August 28, 2025 • 35 mins
Jennifer Westcott is a therapist, artist, mother, wife, and passionate advocate for the well-being of mental health professionals. Her mission is to help therapists feel supported, human, and compassionate toward themselves—because she knows firsthand how vital this is.
Jennifer’s passion stems from her own healing journey, shaped by both profound and painful experiences with therapy. Raised in a family that appeared perfect on the outside but hid deep dysfunction, alcoholism, and incest, she faced unimaginable trauma. At 36, Jennifer suddenly recalled being sexually abused by her mother—a revelation that shook her world and began a long road to healing and sobriety.
Her recovery led her through countless therapy sessions, psychiatric and psychological care, alternative healing circles, and 12-step programs. These experiences ignited a burning question: What truly helps people heal—and what doesn’t?
As a clinical supervisor and private therapist, Jennifer transformed her entire approach to client care, focusing on authenticity, humanity, and the sacred nature of healing. She firmly believes therapists who embrace their own stories and vulnerabilities create the deepest impact for their clients.
Through Therapist Sanctuary, Jennifer is creating a space where therapists can share the human experience of their profession—beyond supervision and training—and rediscover the wonder and sacredness of their work.
Jennifer’s work is driven by the belief that when therapists are real, grounded, and supported, they help clients heal profoundly.
Website: https://www.holistichealingcounselling.com/welcome
Join our supportive group community:
Https://HealingFromTraumaTogether.com/
www.facebook.com/groups/healthrivedream
Connect with me:
Gmail: healthrivedream@gmail.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/healthrivedream_
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/healthrivedream
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@traumarecoveryexpert
Twitter: https://twitter.com/healthrivedream
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenrobinson2022/
Website: Https://HealThriveDream.com/
Podcast: Http://HealThriveDreamPodcast.com/blog
Loved this episode? Leave us a comment below.
Jennifer’s passion stems from her own healing journey, shaped by both profound and painful experiences with therapy. Raised in a family that appeared perfect on the outside but hid deep dysfunction, alcoholism, and incest, she faced unimaginable trauma. At 36, Jennifer suddenly recalled being sexually abused by her mother—a revelation that shook her world and began a long road to healing and sobriety.
Her recovery led her through countless therapy sessions, psychiatric and psychological care, alternative healing circles, and 12-step programs. These experiences ignited a burning question: What truly helps people heal—and what doesn’t?
As a clinical supervisor and private therapist, Jennifer transformed her entire approach to client care, focusing on authenticity, humanity, and the sacred nature of healing. She firmly believes therapists who embrace their own stories and vulnerabilities create the deepest impact for their clients.
Through Therapist Sanctuary, Jennifer is creating a space where therapists can share the human experience of their profession—beyond supervision and training—and rediscover the wonder and sacredness of their work.
Jennifer’s work is driven by the belief that when therapists are real, grounded, and supported, they help clients heal profoundly.
Website: https://www.holistichealingcounselling.com/welcome
Join our supportive group community:
Https://HealingFromTraumaTogether.com/
www.facebook.com/groups/healthrivedream
Connect with me:
Gmail: healthrivedream@gmail.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/healthrivedream_
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/healthrivedream
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@traumarecoveryexpert
Twitter: https://twitter.com/healthrivedream
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenrobinson2022/
Website: Https://HealThriveDream.com/
Podcast: Http://HealThriveDreamPodcast.com/blog
Loved this episode? Leave us a comment below.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Heel Thrived Dream Podcast, where trauma survivors
become healthy thrivers. Each month will feature a theme in
the trauma recovery and empowerment field to promote your recovery,
healing and learning how to build dreams. Here's your host,
Karen Robinson, transformational coach and therapist.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hi there, welcome to the Heel Thrived Dream Podcast. Today,
I'd like to introduce my guest. I'm delighted to have her.
Her name is Jennifer Westcott. Jennifer is a therapist, artist, mother,
wife and friend. She is devoted and passionate in making
(00:45):
therapists the best they can be, the most supported and
human and crying to themselves. The reason Jennifer believes so
strongly and about this is because of her own journey
through here and encountering both great and awful therapy in
(01:06):
her past. I love that because I say that to
clients all the time, like if o'mful and I refer
them out, just like if you get someone terrible, just
keep trying, don't give up. There people out there. Yes,
but I cracked up when I read that, Jennifer, So
welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Thank you, thanks for having me, Karen, I'm really glad
to be here with you.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I'm so glad to have you. How long have you
been a therapist?
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Twenty five years this year? Yeah, I saw that. Yeah,
I started in well, I finished my program in nineteen
nine nine, and I had been counseling a little bit
before that, but just very sort of beginning stages. Yeah,
And during that time, I've been in all kinds of settings.
(01:54):
I was a nonprofit world and then I moved into
government to mental health work, and I have a private
practice with just adults that I've had since two thousand
and nine. So I right now will work full time
in the government and part having private practice, and in
both of those I do a lot of supervision of therapists.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Beautiful. Yeah, we have a quite a bit in common,
except I suspect that you are way better at creativity
based on your So those of you watching on YouTube's
got you can see how her beautiful art in the background,
her crafting area, her studio. Yeah, so sorry for you
(02:40):
that are just listening today, I can't see the beauty,
but you could check out check out her website and such. Jennifer,
how did you get involved with art as part of
your practice or were you always doing both?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yeah, I did, but I didn't know how to incorporate
it in the begin So I was always very artsy
growing up. I like to I didn't think of myself
as an artist. I like to turn one thing into
something else. That's what I say is the best definition
of art. Just take something and make it something else,
(03:17):
whether it's by coloring it or whatever. So I'd always,
you know, liked making homemade presents for Christmas for people
and turning photographs into different things. And I don't know
if that's me dinging, sorry. And then when I went
to university, my undergrad degree was in recreation therapy. Didn't
(03:40):
really know what that meant, and I didn't really know
what I was doing or why I was in that.
And I quickly got out of that field just because
I couldn't find the work that was resonating me. So
I went back to school. But what I've realized over
the years is how much that training prepared me for
(04:01):
being able to invite people into a flow state, mostly
through art, because that's what I love that lends itself
well to healing. So it was kind of this sort
of love affair with art and then adding in a
degree in basically how to use flow state for healing.
