Season 4, Episode 3

Today’s Guest: Dr. Kirsten Ramey, or "Doc," as her clients refer to her, is a board-certified telemental health provider. With a background in entertainment, she used Frank Sinatra's famous line, "If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere," to influence her choice for her grad school internship placement with the department of corrections. Although Dr. Ramey has worked within the community, in the department of juvenile justice, in private practice and in academic settings, her most enjoyable work has been with creative folx. As a mother of five, one of whom is a former Broadway star, Doc uses a creative approach to help clients rewrite their own stories.
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SHOW TOPICS

• The connection between filmmaking and therapy, and how Dr. Ramey’s transition between the two made perfect sense
• The concept of bringing everything we are and everything we are not into a client relationship
• Seeing things your client may not be aware of, like an audience often does with characters in a story, and allowing your client to reach their own “aha” moment at the right time

Season 4, Episode 2

Today’s Guest: Ruby Rose Fox is multi-award-winning musical artist who charted #8 on the Heatseeker Billboard charts, has over 2 million Spotify plays, and has music featured in the game Rock Band. Over the past 4 years, Ruby has become a mental health pioneer, starting with her nervous system state-shifting class for performers, based on cutting-edge research by Dr. Stephen Porges, and then with MuscleMusic, the #1 trauma-informed app for artists. Ruby has an Acting BFA from Emerson College and studied jazz and classical singing at both New England Conservatory and Berklee College of Music. She was trained in polyvagal theory from the Polyvagal Institute by Deb Dana. She is also trained in Linklater technique, Alexander Technique, and Qi Gong. She has also coined her own performance training method, The Fox Method, which combines Integral Theory, Polyvagal Theory, and decades of experience on the stage.

SHOW TOPICS

• Peeling back layers of generational shame around mental health
• Bringing polyvagal theory, the science of safety, to the performance art industry
• Is it worth it to suffer for the sake of art? 
• How our relationship with creativity changes once it becomes a job

Season 1, Epsiode 7

Today’s guest: Elle Bernfeld, LCSW, is a Brooklyn-based psychotherapist who specializes in artists, entertainers, and creative professionals. Her passion for working with those in the arts comes from her experience performing professionally and locally in the Los Angeles area as a child, as well as her years training at a conservatory as a young adult. In her private practice, she provides telehealth counseling to creatives of all kinds. Some of the issues she addresses in her practice are: identity, self-esteem, anxiety, depression, work/life balance, career transitions, and life purpose. A graduate of Columbia University and NYU, she has Master’s degrees in Clinical Psychology and Social Work.
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SHOW TOPICS

• How creative clients may differ from ‘typical’ therapy clients
• The potential for a loss of joy in art-making once it becomes our career
• Channeling creativity and innovating with new methods as a therapist
• How experience as a performer informs approaches to therapy
• Empathizing with and recognizing the grief of creative loss
• Separating the therapist from the person​