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

​Season 2, Episode 6

Today’s guest: Dr. Bobbi Ballard is a clinical psychologist based in Georgia. She has an online therapy practice working with creative professionals in several states. Her clients are dealing with burnout, depression, and anxiety. Dr. Ballard has been a psychologist for over 20 years, and she also has an active creative practice of her own, which includes painting, knitting, and music.

SHOW TOPICS

• The magic of finding which clients are the best fit for you and who you can serve most fully
• Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy and how it can help clients let go of the “bag of crap” they may have been carrying for years
• How sensitivity and creativity go hand in hand
• Facing therapist burnout by creating art for fun and shifting to practicing therapy that energizes you​

Season 2, Episode 5

Today’s Guest: Dr. Lee Stone, LCSW, PhD, has amassed over thirty years of experience in human services. Most recently, he served as Program Director and was quickly promoted to Executive Director of Freeport Pride, Inc./H.E.L.P. Services, Inc. He worked there for twelve years. The 501(c)3 organization was presented an award in 2019 by Nassau County, NY, for the exceptional services provided to the community. The organization had a unique approach in their substance use treatment, drug prevention, and youth services programs — music and performing arts were utilized as interventions.

Dr. Lee’s interest in using music as an intervention began when he was a middle school student; he developed entertainment programs at a local senior citizen center that had a positive impact on the residents’ well-being. During high school, he created the “Underground” magazine—which included interviews with up-and-coming heavy metal/thrash metal artists and critical reviews of their music. As a student at SUNY Old Westbury College, he co-hosted a talk/music radio show that featured current events and social commentary. 

Dr. Lee has received awards and accolades in both music and social work. He is a two-time gold and platinum record award recipient for his music production work; he was also presented an award and given membership to LIU Post University’s Alpha Chi National College Honor Society for his service in the field of social work. Additionally, Dr. Lee was chosen as one of twelve PhD students in the United States to present his research at The Network for Social Work Management at Boston University. He has lectured for the students at Adelphi University, Hofstra University, Molloy College, and most recently, Lee was a guest panelist at The Kennedy Center’s Cultural Center.

Dr. Lee’s future plans include the development of a human service nonprofit organization in partnership with his wife Tanya Dunbar-Stone, MSED, LMSW (Adelphi ’15), and providing consultation work for existing human service organizations that are interested in reinforcing their sustainability. Dr. Lee is also in the progress of completing music for his partnership known as Poeartistry—a performance art ensemble that combines poetry, visual arts, and theater as social emotional learning tools.

SHOW TOPICS

• Recognizing the mental health needs of creatives while working with musicians in a recording studio
• The pressure that artists face when they make their passion their career 
• Fighting getting comfortable or stagnant as an artist or therapist and not continuing to progress or innovate
• The power of understanding the ebb and flow of the creative process for therapists who serve creative clients​

Season 2, Episode 4

Today’s Guest: Davida Price  is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Board Certified Music Therapist, and Certified Yoga Teacher. Davida is also fully trained in EMDR therapy. Davida has worked in both agency and private practice settings with children, teens, adults, and families in a variety of roles from primary therapist to program director. Davida combines Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance Commitment Therapy, music therapy, energy psychology, shame resilience, mindfulness, creative arts, and body awareness from a trauma-informed point of view to target the needs of each client in a creative and comprehensive manner. Davida’s work using “Rock Therapy” with teens has been written about in the San Diego Reader and San Diego Women’s Magazine, and has been featured on About.com. Davida served on the San Diego Chapter of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists board of directors from 2011 to
2015. In 2006, Davida traveled to Gulu, Uganda, to help implement music therapy and music education programs in areas that had been affected by war. Davida likes to read, play music, draw, run, do yoga, and be with friends and family when not engaging in her passion of being a therapist.

SHOW TOPICS

• Incorporating music into EMDR therapy as a tool to keep clients present
• Bringing empathy to the process of helping clients through the challenges of the pandemic and society’s devaluation of art and creativity
• The long-term repercussions of creative wounds and how we can help address them​

​Season 2, Episode 3

Today’s Guest: Jessica Weikers is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She lives in San Francisco and works with folks across the state of California to know and be themselves more fully. Often that involves exploring messages from the past that have become ingrained beliefs and bring those into awareness. Jessica’s passionate about helping people get more self-connected and tap into what matters most to them. When she’s not working, she enjoys dabbling in creative writing and is an avid theater lover. 

SHOW TOPICS

• The willingness of creatives to hang out in uncertainty and try new methods or approaches
• The spark of creativity found in delighting in your clients
• Taking an experiential, somatic, and organic approach to therapy
• Having a blast working not just with clients, but also with their inner children
• The gentle, calm, and safe leadership that therapists bring to their clients​

Season 2, Episode 2

Today's Guest: Nattan Hollander, LMFT, was an artist first and became a psychotherapist along the way. He made art as a child in Israel, where he grew up, and later moved to the US to train in art and get his fine arts degree at CalArts in California. He was living in a Zen Center during that time, where he spent many hours meditating and learned to cook great soups for Zen retreats with a woman who soon became his wife. He earned his MA at Pacifica Graduate Institute, a school that emphasizes care of the soul as being central to mental health. This aligned with his own sensibilities as an artist. For Nattan, art and spirituality are inseparable. When he works with artists as a therapist, he treats their creative life as sacred.

SHOW TOPICS

• Wrestling with creativity and making within an institutional space
• Reconnecting with creation through writing an experiential thesis centered around meditation and imagination
• The importance of treating a client’s creative life as sacred and helping them find value in creation in a society that doesn’t always lift it up
• How lacking opportunity for expression and creativity can be a matter of life and death​

Season 2, Episode 1

Today’s Guest: Brittani Williams is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Social Work Entrepreneur, Educator and Hip-Hop head. She received her Bachelor’s in Sociology from The University of Southern California and a Master’s in Social Work from The University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Originally from the San Gabriel Valley, Los Angeles, she was immersed in the Underground Hip Hop Scene. Through Hip Hop she found connection, passion and identity, and she integrates this passion into her clinical work. Brittani has been in the Social Work field for over 8 years and has a wide variety of social work and therapeutic experiences. She has experience working with at-promise youth in community-based settings such as: group homes, residential care facilities and public-school settings in Southern California. In addition, she has supported individuals through addiction and trauma, along with other mental health challenges. Brittani also worked as a clinical supervisor, providing clinical supervision and consultation to pre-licensed therapists. During this time, she facilitated professional development and mandated trainings to school districts and non-profit agencies. Currently, Brittani is CEO of HEALmatic Group Practice in San Diego, CA and provides therapy to individuals, couples, families and groups. Brittani is also an Adjunct Professor and teaches Social Work courses to prepare future social workers to enter the field of mental health. In her free time, Brittani enjoys spending time with her husband and 3 kids, writing rhymes and contributing to the collective work of Hip Hop Therapy. 

SHOW TOPICS

• Helping therapists entering the field prioritize identity development so they can show up to the work as their full, authentic selves
• Serving your community in a way that is culturally relevant, and working to normalize therapy and increase accessibility for Mexican-Americans
• Honoring the hierarchy of the brain through bottom-up and top-down therapy approaches
• Finding inspiration in hip hop music and integrating it into clinical work​