Episode 22 · 34 min · Jun 23, 2026
Heal Trauma in 5 Sessions Without Saying a Word | Jenn Mejia, LCSW
with Jenn Mejia, LCSW
Most people who carry trauma assume that healing means sitting across from a therapist and telling the whole story. Jenn Mejia, LCSW, knows differently. In her clinical practice at Phases of Healing Counseling and Therapy in St. Augustine, Florida, she has watched clients process decades of pain without uttering a single word about what happened to them. That is not a workaround. That is the point.
Jenn grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, and built her clinical foundation at Louisiana State University before relocating to Florida, eventually settling in St. Augustine, a city she describes as one she vibes with deeply. She works with adults, couples, parents, and families across a range of concerns including anxiety, trauma, ADHD, emotion regulation, and relationship conflict, and she brings a rigorously holistic frame to every case. At Phases of Healing, the practice she joined under owner-operator Angela Fusco, clinicians look not just at the individual in the room but at the full ecosystem around them: culture, environment, lived experience, and the stories those forces have layered onto a person over time.
The modality that anchors much of this episode is Accelerated Resolution Therapy, or ART, a relatively newer treatment that Jenn describes as an offshoot of EMDR. Where EMDR uses rapid eye movements to support memory processing and typically spans eight to twelve sessions, ART compresses that work into one to five sessions and keeps the client mostly silent throughout. The mechanism is borrowed from REM sleep: the brain naturally consolidates memories during rapid eye movement cycles, and ART essentially hijacks that process in the waking state. A therapist moves a hand back and forth while the client tracks internally, allowing the brain to locate the traumatic memory and replace the image connected to it with something healthier and adaptive.
What makes this different from traditional exposure-based approaches is where the work lands. ART does not ask clients to narrate or relive. It targets the visual and somatic layer of a memory rather than the verbal account of it. When a session ends, the facts of what happened remain intact, but the image the brain retrieves when it looks back is no longer the raw original. The client would have to dig to find it. Flashbacks, which Jenn explains arise from intrusive images and the emotional charge those images carry, lose much of their grip because the image itself has changed.
Jenn uses a house of cards to describe why this works as efficiently as it does. Trauma does not sit alone. It creates triggers, and those triggers compound into problem patterns that keep building upward. Traditional therapy often addresses the top of the structure, the most accessible symptoms. ART goes to the foundation. Pull the right card at the base, and the entire stack falls. That shift in where treatment begins is what allows the therapy to move so quickly, even for complex trauma.
The conversation also turns to Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, originally developed to treat borderline personality disorder and now applied far more broadly. Jenn walks through its four modules: distress tolerance, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, and mindfulness. She introduces the concept of Wise Mind as the organizing principle of the whole framework: a meeting point between the Emotion Mind, which feels deeply but can be overwhelmed, and the Reasonable Mind, which thinks clearly but can sidestep connection. Wise Mind is the ability to hold both, to validate the feeling and still make a considered choice about what to do next. Jenn is clear that DBT is not a passive therapy. It is skills-based and homework-heavy, typically spanning a full year, and it works best for people who are ready to practice actively outside the session.
What ties these two modalities together is Jenn's underlying philosophy: that the goal is not to talk about trauma for its own sake but to address it only when it is genuinely interfering with how someone functions. That framing matters. It removes the pressure to confess and replaces it with a practical question: is this thing affecting your life? If the answer is yes, there are tools that can address it with precision, often quickly, and always with the client in control of how much they share.
For the many people who stay away from therapy because they cannot face the idea of recounting what happened to them, the insight Jenn offers is a genuine point of entry: healing does not require the story. It only requires the willingness to begin.
In this episode, you will learn:
- Understand how Accelerated Resolution Therapy uses rapid eye movements to replace traumatic images in memory, reducing flashbacks without requiring any verbal disclosure.
- Compare ART and EMDR: ART completes trauma processing in 1 to 5 sessions versus 8 to 12 for EMDR, and every ART session is designed to end on a positive note.
- Recognize why ART targets the foundational memory at the root of a trauma pattern rather than the surface-level symptoms, pulling the base card so the whole house falls.
