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Episode 739: Can We Play With That with Nina Garcia · The Trauma Therapist

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Or welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
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My mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible cells, to be human,
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to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in
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who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating
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authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more
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about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com.
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That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started. Okay, here
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we go five or three two one, our folks, welcome back to the
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podcast. I'm very excited to have my guests today, Nina Garcia and Nina
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Welcome, Thank you, thank you are welcome. So. Nita is a
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licensed professional counselor, registered trauma therapist and certified Clinical Trauma Professional. She's passionate
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about creatively supporting people to redefine their relationship to trauma, emotional drama, and
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intersectional identity. While specializing in trauma, she has unique interest in empowering people
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with mixed identities and diverse narratives to heal from traumatic invalidation. As a private
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practice owner, Empowerment consultant and host of the podcast Triggered Can we play with
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that? Nina is proud to empower people from all walks of life to own
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their truth without oppressing themselves, without oppressing others. Nina, welcome, thanks
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for being here, so much for having the guy. So before we get
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going, share the listeners. Where you're from originally and where you are currently.
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Yes, Originally I was born in New York. Families originally from the
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Northeast. I'm second generation Americans to family originally originally from Puerto Rico, and
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we moved up and down from the Northeast, right from New York to Houston
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essentially, and from Jersey. I lived in Pennsylvania. Every year until I
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was eleven, we moved Oh my gosh, yes, yes, Why I
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think it was more of a personal matter. The way that I have understood
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it is, you know, my mother's family was from Northeast, and so
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was my father's right they had both met there. But every year that we
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moved down because my father's family moved down to Houston, right, better cost
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of living, you can raise a family down here. So my father's family
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had moved down first, and then we all moved down eventually, and then
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it was like, but I missed my mother, I missed my father,
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and missed my family. Right, So then we would move back up close
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enough to New York, but not quite in New York to be, you
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know, within two or three hour drive of them. And then it was
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well, it's very expensive to raise you know, three children, right,
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a family up hears, Let's go back down to Houston. And so every
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year we did that. I remember one year I was in we split in
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the middle of the school year and so I went to two elementaries that year.
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There's a lot of moving. I don't recall it ever being stressful for
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me. It was very stressful for at least one of my siblings, but
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I think it made me very used to like, let's move on to the
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next thing, got it. Yeah. The reason why I asked is I
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moved a lot around a lot when I was a kid too. We can
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talk about that a different different episodes. All right, look, let's jump
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in here. How the heck did you get into this to being working with
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trauma or to being a drama therapist working with you. Let's start there wherever
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were you want to start. We'll hit it all, all right, wonderful.
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We'll hit the ground running outside of picture it. I was back and
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let me see if I could honestly share the journey. Right, I'm going
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to intermingle it all. You down with that guy, but just sort of
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we've okay. So story wise, I went to high school down here in
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Houston. And when I was in high school, I had a trigger warning
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here, right, I had a teacher sexually abuse me. I was waiting
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for my parents. The teacher said, hey, I'll take you home,
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and it was a terrible experience. From there on the rest of my year,
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I ended up hiding that I was being abused. It was in my
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sophomore year. I had just turned yeah, and I was young. I
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had just I was fourteen. I had just turned fifteen that year, right
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in August, it's my birthday, and so I was very young. I
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did not know what was happening at first. Shocked, right, I did
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not understand my world had been turned upside down. Right, We're supposed to
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trust adults. I don't get what's really happening. Is a lot of that
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topsy turvy world flipped upside down, right, when we experience a trauma like
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that, And so the rest of that sophomore year. I don't really remember
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a lot of it. At the beginning, I did not. I've done
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a lot of work to recover some of those memories. Some things I may
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never get back, right. This is a part of that process of trauma.
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I do know that some of the things that I deal with as a
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human being, for my body to be able to survive, that was a
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dissociative amnesia. And so for those who don't know what that is is my
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brain just said, we're just going to clip these scenes from your brain so
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you don't have to remember them. And so that is something that my body
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does to protect me, right, and yet it can be stressful because I'm
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missing pieces. But so that's where my journey, I would really say,
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began with trauma and not really understanding what was happening to me. My junior
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year, I really struggled with depression. Up through my senior year. I
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struggled with depression at the same time that I was killing it in school.
