Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Bergen County
Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Ep. # 96 Healing Through Dialogue: A Therapist's Journey to Whole Family Wellness
What does healthy connection look like in today's fragmented world? Therapist Trisha Sanders reveals powerful insights from her 20-year journey helping families, couples, and teens rebuild meaningful relationships through a holistic lens.
Drawing from both professional expertise and personal experience, Trisha shares how her own marital separation and reconciliation transformed her approach to therapy. This vulnerable story illuminates the power of Imago Relationship Therapy – a structured dialogue process that creates safety and allows partners to be heard beyond their differences.
"Incompatibility is the grounds for a healthy relationship," Trisha explains, challenging the notion that differences are obstacles rather than opportunities for growth. Whether working with argumentative couples or parent-teen conflicts, she helps clients move from combative "tug-of-war" dynamics to authentic connection through empathic understanding.
The conversation explores how digital media affects adolescent therapy, with Trisha noting that teens themselves report virtual sessions "don't feel the same" as in-person work. She discusses the dangerous impact of social media on teenaged self-perception through "the looking glass self" – how young people's identities are shaped by what they believe others think of them.
Beyond traditional talk therapy, Trisha incorporates somatic approaches, polyvagal theory, and wellness practices like meditation and yoga. Her weekend retreats and workshops give couples concrete tools to communicate effectively and rediscover joy.
Ready to transform your most important relationships? Connect with Trisha through wholefamilynj.com, on Instagram @trish.sanders.lcsw or by calling 201-208-2792. Subscribe now to hear more conversations that bring our community together.
Wholefamily Therapy & Wellness
Trisha Sanders
10 Forest Ave Suite 305 Paramus, NJ 07652
(201) 723-1776
info@wholefamilynj.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Doug Drohan.
Speaker 2:Hey, good morning everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast brought to you by the Bergen Neighbors Media Group. I am your host, doug Drohan, and today we are joined by Trisha Sanders of Whole family Therapy and Wellness. Trisha is a licensed clinical social worker. If you know what those acronyms if you ever see LCSW after somebody's name, that's what that means Licensed clinical social worker. She's been in professional practice for nearly 20 years, although she looks like she's 20. So it's amazing to start off when you were just a kid. And Trisha works with young people, families, couples, in a variety of settings. Trisha, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you so very much for having me, Doug. It's great to be here.
Speaker 2:Thank you. So where are you, where's your practice based out of?
Speaker 3:So my practice is based out of Paramus and I am in the office in person one day a week currently, and then the rest of my hours are virtual hours.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay. So is that something that came about during COVID or have you always had? Technology has changed, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yes, it definitely arose out of COVID times, excuse me and then there has been a consistent demand, so I have maintained it as a part of my practice although there is nothing like in-person work in my opinion so that'll also always be a part of what I do.
Speaker 2:So I mentioned you know you're an LCSW and you've been in practice for nearly 20 years, so what like? Let's go back. Like you, at what point in your educational life did you decide you wanted to be a social worker and therapist?
Speaker 3:Gosh, to be honest, I really have always wanted to be a therapist. I worked, was a teenager myself. I went to therapy and had very positive experiences, and pretty early on I mean by the time I was probably 15 or 16 at least, if not before I knew that I wanted to be a therapist and work with kids, and so that is what I did. So that was my trajectory throughout college and then in graduate school, and that's what I did for the entire duration of my career, over 20 years. And then, about 10 years ago, I started to include couples in my work, because my husband and I actually got separated and the process that we used to reconnect was really, really transformative for me. So then I went back and studied additional work to work with couples.
Speaker 2:Nice and you know, a lot of times couples therapy is the next step to divorce. It's kind of like this, you know, mandatory thing people go through to say, oh yeah, well, we tried, it didn't work, because they probably already checked out and they're just checking the box to say, oh, I tried, you know, it's great to hear that it actually worked. So you said you, you know, initially your experience with it when you were a teenager and that's where you wanted to focus. But the name of your practice is whole family therapy and wellness, so I would imagine encompasses the whole family.
