forward. And then, you know, everyone realized that we are social creatures and that we we have to have connection in our life constantly with other people, in order to thrive. And and then people realized that telehealth was an option. And I think, you know, had the pandemic been twenty years earlier, it might have been a bigger problem for us Yeah. Because telehealth wasn't such an option. But we had that ability, and then clients started calling and wanting to book sessions regularly more regularly. People were all working from home for a while. I think for for a lot of people started working from home for a for a long period of time after the pandemic, and that allowed for even more access to telehealth. And so, yeah, we just we just started helping as many people as we can. And your your firm has been growing by leaps and bounds. How many therapists do you have now across We're the we're over 55. We have 10 locations, four here in DFW. We've got two offices in San Antonio, one in Houston, Waco, Austin. That's incredible. Let's go ahead and pull up his website. And as we scroll down the website, I just looked at some of the highlights from the website. You work with individuals, couples, families, even recommending support animals. I mean, really do a lot of stuff. Yeah. We like to think of ourselves as the In N Out Burger of therapy. We do individual double double that's your couple, know, triple that's your family, and then animal style for the support animals, you know. Even a combo meal. Yes. Absolutely. Let's go back to the very beginning, your journey. When when were you when do you remember being fascinated by mental health? Oh, I've always been fascinated with how things work. Right? So when when I was a kid, I was the kind of kid that would take the VCR, for those of you that know what VCR. Yes. And I would take it out in the garage when my dad was at work, I would like take it apart, try to figure out how the dinosaurs were getting made in there. Was like, what is happening in this this box? Then, of course, I put it back together wrong and my dad would get really upset with it. So that's how I started to fall in love with how things work. And then after that, I fell in love with how people work. Yes. I fell in love with that in in college. One of my friends was going through a really bad breakup at the time and just loved talking to me about it. I was just so fascinated. I was curious. Sure. You know? So one of my favorite quotes is, Walt Whitman, you know, always be curious. So just just constantly wanting to learn more and more and more about why we make choices, why we make certain decisions, or why we don't make choices, what stops us from making an active choice in our life. And so that led led me down the road to where I ended up working at CPS, and then I fell in love with, you know, actually helping people in that process. And then that's put me on my journey to get my masters in the doctorate in counseling. And you have an exciting new book coming up in a couple months? I do. Yes. Tell us about the book. Yeah. The book is You Are Here. It is a story of several people that I've worked with throughout my career who all went through this journey of self discovery and to to learn how to live their authentic life, to be their most authentic self. Alright. Tell me one of your favorite success stories. Oh, Brooke. All the names are are are Pseudonyms. Pseudonyms. Yeah, of course. Yeah. But Brooke was one of my just favorite stories. Brooke met me in this horrible time in her life where her her husband was having an affair and he wanted to leave the marriage. And Brooke had built her entire identity on this marriage and this husband. And when he left, and he quit therapy and he left, Brooke and I continued to work together individually. And she was able to go through this. It was a long process for her. But she was able to go through this process of making active choices in her life, Choices to challenge herself, choices to do things that she normally wouldn't, choices like like choosing to live alone instead of with somebody else to build her own identity. These types of things, she did a lot of deep hard work. And then and then she she decided to end therapy when she was doing really well. And then a couple years later, she calls me and comes into my office. And I don't know who this person is that's standing in front of me. Wow. She's like, I have achieved my dream job. I now travel the world. She she was in really great physical condition. She I mean, she looked like she was glowing. Wow. Was just so amazing. And literally though, when she walked in, I was like, I don't you. You know, I couldn't tell who she was right away. Well, tell me about your your personal therapy style because every therapist is a little different. Oh, we're all very different. Yeah. We're like we're like the dinosaurs from land of land before time. You know? Yeah. We all do things a little differently. I I am an existential psychotherapist. So, what that means is I I do deep work. I help people work through value building. Mhmm. So, I I challenge your idea on what your values are. I help you to explore those values. We look at values as sort of like the building blocks of our identity. And then, make choices every day and those choices are either in line with your values or they're incongruent with your values. Mhmm. And small little choices, like, that's okay. Like, if you really value fitness, but, you know, you sneak by McDonald's every once in a while Right. And you tell yourself, it's okay. It's okay. That's like a small little choice. Right? Not a big deal. Not a big deal, but a small little choice. You make that choice often enough over time, you start to come into conflict. Right? So Mhmm. So that that desire to have that nice little quick fix versus versus the healthy lifestyle that you want, those are now incongruent. They're now in conflict. Yes. And we call this the big fancy word, an existential crisis. Right? You start saying like, who am I? What is the purpose of my life? You know, and all this stuff. Well, we were talking before the show that I think people are having mental health crisis at an early age. We, you know, famously talk about the midlife crisis Yep. But I'm seeing a quarter life crisis where twenty five year old year olds are waking up saying, I hate my life. Yep. That's that's true. Yes. That's happening. We're in a mental health crisis. We're in a loneliness pandemic. Very true. And I think we're gonna start seeing high schoolers do this too. We're forcing our children to decide what they wanna do when they're 40, when they're 12 years old. Right. You know? Right. And I'm not being hyperbolic when I say 12. I mean, they're really there are 12 year olds right now preparing to get into a specific school so that they can be pre med so that they can go here and then they can do this. Know, just were putting way too much pressure on our children. And often it's the parents values that, you know, dad's a lawyer, the mom's a lawyer, and so the kid's gonna go to law school. Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to live or wanting to pursue your what your parents did, if that's something that excites you. It's just it's so impossible for a 12 year old to decide that. Yes. You know, or even for a 15 year old or an 18 year old, our brain is still developing well into our early twenties. You know, it's just, it's too much pressure to put on one on one person, one small person who is dealing with other stuff. Yes. And now we have, you know, social media. Right? Before 2009, we did not track preteen suicide in a meaningful way. We didn't have like a real way to track it because you would always consider it we would always be logged as an accidental death if something were to happen. Right. In 2009, Instagram was released on your smartphone. And we, for the first time ever, began actually tracking real pre teen suicides. All that because of that social peer pressure from that FOMO, from the isolation, from from the, you know, seeing the fake life on the internet. Right. All that. Yeah. Let's dive a little deeper there because, you know, I know friends that will go to Cabo, it rains for six days but they take all the They take them one. Yeah. On the on the good day. So we're constantly comparing ourselves to other others' fakes fake lives. Yeah. Comparison is the thief of joy. You know, my neighbor just got this new massive truck and he parks it like Yeah. Just like right outside. I have no envy over this truck. I just keep I keep playing pranks on him. I put like parking cones around it and stuff, you know? But we just we can't compare ourselves be because we don't know what other people are really struggling with and what they're really going through. Right? We we just we can't see into their lives in that way. It might look like everything's great. It might look like they have it all together. But on the inside, they're just telling themselves, I can't I I gotta keep up the appearance. I gotta keep fooling everybody. Yes. Are you seeing any trends in terms of different demographics? Are you seeing the same kinds of patients or clients that you were twenty years ago? Oh, no. I know. Mean, therapy is far more acceptable now. You know, the joke is every conversation starts around the water cooler with my therapist says. Yes. You know, or my therapist told me this. Therapist memes everywhere. Everyone on reality TV is in therapy and they talk about their therapist often. Yes. You know? So the stigma has faded. Oh, it's not faded entirely. Right? Because there still is the the concern that like, oh, you need therapy. Right? Like, you need this. You're you're bad. So you need to be in therapy. Yeah. So it's not entirely gone. But what we saw twenty years ago, that's gone. That that hard judgment is gone. Let's talk about isolation because, you know, during the pandemic, I just remember seeing all these videos of children and grandchildren kind of waving at grandma through That the really took a toll didn't it? Yes. Yes. I wanna brag about your dream team and you you we don't have enough time in the day to talk about each one of them. But in as we pull this page up on the screen, I want you to talk about the kinds of qualities you look for in somebody who joins your team. Oh, yeah. So we we are a company built on values. One of our core values is collaborative growth. So we we love seeing therapists that work together as a team. We we are not about we are not about competition. We are not about out outworking each other. We're all about doing it together. And so we love hiring therapists that wanna be a part of a cohesive team, that wanna work together, and and help us grow and work with as many people as we possibly can. And I applaud you because you have a very diverse group. I mean, male, female, old, young. It's it's amazing. How big do you see this getting? Are you are you an empire builder? Do you want to be in all 50 states? No. No. No. No. No. I'll let I'll let I'll let everybody else handle that. No. No. That's not me at all. I'm surprised we got it this big. Alright. We have about three minutes left. So I want you to talk to the camera to the left Sure. And talk to that viewer who might be struggling and has never once scheduled a counseling session. You are here and so are we. We're ready to help. All you need to do is give us a call, email us, you can find us on the internet, taylorcounselinggroup dot com. Give us a call, [phone]. It's so easy to start. We'll help you with every part of the process. It's easy to sign up online twenty four seven. It's easy to call, ask questions. You know, everything you say to your therapist is private. They are professional therapists. Don't have anyone on staff that's not licensed legally by the state. We don't have any life coaches or anyone that's out of state. So, you know, everything you you do here is is confidential, and we're here to help. And there's no problem too big. There's no problem too small that we can't help you get started with. And you take insurance. And we take all major insurance. That's right. That's incredible. Thank you much for coming on the show. We're gonna end with your website, which is taylorcounselinggroup.com. The great Doctor. Christopher Taylor. No. No. No. No. That's it for now. We'll see you next time. Definitely not the great.