Mechanism Of Anxiety And Impact Dr Mahsa Hojat-Khoshniyat

The Tim Heale Podcast S3 E176 Dr Mahsa Hojat-Khoshniyat

Dr. Mahsa completed her Bachelor's in Psychology and Masters in Social Work at UCLA in 2008. She completed her Ph.D. in Clinical Social Work, with an emphasis on psychodynamic treatment in 2016. She has over 12 years of experience in the field of Mental Health, working with hard to reach populations, those struggling with histories of trauma depression anxiety, and relationship difficulties. She started her career in working with children and families impacted by trauma at the Department of Children and Family Services. She then moved onto working at the jails, Twin Towers correctional facility, Men's Central Detention Center, and CRDF, working with incarcerated women and men. She also worked at a Mental Health Clinic, working with more severe mental disorders and those being significantly affected by their mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, etc. In addition to working with individuals, couples, families, and children affected by trauma, relationship issues, immigration, and severe mental health, She has experience in working with addiction and those affected by addiction. She has worked at an outpatient drug and alcohol program and gains much insightful information. Dr. Mahsa is Also a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional.


Dr. Mahsa's treatment modality is a combination of different cutting edge treatments for depression, anxiety, mood disorders, and trauma. She uses a psychodynamic approach to treatment, where the goal of treatment is to identify, grieve, and heal the root causes of the symptoms. She uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, mindfulness, attachment, and other modalities to provide her clients with tools to manage their symptoms as together they embark on the journey of self-discovery, healing, and thriving. She considers herself a guide, collaborator, and source of support for her clients. She provides her clients with insights related to their adaptive and maladaptive behaviors, thoughts, and ways of interacting with others. She helps her clients understand and appreciate the need for these behaviors at the time they were developed and how to improve upon them. In her sessions, she helps the clients to explore, understand and come to terms with their experiences, feel what was unfelt, resolve what is unresolved and grow and prosper with the renewed freedom they reach as a result.

Website:  

https://www.Heal-thrive.com 

Facebook: 

https://www.facebook.com/PsychotherapyHAT/ 

Instagram:  

https://www.instagram.com/healandthrive_pc/ 

LinkedIn:  

https://www.linkedin.com/company/heal-and-thrive-psychotherapy-coaching/about/?viewAsMember=true 

Twitter: 

https://twitter.com/heal_thrive 

Personal LinkedIn: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahsa-hojat-khoshniyat-phd-b3820bb4 

Transcript

Welcome to the Tim Heale Podcast, Ordinary people's extraordinary Stories and Everyday, Conversations, Regarding, Mental Health, and live awesome quizzes on a Tuesday. If you'd like to watch these episodes, rather than listen, if you'd go over to YouTube and type in Tim Heale Nine or Ordinary People's Extraordinary Stories, or Everyday Conversations Regarding Mental Health or Live, or some quiz, you'll find it on YouTube and you can watch and see who I've been talking to. 

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00:00:40

You can also take part in the quizzes after the event and put your scores in the chat box to see who else has done well. You'll also find the links in the description below. thank you for your time. 

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00:00:56

The Tim Heale Podcasts Ordinary People's Extraordinary Stories. 

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00:01:02

Welcome to the Tim Heale Podcasts and Ordinary people's extraordinary stories. I've got a great guest today, so without too much further ado, I'll bring her in. So, Mahsa, welcome. 

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00:01:21

Hello, 

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00:01:22

How are you today? thank you so much. 

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00:01:23

Thank you so much for having me. How are you? I'm good. 

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00:01:27

I'm, I'm good as well. So if you can tell me where, where you were born, not necessarily when you were born, 'cause you were a lady, if you can describe to me what it was like, where you grew up, the schools you went to, and the education that you received. So the floor's yours 

3  

00:01:51

So much for giving me this opportunity to be here and speak to you and your listeners and viewers. So, hello everybody. I'm actually 42 years old and I'm from Iran. A beautiful country with a rich culture and good people, but unfortunately a very oppressive and truly brutal government. So in essence, I grew up in this duality of growing up with a rich culture that valued humanity, valued integration, diversity, understanding the good in people, and really being caring, loving, hospitable, and a outside environment, right? 

3  

00:02:40

The government that reinforced fear and oppression and its own agenda, using a religion to reinforce this power and reinforce what it believed to allow its power to continue without care for the people. So really, I grew up in a very understanding, very open-minded, progressive family while trying to manage the oppression and through fear that was instilled in us from very early on. 