(04:21):
And then I did quite a bit of art therapy
courses and trainings over the years. And as I've I
don't know, I guess, as I've risked and been courageous
enough to just try different things, it's become more and
more typical part of what I do. I started an
art group for women about six or seven years ago,
(04:46):
and it's probably one of my favorite things to do.
So we spend this Saturday afternoon doing art therapy together.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
That's so beautiful. Now I know the benefits of art
therapy from my colleagues, and I've also taken a couple
of courses myself, and I've been a patient or client
and some as well, and I believe that they're deep healing. Now,
what about your life? Did you have any early traumas
(05:19):
that your work or doing art has helped healed you?
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Yeah, and I would say still does. The pictures up
on the wall up there are my actually my journals.
I'm a journalholic, really a journal every day and a
lot of times the only way I could capture and
heal what was going on inside me from my childhood
was collage. So I got in love with collage and
(05:50):
it's grown up, sister. I like to call it mosaic,
and collage became this way, you know. I went to
this training as a therapist and it was a training
on somatic work, and the woman who was doing the
training said back to me, collage for you, sounds like
(06:13):
it's taking all these fragments from your trauma and putting
them together on one page. And that's you putting yourself together.
And so yeah, my early life, I was sexually abused
by my mother, and that's something that I stayed in
(06:33):
deep denial and amnesia about until I was thirty six
and had a daughter and it all came flooding back.
I'm saying it so commonly right now, but I was
an absolute Yeah. Work developed PTSD from that point forward,
and art has always been the thing that calms me down,
(06:57):
you know, like the thing I can go to at
home on the couch when I'm not in therapy and
I'm not in a support group and I'm not able
to get to Like art is like the thing that
will soothe my nervous system and help me weave myself
back together.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah, Well, thank you for being vulnerable and sharing. I
especially appreciate the share because there's thisness that abuse is
done by men only, like we hear of mothers that
little head or yell or whatever. But I've worked with
lots of people that have been sexually abused by other
(07:41):
women or their moms. Wow, I think it's more common.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
But oh, I think it's way more common than people think.
And you're right, it's we're all kind of seduced by
the mother myth that mothers are nurturing and caring and
and my and you know, interestingly, my mom was those
things too at times, so it's kind.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Of just more confusing and more complible, more.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Oh my goodness. Yeah, I mean I went through years
of thinking I must be making this up, I must
be crazy, I must be fill in the blank, something's
wrong with me that I would think that my mother
would ever do these things, and yet it is what happened.
And yeah, you're up against not just trying to heal
(08:30):
from abuse, but I was kind of up against this
narrative in our culture that women don't do those kind
of things, And you know, I had all these bizarre
ways that I ended up unconsciously coping with that and
one of them was I came to hate feminists. I
(08:52):
hate to say. There was this job I had when
I was first a therapist, and I worked with children
who had been sexually abused. That was my whole job.
I'm upstairs in this building doing this job seeing these kids.
Downstairs are the women's violence counselors, who are a very
feminist based program, seeing these poor women who are have
(09:15):
been tortured and violated and all these things. And what
I couldn't reconcile with these counselors was the fact that
a lot of the kids that I was seeing had
mothers in that program, and I'm hearing stories of mothers
that were quite not kind to these kids, abusive, and
(09:35):
we would get in these sort of debates about who's
the victim and who's the perpetrator, And they were very
difficult conversations because I think human nature is we don't
want to have to hold two opposing thoughts at the
same time.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Exactly, so you can be a victim and a perpetrator.
You don't have to be worse.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Yeah, And I struggle with that too with my mom.
My mom was kind and wonderful and loving and good
at certain things, and she hurt me and sexually abused
me and denied my truth and all of that was
true at the same time, and I think it just
stretches the brain and the psyche into a place that
(10:20):
is so painful. For years, I just wanted to drink
and forget about it, and I did. So. It was,
you know, getting into sobriety that required me to grapple
with that level of debate. Debate is a very sanitized
way to say it, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah, I remember feeling a little bit like that. As
an intern. I worked at a I worked well. I
worked with the younger kids while the parents were getting
or the mothers were getting parenting classes, and so the
counselor's working with the parents had all this empathy, right
(11:01):
because they saw their struggle and the abuse and traumas
they went through. And I'm working with the kids who
have very dirty clothes on, who have crusted boogers on
their face, right, and has orange soda in their bottle,
and you know, and I'm having.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Judgment, absolutely do you. I don't know if you watched Seinfeld,
but I always remember this episode of Seinfeld where Jerry
was saying, depending on what the documentary is about, is
who you are going to cheer for. And I often say
this to the therapists who are new. If the documentary
is about the antelope, you're going to cheer for the
(11:40):
antelope to outrun a cougar. But if the documentary is
about the cougar, you want the cougar to get the antelope.
And that often happens with therapists and in therapy it's
wherever we are designed to align. We don't want to
see the rest of it. Yeah, if we're going to
be real good at what we do, we've be able
to hold it all and often within the same person. It.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yes, it's such a challenge. I remember one time I
was working with a pedophile who I didn't know was
a pedophile, and I just thought he was the Beasnys
until he told me. And it was so confusing trying
to reconcile what I thought I knew and his behavior.
That was quite the challenge, right. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
I've always said, you know, you get dark humor about
your own trauma at times, and I've always said pedophiles
are really good with children, like they you know, they
tend to be really good with children. Part of shot
when people are kind of shocked and horrified that someone
(12:49):
kind that they knew something comes out that they were abusive. Yeah,
that's my response. It's we want it to be this
creep down the back alley who was a stranger to everybody,
and it's just all pathology. But that's not the truth.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
It is not the truth. No, And it's often somebody
in our family. It's not the stranger, that's right. It's
more common in our families.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Yeah, yes, exactly, Yeah, yes, I do like that. I
would rather go to the basement right away than stay
on the ground floor.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of power in that one.
It's very for the person listening that's suffering and not
healed yet. It's very validating to know, like, oh my gosh, wow,
like of course she drank. Of course, that's why I
had my alcohol problem, you know, like people listening, And
(13:49):
it's not always alcohol, right, it can be anything. It
can be phornography, it can be sex, it could be drugs,
prescription drugs.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Food.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Food is a common one over being gambling. Like these behaviors,
these risk these behaviors generally are because the person is
a trauma survivor. Sometimes they sometimes they're in denial.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
You know, last night I was out at a treatment
center that is nearby where I live, and sometimes they
bring people from town who are in recovery to speak
at the Friday night kind of evening they have out there.
