Good Neighbor Podcast: TN-WNC-SWVA
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Good Neighbor Podcast: TN-WNC-SWVA
EP# 283: Road Trips, Bluegrass, and Psychology: Meet Dr. Heather the Smiling Realist
What makes Dr. Heather Ulrich a good neighbor?
What does it really take to understand yourself? Dr. Heather Ulrich, licensed psychologist and self-proclaimed "realist who smiles," guides us through this profound question in our latest conversation.
With over two decades of experience helping people navigate life's complexities, Dr. Ulrich shares her refreshingly straightforward approach to psychology. "My goal is to help people feel seen and understood," she explains, "because once people are able to be self-aware and understand themselves, we can better go out and navigate the world." This simple yet powerful philosophy forms the foundation of her work with clients ranging from six-year-olds to septuagenarians.
Dr. Ulrich shatters common misconceptions about psychologists with humor and clarity. No, she's not analyzing you unless you're paying her, and despite her expertise in human behavior, she doesn't claim psychic abilities. Beyond her professional identity, we discover a multifaceted individual who balances motherhood to teenage daughters and a toddler stepchild with her love for spontaneous road trips (sometimes literally sleeping in her Subaru) and bluegrass music.
Perhaps most inspiring is Dr. Ulrich's candid sharing of her own non-linear path to becoming a psychologist. Despite knowing her calling from a young age, she faced numerous rejections and setbacks. "Just because you feel like the path isn't going the way you thought doesn't mean you're not meant to do what you're supposed to do," she reflects, embodying the perseverance she now helps foster in others. Her Buddhist-inspired approach emphasizes that meaningful change must begin within ourselves—creating our own "instruction manual" for navigating the world more effectively.
Discover how self-awareness can transform your life by connecting with Dr. Ulrich through her website, social media platforms, or Substack publication "The Realist Who Smiles." Ready to better understand yourself and create a more conscious, thoughtful life? This conversation is your first step.
To learn more about Dr. Heather Ulrich go to:
Heather Ulrich, PH.D.
828-668-5332
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Skip Monty.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. So we are very excited today. I'm excited today to have a very special guest in our studios for the first time, and all excited to learn all about what they do. And I'm sure you will be too, because today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, dr Heather Ulrich, phd. And Heather, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you, skip, it's good to be here.
Speaker 2:Well, we're thrilled to have you and, like I said, all excited to learn all about you and what you do. So if you don't mind, why don't you kick us off by telling us about your business?
Speaker 3:Sure. So I'm a licensed psychologist. I'm actually licensed in a couple of states. I'm licensed in North Carolina as well as Delaware and Maryland, because that's actually where I grew up. So I like to provide services back in my home area. So I'm a licensed psychologist. I'm a parenting coach and a life coach. I'm a writer on Substack. I'm also a trainer who does some online trainings through Mayhex, some of our local continuing ed places, and I used to say I'm a self-proclaimed realist who smiles.
Speaker 3:That's kind of my motto for life is I'm a realist who chooses to smile. And overall my goal is to help people, whether it's parents, whether it's co-parents who are divorcing and separating, whether it's adults, kids, just individuals who are seeking to better their lives. My goal is to help people feel seen and understood. Through my treatment I try to help them feel seen and understood so they can better understand themselves.
Speaker 3:Because once people are able to be self-aware and understand themselves, we can better go out and navigate the world, the complex world that we're in. Once we have that self-awareness and self-understanding, we can then go out and be more conscious and thoughtful as we navigate the world and can then better enjoy our lives and get the most out of our life. So I work a lot again with adults. I work a lot with kids. I work a lot with co-parents actually divorcing and separating families, helping them prioritize their kids as they go through that process. But my main goal is helping people become more self-aware so they can live a conscious and thoughtful life, be more aware in their actions and get what they actually want to out of their life, at whatever point they are in it, whether they're six or whether they're 70, wherever they are at their stage in life.
Speaker 2:Very cool, very cool. A realist who smiles. I like that.
Speaker 3:That is what my writing on Substack is called as well A realist who smiles.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it. Well, what are some myths or misconceptions in in what you do, heather?
Speaker 3:Absolutely the ones. The two I get the most often is um, the two I commonly get. One is that you're always analyzing me. So anytime anybody meets me and I find out what I do, the first thing I get is oh no, you're analyzing me. And my response to that always is are you paying me? That's my first joke back Are you paying me?
Speaker 3:We don't analyze psychologists, don't analyze people out in our daily lives. I do say I'm always understanding things. My mind never shuts off, so I always like to understand the world around me, but we're not always analyzing people. I don't like to break people down into their parts, so that's not true. The other thing that people say is that we get in and we mess up people's minds, that we're mind readers, that we can do that and psychologists are not mind readers. We're trained in understanding human behavior. We're trained in lots of therapy and techniques to help you better understand yourselves, but we're not psychics, we're not mind readers. I am trained to predict human behavior by understanding human behavior, but we're not mind readers and we are not analyzing human behavior every step of the way. I do like just to be a normal human and go out and exist in the world as well. But sometimes people are afraid to talk to me when they meet me out in the world, when they find out what I do.