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I was doing great at school. I was keeping the mask on. I
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was surviving, and it looked to everyone else like I was thriving, and
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I was really struggling internally at the same time that I was having a lot
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of success as a performer. This is important, I think because when I
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think of what I do now, is I am at the intersection of drama
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and trauma, right I am. They're healing people with dramatic and theatrical interventions.
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And for me, continuing through high school and performance, moving on into
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college, did my undergrad and musical theater performance and the structure that it provided
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was something that helped me stay stable no matter how big the feelings were.
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There were more instances of assault, abuse, other things. It's sort of
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a recurring pattern because I had not dealt with the original trauma. And so
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this is something that I mean, I could go on and on about the
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patterns and how we don't recognize that we're we're still in a trauma mastery loop.
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Is what I will refer to with clients. That's from the book Trauma
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Stewardship for anybody who likes a little psycho education knowledge. Right. But we
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moved through, right, so I started with fifteen, we moved through and
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performance. I'm dealing with trauma except not really processing it. And I ended
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up becoming a teacher of drama. And when I was teaching students. I
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was seeing their trauma and I was like, oh my gosh, we've got
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to do something about this. I haven't been trained as a teacher to do
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this. I need to know how can I use my dramatic and theatrical skills
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to help, you know, support my students. I wasn't looking to do
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therapy at that point, but I said, I need tools. I need
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tools to be able to help these human beings lift themselves out of a narrative
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that they're stuck in. And then I went online and I said, how
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can I use drama therapeutically? And it was like drama therapy, Come get
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a degree? And so had you dealt with this, oh a trauma at
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all? Or had you seen a therapist for the depression? So I come
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from a line of resilient people, right, and also a line of people
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who, narrative wise, like stories that we that we can pass on to
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our children. Therapy was not one of them. I came from a low
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socio economic background. I was a first generation college student. My parents did
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not attend college. And I what I was really good at being scrappy,
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being resilient, and picking up tools throughout the twelve years that I did have
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diagnosable PTSD from this, from this original assault and abuse episode that occurred for
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so long. Throughout the twelve years that I had this, I did not
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see a therapist until the tenth or eleventh year. And it was only in
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officially seeing that therapist that I was able to I don't want to say kick
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the diagnosis, but deal with the material that kept me stuck in the PTSD
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diagnosis. Now, will I always have had that trauma occur? Of course,
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right, I can't erase that. I can't take that away. But
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do I meet the criteria for PTSD anymore? No? Why don't you see
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that therapist under the auspicaleb Yes? So what I realized was I was going
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on ten years right, and I was like, wow, Nina, you
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really you have been dealing with this is the best way you can. I
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had been trying my best not to avoid it. I was reading material on
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how people deal with things that keep up automatic thoughts right avoid a material that
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I was avoiding. I had streets that I literally would drive by and my
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brain would just cut them out. The street that I was originally assaulted on.
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I could not see that street. I could not say his name.
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I couldn't handle other people saying the name right, and this was traumatic material
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for me. Is stuff associated with right. There were songs that were so
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I could not hear the songs. For the first year after I was I
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could not look at people expressing intimacy. I would literally wretch. My body
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just did not feel safe in so many different areas. And what I looked
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at it is, was well, I don't want to be comfortable with that,
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So how do I lean into that? And I was sort of for
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ten years. I was sort of doing my own what we would refer to
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as is exposure response prevention. I was like, oh, that song,
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let me just go look up the lyrics to that song. I don't have
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to hear it. Let me just go look up the lyrics. Okay,
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that's enough. I just all I did was put it into Google and I
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was like, oh, and we're done with that. Right to do the
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street to lean into that, and these are things I wish that I had
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done with the therapist, because I don't think I would have had this diagnosis
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as long if I had just had a professional to support me sooner. And
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I can honestly say that but I didn't have that narrative. It was nobody
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said go to therapy. In fact, I had teachers and principles and people
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who were supposed to support me not tell me to do anything that I should
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be I should just deal with it and not make a big deal about it.
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And so I was looking at for my own resources. Again, I
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was leaning in for the street. I went to Google Maps and I would
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just look at the street. I would just look up just the street name,
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and I would lean into it that way until I started to drive past.