And I was talking about my story and I said that,
I said, I drank because it worked. It gave me
(14:39):
something I could not get any other way. We don't
do it because we're just assholes. We don't do it
because we're choosing. This is a very common line I
hear we're choosing alcohol over our children, or because we're
making bad choices, like it's some just simple cognitive process.
We typically have deep seated trauma that we're just trying
(15:03):
to survive day to day, and until we come up
with a better way, why wouldn't we do the thing
that works? And you know what shocked me after I
was done speaking, because I talked about sexual abuse and
my mom and all kinds of tortuous feelings about that.
And it was the man actually who came to me
(15:26):
after and said I was hurt by my mom or
I was hurt by this other person. And I've never
talked about it, and I haven't even said it here yet,
and they were crying, and I said, you got to
say it, because if you don't get this stuff out
and start like shining a light on it, it's going
(15:47):
to be real hard to stay sober.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
I like, yeah, yees talking. It's the same process with grief.
Trauma has been grief for us and cousins, and a
lot of the strategies work for both. So there's this
thaw strategy, talking art and writing. Oh when you do
(16:12):
when you do those three things and combination, you're quantum
leaping your your healing.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Yes, And I've never heard anybody say it that way.
It's that processing that needs to happen to weave it
together into a blanket instead of a million threads, you know,
like it weaves it together into a story. And often
with trauma, I think, for myself and people i've seen,
(16:42):
you have to do it over and we're not like
it's not a one time story we tell and it's done.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
And one of the things I tell my science like
when it feels like when they feel tortured by my methods,
you know, I try to go slow and be compassionate
with it. One of the things I remind them though,
is that exposure piece of sharing your story and writing
your story and doing free to projects rend your story.
(17:13):
When you're doing these things, you're bringing down your emotional intensity.
So the more you do it, the less intense your
emotions are around it, and then you can see that
you can survive that emotion without turning to a risky behavior. Yes,
you know, we don't believe we're going to survive it. It
(17:33):
just feels so painful. Oh, it's just we can.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Yeah, what do they say about trauma. It's when the
intolerable becomes interminable in our minds that we just think.
It's if this feeling that's horrible is never going to end.
I'm not going to go back in the bringing house
to save myself because that's the only way to do it.
I don't ever want to feel it ever again. And
(18:00):
that shuts down that healing journey. And it makes sense,
Like I mean, I guess we have to who knows
why the timing is what it is? Like, I think
timing and healing is the thing that comes from the
spiritual realm or the you know, the unexplainable realm why
certain things come up at certain times and you're ready
(18:21):
when you're ready a month ago. Yeah, there's a part
of your body mind blow.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
The body is very wise. It's good to listen to it,
you know.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
True.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
And I tell my young people that come to therapy,
is like, you may not be ready if you weren't great. Yeah,
oh I'm ready. I'm like you say that, but are
you really really tired of feeling sick and tired of
your symptoms? Because it usually takes a few years later,
and sometimes they are you know, and sometimes I still
(18:50):
come back later. Yeah you know, Okay, now I know
what you mean. Yeah, So what else has been healing?
Are you? Other than doing creative projects?
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Well, I would actually say what comes up for me
is to just say everything I've tried has given me
a little bit of healing, even bad therapy, because it
even prepared me for what does not work for me,
do you know, like it got me. Yeah. So even
the bad experiences where I felt judged or a misunderstood
(19:27):
or someone tried to do CBT on my trauma, God forbid,
Like you know, I just think different thoughts about it
and reframe it in your mind. And like that felt
so demoralizing and unachievable to me, but it let me
know what wouldn't work. So I've tried so many types
(19:48):
of therapy. I feel like I've done it all, but
I probably haven't. So I've in the early days, I
was seeing someone who did primal work, and that a
really intense and mooting swinging that like letting it all out.
I did that. I did breath work. Then I, you know,
had the traditional people who did my through my benefits.
(20:10):
I would try that and they have like we have sections,
you know, and I'm like, well, I've been sexually abused
for seventeen years. I don't know how this is going
to go. And so but they would give me little tidbits,
you know, little things. And for the last four years,
I've actually been in psychoanalysis two to three times a
week at times and with a psychiatrist, and that's a
(20:32):
whole other rabbit hole to go down. Because I thought
the medical I kind of swore off the medical model
realm for quite a long time. I thought I'm not
going to be I'm not going to belong there. I
don't want to be sort of pathologized and symptoms treated.
And because I'm in the work, I knew what typically
(20:53):
psychiatrists focused on, but anyway, then I came across this
wonderful psychiatrist who wants to get back to the roots
of psychiatry and do therapy, and it's been mind blowing,
like Fredian analysis. I mean, I never thought ever that
(21:14):
I would, and I feel kind of like as a therapist,
there's this little part of me that's observing, going, wow,
this is interesting. You know. I remember I said to her,
this was the big difference for me. I'm geeking out
now on types of therapy. But I said to her
early on, I said, you know, I'm just mine. This
really hard because you come on the screen because we're virtual,
(21:36):
and you don't say a single word. You just wait.
And she said, you know, the difference between counseling and
analysis is counseling tries to alleviate anxiety and help people
feel safe. Analysis invokes anxiety to get your material going.
And I said, well, I hate it. I feel so
(21:57):
anxious when I start these sessions. And then I below
this out. I said, you remind me of my mother
just sitting in her chair doing nothing. And then I said,
oh my god, it's working. So it's been quite enlightening
when she.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Still sees you.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yes, I mean, she's like, exactly what we're here for.
You're going to project all your stuff on me, and
I'm going to be, you know, this warmer mirror to
help you process it.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
And oh wow.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
So I guess I'm telling that story because there's been
a lot of things I've tried where I've wanted to
quit pretty early. And support groups twelve Step World Groups
for a Diction Recovery is another one. I thought, I
don't belong in this church basement. I'm not like these people.
And sixteen years later, I'm still, you know, two three
(22:51):
times a week, you know, So don't give up even
if it's crappy or you don't you know, like, or
it's uncomfortable or I guess that's what I've learned from
sort of opening myself up to all kinds of things.
The craziest thing I ever did was holotropic breath work.