3  

00:03:20

Kindergarten was quite an interesting experience, as I said, you know, good family, good relationships, a lot of opportunities and in the school, some good experiences not, and not some great experiences. So being a shy kid myself, feeling out of place and not getting the nurturing and caring that I was receiving at home and what I needed there, there were times that the caregivers were neglectful at school. I remember feeling like squ by a couple of kids at nap time and trying to ask for help and nobody around to hear me needing to go to the bathroom and not being, you know, being attended to, to be able to go. 

3  

00:04:08

And I shared these experiences and honestly these traumas to let you know how it affected me as a mother today and as a therapist and how it really became my purpose to be different and to be nurturing and caring and attentive to those who may not have received it. Who, go 

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00:04:32

Ahead. Wow. So grew up in Iran, I guess with your young age, you, you kind of came in to the world around about the change of the, the Shah and the Aya. Yes. So can, did, were you there for the change or the Aya already taken over? 

3  

00:04:58

I was actually at the time of the war. So Iran went for right after the revolution. A few years later, Iran went through the 80 year war with between Iran and red Iraq. And. I was born at the tail end of that war. 

0  

00:05:14

So, you can't remember an awful lot about the war then, obviously, 

3  

00:05:19

Unfortunately. I think that's the thing about P T S D, right? It leaves a mark no matter how old you are. So I do remember these are snippets of, you know, kind of like the family scare, being afraid. I remember trying to watch TV and going to a specific room to watch TV when everybody would like completely panic. 'cause at the time they were doing, you know, bombing the place. I didn't realize that the two, three year old, what that meant. I wanted to watch my movie and everybody was just trying to get me away from the space and keep me safe. I remember the fear in my mother's eyes. 

3  

00:05:59

I remember the rations and not understanding what that was about. I remember being moved around to be kept safe and going into, I was seven years old, going to eight years old, around the time that the war ended and at the tail end we had to migrate to a different city like Northern Iran in order to stay away from what was going on. There were some bombings in the Iran and being kind of like not accepted necessarily to the new environment, like the new schools, the new kids, and what a significant impact it had on my self-esteem and my view of myself. 

3  

00:06:41

you know, there's kind of like you're trying to keep your children safe from the environment and unintentional. There are all these other influences that my parents could manage and negotiate for me, but just so much right. At some point there, you know, they didn't know I was a very quiet child, so I didn't really tell them about the things that were going on at school. They had a lot going on just trying to stay alive. Right. Yeah. And then unfortunately, go ahead. 

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00:07:09

So, so whereabouts in in Iran were you to start with and where did you move up to? 

3  

00:07:15

So we lived in Tehran, which is the middle of kind of like, it's nestled in the middle of Iran, basically. It is the, yeah, capital. A lot of the war happened in the southern area. A lot of the bombings happened in that, but it was some, some bombings. A few of them that happened into our specific area and that's when we had to move. Our windows were all shattered, you know, we were away actually, thankfully when that happened, a neighbor's house completely got destroyed and that's when my parents were like, we're not gonna stay around. So they moved us up further to when this was happening in the southern areas. They moved up us further north to like rash or something like that. 

3  

00:07:59

I forgot exactly where we moved way further away from where the war was happening. 

0  

00:08:09

So how, how did you find it moving from, from one school to, to being in a new school then? How did the kids treat you? 

3  

00:08:20

It wasn't my, unfortunately, my experience with education in Iran was completely opposite of what I had here. So, it wasn't a good experience and there was a lot of bullying come, there's a lot of classism in Iran, right? And there's a lot of why you have a lot of racism and discrimination. Here we have it in, in the sense of the classism and where you're from in Iran. So when I went to this new school, new space, and they actually moved me up from the grade I was into the next grade, which I wasn't ready for because they didn't have a space in first, first grade. So they put you in the second grade. I struggled because I didn't understand, I didn't have the concepts down, I didn't know the material and I couldn't catch up. 

3  

00:09:05

so that was like where the teachers would be disappointed and kind of annoyed. They had gotten all of these new students that they weren't prepared for, the students weren't ready to learn, you know, still dealing with the, you know, effects of war and they weren't up to par to where the classroom was. So the teachers were annoyed and then the students had this feeling of rejection and you don't belong and you're stupid and what's wrong with you. Add that to an extremely sensitive child, created this very difficult experience that took me many years to be able to overcome. 

0  

00:09:45

So how long were in that school for? 

3  

00:09:48

I don't recall to be honest with you, but I'm assuming it was few months only from what my parents have told me. And then we came back, you know, eventually things went back to normal. The war And that, I think the rations are still continued. It was very young at that point, but eventually went back to like normal, you know, the elementary school that I knew from what, what my parents have told me, it, we were there only a few months that it was very short, the stay we had over there. But I think it just left its impact coming to elementary school. Right? Again, I was that very sensitive child around a lot of people that had experienced really difficult lives. 

