Good Neighbor Podcast: Delco
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of Delaware County, PA (Delco"") and the surrounding Philadelphia Metro Region.
Good Neighbor Podcast: Delco
Exploring Being Well Therapy with Heather Bellini: Methods, Flexibility and Client Progress
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Exploring Being Well Therapy with Heather Bellini: Methods, Flexibility and Client Progress
Unlock a greater understanding of effective therapy and gain insight into psycho-therapy techniques with this episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast, and Host Bob Blaisse's special guest, Heather Bellini, a licensed psychotherapist from Being Well Therapy in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Heather sheds light on the importance of building a trusting and confidential relationship with her clients and shares her compassionate approach to addressing a wide range of issues, from depression and anxiety to relationship problems and trauma. Discover how goal setting and understanding individual needs play a pivotal role in her therapeutic practice and learn why a tailored approach is essential for effective therapy.
In this enlightening episode, Bob's interview explores a diverse array of therapeutic methods Heather Bellini employs, including gestalt therapy, mindfulness, psychodynamics, hypnotherapy and internal family systems. Heather discusses the flexibility required in modern therapy, such as virtual counseling and ethical referrals, ensuring personalized care for each client. Additionally, Heather touches on the economic aspects of making a personal investment in personal therapy, which can also be eligible for payments using medical insurance, and the profound fulfillment Heather experiences from witnessing her clients' progress toward a better version of themselves. Listen to Bob's conversation with this Good Neighbor Business Professional and dedicated mental health therapist, who provides her valuable perspective on how therapy methods can help uncover and address the past events that shape present behaviors.
Being Well Therapy
Swarthmore, PA
509-412-3732
www.BeingWellTherapy.com
--- About The Show--- Good Neighbor Podcast is a spotlight on local businesses in and around Delaware County, PA (“Delco” ) and Beyond... The executive producer and host, Bob Blaisse, is a community sponsorship advocate, business branding specialist, and publisher of several hometown magazines, including: Newtown Square Friends & Neighbors, Marple Friends & Neighbors and Newtown Edgmont Friends & Neighbors, mailed monthly to more than 12,000 homes in Western Delaware County, PA, and also available for reading online.
Thank you, michael, and welcome everybody again to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast. My name is Bob Lacey and I'm coming to you today from the Good Neighbor Podcast studio in southeastern Pennsylvania. We're in the southeast corner of Pennsylvania, delaware County, pennsylvania, which is often referred to as DELCO, so we call the podcast, good Neighbor Podcast, delco and it's a great term that everybody in the tri-state area of Pennsylvania, delaware, new Jersey, know about. There's a DELCO vibe and we get it and it includes businesses that have that vibe and people who are owners of those businesses we like to bring to you through the Good Neighbor Podcast to let you learn a little bit about their profession and from their expertise and get a chance to meet good neighbor businesses. I have one today. Really, it's a lady who operates a service for people that maybe we all know could use some of this therapy. It's a therapist and we're going to bring on Heather Bellini today as our guest. She is the therapist from the being Well Therapy practice. It's her practice, heather. Welcome to the Good Neighbor podcast today.
Speaker 3Hi, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2It's great to have you, heather, because when we get a chance to have a guest like you, that is not talking about I don't know doing landscaping or a jeweler or you know something, that's more retail. This is really a service, but a service of mission and a service of practice and a service of, like you say in your practice name being well therapy. Your therapy is helping people become well and better, the better version of themselves. So help me out a little bit here and let me understand a little bit about you and how you got into being a therapist. How long have you been operating in this matter and helping people?
Speaker 3I don't know, probably all my life, you know.
Speaker 2That's a great answer. Yeah, because if you were a young person, even before being educated in this space, you were always willing to help people with their problems, and so you have clients professionally as a professional therapist, who are coming to your practice of being well therapy and listeners. You can find Heather online at beingwelltherapycom. She's our guest today. She's a licensed psychotherapist in Swarthmore, pennsylvania You've heard Swarthmore right, swarthmore University. Heather practices there with lots of different kinds of treatments for different types of issues and different treatment approaches. But, heather, tell me, as you find your clients these days, are you practicing specialties of men versus women or certain age, you know, adolescents, children? What is the general area of your practice?
Speaker 3Um, I have a pretty wide range of people that I work with. Um, you know, through the years of practicing I've got a chance to work with everyone you know, from four to I think I've had some 80 year old clients.