That holotropic breath work, it was kind of designed by
(23:16):
this psychiatrist, I believe, Stanislav Grap I think is his name,
when they took away psychedelics back in the sixties from
psychiatrists and said you can't actually get people LSD, and
so he came up with this way to get the
same thing happening, but through hyperventilation. And so you go
(23:38):
in this dark room with this really loud music and
you hyperventilate your way into a tran state and then
see what happens is what the facilitator said, and that
was wild. And I've tried anything that's offered to me.
I'll try it because you get that desperate when you've
had a life of trauma, right.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, And what works for someone may not work for us,
and vice versa. When you mentioned CBT, I was trained
in CBT pretty early in my career. And when I
worked with this one woman now on and off for
(24:20):
twenty five years. You know, she takes maintenance great she
you know, it's on and off for twenty five years.
And one of the first things I did with her
was to put her in a CBT group that was
leading because she had such crippling anxiety and depression. And
so later when I learned about somatic work and more
(24:43):
of it as based trauma treatment, I apologized to her
and said, I am so sorry I put you in
that group. You know that was to treat the anxiety depression.
You know, that wasn't for trauma. I think I really
messed up doing that. And she's like, oh my god,
that class is so helpful for me to reframe the
(25:05):
way that I think about my soul as an individual.
You know, she goes, I thought I was complete shit worthless,
So she those countering statements after you take your unhealthy
thoughts to the dump is what we can CVT and
you learn healthier thoughts that you can prove to be true. Yes,
(25:28):
she really benefited that. I'm like, okay, I guess there's
no accents. Then it just happened. Yes, there's nothing.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Like I said, like, I think everybody can get something
out of everything, and yeah, CBT. You know I poked
fun at it there, but it saves my bacon in
between sessions because it is very accessible and very easy
to kind of apply, like in the here and now,
I am not okay, and I'm going to do a
(25:56):
quick list of what if and then what is? You know,
those little techniques you learn that see me through really.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah, And I love I love analyzing the way I
think you know that there's a piece of CBTED utility
analysis where you're asking yourself, is this that helping me
feel better? Where's he is it making me feel worse,
does this that help me with building relationships with others
(26:27):
or is it arming relationships? And then the third question
is does this that help me work towards achieving my
goals or is this that a barrier? And when in
almost always, when you have a critical, negative thought about yourself,
this is not.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yeah, and so those questions save my bagan a lot. Okay,
there's no use for this thought, So why keep it? Why? Yeah?
That helps me pit of it? Yeah? Rights, But are
you a published author yet?
Speaker 3 (27:03):
No? I'm not.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Is there a plan for that?
Speaker 3 (27:07):
I thought about it. One of the things I've often
thought about is somehow publishing my journals and this kind
of story of recovery through the art and the writing
feels risky to do that. I don't know. Maybe one day, Yeah, yeah,
maybe one day.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
If it feels risky, then that needs It's not quite
the time.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Yeah, the risk is a bit big. Still. No. My
latest love is I've created. I have a business called
Therapist Sanctuary, and my belief system around it is that
therapists need a place to be human and to be
open and vulnerable with other therapists and feel really supported,
(27:49):
not just sort of in a heady way where we
talk about what interventions we're using, but in a really
deep and personal way of where are store And so
there's a clinical supervision community that is part of that
work where thepists join together. And so if anyone's interested
(28:12):
in that, it's on my website at Holistic Healing Counseling
dot com and it's all online, and so it's supervision
and it's recorded videos that you receive and then coming
together monthly with other therapists to talk about the work.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
And can therapists from any state, Let's say they're working
towards licensure, can you help them from any state? Or
are you limited in the States?
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Well, I'm in Canada, and so it's open for anyone
in the States or here, as long as you're either
have a master's degree or are working towards masters and
kind of what you need for your own requirements and
leave to the person. But it's it's more a place
to sort of debrief. And the videos that people seem
(29:02):
to really enjoy are the ones that are about the
things that happen in therapy commonly that often therapists need
to process but aren't part of any particular modality per se.
So lots of our training or what we do is
we learn CBT or we learn DBT, or we learn
EMDR or but I've felt like there needs to be
(29:25):
a place where we get to talk about how do
we assimilate all that into who we are as people?
So it's more that part. It's the who are you
uniquely as a therapist? What's your thumbprint of what you
offer your clients?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
It sounds like beautiful work because, like we mentioned earlier,
a lot of us are survivors.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Yes, and it's a lonely profession. Actually it's behind closed doors.
We can't go home and talk about it over supper.
We can't, you know, we don't do you ever go
out for supper Or you're with people you love and
they're all talking about their day and you kind of
clam up because you don't know what you can share,
and so you end up sharing nothing. That I've had
(30:09):
that experience so much that I thought I need more places.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Maybe when I was younger. Now I have a lot
of other interests, but can hold conversations like I do
a lot of travel, I read a lot, you know,
the kids are involved in different things.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Yeah, so that's good too, Yeah, I think, yeah, I
think I have the opposite problem though.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Where doing the work, especially if it's intense, if I
have a full day of people, I think what ten
has happened in my case is I don't want to
talk anymore and I don't want to hear anybody else anymore. Yeah,
you know, after so I kind of go into that
time and I'm like, well, this isn't good for friendships, right,
(31:02):
because friendships you have to both be engaged in talking
and also listening. Well, so, yeah, my social life has
taken a hit over the years, right like this.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
The work affects us so profoundly, and I think it
needs a place to be shared and seen and expressed.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Yeah. I think that's a beautiful group you have.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
The other thing I noticed, I wonder if you notice this,
and I again, everybody's different. I notice that as a
younger person and therapist, I would laugh at everything and anything,
like I thought things were funny. And after being a
trauma therapist for so long, it's really hard to get
(31:51):
me to laugh. The gust over the top funny. Do
you relate to that at all?
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Yes, And it's come of like giving me the chilled
a little, just losing some of the lightheartedness of life,
Like I don't remember there was Okay. I read once
and it talked about going on this trip with her family.
She was a therapist, and I related to it so much.