Speaker 3:Yes, we sort of take, I connect whole and family together, because I say we're all about connection and we really are about relationships in sort of micro ways and macro ways. I see us as global citizens, I see us as a family, you know, as humans, all connected and right down to. If your family is you and your cat, that also counts as family to me, and so I work with families of any shape and size and of course I think if you're a couple without children, without pets, I consider that family as well, of course, and so I work with any type of relationship.
Speaker 2:Okay, so do you work with? So if it's a family, everybody comes in together and you talk together as a family, or do you meet with people individually and then also in a group setting?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the way that I typically do family work is as a supplement to individual work. So oftentimes I'm working with a teenager or a child and then when I start to see that we can talk forever about a particular thing but not necessarily get a lot of movement outside of therapy, unless the parents are also aware of what's going on, so that they can work with us, and then I'll have supplemental family sessions and sometimes that's like a one-off session to discuss a particular conflict that has arisen, or it might be something more regular, like monthly, or you know something in a more regular schedule.
Speaker 2:And imagine, some parents are not, you know, aware of how their children feel or why they feel a certain way. So it must be, you know, eye-opening to them to hear oh wait, I didn't know this affected you so much, or the way that I talk to you has this kind of effect on you?
Speaker 3:Absolutely yes absolutely yeah, parents don't their intentions. As parents I mean, I'm a parent myself and I speak, you know, sort of in a general way about parents I really truly believe that our intentions are good, but what we do doesn't always land so well for our children, and it's important to know, and that's why a lot of what I do is supporting healthy communication.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a song which is my intentions are good, oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood. Yes, I think it was by the animals, but anyway, I digress. So you talk to, you know to, as part of therapy, is that is there?
Speaker 3:is that called talk therapy or is there other kinds of therapies? Yes, historically I've always done what would be considered talk therapy in the last several years and I'm a MAGO relationship therapist which is very much based in talk therapy, but it's also very strategy based and it operationalizes, kind of gives step by step information about how to communicate well. But that still I would say it falls largely under talk therapy and in the last several years I've been moving into not in place of, but in addition to talk therapy, using somatic therapy and body work and incorporating polyvagal theory, which has to do with our nervous system, because I think the mind-body connection is incredibly important. So working with how the body feels in the present moment is very connected to how we're reacting in the present moment and what we're saying. So I have definitely stretched into a more holistic approach.
Speaker 2:All right. So you threw out some big words there. So imago, yes, so imago. What is imago therapy?
Speaker 3:So imago the word is image, with an O at the end. Instead, it means image it's the Latin word for it, and it is a type of relationship therapy that focuses the theory. What image is is that, when you think about couples, that we each carry an image of familiar love, which is based on what our experience of love was like when we grew up, so the relationship we saw our parents have, or our aunts or uncles or grandparents, or the relationship we had with our early caregivers as well, and that that's an imprint on us that we carry with us and it guides us unconsciously in our adult relationships and in our relationships in general, and even as parents. It comes out as well.
Speaker 3:So that's what a MAGO is, that's what the word is, and the primary goal, I would say, of Imago therapy, or one of the primary goals, is to help people connect beyond their differences, and we do that using what's called the Imago intentional dialogue, which is a very structured way of speaking that has steps and you have different roles. Essentially it's a speaker and a listener, but we call them sender and receiver, and we help people in relationship. I use this with families, I use this with couples always as well, and it really just gives space for two different people to be heard and seen and connect, even when they don't agree. So that's really kind of a Mago in a nutshell.