Speaker 2:That's funny. That's why you got me thinking is she analyzing me as we talk?
Speaker 3:I promise I'm not.
Speaker 2:And I'm not paying you, so yeah, Exactly, that's exactly right, I'm more analyzing what I'm saying, to make sure I'm saying it the right way. There you go, there you go. Well outside of work, dr Heather, what do you like to do for fun? Well, so outside of work.
Speaker 3:Dr Heather, what do you like to do for fun? Well, I'm a mom, I have two teenage daughters and I'm a stepmom to a toddler, so I love spending time with my kids. So whenever I can, I'm with my kids. I love to see music, so I see music as much as I can and I love to travel. I love to road trip and I actually this is going to sound funny, but I we will get in our car and we will travel and we will pull over wherever we want and we will sleep roadside. I love the freedom of it. I love the being in the moment, the no planning, the no structure. We are able to just stop and just be wherever we want to be. So whenever I can, I have the freedom. We will get in the car and drive and just do whatever the road takes us. It's that realist who smiles enables me to just be in the moment, not plan, not structure. Make the most out of my time. That is one of my passions.
Speaker 3:I hope to live in my car someday. I know that sounds funny, but someday when my kids are grown. I would love to live out of my car.
Speaker 2:You need to have an RV. What kind of car do you have?
Speaker 3:That's the goal. It's a Subaru.
Speaker 2:It's a Subaru camp, my brother and I camping and he would. He had an old 1962 pickup and he put a mattress in the back of it and that my brother and I would sleep on and then he would sleep in the bed of the truck below the mattress. Anyway, it was some of my best memories as a kid, you know simplicity.
Speaker 3:That's exactly right. You don't need much to be happy. That's the realist who smiles. You don't need much to be happy. Actually, sometimes less is I've learned that over time.
Speaker 2:Amen. And what kind of music? You said you like to listen to music.
Speaker 3:I do. I actually. I like a lot of bluegrass jam, band music, fish. I don't know if you know Fish. Fish is actually one of my favorite bands. I've seen them probably more than 50 times, I see them quite a bit.
Speaker 2:Fish with a ph it's phis. Are you a grateful dead fan? I am a grateful dead fan.
Speaker 3:Yes, I'm, a fish is in that realm right it is yes, yeah, and I love bluegrass anything, bluegrass anything with a banjo, I love wow, love bluegrass.
Speaker 2:I'm a guitar player myself, so okay, I wish I was.
Speaker 3:I enjoy and I appreciate it, but I can't play oh you, you can, you can if you tell yourself you can, you can, I appreciate that confidence I'll take that. I like it. You can, you can. If you tell yourself you can, you can. I appreciate that confidence.
Speaker 2:I'll take that. I like it Absolutely. You can do anything you put your mind to. My dad always told me Very cool, very cool. Well, let's switch gears. Can you describe a hardship or a life challenge that you've overcome and how it made you stronger in the end when you got to the other side?
Speaker 3:Absolutely One of the ones I actually talk with my clients about a lot, because one of the things I say to my clients all the time is there's no one right way to do anything.
Speaker 3:I often say there's wrong ways to do things, but there's no one right way to do things. And the example I always give is actually my path to becoming a doctor. I knew that I wanted to be a psychologist from high school, when I was very young. I was one of those lucky people that knew what I wanted to do from a young age and in my mind, you went to high school, you went to college and then you went to a doctorate program. That was the path you took.
Speaker 3:Well, it wasn't that easy for me. I went to an undergraduate, got a full ride as an undergraduate and then applied to doctorate programs, got into no doctorate programs, had to recalibrate, had to go to master's programs first and then applied to doctorate programs. So my path was a little bit hairy getting there. I had to work really hard to get there. Obviously, I eventually did get there, but it was very hard for me to get there. There's lots of different paths I had to take. I had to shuffle around my plans quite a bit, but I still got there. However, had I gotten stuck on the path that you're supposed to take, what the books told me to take, my confidence might have gotten shook and I might have thought I can't be a doctor. This wasn't for me, I wasn't supposed to do this, and I might have stopped and taken a different path. Thankfully I didn't. Thankfully I persevered. I didn't let my confidence get shook. I said no, I'm meant to do this anyway. It doesn't mean I'm not good enough that I didn't get into the PhD programs right out of my undergraduate degree and I pushed through. I got very sick in graduate school. I was bedridden for a while. All kinds of things happened during my course to become a doctor, but I pushed through anyway and I'm very lucky.