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And this is years and years into this that I would drive past it
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and I would then say, Okay, now it's your time to look at
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the street. Okay, and we're done. That's it. You just had
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to look at it, right. Were you cognizant of the fact that this
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what challenge struggle was leaning in was due directly related to that. Yes,
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me being able to lean it, Yes, I did know. I was
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aware. The way that I looked at it was not Nina, you've been
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traumatized and you're trying to heal your trauma. I looked at it as Wow,
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this is really uncomfortable material, and I looked at it piecemeal right,
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like, Oh, I don't want to feel that. How about I deal
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with that? Oh I don't want to think I don't want to ignore that
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song or avoid that. How do I deal with that? Right? And
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so I was piecemeal leaning into everything. And I know your original question is
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why ten years why did I end up going into therapy? When I decided
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to become a drama therapist and actually go to graduate school, it was the
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first time that somebody said, hey, Nina, have you thought about going
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to therapy? And when I signed up to go to graduate school, I
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got a therapist. The minute I moved up there, I got a therapist.
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It's not surprising. Yeah, I mean, we know people go for
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years doing this, but oh my god, some people lifetimes, right Jesus.
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So you get into drama therapy, see what happens for you? Yeah.
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So there were a lot of flyerworks and in my graduate school program,
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some of which was due at this point. Now, we lay around different
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types of trauma, right, So at this point I probably met a complex
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trauma diagnosis, right, which is not technically an ideasm yet, although it
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should be arguably, But what I started realizing in graduate school was not only
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did I have right a sexual assault in trauma history, but I was also
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struggling with a traumatic invalidation history, and so identity trauma and invalidation around identity
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pieces. So the fact that I was scenuro divergent and had been told you're
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too much, you're too energetic, you don't fit in, you can't belong,
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you can't do things, you're not right, all these this idea of
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minimize Nina, minimize her because she doesn't fit. And when we see this,
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we see this a lot in the public. I think we're talking about
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this much more now. We see this with microaggressions against race and ethnicity and
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religion. We see this a lot easier, but we tend to miss it,
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and I'm hoping that we're talking more about it the ways that we also
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microaggress against neurodivergent individuals and other other different identity facets that might be present this
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constant minimizing misrepresentation and outright rejection in some cases of a human example, Yeah,
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what you're talking about? Yes, so, oh man, of the
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different identities, is there anyone in particular you're leaning toward? And then let's
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talk about neurodiversions. Yes, that is a broad term. Yes, so
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there, of course I'm going to vastly oversimplify, right, and I'll speak
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to my experience of it. I am somewhere on the ADHD spectrum, and
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I have really high energy. I run it. I usually say, if
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the average individual, right, the human being, were to have energy from
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zero to one hundred, and the typical individual runs at about fifty miles an
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hour, running about seventy five, And that's my baseline. That feels very
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normal to me, to my energy, to how I exist in the world.
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But I have realized throughout much minimization over my life and being told I'm
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too much, I'm too healthy, I don't fit in all of these things,
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I'm too expressive, all of these yes, too healthy really killed me.
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I was like, and so I say, well, now, like,
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there's a lot. There's a lot in that when you say that to
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somebody that has very little to do with me, right, right, And
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so with this though, and I can play with this now, But I
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had to realize that unless I titrated and brought myself down, that I was
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standing out in a way that did not feel typical or normal to everyone else.
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And so I was consistently receiving messages in groups that I was excluded from
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events, that I was excluded from jobs that I didn't get. When I
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went to internships to intern I was literally told by more than one person who
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I interviewed with, I don't think you would fit in here. They would
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probably think that you're too much. And so when a person hears this not
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just from their family or their friends or strangers who have just met them,
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but also from professionals in the industry, I had mentors say this, right,
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you received this story, and if you're not careful, you start to
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eat that story. I am different. I don't fit in. I'll never
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fit in. I don't belong here. I need to change. And so
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you begin to build a narrative that inherently minimizes you. And then some people
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will jump right on that train and they'll go ahead and minimize you some more.
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So, when I got to graduate school, I was dealing with the
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trauma of NERO you don't belong. So every time something happened where I didn't
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belong, I could feel that trigger go off. And then when we were
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doing work and I was having to deal with other sexual assault survivors, now
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I had processed ten years of processing this and was now in therapy for it.
