Season 5, Episode 5

Today’s Guest: Annabelle Coote, MA, LMHC, BC-DMT,  is a licensed mental health therapist, certified Sensorimotor Psychotherapist, and board-certified dance/movement therapist based in Massachusetts. She has more than 25 years’ experience using somatic, creative, and experiential approaches. At Mind Body Matters, Annabelle offers consultation and training for therapists who want to develop their clinical work using mind, body, and creativity. In her private practice, Movement Matters Integrative Psychotherapy, she specializes in anxiety, trauma, women’s issues, life transitions, and cultivating creativity. Annabelle has authored book chapters on depression and trauma using embodied and creative approaches in therapy and telehealth and has presented at numerous conferences. Annabelle is known for her deep compassion, humor, quirky metaphors, spontaneous creativity, ability to simplify complex concepts, and the conviction that profound transformation happens in tiny steps.

​SHOW TOPICS

• Aspiring for a sense of being grounded amidst the messiness of life and therapy
• ​How imposter syndrome and the pressure to know everything can derail our work and creativity
• Taking risks in the therapy room to help clients become unstuck and turn off their “autopilot” responses
• ​Practicing the entire spectrum of nonviolence as a therapist and eliminating negative or adversarial vocabulary from the therapeutic lexicon

Season 5, Episode 4

Today’s Guest: Katie Curran, MA, LMHCA, is a licensed mental health counseling associate located in Spokane, WA. She specializes in working with young adults, artists, grief, witchy folks, and identity/purpose struggles. She utilizes art, ritual, normalization, and alternative approaches to meet individuals where they’re at, recognizing that counseling is definitely not “one size fits all.”

SHOW TOPICS

• Identifying the “language” we speak and using that language through therapy to be our most authentic selves
• Fostering empathy for and humanizing people who are incarcerated and those facing addiction
• The effect of grief on blocking the creative process, and how our art and soul co-conspire to help us face things directly
• Seeing art-making as a somatic methodology for moving trauma through the body

Season 5, Episode 3

Today’s Guest: Sandy Cohen, NBC-HWC, is a national board-certified health & wellness coach and a writer and podcaster who studies the science of well-being. Her work with The Associated Press has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and hundreds of other newspapers and websites around the world. She is now working toward a Master's degree in Public Health at the University of Alabama. Sandy earned a certificate in health & wellness coaching from the University of Wisconsin and became a national board-certified coach in December 2020. She launched her own podcast, "Inner Peace to Go," in January 2022.

SHOW TOPICS

• Questioning realness and authenticity when working in the world of celebrity journalism
  
• Transitioning from reporting on Hollywood to focusing on health and wellness after facing mental and physical health challenges
  
• The power of journalism to make people feel seen and put complicated topics into accessible formats and terminology
  
• Simple steps we can take to improve our health and wellness
  

Season 5, Episode 2
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Today’s Guest: Julia Vering, LSCSW, LCSW, REAT, is a performance artist and musician, licensed clinical social worker, and Registered Expressive Arts Therapist based in Kansas City. She has integrated the arts into social work for 20 years, centering her practice in joy, humor, imagination, and the strengths perspective. She has received grants from The Charlotte Street Foundation and Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts for her community-based performance work involving collaborations with older adults and people with neurocognitive disorders. She also tours and releases albums as “Unicorns in the Snow,” a performance art project that integrates interactive projections, stop-motion animation, and original music. 
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Vering has worked in hospice and long-term care settings for the past 17 years. She opened her private practice, Expressive Arts Therapy KC, in 2022. She became the first Registered Expressive Arts Therapist in the state of Kansas in 2023 and serves as the Kansas State coordinator for the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association. Vering integrates expressive arts, psychodrama and EMDR into her practice, and is currently creating a workbook and film on performance art interventions for people with neurocognitive disorders. 
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SHOW TOPICS

• Finding liberation and community through "weird" and "quirky" art forms
• The symbiotic relationship between art and therapy
• Facilitating healing and rehumanizing activities for patients and families in long-term care facilities through silliness and fun

Season 5, Episode 1
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Today’s Guest: Elizabeth Davis, MFA, MS, ATR-BC, LCAT, is a board-certified, state-licensed art therapist and an EMDR consultant and trainer through EMDRIA. She has more than 25 years of experience working in the field of trauma. Her approach integrates art therapy, EMDR therapy, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems, and play therapy. She has conducted dozens of workshops, including for the EMDR International Association and the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. She is an author and editor of Creative Arts Therapies and EMDR (2022). She currently serves as a director at the Trauma Institute and Child Trauma Institute.
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SHOW TOPICS

• What are parts of a person and how do they manifest?
• The necessary parts of themselves that artists form in order to better create and commune with their art form
• How to foster harmony between parts through love, compassion, and respect
• Switching between the therapist and artist parts of ourselves