- Apply the Wise Mind concept from DBT by learning to hold emotional experience and rational thinking together before responding to distressing situations.
- Identify who ART may not be appropriate for, including people with traumatic brain injuries, pregnancy, vertigo, or vision tracking difficulties.
- Practice the four DBT skill modules: distress tolerance, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, and mindfulness, which together form a full year of structured training.
- Understand why trauma avoidance works until it stops working, and how ART gives clients a path to healing while keeping them fully in control of what they share.
- Recognize how a holistic treatment team model works in practice, where clinicians with complementary specialties collaborate to support one client's full healing journey.
Welcome back to Therapist Voices at Reach Link. My name is Jessica Horowitz and I oversee Reach Link's network of amazing providers. Today I'm joined by Jen Mejia. She is a LCSW and works with Phases of Healing Counseling and Therapy. We are all going to be visiting you whether for therapy or not because what I have heard, I know I told you this about St. Augustine, it sounds so magical. I don't know if it's always that way when you're the one that lives there, but if we see you in your office or just around St. Augustine, we will all be saying a hi. Um I know that today we talked about perhaps talking about some different specific treatment modalities that you provide. My name's Jen. I'm a licensed clinical social worker here. I got my master's from LSU. I've been now doing therapy since 2023.
I'm from North Carolina. I'm from Asheville. I live in St. Augustine. I really enjoy working with all different kinds of populations. I have been obsessed with psychology for over a decade. I get so much energy and so honored to be able to do this for a career. You know, I know that a lot of people get to do the things that they're really passionate about. I'm grateful for it every day. At what point did you make your way to St. Augustine? So I actually went to Jacksonville first. So I moved in 2006 down to Jacksonville and then in I think right around 20 2020, right around when COVID hit actually, I made my way down to St. Augustine. It's a a really cool city that I I vibe with really well. Um the art scene is amazing. So if you're into art, it's awesome. And it seems like you it seems like you joined a really cool group.
From the time I spent on your website, it seems like you've got some real great people there. So Angela Fusco, she is our owner operator and a fellow therapist. She's an LMHC. She is incredible. She's very um holistic mindset. Um so we're looking at the whole person and the whole environment. That's kind of why I love being a social work as opposed to mental health clinician is I look at everything, not just the person. Um but she is such a great boss, teammate. We collaborate on a lot of things. We're working on building a lot of things in the community. I like that you mentioned, cuz this is a theme that I saw coming up a lot on your website and when we spoke earlier that the holisticness is a big part of your practice. Would you say that's accurate? Oh my gosh, yeah. In different components, right?
So we've got We're made up of four clinicians. We all do it a little differently. Some of us are more focused on the effects of nutrition and physical movement. Um some of us are more focused on the cultural aspects of psychology or they're looking at the societal aspects of it, age and development. I mean, there's so many different things, but when a person comes into therapy, I don't just see them. I see all of the things that have created who they are today and they all, you know, influence it on a daily basis, yeah. And who as a client, who does not want to hear that? I mean I mean, yeah. It's I think that's all we are as humans is just a product of our experience, right? Absolutely. Well, I'm excited to hear more about your practice. I wanted to get into, if we could, a little bit about these modalities that you work with the most.
I know that you work with adults, couples, and families. Especially, is this right, with ADHD and anxiety and relationship issues? Do you use those three modalities that we're going to be talking about? Are those the main ones that you incorporate into your into your sessions with those populations? They are large ones I use. Um as with most therapists, I think you kind of become eclectic over the time and you have to learn which clients are going to respond better to certain things, right? Stay on your toes. Yeah, you got to stay on on toes. So the accelerated resolution therapy is really a unique one that I use depending on certain circumstances. Obviously, go into that in a minute, but I also really love internal family systems, so IFS. That's a big one that I I lean on a lot. Obviously, CBT um is a big one as well, but DBT, Gottman, and accelerated resolution therapy, they work differently, very differently.