3  

00:10:36

And now reflecting back, I recognize that that's what it was. I was very sensitive, very empathic, very caring child along around people that, that was odd and different to them. Mm. And then because of the way my parents were, they were very open-minded, they were very progressive. They had exposed us to a lot of things. The way I would express myself would've appeared as odd or different. So in a sense, that made me a target. And then on top of that, I was the kid who was very empath. So I would search for the kids who were loners in order to help them. 

3  

00:11:16

I just had this feeling of I would get it. I understood And that drove my parents, you know, crazy. I like, why do you go and look for someone who's troubled? It's normal. 

0  

00:11:29

So, 

3  

00:11:30

So 

0  

00:11:30

That made So. yeah. So how did you get on then in, in your elementary school? This is still in Iran? Yeah, 

3  

00:11:40

Yeah, I was, I didn't come here till I was 20 years old. It was actually very tough. But in third grade I met a girl who's still a good friend of mine and she was kind of like my connection to the world and in this world that I felt very isolated and misunderstood and alone and abused in a sense in the school environment. There she was, who was in a sense a lot more resilient and a lot more comfortable in engaging with kids. And she was kind and loving to me. And so we created this friendship that through her I felt very safe. 

3  

00:12:21

And through her we built this new, you know, there's like the five of us with built these other connections and these other people that I came to know and things have started to get better until we moved on to junior high and I lost her. 

0  

00:12:40

So in your elementary school then, what was your favorite lesson? What, what lesson could you, you just wanted to get up in the morning and just couldn't wait to get to school to do? 

3  

00:12:52

I don't recall any. It's very sad that my education and my love for education didn't happen until I got here because the story of coming to America was as if my world changed here I was the a plus student throughout my whole career. I had one B, every degree, literally every single b I have, I have one B. But back home was a complete different story. And I think it's the way they taught and the way they educated us. 

0  

00:13:27

And, and, and, and what's the difference? What was it like back then? How, how was their, their their teaching methods? 

3  

00:13:36

I think it was very dry, very linear and very much like this is it, learn it, memorize it, know it, why don't you know it? Right? There was, I'm very conceptual, I'm very analytical. And I was since I was a child and my daughter is definitely more than me. So what it does is I have to understand the concept and the reason for why I am doing this, give my mom a lot of hard time over this. So I had to understand the concept. I had to understand why two plus two equals four the me and I'm not good at memorization, so the memorizing wouldn't work. 

3  

00:14:16

So I constantly struggled and then when I would try to ask those questions, I was seen as an old mm, you know, 

0  

00:14:25

Ah, So. yeah, it's a totally different sort of teaching regime, I guess. So. So moving slightly on then to your junior high, what was that like? 

3  

00:14:39

So I don't know why, but this is my mother's explanation of why I was bullied so much in junior high during summer before junior high we went to Europe. Now that is something that is almost unheard of at that time. And we came back obviously with the nice clothes and nice things. And I was oblivious of that being un-normal, right? So I walked into junior hall with an open heart, loving and caring, loving everyone. Mind you, I'm around probably people that are 80% being abused at home, but I have no concept of such a thing. My parents were very, very protective that I didn't know abuse existed until I became an adult. 

3  

00:15:24

So I'm showing up with all these things and with all this love and care and kind of like, you know, let's all get together and enjoy each other. And we're dealing with all these traumatized people that in essence I'm triggering them and I'm not seeing it. So I find myself being picked on and made fun of for things that are just to me, normal. I remember this story. I wrote a, an essay and it was just a very moving essay. It was very emotional and all of a sudden everybody started laughing and my teacher got mad and started yelling at everyone. 

3  

00:16:05

And I was like, no, that's okay. They just didn't get the point of the story. Imagine that didn't run well. So there was always this duality of the way I was seeing and thinking about the world versus how, you know, my cohort was thinking and experiencing the world. 

0  

00:16:31

So I, I guess Iran is a Muslim country. Were you brought up as a strict Muslim to gen where the hijab all the time, but I guess you couldn't dress down, you couldn't dress in western clothes so much. So how did you find 

3  

00:16:50

That So? it was the Right, that's where the duality comes in. We were a spiritual in our house, right? We were people who believed in God and believed in goodness and believed in good qualities and being caring and loving and all that. Yet we were living in a country that believed in a specific religion in the way it was practiced by them of other Muslims. And they have told me that this is not what religion says personally. I'm not religious, so I can't tell. But what we went through was the moment you stepped out of the house, there was this form that you needed to put on. 

