Meet Jodi Top | Mental Health Therapist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jodi Top and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jodi, what habits do you feel helped you succeed?
My most significant habit is probably cultivating curiosity & creativity. Most people may not think about a therapist being creative but creativity fuels so many things in my life and practice. I love creating interventions and analogies specific to my individual clients, it keeps their experience fresh and not feeling like I do this or that with all of my clients trying to make them fit into a box. It adds to the warmth and premium experience they have with me in therapy. And this process keeps my mind engaged so that after 25 years practicing I am not unchallenged. Curiosity and creativity also make me an incrdible problem solver, if I apply the curiosity to why something didn’t work with a client when I thought it would, I can creatively look at things from another angle or perspective to once again gain traction movng toward goals. This applies to my buisness itself too. Curiosity recently about lower referrals has led to a shift in goals and opened up whole new areas of access.

What should our readers know about your business?
I am the owner/thrapist at my own private practice Jodi Top LCSW, PLLC. What sets me appart is my creativity, my warmth and my ability to create a holistic & integrative plan for my clients. I also still love working with teenagers! Many therapist pass through working with this population on their way to the things they really want to do. Although I do also work with adults, my passion for seeing and hearing teens in their pain is something I value deeply. I love working with people who really need to be heard and seen, regardless of the symptoms, anxiety, depression or even trauma, people need to be heard and seen before they can enter into deeper work in therapy. One of the greatest challenges in my career has been figuring out balance. I have never had a job where quantity was in my hands to produce. I have some chronic health issue that will increase in intensity if I overwork or get too stressed. Ironically, in mental health balance for clinicians has only recently entered the realm of discussion. For most of my career the focus was production, do more, see more, bill more. This led to crushing migraines and other health issues that further limited my ability to produce. But I am tenacious and creative. To overcome this barrier I anchored into my strengths with warmth and creativity soon providing a premium quality experience that offset my quantity issues. Once in communtiy mental health my supervisor said she had never seen anything like my “no show rate,” that is the number of times clients don’t show up. Often in community mental health clients aren’t the ones paying so their investment is low and no show rates of 20% are not uncommon. In the month of numbers she was looking at I had zero. Even my homeless clients were coming. As I moved out of community mental health and into a group outpatient practice, my goal was still high warmth and premium quality. That now persists in my private practice, I am never going to see the most clients, but the clients I do see will feel like they are deeply cared for and receive something really special in therapy. One of my biggest lessons has been that kindness matters because you never know where and how that will land. I love Maya Angelo’s take on people remember how you make them feel. I recently received a referral from someone who heard me present nearly 20 years ago at a workshop, he remembered yes that I could do the thing he needed, but also that I was kind, approchable, and warm. If I could leave people with one impression about me or my practice it would be the warmth they will experience and that I will work to create a holistic response to their needs.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I live in Golden and work on the west side of Lakewood, so some things would focus in this area, but any best friend of mine has to go to Denver Broncos football game with me and 80k of my closest friends. We could eat some dogs and nachos and cheer for the home town team. Monday we might do a slow start and walk down the street to Bean Fosters Coffee, we’d linger over something aromatic while munching on breakfast burritos. We may even stay for lunch, you know how best friends can talk. Tuesday we’d have to go to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science we’d look at every sparkly gemstone in the place & then tour through all the animals from around the world. All that walking would mean a trip for some nourishing Indian food on the way home. My foavorite spot is Yak & Yeti in Arvada located in a big old house with cute little rooms. It’s Colorado and if its football season its leaf peeping time and Wednesday we would do one of my favorite things, a trip to Georgetown’s cute victorian village, we’d stop in a rock shop, and the old fashioned store where we’d maybe grab a couple big Palasaide peaches and a wedge of fun cheese and head up to hike in the Silverdale site, where the leaves will blow you away and a snack by the creek never disappoints. Thursday we would go back into the city and spend time at the Clifford Still museum, this almost retreat like place never ceases to engage my creativity while cultivating a stillness and solitude that restore the soul! Sticking with the theme of nourishing the soul, dinner at Miyako Ra-men Spot in Englewood, small, cozy and personal! There are dozens of other things that could happen, stroll through downtown Golden, a trip to Red Rocks ampletheater I’d maybe even make a scavenger hunt of the cool things at the airport for my friend to find. (Baggage Gargolye!)In the end it would be an epic trip filled with nature, beauty and emjoyment. or we’d just talk for a whole week, after all we are best friends!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My sucess has been built by kind humans who wanted me to succeed. Other counseling friends who encouraged me to think about private practice before I was ready, Kelly Poag of Anchor and Bell Counseling who was my cheerleader. Katie Brown who then and now encourages me to dream big by reminding me who I am. And my out of state friend Michelle Essary who through the founding of her own clinic in Birmingham, Alabama reflects to me my competence and the genuiness of my current pursuits and how they are inline with who I am. I will always be grateful for my friend and now landlord Melissa Woerner, who treats me in her accupuncture practice and has offered, care, advice and space and who always says, “I just want you to be successful.” There are so many more voices its hard to loop them all in, my nephew who looks to emulate my practice one day, my supervisees who expose me to new trends I would otherwise be out of touch with, even recommending this interview. If life is a journey each of these precious people hold a stone on my path.

Website: Joditoplcsw.com

Instagram: @Joditoplcsw

Other: Website won’t be live until the end of August.

Image Credits
All images are mine with the exception of the headshot provided by Sarah Bockting, a friend.