And so, I'll use them a lot of times with the same person in different facets depending on the need. Maybe. Oh, great. Well, I'm excited now because I admittedly do not know much at all about accelerated resolution therapy. So, if I could be a hog of the conversation and ask if we could start with that, that would be amazing. Tell us a little bit about it if you could. Yeah, so a lot of people have heard of EMDR. Miley Cyrus did a video talking about EMDR and the benefits of it, so people are a little bit more familiar with it. For those that are not, the reason I'm talking about EMDR instead of ART is it's an offshoot. EMDR uses rapid eye movements to help with memory processing, is really what it boils down to. So, Laney, who was the person that created uh ART or accelerated resolution therapy, she previously was an EMDR therapist.
So, basically, Laney was realizing that her clients, there were a couple issues with how they would be feeling at the end of the sessions and things like that. So, she started to kind of play around with it a little bit and found an alternative way to treat trauma with rapid eye movements. So, REM sleep, which is rapid eye movement sleep, is known for the time when our our brain is consolidating memory. So, we're essentially hijacking the system and allowing us to do that in our waking state. So, if you were to attend an an ART session, an accelerated resolution therapy session, there's going to be eye movements. So, you'll sit with a therapist and they're going to be moving their hand back and forth. EMDR, they usually have like light bars that they may use. There's different ways to do it.
I also have buzzers for different reasons, like hand buzzers. And it's not type of therapy that you're talking. There's very little talking. Most of it is done internally. There's different ways to approach it. It's either using a way to replace the images connected to a traumatic memory or dealing with unknown somatic or sensation things that come up for you that you don't really understand. So, the traumatic memory piece of it, the way that they say it is you're going to remember that things happened. You know, if you had a traumatic situation with, you know, a parent as a child, the details are going to be there. But when you go back to try to remember it, what's going to actually come up is the visual is the joyful or the happy replacement that you made as the image. You would actually have to dig to try to find the original image.
It's really freaky and weird, but it definitely works. And so, what that results in is your ability to tolerate thinking about it, so that way you're not dealing with as many flashbacks because the flashbacks come from the images and then the emotional experience from seeing those images again, not the knowledge that it happened. Does that make sense? It does and you're very good at explaining this because this this has historically been difficult for me to grasp sometimes having not partaken in any form of EMDR or anything in that manner. So, it's so fascinating. I'm sure so many people can agree and I know most listeners are probably fellow providers that may or may not offer these services and it just it's just so helpful to hear it explained in a way in the way that you are. So, please keep going.
Yeah, no, that's right. Yeah, so some people will ask me, you know, what's the biggest difference between EMDR and ART? Um EMDR is usually longer. It's like 8 to 12 sessions. ART is usually 1 to 5. Um so, it's a condensed version of it. EMDR, which by the way is highly, highly effective, is even used by the Department of Defense. So, EMDR is a fantastic modality. But a lot of people when they leave an EMDR session, they kind of feel raw and like really open. I hear a lot of feedback like that where they have a hard time going back to work the same day, that sort of thing. Whereas with ART, in the session on a positive note. So, only the first 5 to 10 minutes is really the hard work, the the negative parts that you have to really process out. And it's allowing you to kind of feel the emotions you didn't allow yourself to feel at the time of the trauma to finally be able to allow your body to process that energy out of the body.
Then you replace it with a more healthy adaptive storyline and image that's connected to it. Is really the basis. But so, it's really great for one-time trauma memories, so big T traumas. But you can use it for little Ts or complex PTSD as well. It just functions slightly differently. Well, the other way that I'd like to use it is the people that will come in and they'll say something like, "Gosh, every time my parent sees this pen, I start to notice that I'm feeling like really irritated and I don't know where that comes from or what that is, right?" That's just an example. We can use ART to actually allow the brain to show memory. So, what that would look like is through the the art experience, I would have you tap into what you're feeling and where you're feeling it in your body. It's a very common thing that you're going to notice with breaks.