(32:19):
She was going on a trip and they were at
this beautiful spot on the top of the mountain and
they were looking over and all she could think of
was all the people that could jump off there and
die by suicide. And it was in that moment she
kind of realized the impact of working with trauma for
year after year after year, Like you kind of see
(32:40):
a world differently. You and I have too. Yeah, I
relate to that a lot. And the flip side of
it is and I need laughter so much more than
I ever did.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yes, we do, We absolutely do.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
So I try to be mindful of that. And I
love it when I find a show that's truly funny
to me, or a comedian that's, oh, that's really funny,
you know, it's a nice surprise. Or if I find
a book that makes me chuckle, I'm like, oh, this
is so I can still laugh.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Yes, we're still in there, We're still we're still whole
human beings in there.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Yeah, so I think we should probably wrap up. I
know we could talk about date for days, about the
different topics that we help people in therapy with, or
even just your art creativity. Let's end by just kind
of recapping what your website is recapping on the programs
(33:46):
that you have took for people right now.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Okay, So my website is Holistic Healing Counseling counselingtwo l's
dot com. And my pro that's available for therapists is
Therapist Sanctuary, and it's on that website. I also have
a free giveaway for a therapist and you can find
it by going to www. Therapist Sanctuary dot com. And
(34:15):
it's called between Sessions and I do hypnosis. I'm a
clinical hypnotherapist, and these are short hypnosis meditations if you
want to call it that, to do in between your
sessions throughout your day on topics that are appealing to
most therapists, like how to let go of the client's pain,
(34:37):
how to not take on too much and those kinds
of things. And yeah, and social media. I'm at Therapist
Sanctuary on different platforms, so I'm happy to have other
therapists join our community. It's a beautiful group of people
and very honest and very welcoming.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
It sounds beautiful.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Thank you so much for having me, Karen, I've enjoyed
it a lot, sane.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Thank you for being here today.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Thank you for listening in today. Please join us next week,
same day and time. Also, I would love for you
to check out my website heel thrivedream dot com.
Welcome to the Heel Thrived Dream Podcast, where trauma survivors
become healthy thrivers. Each month will feature a theme in
the trauma recovery and empowerment field to promote your recovery,
healing and learning how to build dreams. Here's your host,
Karen Robinson, transformational coach and therapist.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hi there, welcome to the Heel Thrived Dream Podcast. Today,
I'd like to introduce my guest. I'm delighted to have her.
Her name is Jennifer Westcott. Jennifer is a therapist, artist, mother,
wife and friend. She is devoted and passionate in making
(00:45):
therapists the best they can be, the most supported and
human and crying to themselves. The reason Jennifer believes so
strongly and about this is because of her own journey
through here and encountering both great and awful therapy in
(01:06):
her past. I love that because I say that to
clients all the time, like if o'mful and I refer
them out, just like if you get someone terrible, just
keep trying, don't give up. There people out there. Yes,
but I cracked up when I read that, Jennifer, So
welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Thank you, thanks for having me, Karen, I'm really glad
to be here with you.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I'm so glad to have you. How long have you
been a therapist?
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Twenty five years this year? Yeah, I saw that. Yeah,
I started in well, I finished my program in nineteen
nine nine, and I had been counseling a little bit
before that, but just very sort of beginning stages. Yeah,
And during that time, I've been in all kinds of settings.
(01:54):
I was a nonprofit world and then I moved into
government to mental health work, and I have a private
practice with just adults that I've had since two thousand
and nine. So I right now will work full time
in the government and part having private practice, and in
both of those I do a lot of supervision of therapists.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Beautiful. Yeah, we have a quite a bit in common,
except I suspect that you are way better at creativity
based on your So those of you watching on YouTube's
got you can see how her beautiful art in the background,
her crafting area, her studio. Yeah, so sorry for you
(02:40):
that are just listening today, I can't see the beauty,
but you could check out check out her website and such. Jennifer,
how did you get involved with art as part of
your practice or were you always doing both?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yeah, I did, but I didn't know how to incorporate
it in the begin So I was always very artsy
growing up. I like to I didn't think of myself
as an artist. I like to turn one thing into
something else. That's what I say is the best definition
of art. Just take something and make it something else,
(03:17):
whether it's by coloring it or whatever. So I'd always,
you know, liked making homemade presents for Christmas for people
and turning photographs into different things. And I don't know
if that's me dinging, sorry. And then when I went
to university, my undergrad degree was in recreation therapy. Didn't
(03:40):
really know what that meant, and I didn't really know
what I was doing or why I was in that.
And I quickly got out of that field just because
I couldn't find the work that was resonating me. So
I went back to school. But what I've realized over
the years is how much that training prepared me for
(04:01):
being able to invite people into a flow state, mostly
through art, because that's what I love that lends itself
well to healing. So it was kind of this sort
of love affair with art and then adding in a
degree in basically how to use flow state for healing.
(04:21):
And then I did quite a bit of art therapy
courses and trainings over the years. And as I've I
don't know, I guess, as I've risked and been courageous
enough to just try different things, it's become more and
more typical part of what I do. I started an
art group for women about six or seven years ago,
(04:46):
and it's probably one of my favorite things to do.
So we spend this Saturday afternoon doing art therapy together.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
That's so beautiful. Now I know the benefits of art
therapy from my colleagues, and I've also taken a couple
of courses myself, and I've been a patient or client
and some as well, and I believe that they're deep healing. Now,
what about your life? Did you have any early traumas
(05:19):
that your work or doing art has helped healed you?
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Yeah, and I would say still does. The pictures up
on the wall up there are my actually my journals.
I'm a journalholic, really a journal every day and a
lot of times the only way I could capture and
heal what was going on inside me from my childhood
was collage. So I got in love with collage and
(05:50):
it's grown up, sister. I like to call it mosaic,
and collage became this way, you know. I went to
this training as a therapist and it was a training
on somatic work, and the woman who was doing the
training said back to me, collage for you, sounds like
(06:13):
it's taking all these fragments from your trauma and putting
them together on one page. And that's you putting yourself together.
And so yeah, my early life, I was sexually abused
by my mother, and that's something that I stayed in
(06:33):
deep denial and amnesia about until I was thirty six
and had a daughter and it all came flooding back.
I'm saying it so commonly right now, but I was
an absolute Yeah. Work developed PTSD from that point forward,
and art has always been the thing that calms me down,
(06:57):
you know, like the thing I can go to at
home on the couch when I'm not in therapy and
I'm not in a support group and I'm not able
to get to Like art is like the thing that
will soothe my nervous system and help me weave myself
back together.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah, Well, thank you for being vulnerable and sharing. I
especially appreciate the share because there's thisness that abuse is
done by men only, like we hear of mothers that
little head or yell or whatever. But I've worked with
lots of people that have been sexually abused by other
(07:41):
women or their moms. Wow, I think it's more common.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
But oh, I think it's way more common than people think.