Speaker 2So, um, that's a pretty big range, I mean, you know. In other words, some people would say I don't work with children, some people would say I don't work with children. Other people say I only work with children. But your therapies, you know, are really for the person. So when a parent calls, you're there. Or when someone calls and you're having problems, say you know, over some kind of drug abuse or alcohol or codependencies, you're there. Kind of drug abuse or alcohol or codependencies, you're there. Tell me what if somebody said, heather, tell me the specific kinds of issues that you've helped people with over your practice.
Speaker 3Name a number of them. That are the variant problems that people bring to you. Oh, wow, that's a big question. I mean, you know lots of people come in with depression. Anxiety is, you know, a big one lately since COVID. You know there's relationship problems, kids having trouble in school or with their parents. You know a lot of people have trauma experiences, so things that have happened to them that have been scary or traumatic, or, you know, abuse situations.
Speaker 2What I'm hearing in your voice, heather, is something wonderful, because we all know we see it on TV how therapists are very confidential and I think you're almost kind of holding back a bit because you're so used to not talking about your practice. And that's a good thing, because when we think that we might need to talk to somebody, or when we're a parent, we have children that might need to talk to somebody, or we have a friend who we know you need to talk to somebody, you know the person would always have concerns. How private is this? How much can I open up to this? When someone is with you in their office they've never had therapy before Explain to them what you're both going to be doing here in this relationship.
Speaker 2Do you set them up to understand that they have to be candid and honest and open? Do you ask them questions? Do you let's just let them talk? Do they know why they're there and they just keep dumping out information? Or do you have to kind of really specifically mine through to find out that what looks like alcoholism is really a you know, marriage abuse or something you know that doesn't work? How do you really, if you don't mind sharing it's not you're breaking any confidentialities here. Give us, give us just coursework answer on this.
Speaker 3Um, I mean, yeah, you know, most people have some idea about what they want to get out of coming to therapy, and that's what we usually do in the first session is kind of like try to assess, like what's the most important things and try to set goals. So you know that everything that you talk about with a therapist is confidential. Of course, there's always some exceptions, so you talk about those kinds of things, but just mostly building a relationship with someone, getting comfortable with each other because that's really where therapy takes place is inside the relationship that you have with your therapist. If you feel safe and comfortable and understood, that's when people can start to really talk about what's going on and that's where you can figure things out.
Speaker 2You're sitting in the other chair and you're listening and you've got them comfortable and they're able to start opening up. You've got them comfortable and they're able to start opening up. Now as a professional. You're hearing it not as say I would or a friend would and like, oh boy, how can I, you know, listen to this. But you're actually hearing it more as a wrong word here, but technologist in a sense, because you've been trained to understand when somebody's saying one thing, it could be a result of some other issues going on or the way that they've had experiences in their life. When they say things like cognitive behavior, cognitive behavioral therapies, what does that actually mean to someone? When they're actually coming to you, you probably don't bring that subject up too much. But what are you doing? That's, cognitive behavioral approach to what they're saying and then helping them through.
Speaker 3Yeah, I mean cognitive behavioral therapy is, yeah, a technical way of saying how your thoughts affect your feelings, affect your behaviors and just kind of looking at that circular path. And just kind of looking at that circular path, mostly cognitive behavioral therapy is about how to change your thoughts or your beliefs about things and so therefore changing how you feel and then act in the world. You know it's something that's been popular for a while.
Exploring Therapy Methods and Successes
Speaker 2That's kind of like scientifically you hear that, right, we hear that, right, we hear that, but we don't really know what it is, and it may be that the person in the other chair doesn't really need to know specifically what it is, as long as you do and you're kind of using that technology, if you will, that technique to be able to kind of understand what you're hearing. Might not be the words you're hearing, but you understand what's going on in the, in the statements that are coming out. There are other words that we hear, lay people, we hear things in therapies. You know, I mean years ago it was gestalt methods or something like that gestalt therapy. And then, and then I I hear even more modern times.
Speaker 2You hear things like mindfulness, right, or, or a kind of psychodynamics or something, even even hypnotherapy. I mean, we can kind of hear these things in the, in the lexicon, ofxicon of the common world, here, and movies and such, but we necessarily don't know what those technologies and what those methods are. In your practice, are you bringing all of those kind of things together to be able to help assess really what's going on in someone's life?
Speaker 3Well, I would say yes, you know, because, depending on the person, or depending on what they're working on or what's affecting them, you know, some technology that I'm using right now is called internal family systems get people to notice, you know, how they've held different stories or thoughts or ways of being in the world and see if they can create change around them. So, for example, you know, when you were five years old you know, you, I don't know you tripped in front of a large crowd of people in a big puddle and then you decided that you, I don't know, are afraid of, you know, walking in the street or something.