3  

00:17:31

There was this expectation that this is how you were, this is what you did. You had to cover up your head. We never had to cover our faces, but you had to cover up your hair, you had to cover up your body at the time. Back then you had to cover up your nails. You couldn't have nail polish. And it was just this constant struggle. Iranians are very rebellious. We don't just lay down and take it, right? Constant push and pull up. We are coming up with ways to get the hair out from the scar, right? Get away with the nail polish, put on the little makeup and this constant battle getting in trouble basically. 

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00:18:13

So how did that affect playing sports, for instance? Did, were you, were girls allowed to play sports in Iran at the time? 

3  

00:18:21

Yes, we were segregated. So girls had their own schools from the elementary and boys had their own schools. But yes, we were allowed to play sports, we were allowed to do a lot of things. But again, in that segregated manner, right? We weren't like, I remember taking my bike, And I was probably a teenager and like, you know, going around the park, wherever we were and somebody was very religious starting to screaming and yelling that you're not allowed to ride a bike. My parents are like, don't listen, do what you gotta do, don't worry about it. You're not police. That's all you need to care about. 

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00:19:00

So, it was quite an oppressive kind of society. Once, once you've got outside your, your own four walls, you, I guess you have to be very careful of the religious police, you know? I mean it's, it's, I dunno if it's getting any better in Iran at the moment. 

3  

00:19:22

It's not, it has gotten so much worse, right? I left 21 years ago. It has come to the point that people my age or younger, like even kids have come to the streets protesting and getting killed. I mean, we're talking about kids getting shot, we're talking about poison being pushed into girls with schools. We're talking about tragedies, we're talking about people getting hanged because they protested. It has become an Absolute, unbearable space. And, you know, I think this is a revolution that is continuing to happen and is continuing to grow, but is being oppressed as it's always been. 

3  

00:20:11

But these generation is not going to take it. See, I left Iran because didn didn't have a lot of opportunities. I had some, but not a lot. The generation left now has none. They can't even breathe. The air is so polluted. 

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00:20:31

Yeah, I mean you, you, you don't get to see an awful lot of stuff that's, that's happening in Iran at the moment. There's the odd bit gets out on the news, particularly about the, the, the young people demonstrating and being stamped on pretty hard. But it then, it then it just goes out of the news again. So I I'm guessing that, that I is still the case. 

3  

00:20:59

Absolutely. It's, it's a, you know, the, the original, the first revolution when the went and Molo came, took him a long time, took over a year. And this is a sort of another form of revolution, right? This is the start of that. But what our people need is support, you know, places like Amnesty International, consistently working on providing that support because it's a Absolute violation of human rights. And an interesting fact is that our history is our country is the first who actually established human rights, you know, way before a came, way before all that happened. 

0  

00:21:44

So let's, let's bring you on a little bit then. So after your high school, what did you do? 

3  

00:21:52

So I went to college. I, so there's this exam that we have to take in order to get to college and I call it equivalent like a California bar exam, right? It is extremely difficult to get in. You get about a hundred choices of career, I mean majors, I guess, that you want to apply for. And I, for some reason I had chose nursing as one of my options. It wasn't my first option, but it was like mid, you know, like, I don't know, 40, 50 numbers. And I got into six nursing schools. So I don't have any other option. I started studying nursing and it was, it fits my character. 

3  

00:22:33

I'm very caring and I enjoyed that And I was very much enjoying working with the patients, but it was treated, we were treated extremely poorly and there was a lot of discrimination, a lot of disrespect by, you know, the other staff. And it was just a really bad environment. So my brother got a scholarship, he moved here and about six months later he said, you need to come. And at this point, I'm like, two years into my studies, I have two more years to finish the school and then I start my practicum and he is like, come on, you gotta come. We'll figure it out when you get here. And I got here, I went to, you know, college and they said if you had to studied anything else, we would've accepted your credits, but not nursing. 

0  

00:23:23

So, so when, when, let's, let's just take you back slightly. Did you do English in Iran? Did you learn English as as a second language? 

3  

00:23:35

Yes. I went to a lot of classes. And, you know, for many years I studied, I did not realize that that wasn't gonna be sufficient when I got here So, it was a culture shock. 

0  

00:23:49

I, I bet a total culture shock. So where, where did you move to, where are you now then 

3  

00:23:57

We moved to San, so my mom, my brother was in UCLA and my mother wanted me to have same opportunity. So she got us a place in Color City. I think it was close to actually the city be before Santa Monica So. it like would take a bus, you know, 40 minutes bus ride. And I was at Santa Monica College. So we did come to California specifically LA area. And that's two weeks after I arrived. They were like, okay, go to college. Like really already. They're like, what else are you here for? And. that started at 22 years of education. 