And you're right, it's we're all kind of seduced by
the mother myth that mothers are nurturing and caring and
and my and you know, interestingly, my mom was those
things too at times, so it's kind.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Of just more confusing and more complible, more.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Oh my goodness. Yeah, I mean I went through years
of thinking I must be making this up, I must
be crazy, I must be fill in the blank, something's
wrong with me that I would think that my mother
would ever do these things, and yet it is what happened.
And yeah, you're up against not just trying to heal
(08:30):
from abuse, but I was kind of up against this
narrative in our culture that women don't do those kind
of things, And you know, I had all these bizarre
ways that I ended up unconsciously coping with that and
one of them was I came to hate feminists. I
(08:52):
hate to say. There was this job I had when
I was first a therapist, and I worked with children
who had been sexually abused. That was my whole job.
I'm upstairs in this building doing this job seeing these kids.
Downstairs are the women's violence counselors, who are a very
feminist based program, seeing these poor women who are have
(09:15):
been tortured and violated and all these things. And what
I couldn't reconcile with these counselors was the fact that
a lot of the kids that I was seeing had
mothers in that program, and I'm hearing stories of mothers
that were quite not kind to these kids, abusive, and
(09:35):
we would get in these sort of debates about who's
the victim and who's the perpetrator, And they were very
difficult conversations because I think human nature is we don't
want to have to hold two opposing thoughts at the
same time.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Exactly, so you can be a victim and a perpetrator.
You don't have to be worse.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Yeah, And I struggle with that too with my mom.
My mom was kind and wonderful and loving and good
at certain things, and she hurt me and sexually abused
me and denied my truth and all of that was
true at the same time, and I think it just
stretches the brain and the psyche into a place that
(10:20):
is so painful. For years, I just wanted to drink
and forget about it, and I did. So. It was,
you know, getting into sobriety that required me to grapple
with that level of debate. Debate is a very sanitized
way to say it, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah, I remember feeling a little bit like that. As
an intern. I worked at a I worked well. I
worked with the younger kids while the parents were getting
or the mothers were getting parenting classes, and so the
counselor's working with the parents had all this empathy, right
(11:01):
because they saw their struggle and the abuse and traumas
they went through. And I'm working with the kids who
have very dirty clothes on, who have crusted boogers on
their face, right, and has orange soda in their bottle,
and you know, and I'm having.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Judgment, absolutely do you. I don't know if you watched Seinfeld,
but I always remember this episode of Seinfeld where Jerry
was saying, depending on what the documentary is about, is
who you are going to cheer for. And I often say
this to the therapists who are new. If the documentary
is about the antelope, you're going to cheer for the
(11:40):
antelope to outrun a cougar. But if the documentary is
about the cougar, you want the cougar to get the antelope.
And that often happens with therapists and in therapy it's
wherever we are designed to align. We don't want to
see the rest of it. Yeah, if we're going to
be real good at what we do, we've be able
to hold it all and often within the same person. It.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yes, it's such a challenge. I remember one time I
was working with a pedophile who I didn't know was
a pedophile, and I just thought he was the Beasnys
until he told me. And it was so confusing trying
to reconcile what I thought I knew and his behavior.
That was quite the challenge, right. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
I've always said, you know, you get dark humor about
your own trauma at times, and I've always said pedophiles
are really good with children, like they you know, they
tend to be really good with children. Part of shot
when people are kind of shocked and horrified that someone
(12:49):
kind that they knew something comes out that they were abusive. Yeah,
that's my response. It's we want it to be this
creep down the back alley who was a stranger to everybody,
and it's just all pathology. But that's not the truth.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
It is not the truth. No, And it's often somebody
in our family. It's not the stranger, that's right. It's
more common in our families.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Yeah, yes, exactly, Yeah, yes, I do like that. I
would rather go to the basement right away than stay
on the ground floor.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of power in that one.
It's very for the person listening that's suffering and not
healed yet. It's very validating to know, like, oh my gosh, wow,
like of course she drank. Of course, that's why I
had my alcohol problem, you know, like people listening, And
(13:49):
it's not always alcohol, right, it can be anything. It
can be phornography, it can be sex, it could be drugs,
prescription drugs.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Food.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Food is a common one over being gambling. Like these behaviors,
these risk these behaviors generally are because the person is
a trauma survivor. Sometimes they sometimes they're in denial.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
You know, last night I was out at a treatment
center that is nearby where I live, and sometimes they
bring people from town who are in recovery to speak
at the Friday night kind of evening they have out there.
And I was talking about my story and I said that,
I said, I drank because it worked. It gave me
(14:39):
something I could not get any other way. We don't
do it because we're just assholes. We don't do it
because we're choosing. This is a very common line I
hear we're choosing alcohol over our children, or because we're
making bad choices, like it's some just simple cognitive process.
We typically have deep seated trauma that we're just trying
(15:03):
to survive day to day, and until we come up
with a better way, why wouldn't we do the thing
that works? And you know what shocked me after I
was done speaking, because I talked about sexual abuse and
my mom and all kinds of tortuous feelings about that.
And it was the man actually who came to me
(15:26):
after and said I was hurt by my mom or
I was hurt by this other person. And I've never
talked about it, and I haven't even said it here yet,
and they were crying, and I said, you got to
say it, because if you don't get this stuff out
and start like shining a light on it, it's going
(15:47):
to be real hard to stay sober.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
I like, yeah, yees talking. It's the same process with grief.
Trauma has been grief for us and cousins, and a
lot of the strategies work for both. So there's this
thaw strategy, talking art and writing. Oh when you do
(16:12):
when you do those three things and combination, you're quantum
leaping your your healing.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Yes, And I've never heard anybody say it that way.
It's that processing that needs to happen to weave it
together into a blanket instead of a million threads, you know,
like it weaves it together into a story. And often
with trauma, I think, for myself and people i've seen,
(16:42):
you have to do it over and we're not like
it's not a one time story we tell and it's done.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
And one of the things I tell my science like
when it feels like when they feel tortured by my methods,
you know, I try to go slow and be compassionate
with it. One of the things I remind them though,
is that exposure piece of sharing your story and writing
your story and doing free to projects rend your story.