And when you notice the sensation, you'll ask something like, "Okay, well, can you ask your brain when else in your past have you felt the same sensation?" And you sit back almost as a passive observer of your thoughts, and then usually within 40 passes, your brain's going to show you a memory that may feel irrelevant, but we follow the wormhole basically to figure out, "Okay, well, what is this and how did that make you feel?" And we start to process it. It's a really cool modality to dive deep and deal with it. what? Then what happens? So, then basically once you get to those places, then we figure out, "Okay, what was the core memory or one of the biggest core memories? One of the greatest examples I learned in my training is like you think about like a house of cards. Uh-huh. When you're dealing with traumatic memory, if a trauma happened, it's then going to create a trigger.
That trigger is then going to potentially impact future problem areas and then there's more conflict that's just basically reinforcing whatever the trigger was that's connected with that trauma. So, what ART does is instead of trying to fix the problems that are kind of up on the top that you have more access to, it's going to have you tackle one of the cards on the base on the foundation. So, that way we can kind of pull it way back and if we pull that card out, the whole house falls. Yeah. As opposed to having to work on each individual one, if that makes any sense. It does. Yeah. I highly recommend it. It's It's a really cool cool thing to do. What you really got me on is when I think about EMDR, I always think then what happens to this client that is just left with this what has been uncovered or or not, what a vulnerable place to be.
So, this sounds like a very different ending to a session. It is. So, now it is going to be taxing because your brain is doing a lot of work. So, you know, you want to make sure you bring a bottle of water with you. You want to make sure you get a lot of rest afterward. But basically, yeah, the first section I would say the first 25% of the session, it's processing what actually occurred. The rest of it is replacing the image that you've connected to it. So, when you walk away from it, not only is the image different, but your perception of what happened changes as well. And I've had a lot of clients that through this process when we deal with trauma, our brain makes up stories about what happened and it has to try to fill in the blanks because it's such a uh scattered memory that happens.
Um a lot of times it comes in bits and pieces. So, I've had clients that when they get into these places and we start to build on it, they'll notice things about the memory that they forgot or they didn't actually recognize in the moment that then completed the actual story. So, now they're able to make sense of it with a full picture as opposed to these fragments and be able to kind of understand, you know, how they got to the conclusion that they did. When someone finishes their treatment, let's say it's the last session, what comes next? Is this often like a short-term intervention or are you then doing using other modalities to do other work based on what you've done already? It depends. So, if a client's coming in for me just to do art, they needed to work out a specific traumatic memory, then usually, yeah, it's very short-term treatment goal.
You know, we'll do one to five sessions, and then I wish them well, and they move on their way, basically. Most of my clients though that use art are already current clients of mine. And so, then we just look at the insight and the meaning. So, then I kind of lean into cognitive processing therapy. Cognitive processing therapy is another type of trauma modality that basically looks at how did the trauma that occurred to you impact how you view yourself and view other people in the world around you, right? So, if they've done this art, and they're now able to step away and actually look at it, now they can tolerate looking at it, now we can go, "Okay, well, how did this influence how you see yourself? You know, what are the narratives that are working behind the scenes that are potentially actually creating the problems that you're experiencing, right?"
So, we can start to then get a little bit of movement in that direction. Wow, so there's there's still that kind of follow-up of okay, now we can do some more with this with what's been identified. Oh, yeah. There was I without disclosing, you know, personal information, this was actually a client that was not my client. It was a fellow clinician's client, and they referred them to me for a one one art session, and then I brought them back over to their existing clinician because we needed to get those pieces moving. And this client had a moment where she was like, I don't understand why this one thing continues to happen, and it was a core memory back with her parents and an association that she had. And then we were able to get her back into her therapist's office, and they were able to process what that brought up for her and how she can find a level of acceptance and be able to process the emotions as well.
That's such a cool way to be utilizing your practice of each other, knowing that you have different specialties, saying, I think Jen would be really good for this. Let's Let's shoot on over to her office. Yeah, this is another part of that holistic practice. Yeah. Is we believe in like a treatment team, that it's not just you know, you're going to have the individual therapist. You might have an individual therapist and a couples therapist. You might have a nutritionist. You might have We don't have that in our practice just yet, but we love the idea of having even a holistic practice itself, that the healing journey was not a single The problem did not come to a single place, so therefore the healing doesn't come from a single place, right? There's multiple aspects that go into it. That's really interesting.
