In this week’s episode, Alyssa sits down with Certified Eating Disorder Specialist, Dr. Maria Paredes, for a poignant conversation about the role of social (in)justice in the development of eating disorders.

Learn more about the incredible work Dr. Maria Paredes is doing:

Instagram: @with_this_body

threebirdscounseling.com 

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Transcript:

Alyssa Scolari [00:23]:

Hey, everybody. What’s up? Welcome to Light After Trauma, episode number, I have no idea at this point. So I know that for the last couple episodes, or really since the start of the podcast, I have been giving all of the episodes a number in the show, and I just wanted to let you all know, I am no longer going to be doing that. I am not a numbers girl. I am not the girl you want to come to, to ask for numbers. And at this point, I’ve lost count. So I’m going to nix the numbers. If you have a question about the numbers, you’ll be able to see it in the show notes and on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen but during the episode itself, I’m over giving it numbers because I have no clue. It could be 7, it could be 12, but I am so pumped for today’s episode.

I have somebody coming on, who I greatly admire. Dr. Maria Parades is a licensed clinical mental health counselor, clinical supervisor, certified eating disorder specialist, and approved IAEDP supervisor and owner of Three Birds Counseling & Clinical Supervision in Greensboro, North Carolina, a practice that provides services from trauma-informed, fat positive, sex positive, LGBTQIA affirming, faith affirming, and social justice affirming lens. She helps individuals of all gender identities make peace with food and their bodies and live fuller lives, free from negative thinking, fear of food and body hate. She believes all bodies have worth, and that all individuals deserve to enjoy food, move in ways that feel joyful, treat their bodies with kindness and gentleness, and experience authentic connection with themselves and others. Maria recognizes that this healing must occur within the individual therapeutic relationship, as well as within the larger cultural environment and thus embraces the role of advocacy and activism.

She also works with individuals experiencing anxiety, trauma, infertility, pregnancy loss, and PCOS. Maria teaches courses in UNCG’s counseling department and provides clinical supervision and training to new professionals working towards their licensure, as therapists or dieticians. Maria is mom to three young girls and hopes that they will grow up to experience the wonder and power of all their bodies have to offer, without believing that they must shrink themselves.

So, hi, Maria, how are you?

Maria Paredes [03:14]:

I’m good. Thanks for having me, Alyssa.

Alyssa Scolari [03:17]:

Thank you so much for being here. I am really excited. Is it raining down where you guys are like, have you got the hurricane?

Maria Paredes [03:26]:

It’s like overcast, a little sprinkly, but not really raining yet. Yeah.

Alyssa Scolari [03:32]:

It is pouring here so if you all hear rain in the background, hopefully it’s soothing for you. Not sure if we’ll be able to edit that out, but it is pouring here. I guess these are the remnants of, is it Hurricane Laura? Is that what hurricane we’re at?

Maria Paredes [03:51]:

Yeah.

Alyssa Scolari [03:52]:

Yeah. So let’s get right into it. Can you talk a little bit more about the work that you do? I am a huge fan.

Maria Paredes [04:02]:

Oh, you’re so sweet. Thank you. So I’m a therapist down in Greensboro, North Carolina, and I own a private practice called Three Birds Counseling & Clinical Supervision, and we provide specialized outpatient treatment for eating disorders, body image, anxiety, depression, infertility, pregnancy loss, and trauma, and we do a bunch around hardship evaluations, immigration hardship evaluations, and I’ve got, I think it’s now six or seven of us now, the practice and I really enjoy it. And then on the side I also teach at a local university. I teach counseling classes to grad students and yeah, that’s what I do.

Alyssa Scolari [04:49]:

Holy smokes. That’s a big practice and you’ve got a lot on your plate.

Maria Paredes [04:54]:

Oh, well, thank you. I mean, the people that I cannot say enough about the folks who work with me and they’re awesome, and so I provide some of them supervision, but they’re all pretty competent on their own. So it’s neat. It doesn’t all fall on me, which is lovely. I love the team that we have.

Alyssa Scolari [05:16]:

Yeah, that’s great because I mean, you have all those people under you. You’re the founder of Three Birds Counseling. So you are the lead therapist, the owner.

Maria Paredes [05:27]:

I am, but you know when I created it, it’s funny ’cause I had been toying, I’ve kind of hopped around in my career a little bit and some of that’s been around like motherhood and just life and interests. And I had toyed with going into private practice for years and years and it was like studying it and trying to figure out like what’s the right way to do it and what’s the best way to do it, all in quotes. And I had a lot of fear about being able to do it, will I be able to have a caseload, like I think a lot of imposter syndrome kind fears. And I also knew that in doing it, I wanted to try and do something a little bit different. I wanted to try and embody some feminist approaches to creating it and to having it be something where the people working at the practice, that we were doing something a little bit different and in trying to have, I didn’t want them to just be people who were working for me and that they were barely scraping by.

I wanted to really help mentor them and help them grow into their own, grow their own voice, grow what they’re doing, have them be able to make enough that, I’m sure, you know in mental health, it can be sometimes hard to make enough to get by [inaudible 00:06:38] so I’m really proud of what we were building together. And I emphasize that like we’re building together, ’cause I feel like they’re all part of the team and that we’re working together and in some really neat ways.

Alyssa Scolari [06:50]:

Right, you brought people along that work with you, not necessarily for you. I mean, technically they work for you, but.

