Season 1, Episode 10

Today’s Guest: Hallie Lincoln, LCSW, MFT, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Marriage & Family Therapist based in Denver, CO, and is a Co-Founder of Backline. Hallie is a clinician who uses a strengths-based, friendly, and inclusive approach to provide individual, couple, and family therapy to clients of all ages and from all walks of life. Before redirecting her efforts toward private practice, Hallie worked at various non-profits and has extensive experience with case management and client care coordination. Hallie has been exposed to the unique challenges and stressors faced by those in the music industry, first by way of her brother, who is a touring music industry professional. She also serves as the Director of Backline’s Case Management program and treats clients from the music industry in her private practice.

SHOW TOPICS

• Curating a platform to help connect music industry professionals to therapists and mental health resources
• How the pandemic served as a time of reflection and evaluation about lifestyle demands
• How the lifestyles of musicians and music industry professionals differ, and how to meet their therapeutic needs based on those differences​

Season 1, Episode 9

Today’s guest: Dr. Miriam Torres Brinkmann was born and raised in Spain, where she worked as a journalist for several years. Eager to reinvent herself, she moved to San Diego, California, where she now resides, and studied for her Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy and her Doctorate in Psychology, with a specialization in Expressive Art Therapy. She has completed advanced training in the field of couples therapy and has written two books for couples. Miriam also is trained in and uses EMDR and hypnotherapy with her individual clients. Miriam considers herself a multi-passionate, multicultural person. Apart from her online private practice as a couples therapist and relationship coach, Miriam also consults with clients as a life coach and organizes workshops for couples and individuals in different parts of the world, in both English and Spanish. Her career is devoted to helping couples and individuals achieve flourishing relationships and their best possible selves. She enjoys traveling, animals, friends, family, music, books, movies, sailing, nature, good food, and learning new things. She lives with her husband, Peter, as well as their Chihuahua, Bebe, three American quarter horses, and three parakeets.

SHOW TOPICS

• Transitioning into a career in therapy after a career in journalism
• Integrating the spirit of creativity into couples therapy
• Helping couples find inspiration in themselves, their partner, and their relationship
• Nurturing creativity and encouraging expression in everyone​

Season 1, Episode 8

Today’s guest: Ann Taylor McNiece is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist practicing in Southern California. She comes from a family of creatives and loves using out-of-the-box methods to help people with different kinds of minds find success and healing. Ann hosts the Soul Grit Podcast, which covers faith and mental health. She is an extrovert who loves tacos and the beach.

SHOW TOPICS

• Finding new modes of expression as we become busy adults
• How the artist’s brain functions differently 
• Adapting common therapeutic methods like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for creative clients (with a demonstration of how it works!)
• The 4 C’s of where we want to be 
• Discussing the advantages of having a creative background when working with creative clients​

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​

Season 1, Episode 6

​Today’s guest: Laura Kay is an award-winning operatic soprano and voice teacher based in New York City. She’s been seen on stages across the country in operas like Mozart’s “Die Zauberflote,” Bizet’s “Carmen,” and Verdi’s “La Traviata,” but her true love is modern American opera. She collaborates regularly with some of the most exciting composers in the U.S. to develop new works for the operatic and recital stages. As a recitalist, she’s known for her series introducing new compositions to audiences in unique ways, comparing them to mainstream works of stage and screen. As a teacher, she’s worked with students ranging from the seasoned professional to the first-time singer, and she holds positions on the faculties of NYU and Temple University. Her students have performed on Broadway, been featured on TV series, and have placed in competitions around the world. She holds degrees from Penn State University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and NYU in operatic performance and vocal pedagogy. She also is currently pursuing her PhD in voice performance and pedagogy at NYU, where she’s focusing on teaching the whole student — bringing psychology into the voice studio.

SHOW TOPICS

• What does it look like to bring psychology into the voice studio?
• The interconnectedness of the physical body and mental health, and how this can especially impact vocalists
• How do our subconscious fears and worries impact our performances and art-making?
• How to face panic and mistakes in a constructive way​

Season 1, Episode 5

Today’s guest: Morgan Myers, LPC, is a therapist in East Dallas, Texas, with her own private practice. Her favorite clients are postpartum women, people working through spiritual hurt from the church, and creatives. She has begun to use horticulture therapy in her practice as a way to help people work through grief. She also plans to use horticulture therapy in her community to help with chronic depression, anxiety, and grief from the effects of COVID. Morgan has two daughters and has been married for 13 years.