That was such a helpful explanation because I knew I think I sort of assumed it was very EMDR Mhm. ish, and I understand that it it is, but the differences are very interesting. I would encourage people, if you're curious about it, try both. You might get something different from each person. ART is a lot more scripted, though the more you integrate it in your practice, you can be a little bit more fluid and flexible. I find that EMDR is a lot more fluid, so if you go to one EMDR therapist, you may not get the same experience as if you go to another. And I think it's probably accurate with ART, but ours is a bit more regimented. Okay. So you're going to get most likely a pretty similar experience. I'm interested in what you said about trying out both. Do Would you suggest people, if they were willing to do that, take a break, is it safe to do that to switch and say, "Oh, you know what?
I'm going to try EMDR. Let's see what Let's see what happens." So, this is where you would if you have an individual therapist, talk with her because I don't want to jump in immediately and go, "Yeah, this is good for everybody." because there may be exceptions to that, obviously. But, when you are thinking about safety and thinking about what's appropriate for you, there are a couple things I always have to gauge. Number one is, did this person ever deal with a traumatic brain injury? Because that can be impacted here. If somebody is pregnant, I'm usually very careful with those as well because the emotional intensity they can go through can put a lot of stress on the body, so we want to be careful with that. If anybody deals with vertigo or any vision issues, and or if their eyes cannot track, that can be problematic.
I know you mentioned a lot of your viewers are fellow clinicians, so personality individuals, that's a big issue as well because they have to, if there's any gain of not building insight, if this is going to be really ineffective. So, it doesn't mean that nobody with personality characteristics can't benefit, but that is is challenging. If you care deeply about mental health, whether as a therapist or someone seeking support, this message is for you. If you're a therapist listening and you're looking for more flexibility, more balance, or a way to expand your impact, ReachLink is growing. We've been building a community of thoughtful, dedicated clinicians who want to make care more accessible through telehealth without losing the human connection that matters most. With ReachLink, you can work from anywhere, set a schedule that fits your life, and let us handle the administrative work so you can focus on what you came to do, help your clients.
And if you're looking for support, at ReachLink, we believe mental health care should meet you where you are, in how you feel, and in how you live. Whether you're navigating stress, burnout, relationships, or major life changes, you don't have to go through it alone. With the ReachLink app, you can connect with licensed, experienced therapists through secure, convenient telehealth sessions from your space on your time. No commute, no waiting rooms, just real support when you need it. So, whether you're ready to start therapy or ready to offer it, ReachLink is here. Download the app or learn more at reachlink.com because better mental health should always be within reach. That's really interesting. I think that's really helpful to make sense of of who this might really work best for. Yeah. And if you have the issues with the eyes, this is where I have the buzzers.
So, bilateral stimulation, you can utilize it in different ways. The most scientifically successful one is through your eyes. But secondary to that, it's going to be tactile. So, if you have, like I said, hand buzzers. I also use that with my ADHD people because the focus is tricky, right? So, they can at least That's exactly what I kept thinking. I was like, "How would I possibly Well, that's a that's a common thing that we deal with. Is people are If you're new to it, you start to get into these places, especially if you're the person that wants to do things right. You want to be able to make sure your eyes are focusing and you're not sitting in, right? So, I always tell my clients, "It's my job to track your eyes, not yours." And so, as people are are moving, if I notice their eyes aren't tracking, I'm naturally slowing down so that I always reconnect and go.
And eventually, as you get more and more into the therapy, it kind of just blurs out and don't really see it anymore. But if you notice that that's a really big issue for you, you can always use those as well. That's That's so helpful to know that it is not unheard of for people to to try cuz I certainly know I would do that. I would want As a people-pleaser, I would want to be doing it right, do exactly what you said, even if it wasn't anything that made sense. Just let me do Let me do what I'm supposed to. So, it's so great that you offer that that support. The goal here with anything that I do, and I know what this is the majority of therapists or I hope all therapists is are we helping you? So, it doesn't matter how we get there necessarily as long as you're benefiting from it. And so, I think that's the best thing we can do.