Speaker 2So there are things in somebody's past that as you're sitting there and they're dialoguing and and you can kind of hear things in between the lines, but then they get to a something, an event in their life and you you realize, well, that was, let's go back to that You're able to kind of start to unpack it a bit, because as a therapist you're, you're able to kind of have these little signals go off in your mind, these therapies that you then can put in place to help people along. I guess, heather, it's, it's a, it's all of the above and a kind of answer in the work that you do. And and then it's it's not just all of the above approaches to how you incorporate therapies, but you've got a lot of different people walking in that door in a way look, or or maybe the virtual uh, do you do some virtual counseling as well, on on a screen rather than just in person therapies?
Speaker 3Yep, yeah, I do Um.
Speaker 2So you're seeing these people with either online or you're seeing them in your office, but they're that, it's, it's in your, it's in your wheelhouse, your junior field of studies. You think this person can be helped. Do you ever have to say I don't think there's anything wrong with you, you don't really need therapy? Most of us have no idea what it's like, what your world must be like, with the people who come in and you have to meet.
Speaker 3You paid for really helping, but tell us a little bit about just how different it must be to be meeting people in one sense at their worst but knowing that the best is really still inside them. Yeah, I mean, sometimes you know, if people have a very specific issue where I think that maybe, like someone who really specializes in that area might work better with them, I might refer them out. Or you know, sometimes if you as a therapist are going through personal stuff that really matches what a client's going through that's not always the best either because it gets kind of messy, so you might refer someone out. I don't refer people to psychiatry, to medication, until I've met them and I can really understand, like if medication is beneficial or not. I mean I think anybody could really benefit from therapy, kind of being self-reflective and having some desire, you know, to do better or to change or live your life better or have more positive relationships that are rewarding.
Speaker 2Agreed to that and you know, I guess I'm old enough to remember years ago, you know, another decades past, there was a higher sense of self-help and people were reading books and trying to become the better version of themselves, or what's the word used to be out at the time get analyzed and get unwired and all that kind of stuff. You're right, everybody could benefit from it. Some people are a little afraid, especially in these economic times, like hey, if I'm going to make any investment in myself, I'm going to lose 20 pounds. I'm not going to worry about fixing the head up. Tell me, do you, do you find that people are concerned about the costs of investing in therapy, do you? In other words, can they use their medical insurance with?
Speaker 3your practice. Yeah, that's something that I do do that not a lot of therapists do anymore, cause it's not really that fun taking insurance. It's very time consuming and frustrating. But because I really I guess you know I came to this just, you know, wanting to make a difference, wanting to help people, wanting to help people that really need the help the most. You know they usually can't afford to pay out of pocket, so I take insurance and that makes it affordable for most people.
Speaker 2Well, that's a great sign that's in your heart.
Speaker 2You know you want to help people so much that if they're not going to get help because they can't afford it and you're willing to do the extra work for the insurance so they can get the help, that's a great sign. Let's talk about a success or two, not specifically persons, but in your years of doing this. There must be examples of people who have gone through your being well therapy which is a great name for your practice, I think, but being well therapy and you've known them for a while and you've gone through many sessions with them and you've seen them make progress and because they were making progress, you could take them to another level. You must have some really wonderful wins and I know there's probably more losses than wins in sickness there often is. But my point is how cool is that when you can really see that someone came through, got over the grief or the real marital problems or you know, somehow or other the stress was just taking them down. Is that wonderful in a practice like you have, being well?
Speaker 3Yeah, it is. It's the best thing ever to see people, you know, heal pain, get better, love themselves, be happier with their kids or in relationships. I feel great, I love it. It's, you know, part of what keeps me, you know, doing this, because it's not always easy, but it's really not. You know, it's kind of like a co-creation, right? So it's between me and the client, right? It's not like I'm doing the work, it's really like the client is doing the work and doing these things for themselves and I'm just kind of like a guide that's helping them get there.
Speaker 2Helping them get there. Perfect being well, being well therapy is what Heather Bellini does. She's been our guest here today on the Good Neighbor podcast. What a great mission that you have to help people and I cannot think of any better product or service that people need. Everybody can benefit from some therapy and you're a great neighbor there in Swarthmore, pa, here in the Southeast corner of Pennsylvania. Heather, you're a good neighbor. You're a good neighbor there in Swarthmore, pa, here in the southeast corner of Pennsylvania. Heather, you're a good neighbor. You're a good neighbor of business and we want to thank you for being a good neighbor of business here today on the Good Neighbor Podcast. Thanks for being our guest.
Speaker 3Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Bob Lacey. This is Michael Barkan inviting everyone to get on the Good Neighbor team. Nominate your favorite local business to be featured on an upcoming episode by going to gnpdelcocom or by calling Bob at 610-557-3745.