0  

00:24:39

Wow. So did did you have any problems leaving Iran? Did you have to leave family behind? I mean, what, what was the situation there? Because I, I know, I know there's lots of people that have managed to get out that are political and And that and they've, they've left people behind and, and, and they have to be careful what they say for, for fear of the people that are left behind. So what was it like for you? 

3  

00:25:10

Well, I had, everyone was there. The only person I had here was my brother and then some family members that we didn't really know very well, but they were here. So my mom came with me, she was here for about six months, got us settled and she left. So, and then my brother was studying for his PhD exam, so I felt very much on my own 24 7, you know, wake up in the morning. He was going to the library, see him at night and had all these hours of the day. 'cause I only had two classes, one in the morning, one at night to kind of like sit there, try to navigate through what I needed to do for my life and what is that gonna look like. 

3  

00:25:51

Not knowing English was a big problem, but it, but it still, there was so many opportunities, right? I, I have funny story to tell you about college. I started college. They're like, well you have to start with English classes in a year or two. You can start taking other courses. I'm like, I don't have that kind of time. Give me, what am I gonna be able to do right now? Take an English class, take a math class, figure it out. I go sit in the math class and the teacher writes everything instead of numbers in words. So everything is going, I, I'm not understanding anything, I'm failing the class. I got very lucky that she would take quizzes every week. So by week three we're like, I'm failing. 

3  

00:26:34

Like I'm not getting anything out of this. So we went to a professor in the college that was Iranian and he said, come into my class, sit in the front and follow everything I write. Don't worry about what I'm saying, follow the numbers. And I ended up getting like the highest score in the class later found out he was like the toughest teacher in the whole college. But that is when everything changed, right? That was when I started to find success. And I think from that point on, college was very hard, right? 

3  

00:27:14

I feel like I might have the learning disabil. So I didn't know English was taking a lot of courses that were in English So. it was like my book and then the dictionary and then going back and forth and I read very slowly. But there was opportunities to succeed, right? So if I worked really hard, I could succeed. And I think that in addition to people really mentoring me and taking an interest, like accepting that I had these difficulties, accepting that I don't know the language, accepting that my grammar isn't gonna be great but is still working with me on it, is the reason that I just felt very powered, empowered to continue because I took a lot of classes throughout, like every semester I took about three classes and I didn't know the English, so I had to kind of compensate a lot. 

3  

00:28:08

But the teachers worked with me. Mm, the professors. 

0  

00:28:13

So the, what did you finished with? What, what was your major to start with? 

3  

00:28:24

So I got my bachelor's in Psychology, which is what I thought I wanted to do. And my very last semester I was very interested in juvenile justice and I had met these other professors from the social work department and when I would talk to them and tell them about my goals and plans and what I wanted to do, they insisted that what you wanna be is not a psychologist, you wanna be a social worker. So I never remember my professor said, why don't you take a juvenile justice class in your Psychology department and in social work And, that was it. It became so absolutely clear to me why social work was my, was because social work was about this dynamic out of the box thinking, whole environment, looking at all these relationships and how systems and people And, you know, what is going on that it affects this one person and how does it speak to their na nature for Psychology was to focus on the person. 

3  

00:29:28

And that's how I ended up moving into my master's in social work. 

0  

00:29:34

Aha, So you came out of it with, with a PhD. Is that, is that it? 

3  

00:29:41

Correct. 

0  

00:29:42

So what was, what was the first job you had when you left university? 

3  

00:29:48

I went and worked at Department of Children and Family Services. So that's when, you know kids are being abused and then removed from their parents and hopefully reunited with them through treatment. 

0  

00:30:03

So how long were you there for? 

3  

00:30:06

I was there for three years and I had a car accident that put me out. And to be honest, when I came back, just the dysfunction of the system and seeing how it was and children who didn't deserve to be removed or removed and children who needed to and have been protected were not protected. It broke my back. I mean literally, I, I broke my back in my car accident and then when I saw that I just couldn't bear it anymore. 

0  

00:30:36

Hmm. So what did you do 

3  

00:30:41

After the ccf? Well, so in the C F S I did a lot of therapy when I technically wasn't supposed to, but I knew that's what was gonna work. So I worked a lot with the parents to learn what they were doing and why it wasn't working to heal themselves to then be able to return to their children. After that, I went to, and I worked at the jails men's jail to be specific and then later women's jail. And although it was supposed to be a discharge planner and just basically just get them set up with resources, my nature is very much of a therapist. So I spent most of my time doing therapy with those same guys and really focusing on who they were, why they were, where they were in their lives and what needed to change really internally at like their depth. 