Do you notice any amount of clients that might be working with you either short-term for this modality or are, you know, kind of existing longer-term clients Mhm. coming back to use this tool again? Yeah. So, one of the fun things that we do as therapists is if somebody's though Yeah, I've done art with them in the past, um and they come in and they're talking about, "Yeah, I just I don't know why I keep blowing up like this." Hey, let's art it out. Oh, right, right. Uh-huh. We go and we'll do the art out, right? I'm picturing looking at you and being like, "Should we Should we art it out?" Yeah, I think I think we should. Yeah. So, that's an easy thing to be able to do. The other really cool thing is if your brain is used to art, so if you've done at least one session of it, I'll notice that their brain will jump steps because it's very systematic when you do it.
And so, I'll notice first time around I'm having to kind of pull things out. And then I'll do it the second time or the third time, and it's like the person already skipped three steps and is already way in advance. The brain just naturally learns what it's doing. That's so interesting, and I I'm not surprised especially because something that really caught my attention that you mentioned about this I think the difference in it being very system, and I think that could be really appealing to a lot of people. Yeah, the systematic thing is is easy because it creates a level of safety, right? So, it allows there to be a container like with the training. I know that if I can't fit it all into one session, and ideally you want to fit it all into one session. I know the break points. I know when we can actually pause because you never want to leave somebody when you're doing with trauma work wide open for safety reasons and things like that.
This is honestly so interesting. I think knowing that there is an alternative or something that's just a little bit different if EMDR might not be a fit in certain aspects, that there is and I know I seem so excited by it. I know all of these are great, but it just is so nice that there are with modalities that seem so exact, that there are others that have come stemmed off of them perhaps that address other issues or reasons people might not use one. Yeah, I think that's what modalities are in general, right? So I think they are all just branch off of, you know, what somebody was doing previously. This is also really good because a lot of people when they're dealing with trauma, they don't want to sit and talk about it. It's really hard. So I worked with veterans a while back and a lot of them don't want to talk about what happened and that's understandable.
So this is a way that you can treat it without having to say anything. As you go through it, uh one of the things that you'll hear us say in art is anything you care to share. And if you say no, we keep moving. So it's you don't have to talk. This is all internal. That's so something I imagine would be very comforting to people that oh, wait a second. And we think that that is obvious, but for a client or a patient hearing that I think is so exhilarating. Oh, we really? Yeah, I don't have to? Really, that's okay? And to your point of I would imagine so many people with trauma avoid avoid getting help because the thought is I'm going to have to tell someone what the trauma was, even if I don't know what it was. I mean I have to come up with something. I may have to sit through that, feel it again probably, and then the session's probably over.
And now I have to schedule again to talk about what we're going to do about this trauma. It just sounds very overwhelming. It is. It's incredibly overwhelming and that's why avoidance is the number one tool that most people who've been through a traumatic experience use. It's a whole and it's a very effective tool until it's not. You know, if I don't have to think about it, it doesn't have to exist, I don't have to feel it. The downside though is you cannot control what or when a trigger is going to hit. Mhm. So, when it does, it does. And I'm also a big component too that I don't talk about trauma for trauma's sake. I talk about trauma when it's impacting your functioning. Mhm. I feel like a lot of people just think that if there's trauma, it needs to be discussed. There is some validity to that because some of the function you may not even recognize is tied to past trauma, right?
And this is where ART is really functional. So, as I'm going through trying to figure out, you know, why is this thing happening? And we realize, oh, it's because of this thing that occurred. Then, okay, now we have to make a decision. Do we want to process this or do you want to live with what this is doing to you functioning in your life? It's important to give people the ability to control the pace and what they want to talk about and when they're ready to. That makes it so much easier, I imagine, to want to then talk about it. Like, wait a second, it is my choice. Okay, well, now I now I want to talk about it. They still don't. They still don't. But, they want the effects of the trauma to go away. Yeah. So, that's when we say, okay, well, you got a choice. We continue to live with it the way that you are and you continue to do that, which is going to feel what it's what you've been feeling or you have to do the brave thing and start to heal this.