Speaker 2:So you know you could say you have these unconscious images of familiar love that were kind of ingrained in you through your experiences growing up in your family. But you know there was a very famous book in the 90s Maybe it came out before that called Men Are From Mars, women Are From Venus, which also talked about how we are inherently different in a lot of the ways we've grown up as a man or a woman and that we might see things differently just because of our sex and maybe the way we're expected to behave. So is that something that you could also you know you're talking about how I was or somebody was raised as a, you know, through their family but could also just being a man and a woman have a place in your Imago therapy?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and I think that there's sort of the nurture versus nature kind of thing, and what we come into the world with biologically versus what we're socialized, and so society is one of our early caregivers.
Speaker 3:You know it imprints on us to a significant degree. So there is absolutely space to explore all of that and no matter how different you know we are, there's possibility to connect. We actually say in Imago that incompatibility is the grounds for a healthy relationship, because it's the conflicts that come up through difference. And so, whether you look at that through sort of a very binary lens of man versus woman or any different characteristics, you know like a common relationship characteristic is one person tends to run early and one person tends to run late, that's not separated by binary gender, but there's a lot of opposing forces that show up in relationship a lot of the time.
Speaker 2:I mean you use the word versus men, versus women, which sounds combative. But I would imagine, for this to work, each person in this group needs to be empathetic, right? They want to, or have to, come in with this empathy, that they're willing to understand the other person's feelings and take that into account. And it's got to be both ways. It can't just be you know what about my feelings, okay, but what about my feelings? It can't just be you know what about my feelings, okay, but what about my feelings? Right?
Speaker 2:So I'd imagine when, like when, experience you had with your husband, you both came into it with a deep seated love and maybe things weren't working out, but you were willing to see and be empathetic to each other's feelings and understand, maybe, why they feel this way. But when it doesn't work the one I refer to, when people, one or the other feels like all right, let's go to therapy, just because I want to say I tried, but I really don't want to do this anymore it's not going to work out, because they're not willing to imagine how the other person's upbringing affects how they react to the way you talk to them or how they talk to you. Is that correct?
Speaker 3:It is, I would say, mostly correct. We're born with empathy as children, but we maintain it or not based on how much empathy we continue to receive and how much hurt we have in relationship. And so oftentimes, by the time someone gets into my office, there is an immense amount of hurt that they've experienced in relationship with which really can dampen their ability to have empathy for somebody else. And that does. I realized actually, when you said I said versus, I said oh, that that did seem very combative, which is very much not how I, how I view relationship at all. I view it very cooperatively, but people do come in, oftentimes on their either side, you know, and it's it's me versus you, and we really can work to shift that to, to we call it like I-thou relationship, or focusing on the space between, and be able to, and the dialogue itself.
Speaker 3:The Imago dialogue serves to create safety and allow people to be heard, which can start to lower defenses and reactivity so that healthy communication and connection can occur. Now to the point. If people are not willing to do that, then there's going to be a pretty significant barrier to therapy. My husband actually said when we first entered couples therapy after we went while we were still separated. I convinced him to come to an Imago therapist actually, and he agreed eventually. He described himself as having two feet out the door of the relationship, but I was calling loud enough that he was turning back and so there wasn't a whole bunch of you know he.
Speaker 3:he wasn't totally like, okay, this is going to work, but he had just enough hope even if he didn't know why that maybe it could work. So I don't think you need to be at a place where you're fully empathic and really ready to hear your partner's story, because that's something that we work on and it's pretty common to not come into their couples therapy in that place of openness. We we work very directly on that, but there does have to be a little bit of hope, a little bit of curiosity, like can this be different? Is it possible for things to change?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think a lot of you know younger couples too. Um, you know, there was a very famous play. I don't know when it was written and performed, but it was called I love you, you're perfect. Now change, now change, yes. And I think, uh, yeah, I don't, I don't know when it was written and performed, but it was called I love you, you're perfect.
Speaker 2:Now change and I think, yeah, I don't know, I don't know when that came out, but it was. You know it's, it's, it's apropos to a lot of experiences, because you know someone or the other, or both, are trying to change the person. Because they don't you know. Why are you this way? Why don't you just do this? You know I love that, you're perfect. Now change.