Season 4, Episode 10

Today’s Guest: Phil Hartman is an Adjunct Professor of Music Education at Boise State University in Boise, Idaho.  He previously taught at Centennial High School in Boise for 27 years. He has enjoyed many awards and accolades during his time as an educator, including the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, presented by Boise Mayor David Bieter to Phil and his wife, Wendy.
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SHOW TOPICS

• Realizing a vision of school programs that creates a sense of community and meets the needs of students
• What success looks like and how to approach praise
• Pushing back against the relegation of the arts to the sidelines in education
• The ability of high school band programs to foster a shared passion for music and life

Season 4, Episode 9

Today’s Guest: Sarah Mathews graduated from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, with a bachelor's degree of Individualized Studies in Psychology, Relationship Studies, and Communication. She obtained her master's degree in Counseling Psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California. Sarah has over 15 years’ experience and is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Minnesota, as well as an MFT-board-approved supervisor. Sarah's therapy practice specializes in relationships, sexuality, and high sensitivity. When she's not in the therapy office you may find her at an alternative healing, yoga, or dance class, spending time in nature, or taking an afternoon to let her creativity fly.

SHOW TOPICS

• Viewing every client and their life as a work of art
• The relational beauty and creativity of therapy and art-making
• Leaning into our longing for expression as creatives, and accepting help with coming out of the creative closet
• The processes — creative, technical, or both — through which we see ourselves and our clients come alive

Season 4, Episode 8

Today’s Guest: Not a stranger to struggles and possibilities from decades of life and career changes, profound loss, and personal reinvention, Kelly Hutton, LMFT, is a queer anti-racist ADHDer who specializes in queer grief, loss, and trauma recovery in the unique grief experiences of neurodivergent LGBTQIPA2+ people. Her passions include hospice care, EMDR, and talking about death, dying, bereavement, and neurocognitive decline with teens, caregivers/partners, and older adults while bearing witness to their grief journeys. Kelly grew up in a blended multicultural family of artists, educators, and entrepreneurs who strive in their own ways to think like Leonardo da Vinci. Kelly is glad that she isn’t dead yet because she can still experience and learn pluralistically, including being on a podcast for the first time ever, and remembering that those who laugh, last.
 
SHOW TOPICS

• The importance of considering different perspectives and taking an interdisciplinary approach to therapy
• The benefits of remaining curious and asking questions rather than resorting to “I don’t know”
• Getting back to the “why” of going into therapy and what is alive for us as therapists now
• Using lived experience to hold space for grief and sadness within the queer community

Season 4, Episode 7

Today’s Guest: Valerie Ellis is an artist and former psychotherapist with a studio near west London. She uses paper to represent human experience and intrapersonal dynamics. Valerie gained her psychology degree from the prestigious University of Queensland, Australia. After 20 years in private practice, she moved back to the UK, where she'd lived as a child. In September 2023 she will begin attending the Royal College of Art for a master's degree in painting. With a psychological lens, Valerie’s artwork uniquely reflects themes like childhood, stress, and disguise through the medium of paper minimalist artworks and post-impressionist oil paintings.

SHOW TOPICS

• Facing the disillusionment of the idea that therapy can save everyone
• The importance of meeting people’s basic needs before being able to address further needs in therapy​
• Merging psychology and expression to create art pieces that reflect viewers' life journeys

Season 4, Episode 6
 
Today’s Guest: Dr. Jamie Marich began her career as a humanitarian aid worker in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 2000 to 2003, primarily teaching English and music. Jamie now travels internationally teaching on topics related to trauma, EMDR therapy, expressive arts, mindfulness, and yoga, while maintaining a private practice and online education operations in her home base of Akron, OH. She is the founder of the Institute for Creative Mindfulness and the developer of the Dancing Mindfulness approach to expressive arts therapy.

She is also the author of several books, including EMDR Made Simple: 4 Approaches for Using EMDR with Every Client (2011), Creative Mindfulness (2013), Dancing Mindfulness: A Creative Path to Healing and Transformation (2015), and Process Not Perfection: Expressive Arts Solutions for Trauma Recovery (2019). Her latest release, Dissociation Made Simple: A Stigma-Free Guide to Embracing Your Dissociative Mind and Navigating Life, came out in January 2023. She also has three more projects in the works, including her personal memoir about surviving spiritual abuse called You Lied to Me About God, due out in Autumn 2024. She has been featured in several publications, including The New York Times and the Huffington Post, as well as receiving several awards for her advocacy work.

SHOW TOPICS

• The reasons people may be scared of creativity and how to encourage them through that fear
• The beauty of grounding in EMDR techniques while also finding room for expression and adaptation
• How creative clients can find a therapist who is a great fit for them
• As a therapist, how much should we reveal about ourselves to clients and in public forums?
• Breaking the stigma around mental illness as therapists by finding and accepting support for ourselves within the therapeutic community