And that's, I think, all therapists that deals trauma can relate to that. And to know that they're there with you, I imagine, makes it that much easier. That's the hope, right? Would you say that you use art significantly in your practice compared to, I know we're going to talk about the Gottman method a little bit. Do you use that significantly more than everything else? Do people really seek you out? I do love to use art. I don't use it as much as I would like to. It's not my primary one that I tend to go to all of the time, but I do offer it to all of my clients that did have a traumatic past and let them know, "Okay, this is something that I do offer and we can certainly do that." We just haven't in our practice really leaned into advertising ourselves as the art therapists, but we do offer and have it as an offering and something that we can go to.
So, I really want to make sure we are This is what this this podcast is great for is educating people on what it is and the benefits of it. So, that way hopefully we can get as many people help as possible. And then when I did the training, I remember feeling like, "God, this could have helped so many people that I had worked with previously." That feeling it has to be so hard. I mean very hard. But but also exciting. Yeah, it's empowering because you feel like and it's not just empowering for me as a therapist, but it's empowering for my clients to recognize that you have the ability to heal this. You know, it's not something that you have to be a victim of your whole life. This is something that creates strength within you that you had to learn to overcome, that you had to show yourself what you're capable of to get yourself where you are.
So, yeah, I I think that's an important thing to be able to say to them. Amazing. Well, I hope I hope we can bring more awareness Yeah. whether to clients, providers everywhere, especially in your area. Yes. Um how do you feel about touching on one more one more modality that you work with? Would you pick DBT or Gottman? Do you want to do that's Those are two very different things. So, Gottman I know. I know. It's like I'm so curious what you would pick. I would probably ask which one are you more curious about because, you know, I think they're both very well studied and they're amazing. It just depends on where you want to open to a part two for the one we don't cover? Of course. Yeah, of course. No problem. about DBT if you if we could. Okay. So, DBT was originally uh created to treat borderline personality disorder.
It helps with individuals who struggle with four things. So, it's going to be distress tolerance, which is quite those crisis moments where you feel like I can't breathe um I'm either crying uncontrollably or I just feel like either potentially I'm not safe, right? So, it helps with people that deal with self-harm, suicidal ideations, and things like that. It also helps you regulate emotions. So, there's emotion regulation category in there as well, which is not the crisis moments, but how do I just deal with the day-to-day emotional ups and downs? You have interpersonal effectiveness skills. So, a lot of in folks with BPD, which originally was designed for that, now it's used for anxiety and depression and expands way beyond borderline personality disorder. But, the interpersonal connectedness is how do I communicate myself effectively to the people around me, right?
Rather than using old coping patterns that are just creating cycles that aren't getting me anywhere. And then the last piece is mindfulness, which is actually kind of the core of it all. So, not only how do you I regulate, like feel the sensations in my body and be able to bring my body back where it needs to be, but how do I bring myself back into the present moment and not catastrophize and not, you know, be stuck in the past, but be able to constantly bring myself back in. So, we learn something the the core piece of it is something called wise mind. And wise mind is basically the combination between the emotional experience that we have, which is the emotion mind, and the logical experience we have, which is the reasonable mind. So, an emotion-minded person, which is typically people that would seek out DBT, they're the person that they feel their feelings and they feel them really big.
And they just almost feel like they are being drowned by their emotions and they can't ever come up for air. There's pros and cons to that. The cons are they usually struggle with high emotional issues. They may have trouble with decision-making skills, thinking critically, but the pro of that person is they're usually very compassionate people because they understand emotion on a very deep level, right? On the flip side of that, you got the reasonable mind where everything is very logical and rational and step-by-step, you know, kind of a a vibe. This person is usually using that to avoid feeling the feelings, right? So, if there's an emotional situation, I'm immediately going to go into problem-solve mode as opposed to feeling the emotion. They also have a pro and a con. Their pro is they usually are able to make really good decisions.
