Have you ever had a client with physical or mental health symptoms that festered for months or years but you couldn’t get to the root cause? Most people face a mysterious condition in their lifetime that doctors, therapists and other healthcare professionals simply don’t have a concrete answer as to why this problem exists and what solution is appropriate.

In this episode, we have a courageous woman willing to share her personal story of a debilitating seven year journey of complex neurological and psychiatric issues that nearly ruined her life. After countless doctors, misdiagnoses and failed treatment protocols, her own intuition led to an extremely simple discovery that eliminated her symptoms within days and probably saved her life.

Her story is an important reminder to mental health professionals that sometimes people who display the most complex psychiatric symptoms actually have a root cause that is overlooked and relatively simple to rule out.

The medical model commonly found in psychiatry focuses heavily on categorizing a constellation of symptoms into mental health disorders. This is a useful approach when a person needs medication to reduce those symptoms in order to function in their lives. However, where this model falls short is in truly identifying the root causes of mental suffering.

Many links have been made to brain chemistry, genetics and family of origin dynamics, but these don’t usually present a holistic perspective that’s curative in nature. In this episode, you’re going to learn about a different approach to psychiatry. Integrative psychiatrists look into the root causes of mental illness. Many aspects of mental illness are viewed as imbalances in the body created by a number of factors.

Dr. Will Van Derveer is the founder and medical director of the Integrative Psychiatric Healing Center in Boulder, Colorado where he has practiced integrative psychiatry for 15 years. He holds an adjunct clinical faculty position at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and is the course director of the psychiatry resident course on integrative psychiatry.

Imagine if your body could talk to you..well, it actually does. I’m sure you’ve heard a bunch of things about mindfulness, presence and embodiment. And you may have explored these concepts to varying degrees. In this episode, we are going into the depths of somatic psychology with a pioneer and expert looking specifically at the healing potential of an embodied therapist.

We’re going to explore some really interesting concepts in biology and cellular physiology that impact mental health and wellness. And of course, the role of embodiment in a therapeutic setting. It’s best to listen to this at normal speed because you’re going to get taken through some exercises that are really essential to understanding the concept of presence and connection to your body.

Our guest today, Susan Aposhyan, is a pioneer in the field of somatic psychology, training helping professionals internationally in the Body-Mind Psychotherapy approach that she developed. She also developed and directed one of the first graduate degree programs in somatic psychology at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. 

Imagine a world where body weight is not an issue in order to live a joyous and free life and that your body was designed perfectly.

No matter who you are or where you come from you have a body. Everyday we are relating to this body on conscious and unconscious levels. We think about what our bodies look like, feel like, and the size of our body.

In this episode, we’re going to have a conversation about body size and mental health that is not predictable. This new type of dialogue about the body challenges me and it will also probably push you. I know for myself it’s an essential move toward a healthier way to be in the bodies that we all inhabit.

Carmen Cool, Founder and Executive Director of the Boulder Youth Body Alliance, Named “Most Inspiring Individual” in Boulder County in 2012, Recipient of the 2013 Excellence in Advocacy Award from the Eating Disorders Coalition is extremely passionate and fierce about her work in advocating for a new paradigm of how we relate to our bodies.

Trauma theories and therapies have been gaining a lot of attention in our field in the last decade. It’s really for a good reason. Neuroscience and the advancement of somatic therapies have unlocked new ways of working with trauma that were very difficult to treat.

We’re going to discuss Complex PTSD and how it differs from what typically comes to mind when we think of trauma. Complex PTSD is often interpersonal trauma that happened over a period of time during early childhood. Even within this definition there are degrees of how severely a person is traumatized and many people walking down the street, whether it’s you or me, may have a degree of Complex PTSD that we are attempting to overcome in ourselves.

We will explore what’s happening in the brain when we can’t process an overwhelming event, why it’s important to distinguish between the different forms of trauma, and also differential diagnosis between others disorders.

A major piece to healing complex PTSD comes from understanding post-traumatic growth models, and how resiliency and wisdom often rise from the places that were so difficult in our past.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz is an EMDR Therapy consultant and the author of The Complex PTSD Workbook: A Mind-Body Approach to Emotional Control and Becoming Whole. She has spent nearly two decades researching and understanding the workings of trauma and how to heal.

Personality systems have been around for a long time in the field of psychology. They’ve obviously influenced our culture when we say things like, “that person has a type-A personality.” And systems like the Myers-briggs have infiltrated non-profits and corporate America to help people understand each other and work together in better ways.

In this episode, we’re going to look at the Enneagram and the transformational power it has in a psychotherapeutic application. Unlike other personality systems, the Enneagram looks deeply into both the health and neurotic tendencies of personality types. This allows us to use it as a psycho-educational tool with clients and how they show up in their lives, but also as a therapeutic intervention which you will hear about on the episode. A great takeaway that’s going to apply to your office work is how the Enneagram classifies mental health and mental suffering. We’re also going to talk about ways in which clinicians use this in couples work and why the system is growing so quickly in popularity right now in the self-help and personal development field.

Max Brandel has been studying the Enneagram and the Diamond Approach for over a decade. In the Enneagram world that’s a really long time. He has a private psychotherapy practice where he integrates the Enneagram in his work with individuals, and has many insights and stories about how you can apply this to private practice.

In an optimal environment, most children will experience a healthy developmental process and not exhibit signs of overwhelming distress and emotional imbalances. Unfortunately, parenting is not common sense as many people expect. In a world filled with many distractions, it’s quite easy to mis-attune to our children and have significant issues surface that need attention.

In this episode, we dive into the world of children and what can happen to their nervous system when their needs aren’t consistently met. Our guest, Lisa Dion, founder and CEO of the Play Therapy Institute of Colorado and Synergetic Play therapy talks to us about authenticity and authentic expression as a Play Therapy clinicians, why your own “window of tolerance” matters more than your think, and instruction during play and when it undermines a child’s growth.

And we’re not just talking about Play Therapy here, even though it’s a very important application of this episode. This information applies to parents every where who are trying to learn the most effective ways to help their children grow in a healthy manner.

With the challenges faced in modern relationships, it makes sense why so many of them end with a sense of incompletion and failure. As therapists, there have been a lot of tools and models developed to deal with this dilemma, but partnerships  rarely achieve optimal states of health, attachment, and intimacy.

Jayson Gaddis, relationship expert and student, and founder of the relationship school, is here to talk to us about how to do relationships in a truly meaningful and healthy way. He’s going to discuss a new model and open a doorway for you on why so many people struggle in their partnerships and how to break out of the cycle.