Speaker 3:I did because I love my job. I'm pretty successful at it. I have a private practice. I work completely remotely, so I can travel from my car. I can work at the beach, I can work from any state. I can work where I want to, how I had it set up.
Speaker 3:So I talk to my clients a lot, especially my high schoolers, my college students, when they get really down about not being able to get where they're wanting to go, or feeling like their career path is getting shorted out. About my journey and about how there's not one right way to do anything. And just because you feel like the path that you had is not going the way you thought, it doesn't mean you're not meant to do what you're supposed to do and to keep going, because there was times when I really thought that I was not possibly going to have my dream come true of being a doctor, but I just had to redirect and keep persevering and keep going, and it was quite hard at times. It was quite hard at times, so it took a little bit longer than I thought, but I'm glad I didn't give up.
Speaker 2:I'm very glad I didn't give up and you're here and I'm here.
Speaker 3:Exactly, I'm here.
Speaker 2:How long have you been here?
Speaker 3:Many decades later, but I'm here.
Speaker 2:How long have you been? Has your practice been in existence?
Speaker 3:Over 20 years now. Over 20 years now, wow, yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow. Well, congratulations on that. That's incredible. You don't look old enough to have had a practice for 20 years.
Speaker 3:I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Thank you, it's all that sleeping in cars.
Speaker 2:It's so good for you, that's exactly right, that's all the smiling.
Speaker 3:All the smiling, yeah, smile. One of my modesty, smile, and if you don't feel like it, smiling will make your brain feel happier.
Speaker 2:Smile anyway, smile anyway. And my mom?
Speaker 3:always told me to moisturize. The best advice my mom ever gave me was to moisturize, so I'll give that advice as well.
Speaker 2:Well, it worked. It obviously worked.
Speaker 3:So if you could think of one thing that you'd like our listeners to remember about you, dr Heather, and about your practice. What would that be? Again, I think it's going to be. I mean, one of the biggest things about my practice and what I work with is I'm very Buddhist inspired. That's a lot of what I talk about.
Speaker 3:Is that self-awareness, about really looking inside of yourself. Is that if we want to help other people, if we want to make the world a better place which a lot of us do, a lot of us try to help other people, we want to make the world a better place. We're trying to go out and serve other people is it's got to start with ourselves. So a lot of the work I do, my practice, all the different areas I work with from my writing, so my co-parenting, everything I do is really trying to help people become more self-aware that it all starts within ourselves. So anybody that's working with me or wants to come, you know, come to my practice.
Speaker 3:I really try to help you become a more self-aware individual, a more thoughtful and more conscious individual. So I mean that's if you look at my Facebook page, from my website to anywhere, anybody that's coming to me is because you want to grow, you want to learn more about yourself. We're not going to blame everything on your mom or your dad, but we are going to try to help you have I call it an instruction manual for yourself. We're going to try to help you learn more about who you are and why you operate the way you do. That way, you can figure out how to operate in the world that you're in, whatever environment you're in. We're going to figure out the instruction manual for yourself so you can figure out how to operate in the environment that you're in.
Speaker 3:That's what I try to offer people is. It all starts within ourselves. That's why I love my job. The job I do is help me learn more about myself. My clients help me grow. Every time I sit with someone, they help me learn more about myself as well. It's a blessing to Awesome, awesome.
Speaker 2:Very good thing to remember. So, for those that are interested in what you do and potentially would like to talk to you, how can they learn more?
Speaker 3:You can find me. I have a website, DrHeatherAllrickcom. You can find me on Instagram under my name. You can find me on Facebook. You can find me on TikTok. You can find me on Substack all under my name Dr Heather Allrick. Dr Heather Alrick. I have a publication on Substack called the Realist who Smiles, so you can find me. I publish pretty regularly on there. I do trainings through Mayhek, which is based out of Asheville, North Carolina, so I have some trainings coming up in September that anybody can attend that are focused on their child-focused trainings for any practitioners that work with kids. So I'm out there. You can find me in many different avenues. I try to put myself out there so people can reach me for free.
Speaker 3:You can find out if you want to hear from me. There's lots of ways to get me without having to pay.
Speaker 2:Very good, very good, all right. Well, thank you so much. And, dr Heather, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to spend some time with us and our listeners and telling us all about you and what you do, and it's very unique and we appreciate your contribution to to life as smiling, as a smiling realist. We appreciate that and wish you and your family and your practice all the best moving forward.
Speaker 3:I appreciate that. Thank you very much. It was nice meeting you.
Speaker 2:Thank, nice meeting you and hopefully we can have you back sometime.
Speaker 3:Sounds good. Thank you, all right.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnptry-citiescom. That's gnptry-citiescom, or call 423-7-3.