Hello friends! This episode features Cassandra and Garth, as they talk about what EMDR is (and isn’t), how to know if it’s the right fit for you, and what Reddit is getting hilariously wrong—and occasionally right—about trauma therapy. You can learn more about Cassandra and her practice at: seentherapy.org. Get a taste for the episode below. If you enjoy your listen give us a follow, share, or five-star review. Have a good one!

“I don’t know what our HVAC guy is talking about when he’s explaining our system—and that’s okay. We just hire someone reputable and let them do what they’re trained to do. It’s the same with EMDR. You don’t need to know all eight phases or understand the light bar. You just need a therapist who does.”

Hello friends! This episode features Cassandra, as she talks about how to process and release anger in a grounded, values-based way. You can learn more about Cassandra and her practice at: seentherapy.org. Get a taste for the episode below. If you enjoy your listen, give us a follow, share, or five-star review. Have a good one!

"Write down the first action your anger wants to take—even if it’s wildly unhelpful. Then cross it out. Beneath it, write the action that actually aligns with your values. That’s the moment you move from reaction to intention. That’s where the shift happens."

This episode features Cassandra, as she talks about: how to emotionally prepare for August, especially if you’re navigating back-to-school chaos, seasonal affective disorder, or parenting triggers that resurface this time of year. You can learn more about Cassandra and her practice at: seentherapy.org. Get a taste for the episode below. If you enjoy your listen, give us a follow, share, or five-star review. Have a good one!

"August is a strange transition. It is this in-between space. It's not quite the slowness of summer—if any of us actually slowed down—and it's not the crisp of fall. And for a lot of us, it's a moment to look around and ask: what do we actually want for the next school year?

If you're finding yourself snappy, irritable, overwhelmed, I want you to quiet your mind for a moment. Maybe this season stirs up a lot of memories and patterns we're not even clocking. Sometimes we need to just pause and ask: am I reacting to my child's stress… or my old stuff that's waking up as I'm seeing them walk into what my system thinks might be my old stuff?"

In this episode Garth and Cassandra dive into the difference between PTSD and CPTSD, as they are listed in the DSM-5 and ICD-11. They address how folks symptoms show-up differently and how treatment can look different. See an excerpt of the podcast episode transcript below. As always, you can learn more about us at: seentherapy.org.

 "Somebody with PTSD has a flash burn. And so like, um, it's like fires jumping out at you, right? And you get burned and everyone's really concerned about you. So this may be the person that like has had a really great childhood, um, relatively free from, you know, huge distressing events.

And in early adulthood, they have a car accident. Everybody's worried about that person. You know, it's a serious car accident. Um, they're worried about how they're going to recover from it. C PTSD is more like a sunburn. It's like you, um, have been out at the beach and you haven't put enough sunscreen on and, um, you get into your hotel and you realize you are burnt to a crisp, right?

So that's the kid that like for years has been exposed to chronic trauma. And, um, they weren't necessarily realizing it at the time. And then, you know, whatever happens, um, they go to college or, you know, different life event. And all of a sudden it's like, oh, this is, this is really, really bad. Right? So, you can imagine, like I said, those two treatments are gonna look really different."

Here Cassandra and Garth discuss one of the offerings at Seen Therapy Services, Intensive EMDR.  They discuss what makes EMDR Intensives work, the advantages of EMDR Intensives, who would benefit from EMDR Intensives, and EMDR Intensive Retreats.  If you’re interested in EMDR Intensives for yourself or your clients, give us a listen here or take a look at our blog post on this episode: https://www.seentherapy.org/blog/what-are-emdr-intensives

Hello, friends! I’m thrilled to share today’s conversation with Cecily Mitchell, a therapist specializing in adolescent care. Cecily combines traditional talk therapy with innovative techniques like brainspotting to support her clients in processing and healing. Additionally, she provides consultations for families navigating the challenging journey of residential care for their children.

In this discussion, we explore Cecily’s deep interest in attachment and developmental trauma, a focus that began during her graduate studies and solidified through her work at a residential treatment center for teenagers. Her hands-on experience with adolescents facing early developmental trauma shaped her career and inspired her dedication to supporting these individuals and their families.

As you were listening to this podcast if you felt Cecily would be a good fit as a therapist for your family, you can find Cecily at Seeds of Hope Counseling: https://www.seedsofhope417.com/cecily-mitchell-lpc/

In this podcast episode you'll hear Garth and Cassandra Minnick chat. Where Garth asks Cassandra to explain the basics of EMDR, as though he knows nothing about it and hasn’t heard Cassandra talk about it for the last decade.  

EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, has gained significant attention over the past few years as an effective treatment for trauma. As more therapists become trained in this approach, it’s important to understand not just the basics of EMDR but also the depth of its mechanisms, applications, and the nuances of how it works in therapy.

Hello, friends! Thank you for taking a listen to Simply Mental. We have a little bit different setup today. I have my husband Garth with me rather than a mental health expert as a guest and we are going to be doing this throughout 2025 where he comes onto the podcast and he poses some sort of mental health question to me.

Sometimes it's going to be a question specific to my area of practice. Sometimes it's going to be something that I'm not nearly as familiar with and I will maybe need to do some research in order to answer it. Today we're covering something really general: "What is the purpose of therapy?"