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But a lot of my cohort members were not, and then I was
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triggering them. This is where that you're too healthy came in. You can't
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possibly be really having dealt with your trauma, and you know, if you're
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this happy like, you can't really have had even had that. I had
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people who said it didn't even happen to me, which is also minimizing it.
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It incompletely invalidates someone's reality. Right, So I hope I'm answering this
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question that you have of right, what did that look like? As I
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came into this, I was now dealing with not only my own stuff,
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but the stuff of other people who hadn't yet dealt with it, and my
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own identity pieces coming in of what's real and what's not? Where do you
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fit and where do you not fit in? How do you keep going?
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Right? And a lot of this. Of course, some of it can
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be for some of us an unconscious narrative, right, even the healthiest among
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us, the most self aware among us. It's hard to what filter out
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that negative narrative. Absolutely all right, let's just was here for second to
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thank our sponsors all right, we are back. What inspired you to become
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a drama therapist? Well? And was that conscious? God? Let me
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tell you. I mean so, I think that one of the things that
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I am grateful for and probably in being a neurodivergent individual or just the way
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that I'd have been designed as a human being, is it. From a
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very young age, I knew what I wanted and it has grown from there.
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I didn't I have not had any phases in my life where I felt
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lost and needed to find myself or I wasn't sure who I was. At
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five, I wrote in a journal that I wanted to be a role model
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for women everywhere. That changed into Wow, I should be a role model
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for people everywhere. While the way that I can role model is through performance.
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I have this great performance right. So I was a singer and a
18:04
dancer and an actor, and I realized I had these skills that really helped
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me connect to people. That that's how I was able to really connect to
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people in a way that they also understood that I could belong. Does that
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make sense? The dramatic world is really a great place for many neural divergent
18:22
individuals. I could really go on about how therapeutic it is, but the
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structure it provides and also the sense of belonging that it can provide to a
18:30
community right in which your eccentricity and your individuality is very welcome. Right.
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And so that has really just continued to be shifted and molded of how do
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I utilize drama with myself and to help myself feel structured and expressive and individual,
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And it eventually moved on to how do I use this in teaching?
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And did become a teacher with it, And then when I moved into how
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do I help my students? I was working in a Title one school strict
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with I mean, my students had parents that had been deported, so they
19:06
were now with foster families or or contemporary adoption or potential excuse me, adoption
19:11
families. I had students who were not even thinking of one student in particular
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still sits with me not even had the choice to decide to join a gang.
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The family was born into a gang. And so the narratives that come
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with that that I can only I can only imagine, maybe I can't even
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imagine, right, the narratives that come with that and the weight that comes
19:34
with that. But These are some of the heaviest stories that I was dealing
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with on top of an adolescent's body, which is already trying to figure out
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how it exists in and of itself, much less in relation to other people
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around it. Right, So I'm dealing with all these really narrative, difficult
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human narratives, and I said, I got to be able to do more.
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How can I use this right, this drama therapeutically And that's where I
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was like, I gotta be a drama therapist. This is at the intersection
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of how I exist in the world and what I know personally to be beneficial
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as well as what I'm seeing is now professionally efficacious to be able to help
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other human beings do this right. And So I had this personal experience,
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and I went to school got my master's in drama therapy at NYU so that
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I could do it professionally as well, so I could really know what is
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it that I'm going to be doing here to help people move forward heal through
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trauma and the drama of their lives. What was it like when you first
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started working with people who had been experienced who who would experienced trauma? When
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I first started professionally working with them. Yeah yeah, So well fast forward
20:45
to graduate school and this is another one of those. Right, So this
20:49
the narrative plays again. All of my internships, everyone else had another cohort
20:55
member with them at the internship because they quote unquote belonged. They fit.
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All of my internships, I had to do solo, and so I had
21:03
a very unique experience, and my preference was to be working with trauma because
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I knew it personally, and now I was gaining a professional language as well
21:15
as tools for how to help other people move through it. What I first
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was using when I first to help me understand it, I had this metaphor.
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Right, So, I'm a drama therapist. A lot of what I
21:26
do is playing with really scary things, and we use a lot of imagery
21:30
in order to do this. And so if I can, I'll share with
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you what the imagery was that I first came through with. So when I
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first came to it, even in my own journey, so ten years of
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working with it and then coming in I remember sharing with some of my cohort
21:47
members and I said, for me working through my trauma, it was like
21:51
a four step journey, and I said, at first, it felt like
21:56
a monster in the closet. Don't touch that, don't deal with that.