Speaker 2:And I guess the success of of relationships and it's not just you know, I guess you could say it's not just couples, right, it could be how parents raise and communicate with their kid, because I think we all, as parent, have this ideal future for our kid and you know we want you to be this and that and the other thing, but maybe that's just not how they're wired or whatever, and you have to accept that. You know I love you, You're perfect. Now change it. Maybe you can't change them, Even though, as a parent, you feel your role is to mold and shape your, your child. But I guess at some point, maybe when they're teenagers or whatever, you realize, okay, I can't change everything about them, I can't mold everything. I created a base, but they go in a direction that I don't have control of. Is that something you find parents grapple with and yeah, sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was laughing, because actually I can't give you the date, but I would guess that that show came out around 2005. So my husband and I went to go see it in our early days of dating. And when I walked out, I remember saying, oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:that resonated so deeply for me and I was not anywhere near excuse me, near couples becoming a couples therapist at that time and he was like, oh really, you think so? Like, all right, I didn't get so much out of it, so I have a memory of that show. But yes, I definitely think that that's something that parents grapple with, certainly when they're parents of teenagers phase of exploration as being in the terrible twos, and really early on parents start to desire a certain behavior from their child, and that's from a place of love. You know. We want them to be able to function in society and be successful adults.
Speaker 3:So it's not a negative place that it's coming from, but that push for a certain type of behavior. And then it could also be, you know, some parents want their children to participate in a certain activity or pursue a certain line of work, so it can expand beyond behavior. But really our job as parents and as partners is to be able to honor and appreciate who this other being is, who's actually separate and different than us. And of course, as a parent, we want to help children be able to understand rules and norms and limits. But it's not a situation of us trying to make anybody else who we want them to be, because negative things will result. Whether you're a parent or a partner, you won't get to the place where you're hoping to get to you know there's this proverbial or figurative tug of war.
Speaker 2:You know you're each pulling at the rope in different directions, trying to pull the other person over to you, and I don't have a teenage son yet, he's 11. But you know, I have 14 nieces and nephews, and you know we've seen it that. You know there've I have 14 nieces and nephews, and you know we've seen it that. Um, you know there is this tug of war between parents and teens and we have to remember, I guess, as adults, that their brains are still forming and I don't think they're fully warm, and you could speak to this better than I can like until they're in their mid twenties, which, you know, is why you know, making decisions when you're in your teenage years probably needs a little bit of guidance, and God knows I did a lot of stupid things when I was in college and things like that, and so I guess there's a. What you're getting at is that you know if your whole family therapy is understanding each person individually.
Speaker 2:But then there's a famous quote from Stephen Covey you know seven habits of highly effective people where he said talking to somebody, you can't talk yourself out of a habit you worked yourself into, or maybe not. But you know, just talking yourself you've built up something for years and years and years and now just talking about it is not going to solve it. You know, you just can't snap your finger, you just can't talk your way out of something that you literally put yourself into. That took years. Now it's sort of like going to the gym. If you haven't been working out for 15 years and now all of a sudden you go to the gym and you like you expect immediate results, well, it's not going to happen because you, you had a lifestyle that puts you in this position. Now you're going to have to lifestyle your way out of it. You just can't talk yourself out of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so all right, so we, so you are, you, um, your practices, uh, yourself, or you have other clinicians in your practice, or I am currently a solo practitioner but planning to expand um my group this year and I also run couples workshops and I do that with a partner.
Speaker 2:Nice, Nice. So what are the talk to me about your workshops? You have workshops and retreats.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, so I run, I co facilitate with my partner, Emily Robbins Sorry about that Getting the love you want workshops and retreats. So the difference between a workshop and a retreat is simply the amenities that are included. The work, the base workshop, is the same. So we have workshops that run in Bergen County and in New York City where we help couples learn the Imago Dialogue so they learn this strategy for communication and also how to connect.
