Today’s Guest: Blanca Lucia Bergman is the founder of Mental Wellness for Artists (MWA), a community group of San Diego artists, mental health advocates, and arts leaders. She is also the founder of a local arts business, Art Unites, and co-lead vocalist in the band Poised In The Darkness.

​SHOW TOPICS

• Meeting artists where they’re at with mental health resources
• The role that a lack of affordable housing plays in mental health and the ability for artists to live in major US cities
• The importance of community for mental health, especially for artists

Season 3, Episode 6

Today’s Guest: Katy MacRae, LCSW, is a psychotherapist based in New Haven, CT.  She has been working in private practice for over a decade, and she also works for the psychiatry department at Yale New Haven Hospital. Katy focuses on using artmaking and creativity to help people learn and remember DBT and CBT skills.  

SHOW TOPICS

• How art-making can help clients remember DBT and CBT skills
• What do you do with all of the art your clients create in therapy sessions? What about your own creations?
• Cultivating a private practice that sustains us as therapists 

Season 3, Episode 5

Today’s Guest: Rebecca Crawford, LMFT, is a Marriage and Family Therapist practicing in Southern California. She has been practicing for over 10 years and specializes in work with children and adolescents. She is experienced with play therapy, sand play and the use of art in treatment. Rebecca is also co-founder of DeTalks, a company created by women to help empower other women to find their voice and care for themselves. She is committed to empowering women and helping them find compassion for themselves.
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In treatment with others, Rebecca focuses on helping individuals to again become connected to and be able to hear and know their own bodies. To practice honoring themselves. Throughout her own journey, she has discovered movement and writing as forms of meditation and connection to herself.  When not practicing therapy or chasing her 5-year-old, she can be found dancing, running, practicing yoga, and writing poetry. 

SHOW TOPICS

• How play and creativity help meet the needs of child and adolescent clients
• The power of movement to help us connect to ourselves and identify our needs
• The mind-body connection and the importance of reminding ourselves to truly breathe
• Honoring what we need to do to feel good, even if that means dancing, singing, or creating in a way that isn’t deemed useful or productive by society

Season 3, Episode 4

Today’s Guest: Reina Lombardi, ATR-BC, ATCS, LMHC-QS, is a Registered Board Certified Art Therapist, Art Therapy Certified Supervisor, and Licensed Mental Health Counselor Qualified Supervisor practicing in Fort Myers, Florida. She is the owner of Florida Art Therapy Services, LLC, where she and her small team of therapists provide in-person and technology-facilitated individual and group art therapy and counseling services, contracted art therapy groups at various community agencies, supervision and continuing education programming for counselors and art therapists. She has contributed to several academic texts on the topics of art therapy and clinical supervision and is a frequent presenter/speaker at local and national professional conferences. 

Reina is the owner of Creative Clinician’s Corner, LLC , where she hosts and produces the podcast The Creative Psychotherapist and offers practice-building resources and consultation services for creative arts therapists with a desire to build and scale their own private practice. As the host of The Creative Psychotherapist, she interviews successful creative therapists about the tools and strategies they use to grow their dream practices, as well as how they have hustled to create additional streams of income using their knowledge and creativity by developing products and services that enhance their therapy practices.

​In her spare time, she loves to play on and in the ocean with her husband and their dog, explore vast natural landscapes, and get messy in the kitchen creating complex but healthy recipes. 

SHOW TOPICS

• The vital importance of maintaining a creative practice, even through school, training, or work as a therapist
• How to approach every activity with a creative mindset
• Fun examples of creative interventions in therapy
• The importance of allowing for other creative modalities in art therapy, even if they are not the ones we are oriented toward as therapists

Season 3, Episode 3

Today’s Guest: Rotem Brayer, M.Ed., LPC, is a Licensed Professional Counselor, certified EMDR therapist, EMDR consultant, and an advanced EMDR trainer. He is the author of The Art and Science of EMDR—Helping Clinicians Bridge the Path from Protocol to Practice, and the founder of The EMDR Learning Community, which brings EMDR therapists together and provides education on EMDR therapy and its integration with other treatment approaches. As the co-founder of EMDR Denver, a practice that helps clients heal with an “EMDR first” approach, Rotem spends his time consulting on cases, coaching EMDR therapists, and helping his clients heal from the effects of trauma and attachment wounds. 

SHOW TOPICS

• How adding structure can help with writing and other creative pursuits
• How can you be creative with EMDR?
• The importance of interpersonal connection and bringing your full, authentic self into your work as a practitioner
• Incorporating other modalities into EMDR therapy

Season 3, Episode 1

Today’s Guest: Daryl Chow, PhD, is based in Western Australia and works with a vibrant team of practitioners at the Henry Street Centre in the heart of Fremantle. He also returns to his home country, Singapore, to provide consultations and intensive therapy every few months. Meanwhile, he keeps busy with writing and conducting research, as well as trainings, clinical supervision, consultation, and mentoring.

He is a co-editor and contributing author of a recent book, The Write to Recovery: Personal Stories & Lessons About Recovery From Mental Health Concerns. He is also a senior associate and certified trainer for the International Center for Clinical Excellence (ICCE), which is a worldwide consortium of clinicians, researchers, and educators dedicated to promoting excellence in behavioral health services.

