Therapy Rocks!

Signe talks to Virgie Tovar about why anger is an integral part of self-acceptance, boundaries are the most powerful B-word, tips for bad body image days (BBIDs), body positivity as a relationship value, and more!

Virgie Tovar is an author, activist and one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on weight-based discrimination and body image. She holds a Master's degree in Sexuality Studies with a focus on the intersections of body size, race and gender. She is a contributor for Forbes where she covers the plus-size market and how to end weight discrimination at work. Tovar is the author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat,The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color, her new book The Body Positive Journal, and she’s the host of the Rebel Eaters Club podcast, just starting season 3. Virgie has been featured by the New York Times, Tech Insider, BBC, MTV, Al Jazeera, NPR, Yahoo Health and the San Francisco Chronicle. She lives in San Francisco.
To learn more about Virgie Tovar, visit https://www.virgietovar.com

Signe talks to Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson, who demystifies the “art form” that is social skills and gives insight on how to be better friends, partners, and colleagues. 

Dr. Laugeson is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry
and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, and is a licensed clinical psychologist. She is the Founder and Director of the UCLA PEERS Clinic, which is an outpatient program providing evidence-based social skills training for individuals with neurodevelopmental disabilities and other social challenges across the lifespan. Dr. Laugeson is the author of The Science of Making Friends: Helping Socially Challenged Teens and Young Adults. 

To learn more about Dr. Laugeson and the UCLA PEERS Clinic, visit: https://www.semel.ucla.edu/peers

Join Signe for a Therapy Rocks! conversation with Jessie Susannah Karnatz, author of Money Magic: Practical Wisdom and Empowering Rituals to Heal Your Finances.

Jessie Susannah walks through the importance of a self awareness audit to get a clearer picture of where we “currently” are in regards to our relationship to money, identifying your true financial desires and actionable steps to refine them into real-life goals. 

Jessie Sussanah brings capitalism-critical, shame-free education to healers, hustlers, and creatives in order to catalyze change in their financial lives. She believes healing our finances will bring blessing to our lives, our lineages, and our communities. She offers education, Money Magic products and Intuitive Financial Coaching online and in the Bay Area (unceded Ohlone land) and does it all with impeccable business lady style.

To learn more about Jessie Susannah visit moneywitch.com and follow her on Instagram @money.witch.

Join Signe for a conversation with anti-diet journalist, Virginia Sole-Smith, to explore questions (and some answers) about body image, fatphobia, and diet culture.

Virginia is the author of Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture. Her reporting on diet culture, health and parenting has appeared in the New York Times, Scientific American, and many other publications. She also writes the newsletter Burnt Toast and hosts the Burnt Toast Podcast.

To learn more about Virginia follow her on instagram and twitter @v_solesmith, and visit her website here https://virginiasolesmith.com/.

Join Signe for a conversation with Certified Yoga Therapist, Suzannah Neufeld, on low pressure healing—yoga therapy, asking for help, and avoiding the “all natural” mandate.

Suzannah (Tipermas) Neufeld is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Certified Yoga Therapist (C-IAYT), Certified Advanced Emotion-Focused Family Therapist, as well as a Certified Eating Disorder Specialist and Supervisor (CEDS-S). She has been supporting people coping with eating disorders, body image concerns, anxiety, and maternal mental health since 2003. Suzannah has a passionate interest in helping parents, caregivers, and partners of people with mental health issues. She co-founded the Rockridge Wellness Center, a counseling and health collective in Oakland and speaks widely on topics such as eating disorders, body image, media literacy, perinatal mood disorders, and yoga therapy. She is the author of Awake at 3 a.m.: Yoga Therapy for Anxiety and Depression in Pregnancy and Early Motherhood. 

To learn more about Suzannah, visit https://suzannahneufeld.com.

Margaret Hunter, Registered Art Therapist, joins Signe to talk about Art Therapy as a specialized area of mental health that helps to promote insight and healing through creative expression.

Margaret is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (LMFT), Registered Art Therapist (ATR), and Certified Eating Disorder Creative Arts Therapist (CEDCAT) through the International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals, and author of  Reflections of Body Image in Art Therapy: Exploring Self Through Metaphor and Multi-Media.

To learn more about Margaret Hunter, visit https://www.margaretrhunteratr.com. For “Weekends of Recovery” through Men Healing visit https://menhealing.org.

Connie Sobczak and Signe have a conversation about “The Art of Aging.” Connie is the author of Embody: Learning to Love Your Unique Body (and quiet that critical voice!) and in 1996, Connie co-founded The Body Positive, a nonprofit organization that provides practical tools to developing balanced, joyful self-care and a relationship with our bodies that is guided by love, forgiveness, and humor. In Connie’s 2021 TEDx Talk, Embracing Your Critical Voice: The Gateway to Self-Love, she shares her painful yet powerful journey to self-love, and offers ways for others to get there as well.

To learn more about Connie visit https://thebodypositive.org and  https://thickpress.com/ for her book emerging.

Join Signe for a conversation with Julie Lythcott-Haims, former Stanford dean, on "adulting," the modern markers of adulthood and the importance of feedback.

Julie is the New York Times bestselling author of the anti-helicopter parenting manifesto How to Raise an Adult which gave rise to a popular TED Talk. Her second book is the critically-acclaimed and award-winning prose poetry memoir Real American, which illustrates her experience as a Black and biracial person in white spaces. A third book, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult, has been called a “groundbreakingly frank” guide to adulthood.

Julie is a former corporate lawyer, holds a BA from Stanford, a JD from Harvard, and an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. She currently serves on the boards of Common Sense Media, the Black Women’s Health Imperative, the advisory board of LeanIn.Org and Parents magazine.

To learn more about Julie, visit www.julielythcotthaims.com.

Join Signe for a conversation with Dr. Jason Nagata about body image in boys and men, a historical overview, considerations in caring for this population, risk factors and prevention.
Jason Nagata, MD, MSc, is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, specializing in adolescent eating disorders. He researches eating disorders, body image, and muscle-enhancing behaviors in adolescent boys and young men. He edited the book Eating Disorders in Boys and Men. He has published over 150 articles in academic journals including The Lancet, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Pediatrics, and his research has been featured in the New York Times, The Guardian, and NBC News. He is Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the International Association for Adolescent Health Young Professionals Network and is a recipient of the American Academy of Pediatrics Emerging Leader in Adolescent Health Award.  

To learn more about Dr. Jason Nagata, visit https://profiles.ucsf.edu/jason.nagata and follow him on Twitter @jasonmnagata.

Nine More Truths About Eating Disorders: Boys and Men

Join Signe for a conversation with Dr. Norman Kim on shame. They discuss what shame is, why we have it and how to manage it individually and systematically.
Dr. Kim completed his B.A. at Yale, his Ph.D. in Psychology at UCLA and has developed an expertise in treating and teaching about psychiatrically complex populations with a particular focus on minority status and barriers to mental health care in marginalized communities. He is the founding co-chair of the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Committee of  the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals, the inaugural Behavioral Health Taskforce for the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, and the co-chair of the SIG for the Academy for Eating Disorders. He is also the co-founder of Reasons Eating Disorder Center, and as well as the Institute for Antiracism and Equity.

To learn more about Dr. Norman Kim, please visit: https://reasonsedc.com/about-us/team-members/