Speaker 3:Through that experience and very much what you're talking about. A lot of it is unconscious factors and a lot of it is what we've learned growing up, how we've learned to be in relationship, and so it is a process. But even in one weekend, how we connect the past to your present behavior and we talk about the brain and the impact and how our brain and our nervous system can kind of get in the way of a healthy relationship. Because if we're fighting our partner, if we feel attacked which we can easily feel a lot of the time in relationship we fight back. So we touch on some pretty significant points and in one weekend my own experience I attended my first getting the love you want workshop when my husband and I were separated, and it literally changed my life, so I've known for 10 years that I wanted to be able to offer these in the world, and so the excuse me, let me take a quick sip of water here.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and we could talk like a workshop and a retreat.
Speaker 3:Right, and so the retreat is the same getting the love you want. Material that helped learn a couple uh, help give tools, I'm sorry. We help give couples tools to communicate and connect. Learn to have fun again, because relationships are in fact supposed to be fun. We don't always know that we're in high conflict relationships, and then retreats include lodging and other amenities, like yoga classes or dance classes, things like that, and so we have retreats in the cat skills. We actually have a brand new retreat for expectant parents that we're calling the getting the love you want baby moon coming up in, uh, in buffalo, yeah, the beautiful place right out, right near niagara falls, uh, so we, we do the.
Speaker 3:we have these, uh, transformative weekend experiences because, as much as I am, of course, a big supporter of couples, therapy change like to your point takes time, a lot of the time, because we've been doing things in an unhelpful way for many, many, many years, and so the weekend experience is a great supplement to therapy or sometimes, depending on where a couple is at, it's a great standalone transformation weekend because you get all this information and some pretty concrete ways that you we call it your roadmap to creating the relationship of your dreams. You walk out with kind of a customized plan for you and your partner.
Speaker 2:That's great. Now you mentioned, you know, aside from the talk therapy, there's yoga and meditation. So the other part, the name of your business, is therapy and wellness. So what are? Where does the wellness come in Like? What are the wellness services that you offer?
Speaker 3:Before the pandemic we had some somatic, some Reiki practitioners and some Semi practitioners, which are both no touch energy healing. We had yoga classes. We had some art things happening for kids as well. The pandemic shifted things a little bit, so we're in the process of regrowing and again the yoga practices, meditation practices and somatic work, which is using the body, is incorporated into my sessions. We don't have separate yoga classes at the moment, although once, once we expand, we definitely will reincorporate those because they're really important in order to stay attuned to your authentic self and also self-regulate.
Speaker 2:Okay, nice. And then lastly well, not lastly, but some of the therapy services. You focus on something called adolescent therapy and I know, you know, there's been a lot of talk in the last 20 years less than you know, maybe the last 10 years of understanding the effects of social media on teens. I always say thank God I didn't have that when I was growing up. There weren't iPhones, there wasn't social media, and I think as parents, we're a little bit more educated and aware of the dangers of having a phone and what social media can do. And then also there was, as we talked about with COVID. That was a really tough time for high school students and maybe even early college students because of everything that was going on. Some kids don't work well remotely and other kids did fine, but so what have you? How has your adolescent therapy evolved over the years and what are you seeing going forward?
Speaker 3:Gosh, that's a big question.
Speaker 3:It's a hot topic these days.
Speaker 3:I think that social media and all that has had a really significant impact on our kids and I think that it was really interesting during the pandemic because, while a lot of teenagers have a lot of familiarity with the online world and it was it was a pretty easy transition for them.
Speaker 3:I think the impact of therapy or the maybe I don't know about the impact, I don't have data on that but the experience of therapy in the moment I can feel the difference that when people and I had and I had from like late, like later um childhood, like eight, ten years old, into teenagers, tell me in the pandemic like therapy doesn't feel the same anymore, like it's not, it's not fun, and not that therapy is always fun, but for kids it can be. You know, we want it to be a pleasant experience, but, uh, I think that the, the level of connection really changed and I try to see young people in the office whenever possible because of that, even though it's very convenient and it still works, I think that therapy is still better virtually than not being in therapy, but there's just a level of disconnection that you get virtually and there's also a lot more distraction. You know, I can tell when somebody is playing a video game.
