Psychotherapy & EMDR with Stephanie Polizzi

Psychotherapy & EMDR are therapies for many mental health issues, but what is it all about? What goes on during these sessions? 

Feeling anxious or stressed is something that we don’t want to feel. But unfortunately, we all go through this. Some of us have good coping skills, while others cannot deal with these negative emotions.

The bad news is that we will go through many stressful life situations. The good news is we can overcome the negative thoughts that cause us to be anxious. How can we do it? What steps should we take to rid ourselves of anxiety? And can psychotherapy & EMDR help? 

Our Guest

In this episode, we would like to introduce you to Stephanie Polizzi. Stephanie is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) at Peaceful Living Mental Health Counseling in Westchester County, NY.

She also works with teens and adults struggling with eating disorders, anxiety, trauma, behavioral challenges, and life transitions.

Stephanie is also a trained Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapist at a trauma-informed practice. She uses a combination of EMDR, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and other modalities when working with clients.

Questions for Our Guest

The questions below are some we’d like to tackle. We often go off-topic, so we don’t expect to hit them all. If you have any ideas, please let us know. Looking forward to our conversation!

These are the questions you had in Calendly. We’ll go off your questions and wherever else our conversation goes.

1. Can you give us a little background about yourself?
2. How did you first get involved with therapy? What made you want to become a psychotherapist? 
3. Your primary focus is on adults, teens, and children, specifically those with eating disorders, anxiety, and challenging behaviors; what made you go down that path?
   • How does a teen with an eating disorder act?
   • What does an anxious teen look like?
   • What are some challenging behaviors teen show?
   • Is there a core reason why teens exhibit those problems (eating disorders, anxiety, challenging behavior)? Where do these issues stem from, or what is the teen looking to solve with those behaviors?
   • Do these issues mainly come from trauma or some issue the persona has with society or their parents?
4. How do you figure out the core issue with children or teens going through these difficult times? Do you talk to them, and they eventually open up and speak about it?
5. Once you figure out the problem, how do you solve it? How do you take the teen with an eating disorder and show them how to solve whatever they are going through correctly, or how do you make the teen with challenging behavior content with their situation?
6. What is EMDR, and how does it work?
   • Have you found success with it, or is it an approach you take when other things fail?
   • What does an EMDR session look like?

ENDING QUESTIONS

Before we end the show, we have one last question we like to ask all our guests. If you had the opportunity to have a Cup of coffee with anybody one last time, who would it be & why? 

Catch or connect with Stephanie through her socials via:

Instagram: @peacfullivingcounseling

Website: https://www.peacefullivingmentalhealthcounseling.com/ 

Stephanie about: https://www.peacefullivingmentalhealthcounseling.com/stephanie 

Learn more about psychotherapy and EDMR by watching the full episode here 👇👇👇

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Introduction
01:48 About Stephanie Polizzi
03:18 How therapy helped Stephanie
05:10 The patients’ common problems
06:46 What is EMDR
10:10 What takes place during an EMDR therapy session?
13:19 How does an eye movement fix our suppressed body
18:42 How Stephanie went about studying eating disorders
20:58 The reasons why people have an eating disorder
23:02 The common issues that adults and teenagers have
25:16 How to approach someone with an eating disorder
28:21 Indications that a patient is benefiting from the treatment
32:30 What to do if you’d prefer not to see a therapist
35:40 A determination to improve yourself
39:59 Contemplating positive aspects
44:47 Understanding when to seek help
48:27 The negative implications of sickness labeling
53:16 The lack of expertise in managing eating disorders
58:52 A healthcare system that will benefit us
01:04:56 The gains of mental health awareness
01:08:10 Wrapping up the show