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That's really scared. Let's just keep that there. Right, it feels like
22:02
a monster in the closet. Avoid at all costs. And I said,
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the more that I started leaning into it, the more material I was reading,
22:08
was engaging in different things, and I was leaning in, as we
22:11
talked about earlier, the less that it felt like a monster in the closet,
22:15
but the more that it felt like a giant elephant in the room.
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I thought, people must know this about me now I'm working. They can
22:22
see it on me, they can feel it. Surely they know, which,
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of course is not the case. Right people don't know even if,
22:30
even if some other people may have a sensation that there's something there. And
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so it was this elephant in the room. And I kept leaning in,
22:37
and I kept leaning in, and I said, oh, okay, well
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now it's just ten years in. Right now, it's just like a to
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do list on the table. I know that it's there, but it's not
22:47
as dysfunctional in my life. It's not causing this huge emotional eruption. I
22:51
know that it's there. I know why I want to deal with it,
22:53
and if I'm honest, what I have found with clients is this is the
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part or the point in the journey where most of them say, Okay,
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well I'm pretty good, right, so I don't have to keep going to
23:02
therapy. And I'm like pause, because I thought for a long time that
23:07
that's where I would end, is that it would just be like a to
23:10
do list. And I was like, oh, I can manage it.
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To do list, right, that's manageable. But what I have found since
23:15
going to therapy and actually processing through the final bits and understanding that were really
23:21
they were they were in my body. I needed to see a therapist to
23:23
work through the parts that were embodied somatically to really release my trauma diagnosis.
23:30
But the last bit that I experience for myself and that I share with clients
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is you can get past the to do list stage and it can just be
23:37
like the air you breathe. It's something that happened. You can't stop it
23:41
from happening, right, And when you think about it sometimes maybe it's like,
23:45
oh, that's foul air, and then it's gone. Right that that's
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the ideal point is that it does not at this point in the journey that
23:52
it does not cause dysfunction, does not cause emotional disruption, and also the
23:56
reality that it doesn't mean that there may not be a trigger one day,
24:02
or that something new may not occur, but that for me, I can
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honestly say I do not struggle with PTSD anymore due to that original assault and
24:11
abuse. And I can honestly say the one time in my life that it
24:17
did resurface in a way that I had that was unexpected and it was momentarily,
24:22
it was temporary, was when I became pregnant. I felt hyper sensitive
24:29
and hyper aware of the need to protect my body and I let people know
24:33
it. That's a whole other episode, though, Guy you, I appreciate
24:38
you sharing that when you were working with clients who would experienced trauma, how
24:48
was that for you when you first started doing that. So when I first
24:52
started doing it, I will think back to the first two internships that I
24:56
had, and I was up in New York, and I was at King's
25:00
County Hospital and I was at Bellevue Hospital, And for people who are not
25:06
familiar with those arenas, King's County in particular, I remember one client where
25:14
I felt really confident dealing with traumatic journeys. What I wasn't confident with and
25:21
where I had a lot of room to grow was how other people's journeys looked.
25:26
Right, I knew really well how mine looked. I had that metaphor,
25:30
I was working it, and then I had I remember I had one
25:34
client who was struggling with trauma, yes, but there was some other diagnosis
25:41
in that. It was also borderline if I'm not mistaking my memory right now,
25:45
and so we're dealing with a lot of fragmentation. And one week and
25:48
that client had left and I was like, you know, we did good
25:52
work, but you know, I don't know, you know, we'll see
25:53
what happens. And then they came back and they expressed that they had self
25:57
harmed over the weekend. And being a new baby therapist, I was like,
26:03
oh my gosh, I like handled it in the session, but when
26:06
I went to my supervisor afterward, I was clieing. I was like,
26:08
I must have done something wrong. I must have said something. I don't
26:12
know how I can stop, you know, my clients from doing this.