Speaker 3:You know during their session or watching some other thing or paying attention to their phone. So when? You're in the therapy room. It's a very different, much more connected experience of therapy. So there's a lot more that I could say on the impact of the digital world, and it's not all bad, but it is something that we have to be able to address.
Speaker 2:So I'll admit I used to write songs and poetry and I wrote something called Years of Introspection and I wrote this in my 20s and the chorus goes these are my years of introspection, these are my days of the looking glass self, these are my hours of introspection, hoping I could be somebody else. And you think about, the looking glass self is our perception. Our self-image is shaped by how we perceive other people see us. And again I say thank God they didn't have social media and phones with cameras back when I was growing up, because a lot of you know my introspection and my days of looking glass up was really worrying more about how people viewed me.
Speaker 2:And I think when you get older you start not to give a crap and you're more self-confident and some people reach that a lot earlier in their lives than others. So I think you know that whole that term looking glass self is impacted so greatly by social media and by iPhones and the ability to post things. And you know you have to be really strong and you know, certainly you know I know I wasn't when I was a teen and in my early twenties you're very affected by how you think other people see you and it could be devastating, I'm sure, and it's I'm sure it's tough to you know if you're in that sense of breaking out of that at that age.
Speaker 3:Yes, I think it's a very, very difficult thing and I'm not. I think it's just sort of being human. I'm not even sure that there's a strength that you can steel yourself against being able to resist the impact of what you're talking about. And in Imago therapy, one of our greatest tools and it's part of the dialogue is mirroring and we say you're mirrored into existence and it's exactly what the dialogue is mirroring and we say you're mirrored into existence and it's exactly what you're describing, that we know we exist and we know who we are because of what others reflect back to us and in our early life, that's our caregivers and the people around us, even older siblings perhaps and we use the healing process of using the dialogue to be mirrored accurately and that's part of the healing and growth that exists.
Speaker 3:And for teens today, with what's being mirrored back to them, you know, or what they're seeing. I mean even just being always on an iPhone and being able to see yourself and always have you know this little like literal mirror. You're always seeing what you look like and you're always fixing your hair or you know, fixing your makeup, and then you're, in addition to getting all this information about what you're supposed to look like through all of these social media influencers and you know what is popular. It's, like I said, I don't know that. It's an amount of strength. I think that we have to support our kids in really not being exposed to it.
Speaker 3:It's a hard shift.
Speaker 1:It's a real hard shift at this point.
Speaker 3:But I think we do have to really think as communities of how to support our kids because, like I said, I'm not sure that it's realistic for anybody, for any teenager, to be able to manage through it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. So, Trisha, how do people reach you? How would they if they wanted to talk to you?
Speaker 3:about booking some therapy. What's the best way to contact you? Yeah, so my website is wholefamilynj. com and you can find my workshops there. You can contact me for therapy or anything like that, and if you're interested in hearing more about relationships and communication and how to grow through the hardships that often occur in relationships, I also have a podcast called when Depression is in your Bed, which focuses specifically on how depression can impact couples and individuals in relationship, but I do think that what I talk about is very widely applicable to couples in conflict or just couples who want to feel better and get to a different place in their lives together.
Speaker 2:That's great, very cool, and the phone number to reach you is 201-208-2792.
Speaker 3:Yes, you can reach me there, and also you can find me on Instagram @ Trisha SandersLCSW. That's great Talking about social media, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, listen, as a business, you have to be there, right. You have to be where your customers can find you. So, Trisha, this was great. I know we could talk a long time. I was going off on different things and you know we'll talk offline about that, but I want to thank you for joining the show today and this was great. And just bear with us for a few seconds as Chuck takes us out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you so much. It was great to be here.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbergen. com. That's gnpbergen. com, or call 201-298-8325.