As part of his PhD, he researched the area of development and practices of highly effective psychotherapists, alongside with his mentor and collaborator, Scott D. Miller, Ph.D. Together they are co-authoring a forthcoming book, Reach: Pushing Your Clinical Performance to the Next Level. 
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SHOW TOPICS

• The “terrible gift” of creativity and the beauty and struggle of living an aesthetic life
• Understanding the risks creative clients face as artists
• The musicality of therapy and working as a “conductor” in the therapy room
• What is the meaning of life? (Because we don’t shy away from the big questions here!)

Season 2, Episode 10

Today’s Guest: Christine Tomasello is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and a leadership coach for heart-based entrepreneurs, most of whom are therapists or coaches. As a clinician, she specializes in highly sensitive people, grief and loss, as well as therapy for fellow therapists. She earned her Masters in Counseling from CSU Fullerton, and also has a background in organizational development and leadership consulting. Christine was a professional dancer in a former life, and received her BFA in dance from UC Irvine. 

SHOW TOPICS

• What is the Enneagram system and how can it help us learn about ourselves?
• The link between the Enneagram and creativity
• Examining the connection between your critical voice and your Enneagram type

Season 2, Episode 9

Today’s Guest: Dr. Aviva Gaskill received her PhD in Clinical Psychology with Health Emphasis at the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology in 2011. She is a licensed Clinical Psychologist in the states of PA and NY. Dr. Gaskill has worked with children, adults, and older adults in various settings, as well as in private practice. She has extensive experience helping individuals cope with acute, terminal, and chronic medical problems, including cancer, pain, insomnia, Parkinson’s, and multiple sclerosis. 
 
Dr. Gaskill is a graduate of the New York State Psychological Association's Leadership Institute. She previously served on the board of the Westchester Group Psychotherapy Society and is an active member and volunteer in the American Group Psychotherapy Association and Pennsylvania Psychological Association. She is a designated Partner in MS Care from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. 
 
She enjoys most active and outdoor activities, yoga, painting, and spending time with friends and family. One of her greatest joys is her work as a psychologist. Dr. Gaskill is not a blank slate therapist. She believes that helping you feel better needs to be an ongoing conversation about your goals. She believes that when you feel better, you live better.
 
​Dr. Gaskill feels that everyone has a voice. Everyone has a reason that their point of view matters. When you feel like others are not listening to you, when you are facing a loss, when you are feeling alone in the world, someone needs to be there for you to truly hear what you have to say and help guide you through that difficult time. No one should suffer alone and in silence. 

SHOW TOPICS

• Learning to ask the hard questions to help patients feel safer while working at a children’s psychiatric hospital
• How the act of creating art that you love can have many positive effects on the body and how that may change when that art is made for work
• Encouraging creative clients to express the issues and emotions they are working on through their favorite art media

Season 2, Episode 8

Today’s Guest: Gina Cardillo (she/her) is a licensed professional counselor, board-certified art therapist, and EMDR therapist in private practice in Philadelphia. She brings her training and experience from her first career in the art and design world into her clinical work, and is a practicing artist and musician outside of her role as a counselor. As an art therapist, Gina bases her work on the principle that art is itself a language and that all people are inherently creative. She guides her clients in using imagery and art-making to illuminate their innermost truths. She believes that by nurturing one’s creativity within any given medium, it allows an opportunity to uncover and develop a new side of oneself and to build a sense of mastery and empowerment.

SHOW TOPICS

• How art therapy helps a therapist step into a client’s inner world
• The interplay of different modes of art in art therapy
• Helping clients confront and work directly with their inner critic through art therapy and EMDR
• Discussing how EMDR 2.0 differs from traditional EMDR reprocessing
• How “exiled parts” often hold our wounds and trauma, and how IFS (Internal Family Systems) can address this 
• Therapy as a creative and improvisational art

“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake.” —Kurt Vonnegut

Season 2, Episode 7

​Today’s Guest: Jamie Kohanyi is a licensed psychotherapist practicing in the state of California. She is a graduate of Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Counseling Psychology program, with an emphasis in Depth Psychotherapy. Her interest lies in the interplay between the unconscious, the body, and creativity, which began with her experience as a multi-award-winning singer-songwriter and graduate of Berklee College of Music. Singing was Jamie's primary therapeutic modality until she moved from New York City to California in her 20s to initiate studies at The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and Sky Mountain Institute for the Expressive Arts. The following 20 years of education and experience lead to her current expertise in women with eating disorders, perinatal mental health, dreamwork, the expressive arts, and psychedelic psychotherapy. Jamie is currently pursuing a certificate in Jungian Psychology from the CG Jung Institute of Los Angeles. She is married to David Kohanyi, also a psychotherapist, and is a mother of three.

SHOW TOPICS

• The relationship between creativity and transformation, and how psychotherapists can serve as ministers to aid in that transformation
• Bringing mindfulness and beauty into our daily routines
• The importance of leaving time for imagination and not feeling the societal pressure to “produce, produce, produce” as a creative