3  

00:31:33

you know, that like I could have told them so much about coping skills or behaviors, but my intention was something different. My intention was for them to see what they deserve and to want something better for themselves and for their lives. And so I spent a lot of time focusing on getting them to see that. 

0  

00:31:54

So what, what sort of criminals were these then? Well, they, well they, they, they weren't obviously weren't the real hardened criminals that, that are like lifers or anything. They, these are sort of, I guess petty cri criminals that have been put in jail for two or three years and then they're coming out to rehabilitate. 

3  

00:32:13

It was a mixture to be honest. I've worked with a lot of people who have committed the worst kinds of crimes. I've worked with sexual offenders, I've worked with people who have committed petty crimes. For some reason I always found myself working with people like you called hardened criminals, like career criminals, people who had been, this was their life and we had very productive long conversations about how I saw their world and what I thought they could have achieved versus what they had been doing. Okay, so 

0  

00:32:51

So how long did that last then? 

3  

00:32:54

That was about four years. Hmm. How was there About four years. And the system was changing and I, it had become harder and harder for me to do the work I believed in. It was this pressure to just give them resources and get away. We are not interested in changing them. From there I went to the women's jail and it was the same thing, right? They didn't really allow me to do the work I knew would work and I had a really high success with the people that I was working out of. Every 10, probably two came back to the jail. The rest has stayed out when we have a 90 person reincarceration rate. So I knew it was working and, but the system wasn't just okay with it or allowing it. 

3  

00:33:40

So I left there and I worked at a community mental health center who worked with women who were coming out of jails and prison. And I felt like okay, there, there's more opportunity for me to do the work I wanted. And that's when I started to work, do the therapy. The problem there was that they were very invested in short-term problem solving. Get them out the door, stabilize them, and move on therapies. When the treatment I do is very go to the core, figure out what's going on, figure out where the source of the pain is, heal it so the person is set for the rest of their lives, which takes longer than three months. 

3  

00:34:22

Right? It is a very intensive and painful work, but very effective. Well the system wasn't interested in it, the stem was like in and out, in and out. So from there I moved on to, and it was in la I lived in Orange County. So eventually I made my way to closer to Orange County and I worked at another community mental health center that was working with severely mentally ill. The thing is that I never changed. I didn't change my beliefs, I didn't change what I was doing. And, I was being trained for that, right? I was in school for six and a half years through my, for my PhD And. 

3  

00:35:02

that whole time I'm getting trained to be a better clinician. Supervision support, bring up my cases and work through the cases. So I stayed doing the same thing. I stayed the therapist. I knew I needed to be, but now I had a hundred, 120 cases. So I could only work with a very small population. I could only see that small population in the intensive way that I saw it. But so many I couldn't reach. I had to just like do the check-ins So. it was very heartbreaking. And by the time my daughter was born and she was two months old, they told me, come back to work. 

3  

00:35:45

Now mind you, it took me more than six years to have my daughter. Like I struggled to have her so I wasn't about to leave her. And a very good friend of mine that, his name is Edgar Wheela, he gave me a job at his substance abuse program and said, come here, do some work, start up your private practice. And I did exactly that. And that's when I got trained into addiction and really understanding addiction and the complexities of it along the while working on my, you know, creating my private practice. 

3  

00:36:30

And about a year later my husband joined the practice and really took over and made it what it is today. 

0  

00:36:39

So what sort of addictions were you looking at? What sort of addictions were you helping 

3  

00:36:47

At? the time it was addiction to drugs, right? Different sorts of drugs, meth, heroin, pills, weed, whatever, you know, different kinds of drugs. But the concept apply to any form of addiction. And so when I came to my private practice and continued to use those same education in the sense that I got through them on my own to really help with any form of addiction. 'cause if you think about addiction, there's, yes, there's a biological dependency that is caused by the substance or the behavior, but there's really an emotional, psychological underpinning of that addiction. 

3  

00:37:29

And if you resolve that, that could be food addiction, that could be born addiction, that could be substance addiction, alcoholism, financial, any form of addiction. It has that moment of helplessness and moment of, I don't care anymore. I just wanna get rid of that feeling. So my goal was to get at the core again, once again, going back to the root cause of things get to the core of what was this addiction about? What was it trying to heal and try to go to the source. 

0  

00:38:08

So was it all sort of face-to-face, one-to-one that you were dealing with? 