SHOW TOPICS

• Art as a spiritual practice
  
• What is horticulture therapy?
• How gardening can help people find understanding in their current season of life
• Morgan discusses her own experience of spiritual hurt
  
• Why postpartum women need special care and often feel misunderstood

Season 1, Episode 4

​Today’s guest: Rachelle Archer, MA, is an expressive arts practitioner, organizational consultant, and the founder of Artful Leadership. She helps leaders impact lives sustainably by putting wellness first so they can lead with a full tank and create a culture that supports both staff and the community they serve. Rachelle has over 25 years’ experience at the intersection of arts, education, and healing. She serves marginalized youths and the adults who support them and helps organizations thrive by fostering the individual, interpersonal, and institutional well-being that empowers them to live out their mission and flourish. She believes that everyone can be a leader, humans thrive in community, and the well-being of that community starts with us doing our inner work first.

SHOW TOPICS

• How Rachelle helped found the Monarch School in San Diego
• Why “coregulation” is important, especially when working with children
• How our trauma can get in the way of the good work we want to do, and what to do about that
• How organizations are responsible for setting up a culture of health
• Making conscious decisions WITH people rather than doing things to or for them
• “How do we make life more wonderful for you?”

Season 1, Episode 3

Today’s guest: Molly Zive, LCSW,  is a licensed clinical social worker located in San Diego, CA. Molly uses integrative Brainspotting with an emphasis on Expansion to help clients move from self-doubt to self-trust.

​SHOW TOPICS

• What is Brainspotting & how does it work to heal trauma? 
• How to help clients manifest their deepest desires
• What’s the difference between coaching & therapy? 
• We roleplay a live Brainspotting session for our listeners!​

Season 1, Episode 2

Today’s guest: Boonie Sripom, MA, is a therapy-informed and gamer-affirmative coach who uses archetype systems to support neurodivergent people and their families. She loves seeing the inner worlds and cognitions of people through their fandoms like video games, superhero culture, and creative interests — It's all meaningful! Boonie started working with preschool and school-aged children, and now most of her clients are college-aged and "failure to launch" gamers/2e gifted young adults. Boonie says it's been an interesting transition, and “it's felt like I've ‘grown up’ with the clients I've served.”

SHOW TOPICS

• How knowing your own archetypes can help uncover your authentic self
• Why it’s a struggle to be a twice-exceptional (2E) gifted person
• Your authentic self might be masked by a persona — and that’s OK!
• Being inspired by Catwoman and Saga
• What’s it like to be a performer and embrace that persona?
• “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson​

Season 1, Episode 1

Today's Guest: Brian Zirngible, LMFT, is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist with a solo private practice in Burnsville, Minnesota. He is an actively working musician and performer based in the Twin Cities. His passion and specialty is helping other musicians and creative artists live more authentic and balanced lives. Brian's focus is on self-care, setting healthy boundaries, and turning pain into possibility. Clients find it helpful that he understands and is currently living with some of the unique challenges within the entertainment industry. Colleague Ernesto Segismundo Jr., LMFT, says this about Brian: "He is, in my opinion, a blend between David Bowie and the modern-day psychoanalyst."
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SHOW TOPICS

• Welcome to the first full episode of Beyond Artist’s Block!
• How a teacher helped Brian overcome his frustration by saying: "You’re not quitting. We’re just starting over"
• What to do when clients attend a therapist’s performance
• Brian talks about his path to becoming a therapist and how he focused on working with artists and highly sensitive men
• Rachel discusses why "being in the audience" is an important part of creativity
• Brian and Rachel talk about boundaries and how to manage expectations as a performer and a therapist, as well as how the idea of boundaries may mean different things to different cultures
• Rachel recalls a time she paid dueling pianists to stop playing a song — it didn't go over as well as she'd hoped
• Brian offers this final advice to listeners: Be kind to yourself, especially now