They're able to think things through. They're able to have they usually have really good discernment on what's the right way and the wrong place to or the right and the wrong choice. But their challenges is they usually struggle with connection. Um they are challenged in relationships where people feel like they can't really connect with them a lot. Or they can't really connect with others. So, the wise mind is instead of either/or, how do we utilize both? How in the moments of distress can I validate myself, empathize with myself, feel the feelings, not run away from the feelings just in enough time to be able to then access the logical part of my brain to then be able to decide on how I want to move forward as opposed to trigger and reactivity, it's trigger, pause, and then a choice. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Long spiel. No, that that is fascinating. I'm trying to think of which way I want to be. I know. Well, I mean, I think everybody can utilize DBT. It's actually really helpful even for like teens as well. I mean, how many times have you been sat down with your parents or a caregiver and they were saying, "Okay, if you feel frustration, this is how you navigate it. This is what you do." We just tend to get yelled at for being frustrated because we aren't handling it great. Or if you're really overwhelmed because you're feeling lonely or you're feeling disconnected from people. Self-harm and and suicidal thoughts, those are really lonely places to be. And so, having tools and resources and this feeling of like, "Okay, this part of me may not go away today, but I feel confident in my ability to tolerate it and navigate it with healthier things that are more in line with the person that I want to be."
The ads are really impactful therapy, I know, but it's one of those two where it's not a good fit for everybody because it is homework heavy. So, you learn It's very skills-based, it's not processing-based. Traditional DBT has three components. So, you're going to have an individual therapist that functions like a typical therapist. Let's talk about past trauma, let's talk about processing and emotion regulation and all of those things. You have what's called a DBT coach. The DBT coach is going to be your crisis management. So, it's 2:00 a.m. and you're having a freak out about something, you can call your coach and your coach is going to help go, "Okay, what skill do we need to use?" And they help navigate through those things. And then you have your group setting. And the group setting is going to be skills groups.
So, you're in a group with other people learning skills. It's usually a year because it's a 6-month process of learning the skills, and then you're going to repeat that Excuse me, repeat that for another 6 months to reinforce those skills. So, it's very skills-heavy, it's very homework-based. You have these check sheets to Okay, did I use the skills today? What did it How did it improve? So, it's very scientifically driven to be able to look at how your progress and how you're doing. Which you can probably tell as the therapist if it's going to be hit or miss for somebody. Uh yeah, it's very, very quick because if they continue And I mean, it's it's not always because they just refuse to do homework, you know, some people get distracted and they got a busy life and they can't address it. So, in that case, I have to just give them realistic expectations.
So, hey, we can definitely learn these skills in here, but only doing this for 1 hour once a week is like me trying to join the WNBA and which I don't have any practice playing basketball and choosing to play for 1 hour per week. It it's just you can only go so far. Jen, what's the best way for I suspect maybe it's just me cuz I live in Florida, so I can seek you out. What's the best way for people to reach out to you and your group? Oh yeah, of course. So our website which is Phases of Healing Counseling and Therapy.com, you'll be able to read all the bios of our four different therapists. Each of us have a really different kind of unique specialty which is important. I do have a Facebook page. I'm not entirely active on it because this is how you guys found me. I don't like social media.
I I want to live my life, but I do it because I also really want to make sure when I notice things or patterns that are coming up in in sessions, I want to give some things back to my clients. And so Jen May LCSW on Facebook. My boss Angela, she has an Instagram page. So it's Phases of Healing. I think it's just Phases of Healing. Phases of Healing Counseling and Therapy on Instagram. You can reach us any of those places, of course. Everyone, we will link all of these options at the end of the episode here. Jen, thank you so much for being here. I'm already thinking I know we're definitely doing part two if you'll have us. Of course I'll have you. I'll have you. I'll have you. But I'm thinking of a three, four, and five as well. So we will see your face again very soon. Thank you so so much for being here. You provided such great information and I wouldn't be surprised if you've got some people knocking on your door. Oh no, you are so sweet. I really appreciate that. It was great to meet you, Jessica. You too. Talk to you very soon. All right, talk to you later. Bye.
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