(17:13):
When you're doing these things, you're bringing down your emotional intensity.
So the more you do it, the less intense your
emotions are around it, and then you can see that
you can survive that emotion without turning to a risky behavior. Yes,
you know, we don't believe we're going to survive it. It
(17:33):
just feels so painful. Oh, it's just we can.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Yeah, what do they say about trauma. It's when the
intolerable becomes interminable in our minds that we just think.
It's if this feeling that's horrible is never going to end.
I'm not going to go back in the bringing house
to save myself because that's the only way to do it.
I don't ever want to feel it ever again. And
(18:00):
that shuts down that healing journey. And it makes sense,
Like I mean, I guess we have to who knows
why the timing is what it is? Like, I think
timing and healing is the thing that comes from the
spiritual realm or the you know, the unexplainable realm why
certain things come up at certain times and you're ready
(18:21):
when you're ready a month ago. Yeah, there's a part
of your body mind blow.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
The body is very wise. It's good to listen to it,
you know.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
True.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
And I tell my young people that come to therapy,
is like, you may not be ready if you weren't great. Yeah,
oh I'm ready. I'm like you say that, but are
you really really tired of feeling sick and tired of
your symptoms? Because it usually takes a few years later,
and sometimes they are you know, and sometimes I still
(18:50):
come back later. Yeah you know, Okay, now I know
what you mean. Yeah, So what else has been healing?
Are you? Other than doing creative projects?
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Well, I would actually say what comes up for me
is to just say everything I've tried has given me
a little bit of healing, even bad therapy, because it
even prepared me for what does not work for me,
do you know, like it got me. Yeah. So even
the bad experiences where I felt judged or a misunderstood
(19:27):
or someone tried to do CBT on my trauma, God forbid,
Like you know, I just think different thoughts about it
and reframe it in your mind. And like that felt
so demoralizing and unachievable to me, but it let me
know what wouldn't work. So I've tried so many types
(19:48):
of therapy. I feel like I've done it all, but
I probably haven't. So I've in the early days, I
was seeing someone who did primal work, and that a
really intense and mooting swinging that like letting it all out.
I did that. I did breath work. Then I, you know,
had the traditional people who did my through my benefits.
(20:10):
I would try that and they have like we have sections,
you know, and I'm like, well, I've been sexually abused
for seventeen years. I don't know how this is going
to go. And so but they would give me little tidbits,
you know, little things. And for the last four years,
I've actually been in psychoanalysis two to three times a
week at times and with a psychiatrist, and that's a
(20:32):
whole other rabbit hole to go down. Because I thought
the medical I kind of swore off the medical model
realm for quite a long time. I thought I'm not
going to be I'm not going to belong there. I
don't want to be sort of pathologized and symptoms treated.
And because I'm in the work, I knew what typically
(20:53):
psychiatrists focused on, but anyway, then I came across this
wonderful psychiatrist who wants to get back to the roots
of psychiatry and do therapy, and it's been mind blowing,
like Fredian analysis. I mean, I never thought ever that
(21:14):
I would, and I feel kind of like as a therapist,
there's this little part of me that's observing, going, wow,
this is interesting. You know. I remember I said to her,
this was the big difference for me. I'm geeking out
now on types of therapy. But I said to her
early on, I said, you know, I'm just mine. This
really hard because you come on the screen because we're virtual,
(21:36):
and you don't say a single word. You just wait.
And she said, you know, the difference between counseling and
analysis is counseling tries to alleviate anxiety and help people
feel safe. Analysis invokes anxiety to get your material going.
And I said, well, I hate it. I feel so
(21:57):
anxious when I start these sessions. And then I below
this out. I said, you remind me of my mother
just sitting in her chair doing nothing. And then I said,
oh my god, it's working. So it's been quite enlightening
when she.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Still sees you.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yes, I mean, she's like, exactly what we're here for.
You're going to project all your stuff on me, and
I'm going to be, you know, this warmer mirror to
help you process it.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
And oh wow.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
So I guess I'm telling that story because there's been
a lot of things I've tried where I've wanted to
quit pretty early. And support groups twelve Step World Groups
for a Diction Recovery is another one. I thought, I
don't belong in this church basement. I'm not like these people.
And sixteen years later, I'm still, you know, two three
(22:51):
times a week, you know, So don't give up even
if it's crappy or you don't you know, like, or
it's uncomfortable or I guess that's what I've learned from
sort of opening myself up to all kinds of things.
The craziest thing I ever did was holotropic breath work.
That holotropic breath work, it was kind of designed by
(23:16):
this psychiatrist, I believe, Stanislav Grap I think is his name,
when they took away psychedelics back in the sixties from
psychiatrists and said you can't actually get people LSD, and
so he came up with this way to get the
same thing happening, but through hyperventilation. And so you go
(23:38):
in this dark room with this really loud music and
you hyperventilate your way into a tran state and then
see what happens is what the facilitator said, and that
was wild. And I've tried anything that's offered to me.
I'll try it because you get that desperate when you've
had a life of trauma, right.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, And what works for someone may not work for us,
and vice versa. When you mentioned CBT, I was trained
in CBT pretty early in my career. And when I
worked with this one woman now on and off for
(24:20):
twenty five years. You know, she takes maintenance great she
you know, it's on and off for twenty five years.
And one of the first things I did with her
was to put her in a CBT group that was
leading because she had such crippling anxiety and depression. And
so later when I learned about somatic work and more
(24:43):
of it as based trauma treatment, I apologized to her
and said, I am so sorry I put you in
that group. You know that was to treat the anxiety depression.
You know, that wasn't for trauma. I think I really
messed up doing that. And she's like, oh my god,
that class is so helpful for me to reframe the
(25:05):
way that I think about my soul as an individual.