26:17
What if I shouldn't be, you know, in this line of work,
26:19
and you know, my supervisors sat there, very calmly, having been through
26:25
this situation many times before, and she looked at me and she said,
26:29
you know something akin to you cannot control what your clients do. You can't
26:33
control what they think or what they feel. You're here to be on the
26:37
journey with them. And here's the thing is, she expressed it to you,
26:42
and she was honest with you, and she told you she actually saw
26:45
when she could have shifted it. What else can you do? She's learning?
26:51
And I was like, everyone's journey is different. And even though I
26:59
had not experienced self harm and went to dire, you know this must mean
27:03
the end. I have since really grown to understand what our bodies will do
27:10
and what we will do in order to feel more in control of, you
27:14
know, the internal chaos that we cannot that it feels sometimes like we cannot
27:18
control, or that we may not have the skills yet to control. Right.
27:22
Right, Well, let me just remind everyone I'm speaking with Nina Garcia.
27:26
So your website is Houston Creativity Arts Therapy dot com. Houston Creative Arts
27:37
Therapy, Arts Therapy dot com. Okay, and you also have a podcast.
27:41
Tell us about your podcast. I love it. Okay, So triggered.
27:45
Can we play with that? Obviously we're dealing with triggers, but we
27:51
do it in a really playful way. So I think that that's really important
27:55
when I think about what I do is a drama therapist, I think it's
27:59
really critical that I am inviting people to play with things that are scary,
28:03
and I am happy to expound on that. Right. But in the podcast,
28:07
what we do is we take real stories, we share a little bit
28:11
of psycho education on what are the triggers? So how can you identify this
28:14
in your own life? And then I offer an adventure challenge because I'm really
28:18
growth oriented and I want people to lean in a right adventure challenge at the
28:22
end. Right, here's something to consider, or here's something to do this
28:26
upcoming week. Just roll it around. So yeah, let's let's give us
28:32
an example. I know I'll kind of winding down here, but let's give
28:33
us an example of how you would use or introduce play or drama therapy to
28:42
work with a trigger. Okay, on the podcast or in a session whichever.
28:49
Okay, So let's say that an individual comes in and even some of
28:56
mine that I've I've said so far, actually, like with the street and
29:00
leaning in. But let's say an individual comes in and they say, Nina,
29:03
you know, I just I feel like every time that I think about
29:07
my trauma fill in the blank, right, I don't even want to tell
29:11
you details about it. And this is a thing that has Right, a
29:12
client comes in and they're like, I don't want to have to hash it
29:15
all out again with you. I don't want have to go into every nitty
29:18
gritty detail, to which usually in the first session I'm explaining to them as
29:22
a drama therapist, I actually don't need you to go into every nitty gritty
29:26
detail. We can play with even just the imagery around it. So if
29:30
you tell me, which is often an image here that I'll share this a
29:33
pretty common image actually is Nina, I feel like I'm ten thousand leagues under
29:38
the sea, like I've got to weight around me, and like there's no
29:41
way for me to reach the surface. Again, it's dark where I'm at,
29:45
and I don't know how to get out. I said, can we
29:48
play with that? Right? And what that can look like is even just
29:53
the image we could be drawing that we could be acting that out right,
30:00
There are different parts to this image. This is a whole scene. And
30:02
there are different characters in this image. The sea is a character, the
30:06
darkness is a character. Right, They're all playing a part in this story.
30:10
And so if this is the image that an individual has for their own
30:14
trauma, I say, you know, if we could just get to know
30:17
one part of that image, what do you feel most drawn to exploring?
30:22
And then they tell me, and let's say, it's you know, the
30:25
darkness, you know, I just I get it. I feel like I'm
30:26
low. I feel like the darkness. I say, where do you feel
30:29
that in your body? Right? Being able to play with it in your
30:32
body is really the most appropriate space to be for some people and for others
30:37
it's I can't feel that in my body. I don't know where that is.
30:40
At which point I might say, could we draw it? Could we
30:42
imagine what it would look like? Right? If it were a creature or
30:45
a thing or a person? What does the darkness look like? Right?
30:49
And so in this what we're starting with is just playing with the image rate
30:53
that their body has actually already given them for this. So what I love
30:59
about this is that's what we start to play with is the character the imagery
31:03
for the most part of course, there are some people who are ready to
31:06
deal with the actual scenes of what has happened in the details around that.
