Therapy Rocks!

Join Signe for an interview with “fathering” expert, Joe Kelly. They talk about overcoming common relationship barriers between fathers and stepfathers and daughters—when they're kids and adults! We also tackled male acculturation, "social" dads, and a whole lot more!

Joe Kelly has researched and written about the power and potential of father-daughter relationships since 1992. He’s an advocate, educator, and Family Coach for Within Health. He wrote the best-selling books Dads & Daughters®: How to Inspire, Understand, and Support Your Daughter and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being a New Dad. His 11 other books include four on eating disorders. Joe and his spouse Nancy Gruver founded the girl-edited feminist magazine New Moon Girls. A past president of the Minnesota Fathers and Families Network, Joe has twin adult daughters and three grandsons.

To learn more about Joe Kelley visit www.upagainsted.com

Have you heard of Ketamine-assisted therapy? Interested in hearing more about what it is, and how it’s being received? Join Signe for an interview with Suzannah Neufeld, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Ketamine-assisted Therapy provider, and author of “Awake at 3 a.m.: Yoga Therapy for Anxiety and Depression in Pregnancy and Early Motherhood. Also joining this episode is Dr. Miriam Schultz, a reproductive psychiatrist with extensive experience in the field of Reproductive Psychiatry, as well as Ketamine treatment, she is also an associate clinical professor at Stanford University.

To learn more about Dr. Miriam Schultz visit her website http://miriamschultzmd.com/about.html.

To learn more about Suzannah (Timperas) Neufeld visit: https://www.rockridgewellnesscenter.com/team, and follow her on instagram @suzannahneufeld.

Interested in hearing about body image and eating in a subsistence agriculture, before and after exposure to television? Join Signe for a conversation with Dr. Anne Becker about her groundbreaking study in 1995 in Fiji, when she said, “television arrived like it was being parachuted from nowhere,” her follow up study in 2007 (pre-social media), and her plans to return.

Anne Becker, MD, PhD, Dean for Clinical and Academic Affairs, Professor of Psychiatry, and Presley Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. A medical anthropologist and psychiatrist, Dr. Becker’s research includes the social and cultural mediation of presentation and risk for eating disorders and social barriers to care for mental disorders. Dr. Becker is founding and past Director of the Eating Disorders Clinical and Research Program at Mass General Hospital, past president of the Academy for Eating Disorders, former associate editor of the International Journal of Eating Disorders, and was a member of the DSM-5 Eating Disorders Work Group. She has been a recipient of NEDA’s Price Family Award for Research Excellence as well as the Academy for Eating Disorders’s Leadership Award in Research. 

To learn more about Dr. Becker visit: https://hms.harvard.edu/faculty-staff/anne-e-becker

If you are looking for tools to increase self-discovery, and deepen your compassion for yourself and others, tune into this Therapy Rocks! interview with guest Dayo  Ajanaku, founder of The Black Enneagram—making the Enneagram accessible for communities of color.

Dayo is a lifelong student focused on bringing joy and justice to the world. She offers basic enneagram education through black culture and black images, and regularly engages issues of faith, justice, self-awareness, love and unapologetic joy. Dayo is a 25 year old Nigerian American woman, currently attending Berkeley Law (Class of 2024) in the SF Bay Area, working on her certification with the Narrative Enneagram.

To learn more about Dayo, follow her @theblackenneagram and visit https://www.theblackenneagram.com.

Free Enneagram test to find your type: https://www.eclecticenergies.com/enneagram/dotest

If you’ve ever wondered about things like “mind control” and how to lower the vulnerability to it, you’ll want to tune into this Therapy Rocks! episode with cult expert and exit counselor, Diane Benscoter.

Diane draws from her own experience inside a religious cult, known as the “Moonies.” As a result, she recognized the need for an organization that recognizes psychological manipulation as a public health problem, and founded “Antidote,” the only nonprofit taking this approach and providing services that aid both prevention and recovery. Diane is the author of Shoes of a Servant – My Unconditional Devotion to a Lie. She is a speaker, with a Ted Talk on How Cults Rewire the Brain, workshop facilitator, and has been featured on NPR, Huffington Post and more.