You know, she goes, I thought I was complete shit worthless,
So she those countering statements after you take your unhealthy
thoughts to the dump is what we can CVT and
you learn healthier thoughts that you can prove to be true. Yes,
(25:28):
she really benefited that. I'm like, okay, I guess there's
no accents. Then it just happened. Yes, there's nothing.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Like I said, like, I think everybody can get something
out of everything, and yeah, CBT. You know I poked
fun at it there, but it saves my bacon in
between sessions because it is very accessible and very easy
to kind of apply, like in the here and now,
I am not okay, and I'm going to do a
(25:56):
quick list of what if and then what is? You know,
those little techniques you learn that see me through really.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah, And I love I love analyzing the way I
think you know that there's a piece of CBTED utility
analysis where you're asking yourself, is this that helping me
feel better? Where's he is it making me feel worse,
does this that help me with building relationships with others
(26:27):
or is it arming relationships? And then the third question
is does this that help me work towards achieving my
goals or is this that a barrier? And when in
almost always, when you have a critical, negative thought about yourself,
this is not.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yeah, and so those questions save my bagan a lot. Okay,
there's no use for this thought, So why keep it? Why? Yeah?
That helps me pit of it? Yeah? Rights, But are
you a published author yet?
Speaker 3 (27:03):
No? I'm not.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Is there a plan for that?
Speaker 3 (27:07):
I thought about it. One of the things I've often
thought about is somehow publishing my journals and this kind
of story of recovery through the art and the writing
feels risky to do that. I don't know. Maybe one day, Yeah, yeah,
maybe one day.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
If it feels risky, then that needs It's not quite
the time.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Yeah, the risk is a bit big. Still. No. My
latest love is I've created. I have a business called
Therapist Sanctuary, and my belief system around it is that
therapists need a place to be human and to be
open and vulnerable with other therapists and feel really supported,
(27:49):
not just sort of in a heady way where we
talk about what interventions we're using, but in a really
deep and personal way of where are store And so
there's a clinical supervision community that is part of that
work where thepists join together. And so if anyone's interested
(28:12):
in that, it's on my website at Holistic Healing Counseling
dot com and it's all online, and so it's supervision
and it's recorded videos that you receive and then coming
together monthly with other therapists to talk about the work.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
And can therapists from any state, Let's say they're working
towards licensure, can you help them from any state? Or
are you limited in the States?
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Well, I'm in Canada, and so it's open for anyone
in the States or here, as long as you're either
have a master's degree or are working towards masters and
kind of what you need for your own requirements and
leave to the person. But it's it's more a place
to sort of debrief. And the videos that people seem
(29:02):
to really enjoy are the ones that are about the
things that happen in therapy commonly that often therapists need
to process but aren't part of any particular modality per se.
So lots of our training or what we do is
we learn CBT or we learn DBT, or we learn
EMDR or but I've felt like there needs to be
(29:25):
a place where we get to talk about how do
we assimilate all that into who we are as people?
So it's more that part. It's the who are you
uniquely as a therapist? What's your thumbprint of what you
offer your clients?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
It sounds like beautiful work because, like we mentioned earlier,
a lot of us are survivors.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Yes, and it's a lonely profession. Actually it's behind closed doors.
We can't go home and talk about it over supper.
We can't, you know, we don't do you ever go
out for supper Or you're with people you love and
they're all talking about their day and you kind of
clam up because you don't know what you can share,
and so you end up sharing nothing. That I've had
(30:09):
that experience so much that I thought I need more places.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Maybe when I was younger. Now I have a lot
of other interests, but can hold conversations like I do
a lot of travel, I read a lot, you know,
the kids are involved in different things.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Yeah, so that's good too, Yeah, I think, yeah, I
think I have the opposite problem though.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Where doing the work, especially if it's intense, if I
have a full day of people, I think what ten
has happened in my case is I don't want to
talk anymore and I don't want to hear anybody else anymore. Yeah,
you know, after so I kind of go into that
time and I'm like, well, this isn't good for friendships, right,
(31:02):
because friendships you have to both be engaged in talking
and also listening. Well, so, yeah, my social life has
taken a hit over the years, right like this.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
The work affects us so profoundly, and I think it
needs a place to be shared and seen and expressed.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Yeah. I think that's a beautiful group you have.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
The other thing I noticed, I wonder if you notice this,
and I again, everybody's different. I notice that as a
younger person and therapist, I would laugh at everything and anything,
like I thought things were funny. And after being a
trauma therapist for so long, it's really hard to get
(31:51):
me to laugh. The gust over the top funny. Do
you relate to that at all?
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Yes, And it's come of like giving me the chilled
a little, just losing some of the lightheartedness of life,
Like I don't remember there was Okay. I read once
and it talked about going on this trip with her family.
She was a therapist, and I related to it so much.
(32:19):
She was going on a trip and they were at
this beautiful spot on the top of the mountain and
they were looking over and all she could think of
was all the people that could jump off there and
die by suicide. And it was in that moment she
kind of realized the impact of working with trauma for
year after year after year, Like you kind of see
(32:40):
a world differently. You and I have too. Yeah, I
relate to that a lot. And the flip side of
it is and I need laughter so much more than
I ever did.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yes, we do, We absolutely do.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
So I try to be mindful of that. And I
love it when I find a show that's truly funny
to me, or a comedian that's, oh, that's really funny,
you know, it's a nice surprise. Or if I find
a book that makes me chuckle, I'm like, oh, this
is so I can still laugh.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Yes, we're still in there, We're still we're still whole
human beings in there.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Yeah, so I think we should probably wrap up. I
know we could talk about date for days, about the
different topics that we help people in therapy with, or
even just your art creativity. Let's end by just kind
of recapping what your website is recapping on the programs
(33:46):
that you have took for people right now.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Okay, So my website is Holistic Healing Counseling counselingtwo l's
dot com. And my pro that's available for therapists is
Therapist Sanctuary, and it's on that website. I also have
a free giveaway for a therapist and you can find
it by going to www. Therapist Sanctuary dot com. And
(34:15):
it's called between Sessions and I do hypnosis. I'm a
clinical hypnotherapist, and these are short hypnosis meditations if you
want to call it that, to do in between your
sessions throughout your day on topics that are appealing to
most therapists, like how to let go of the client's pain,
(34:37):
how to not take on too much and those kinds
of things. And yeah, and social media. I'm at Therapist
Sanctuary on different platforms, so I'm happy to have other
therapists join our community. It's a beautiful group of people
and very honest and very welcoming.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
It sounds beautiful.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Thank you so much for having me, Karen, I've enjoyed
it a lot, sane.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Thank you for being here today.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Thank you for listening in today. Please join us next week,
same day and time. Also, I would love for you
to check out my website heel thrivedream dot com.
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