3  

00:38:15

Yeah, I did some groups and I enjoy doing the groups, but I personally do like the one-on-one because it allows me to dig very deeper is this idea of sitting with person, whether on, you know, kind of like digitally or in person, when you really sit in and connect with each other, you can really start to feel the other person's feelings. Our brains are very amazing. We have these mirroring neurons that are able to pick up on the slightest muscle movement and allow us to feel what the other person is feeling like replicate that feeling in us. And again, being very sensitive and therefore empathic And, you know, like being empath, having a lot of empathy. 

3  

00:39:01

'cause I don't want it to be perceived differently. Having a lot of empathy, sitting with a client, I could see those movements, right? The eye movement, the body movement, the pulling away. And each of them had a meaning for me because of, you know, the range of people I had worked with So, it really allowed for that deeper connection. 

0  

00:39:25

So therefore, so how long were you doing that for or, or are you still 

3  

00:39:32

Doing it? So I've worked at that facility probably for a year and a half, the substance abuse program and moved into a hundred percent private practice. I did some teaching along the side, but it's been since 2007 I've been in private practice. 

0  

00:39:52

Alright. 

3  

00:39:53

Thousand 17, sorry. 2017. 

0  

00:39:57

So bring us a little bit more up to date. What are you doing nowadays? 

3  

00:40:02

So we have the Heal and Thrive psychotherapy and coaching. So we have coaching services and therapy services. Therapy services. My husband is an A D H D coach. We have a life coach, an LP coach, and another A D H D coach. And then we have two different therapists. Addition to what we do. And what we believe in is that in order for a person to be truly thriving and truly reach their full potential, they need to be able to heal from what they went through, right? The way that they're being held back. It can be more successful in your career and they still feel unfulfilled. 

3  

00:40:45

You may have what you think of as a happy marriage and find out that there's a lot of problems or there's cheating or there are things going on, or there's like an emotional distance. All of these have a meaning And that origin in usually childhood and early life experiences that is interfering and causing patterns that stops the person from being able to fully live and fully experience. So what we do, I personally do is to really try to figure out what are those dynamics and what are those old wounds. And to provide an environment where a person can truly heal by talking, expressing feeling and being understood in the way that they've never been. 

3  

00:41:36

And through that, what we call corrective emotional experience through that connection where they feel their feelings and are held and receive what we did, what they didn't get. It's almost an unlocking happen. Some call it a closure. A lot of people call it a sense of relief because then they're able to step into life with their all that they can be. It's almost like you open up the treasure box and there are no more chains holding it. And that's when rules, my husband gets in and our other coaches because that's when they take this insight and put it in actionable steps. 

3  

00:42:22

I always talk about this, the story of this person I've worked with for probably two and a half years. We had a lot of successes, but we just couldn't get him a new job. And. then he started working with Ruth and within three months he had his perfect job, super happy, everything good. I'm like, what? And it was, he had done the healing, but he needed something more And. that was that, how do I transfer this inside this knowledge to something in the real life. 

0  

00:42:55

So how did, how did the pandemic treat you? Because you've done face-to-face and group therapy and then, and then the world went into a lockdown. So how did that affect your business? 

3  

00:43:17

I remember the day, the moment I remember everything where I was sitting in my office and my husband was visiting and he is like, okay, well we need to put things, you know, aside, they're probably gonna be a lockdown. Let's go home, let's take everything home. And I never went back. Right. It was interesting because you know, you, you always think about, well, therapy, it has to be in person, 

0  

00:43:43

So, it would, were talking about how lockdown affected you. So when you went home at the start of the lockdown, took everything with you and started doing stuff online, I guess. 

3  

00:43:55

Yeah. And it was interesting, like the connection, the being able to read the cues, being able to read the body language, it was all there. you know, I've had few clients that originally like, no, I don't wanna do online. And we get it started and soon they're just, I'm like, do you wanna go to the office? You want me to make time? They're like, no, this is okay. I'm comfortable. you know, and we, I did, I did go to the office, saw a few people and I asked them, I was like, how is it it, how is it different? They're like, it's nice to be in the same space with you, but the therapy is not that different. 

3  

00:44:39

I feel a little bit more connected to you, but I'm, you know, it doesn't outweigh like the driving here coming. It's not worth it for me. Let's do it online. And I think we've been very blessed and very grateful that we were able to continue having that same connection even through the digital stream. 

0  

00:45:03

Hmm. So that's kind of brought us right up to date. Now, have you had the opportunity or the desire to go back to Iran at all over the years since you left? 

3  

00:45:20

I have gone back and I saw a very different world that the one I left, thankfully, it has progressed tremendously. There has been a cultural revolution. The socially, I mean, when you walk in Iran, if people, I mean, people barely wear a scarf anyways, but it is almost like it's a cold day in the us. I mean, the women are just kind of like having a shawl on. When I go back, my family always makes fun of me because they're like, why are you looking like this? You're way too covered. You're like the religious people. 