To learn more about Diane’s work, visit her website https://antidote.ngo

Join Signe for a second interview with Dr. Dan Tomasulo about a new science of hope and hopefulness that has the capacity to change the trend of anxiety and depression we are seeing around the globe. Dr. Dan talks about the habits of high hope individuals, ways to start adding a little bit of  hope into our lives, “not-so random acts of kindness,” and more!

To learn more about Dr. Dan, follow him on Instagram & Twitter @drdantomasulo and visit his website: https://www.dantomasulo.com/

Dr. Derek Vigon, joins Signe to talk about what goes into our musical taste, how music and audio tracks can enhance performance with athletes, performers, and organizations, music as catharsis and more.

Dr. Vigon is a licensed clinical and sport psychologist in private practice in Maryland and Virginia, and a staff psychologist and the Coordinator of Sport Psychology at George Mason University. He has worked in numerous clinical settings which allowed him to support individuals with diverse presenting problems and from various multicultural backgrounds. He has supported numerous collegiate and professional athletes, and has consulted with the NCAA’s Atlantic 10 Conference, the NFL, and several professional organizations. His dissertation performance tool, “Psych Beats™,” was performed with Olympic marathon runners in San Francisco.

To learn more about Dr. Vigon visit https://drderekvigon.com, and follow him on Twitter @MasonSportPsych.

Therapeutic Sex and Relationship Coach, LMFT, and Certified Body Trust® Provider, Dawn Serra, joins Signe to discuss what our relationship to food has to do with sex, why “safety” is a prerequisite to pleasure, sex and changing bodies, as well as the best advice for a couple with different libidos. 

Dawn Serra specializes in pleasure, body trust, and boundaries. She is currently completing her Master of Counseling degree and will soon be opening a therapeutic private practice in British Columbia specializing in trauma, body, and relationships specifically for people in bigger bodies. Dawn believes that we heal “in relationship, ” and her work is about creating a space where people can explore the kind of healing they are dreaming of without having to do it alone, that’s rooted in practices of playfulness, curiosity, empathy, and imperfection.

To learn more about Dawn’s work, follow her on instagram @dawn_serra and visit https://www.dawnserra.com/about/.

Signe talks to Emma Goswell about one of the most important moments in many LGBTQ+ people's lives, “coming out." They cover off on the importance of pronouns, how to be a better ally, and Emma gives her best advice for individuals thinking about coming out.

Emma has interviewed over 90 LGBTQ+ people from around the world in the last couple of years, and  recently released Coming Out Stories, a book that tells the stories of 27 people from across the spectrum, based on her  hugely popular Coming Out Stories podcast.

To learn more about Emma’s work, follow her on Twitter @emmagoswell, Instagram @comingoutstoriespod and visit her website: https://comingoutstoriespodcast.com/

Signe is joined by her two co-authors, Dr. Shelley Aggarwal and Wendy Sterling to talk about their newly released book Raising Body Positive Teens: A Parent's Guide to Diet-Free Living, Exercise and Body Image. They talk about the importance of taking the morality out of movement, morality attached to weight, and how it seeps into medical care, what sleep has to do with sport performance and Shelley gets up close and personal as she reflects on the writing process for this book as a first generation immigrant who grew up in a taller/larger body.

Wendy Sterling, is a Certified Eating Disorder Registered Dietitian and Approved Supervisor through the International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals, and a Board-Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has consulted for the Oakland Athletics, Golden State Warriors, NY Jets, and NY Islanders. She is also the co-author of How to Nourish Your Child Through an Eating Disorder. 

Shelley Aggarwal is a physician and is a board-certified Pediatrician and Adolescent Medicine Sub-Specialist. She treats medically complex teens and young adults, and consults on a variety of youth-specific health issues including adolescent development. Dr. Aggarwal has worked with premiere academic institutions and continues to be teaching faculty with Stanford Children's Health and UCSF-Fresno. She is the Medical Director of clinics serving justice involved youth.

To learn more about Wendy, visit: http://sterlingnutrition.com, and follow her on instagram @wendy_sterling.

To learn more about Shelley visit: https://www.signedarpinian.com/books.