31:11
But when I think about what we're doing when we play with trauma, is
31:15
we're redefining your relationship to it. Right, we can't change that the trauma
31:21
has occurred. Again, a lot of people will say, I just wish
31:22
I could cut it out, bit all, like, we can't, right,
31:26
we can't cut it out, So let me help you redefine your relationship
31:30
so you feel more in control as you move through life. So that's one
31:33
example of how we can't play with that. There are characters. Somebody might
31:37
actually embody the darkness, and I will interview them say, hey, darkness,
31:41
you know, how long have you been here in Clarissa right? Making
31:42
up a name here? Right? How long have you been here? And
31:45
see and you know then that character will speak right. So some people ready
31:51
that I have puppets in the office when that's appropriate, I've got a little
31:53
guy right here for everybody who can video, right, there's tons of little
31:57
things around the space. And and I work with adults, right, So
32:00
we're playing in ways that are appropriate for that individual. And it's my job
32:06
to be flexible as to what feels most appropriate to them, right that yeah,
32:09
beautifully, beautifully all right, So wow, I could definitely talk to
32:15
you much longer, and I'm gonna have to have you back here. But
32:21
so what do you do? Are you? You're seeing clients talk to us
32:27
about how you work, who you work with. Yes, I work all
32:32
over the map. I'm going to try to be as succinct as possible.
32:36
My private practice, I work primarily with adults. Occasionally I will get some
32:39
adolescents who are a really good fit. I don't work with children. I
32:44
will refer to them to a play therapist for everyone out there who will still
32:47
reach out. So that is what I do. In private practice. I
32:52
work primarily with primarily excuse me, with trauma, right, and people who
32:55
are ready to play with this. Emotional regulation is another piece I work on
33:00
redefining our relationship to our emotions. So if you're often hijacked by anger or
33:06
sadness or fear, right that, I say, let's redefine our relationship to
33:09
that emotion. And I got a whole drama that I could share. I
33:13
know we're near the end of time. Maybe we'll say that that's a whole
33:15
other episode for sure, because when you talk about playing with your emotions and
33:20
emotional regulation, that is some of my most fun stuff to do. So
33:24
there's that. And then when people come in for identity work, right,
33:28
and it could be you know, I've just had a divorce and I feel
33:30
like I lost myself ten years ago, right, and I don't know who
33:34
I am. Great, let's let's you know, explore your relationship to yourself.
33:37
How do you identify you know, to somebody who's just ready to deal
33:42
with I don't know fill in the blank, right, thing where a life
33:45
transition has happened, or they say, you know, Nina, I just
33:47
realized this was a big one in my family. Is I don't feel Latin
33:52
enough. I identifies Latin, but I don't feel Latin enough because of X
33:55
y Z thing where I've been minimized, right, misrepresented or outright rejected.
34:00
And I want to know how do I own my truth you know wherever I
34:02
go? And so a big part of that has become if we're not working
34:06
with that in the therapy side, empowerment consulting is a big thing that companies
34:10
will now have me come out and work with them in a dramatically therapeutic way
34:15
on diversity, equity and inclusion, like how do you stop minimizing, misrepresenting,
34:22
and outright rejecting even your employees? Right? So I hope that helped
34:27
to answer some of them. Yeah, really really super interesting. Oh god,
34:32
all right, look, I love to have you back here. What's
34:36
the best way for people to get in contact with you? If you are
34:39
interested in therapy, the best way is to go to Houston Creative Arts Therapy
34:44
dot com. Right, there's a quick little form on there you can fill
34:47
that out. The next easiest way is social media. I'm on Instagram at
34:52
Drama Therapist Nina and the same as TikTok Drama Therapist Nina. There's a lot
34:58
of good little freebees and fun ways to play with some things that may be
35:01
really scary on there, and so I think those are probably the easiest ways
35:06
to reach me at this point. Awesome and the podcast again, yes,
35:09
triggered. Can we play with that? And you can get that anywhere you
35:14
listen to podcasts. Awesome Nina, you are amazing. You are Yeah,
35:22
just really a breath of fresh air. And I love the way I appreciate
35:27
you coming on here and sharing your own experience. Yeah, that's what this
35:31
is about. Okay, thank you so much for that feedback. I really
35:35
appreciate it. You're welcome, and like I said, i'd love to have
35:37
you back, so we'll connect on that, all right. Take care,