3  

00:46:02

Let's just give you stuff like, this is not how you walk outside all. So it's been tremendous growth, but it's also extreme poverty and pain and suffering. you know, And, that was before this whole, you know, revolution happened. I do wanna go back. I desire to show my country to my child. I, it is such a rich country, such good people, such a beautiful place. The Four Seasons so much culture and civilization, but it is overtaken and truly, I just can't wait for the day that I can go back and visit and reconnect. 

3  

00:46:46

To be honest with you, the now this is home. I don't think I can go back and live back home because the, the country I knew moved on past me. Yeah. And for me now, it's gonna be another migration I have. I came here as a young woman and I established my life here, but I do have my roots there. And I feel like a person of two homes with no home in a sense. you know? Yeah. I have two homes. I have bad home and this home, but neither of them, like each of them is a part of my life. 

0  

00:47:25

So do you travel on a, a US passport or do you maintain a, an Iranian one? 

3  

00:47:32

I, I need to reestablish my Iranian one. I had one we haven't done the job really need to release. Hmm. But you know, sometimes it becomes discouraging because you see what's happening, you know, like, I'm not going back. But I do like to have that. But yes, I have been basically, I've been an American citizen. I've been living as one. I feel like that is more of my roots and this is who I'm, 

0  

00:48:00

Yeah. So, it brings right up to date. What, what's your project at the moment? 

3  

00:48:09

At the moment, I'm really trying to, you know, so we have different therapists, right? So we can offer treatment to a range of people. But I feel like where I'm at and the way I like to have an impact in the world, right? I want to make a change. And where I'm at in my experience, I think I'm ready to help people who have gone through therapy have gained what they could and have felt like I'm up here and I am up here and I feel like I'm hitting this class. Like I went to therapy, I did the coaching, I did all of these things. 

3  

00:48:53

But there's something there. There's something more. And nobody's been able to help me because that means they haven't gotten to the root cause of the issue. They have the skills and they're functioning, they're doing well. But if you want to, and that's to your listeners and viewers, if you want to take it to the next step, if you want to become aware what you're absolutely capable of, all that, then I would like to be there for you because that's what I do, right? I've worked with people who are highly successful doing well in their lives, and the outside things are great, but down deep inside, there's that longing. 

3  

00:49:37

Whether it is in trust is in relationships and wanting something more. Fear of taking that extra step or just simply not being happy. you know, that's what I want. Because what that is, is the child they once were, and the pain that is locking them back there, And. That's why I come in, right? To attend Nurture and care for that wounded person and allow them to heal so they can be all that they can be. 

0  

00:50:13

So how do people get hold of you if they want to use your services? 

3  

00:50:19

So our website, heal, heal thrive.com. We do offer free consultation. Anyone that contacts us will be responded to. We're not in the business of ignoring people. And we do have a range of therapists and coaches and different services. And of course, me, myself, I'm also available, we, we are present on social media healing, thrive psychotherapy and coaching. We are on LinkedIn to either Instagram, Facebook, there are some podcasts I've done that's on YouTube, but we don't have our own YouTube channel yet. 

3  

00:50:59

But if people go on to our website, they can connect to our social media and then they also can set up a free consult or read more about us and our, you know, what we do and our services. 

0  

00:51:15

Terrific. Well thank you very much. thank you. Ive enjoyed our little chat. I've learned. Learned a few things. 

3  

00:51:25

Well, thank you very much. It was very nice talking to you and I and your viewers and listeners, and I appreciate the opportunity. 

0  

00:51:34

No, you're most welcome. 

3  

00:51:36

Thank you. 

0  

00:51:37

You'd just like to hang around for a minute and whatever, finish up chat. Wow. What a fascinating lady. And if you are struggling out there, reach out. I'm sure she'll be able to help you out in the long run. So until the next one, thank you for watching. Thanks for listening. T T F N Tatar for now, 

1  

00:52:05

The Tim Heale Podcasts Ordinary people's extraordinary stories. 

0  

00:52:11

Welcome to the Tim Heale podcast, Ordinary people's extraordinary stories and everyday Conversations Regarding, Mental Health and live awesome quizzes on a Tuesday. If you'd like to watch these episodes, rather than listen, if you go over to YouTube and type in Tim Heale Nine or Ordinary People's Extraordinary Stories, or Everyday Conversations, Regarding Mental Health or Live or some quiz, you'll find it on YouTube and you can watch and see who I've been talking to. 

0  

00:52:52

You can also take part in the quizzes after the event and put your scores in the chat box to see who else has done well. You'll also find the links in the description below. thank you for your time.