Maria Paredes [06:57]:

They work for me, but they’re part of decisions. They’re part of shaping it and I want them to be, I want them to give feedback. I want them to help shape what we’re doing, and there are certain things, structurally, that do end up coming to me right, in terms of decisions, but I really am intentional about trying to have them be part of what we’re doing and how we’re offering it to the community.

Alyssa Scolari [07:21]:

That’s awesome. And is everybody in your practice, a certified eating disorder specialist because you are, correct?

Maria Paredes [07:30]:

I am. No, not everyone is. Everyone specializes in eating disorders and I have full confidence in, we have a new intern and so she’s new and training and learning, but everyone else, I have full confidence in them and the work that they do and giving them any client. They all do a ton with eating disorder. So even though they may not have the certification, they’re very competent. Lindsey Umstead, who’s EverBloomingBody on Instagram, she has worked at two other residential eating disorder facilities and has also worked in substance abuse. She’s done a ton. Melissa Carmona has been doing a ton with eating disorders for a long time. She also does a lot in making it more accessible for Latinx populations. Meredith Nisbet works at another eating disorder treatment facility full-time and then sort of moonlights for us on the side and she will be getting her certified eating disorder specialist credential. So, and there’s others, I mean, no, we’re not all certified, but you know.

Alyssa Scolari [08:31]:

But you all specialize in eating disorders.

Maria Paredes [08:34]:

[inaudible 00:08:34] disorders, and everyone is also trauma informed. Everyone is trained in a specific trauma protocol, at least one. So EMDR, brainspotting, TF-CBT, DBT, [inaudible 00:08:45].

Alyssa Scolari [08:44]:

Where does the passion for eating disorders come from? So that’s something that I specialize in as well. I’m really, really passionate about it. And guys, I’m going to link her Instagram. It’s with_this_body, right, on Instagram? If you don’t follow her already, I tell all my patients to follow you, by the way, because I work with adolescents and with adolescents, so much of their world is social media. So [inaudible 00:09:17] come to me with eating disordered behaviors, one of the first things I say is, “Well, who are you following on social media?” And you are at the top of my list of people to follow because the things, the content that you create is so helpful, and it’s something everybody needs to see. So I will definitely link her Instagram handle in the show notes and on the Facebook page, but go follow her, with_this_body. And you just have a huge, huge passion for eating disorders. It’s very clear. So can you talk about where that comes from?

Maria Paredes [09:57]:

Sure. Yeah. And it’s, and it’s with underscore this underscore body, ’cause I think there is someone else who has with this body, without the underscores.

Alyssa Scolari [10:05]:

Oh. Thank you.

Maria Paredes [10:07]:

I mean, it’s so funny these like there’s multiple pages out there handles sometimes. So I, I’m pretty open about being in recovery myself, and I talk about that with intention and purpose in de-stigmatizing, I believe very strongly that it’s important to de-stigmatize mental health and recovery and treatment. And so I’m open about being in recovery myself and having struggled with eating disorder and complex trauma. And so certainly that’s a big part of what has drawn me to it. I also, social justice has always been a really important part of, it was important part of my upbringing and how my parents raised me, and it’s also just an important part of the work I do, and my beliefs and values and eating disorder treatment, I think is very much rooted in social justice work, and should be.

Alyssa Scolari [10:59]:

Yes. Can you say a little bit more about that? Like what you mean by social justice and how the two are connected? Because I think, I think that’s huge. It’s so important.

Maria Paredes [11:08]:

Yeah. So historically, what most people would think of, when we think eating disorders, would be the sort of prototype classic image that we would see in movies and TV shows of thin, white, rich, cisgender, straight female. And it’s not that those folks don’t struggle with eating disorders too. They do. But what we know increasingly is that the folks who are at most risk for disordered eating and for body image disconnection are anyone who falls into a category of any sort of marginalized identity and that multi marginalized folks, so folks who hold multiple marginalizations are probably at even higher risk for developing eating disorders.

And so folks who are queer, folks who are color, folks who are transgender, non-binary, folks who are undocumented, immigrants, folks who are disabled, anyone who society, is treated as less than, or who has been made to feel or believe that they are not good enough or anyone who’s been put in a position where they have had to, resiliently, learn to disconnect from their full self and hide parts of themselves, is at a greater risk of developing eating disorder.

So I see eating disorders as emerging, as adaptive, resilient coping strategies for some sort of experience of trauma, some sort of body disconnection. And that can be like an event trauma, right? Like someone who’s had a sexual assault or had an experience that overwhelmed the coping system, but can also be complex traama so across your childhood, experiencing something ongoing, prolonged, it could be something like not having your needs met, right? Experiencing food insecurity, poverty. It could be experiencing being in a home where maybe the parents weren’t abusive, but maybe they weren’t able to provide that kid with the affirmation and love that they needed.

And what happens when a person doesn’t feel like they can show up as their full self in the world, again, oftentimes for important resiliency reasons, right? Person of color who maybe, because it may not always be safe to show their full self. Maybe they have to suppress parts of themselves or [inaudible 00:13:31] person who’s living in an area where they’re not affirmed or they don’t have rights, there’s legislation that prevents them from being able to access full rights. Oftentimes there is a need or desire to suppress parts of themselves to be able to survive. And again, you hear me saying it very intentionally as it’s often a resiliency coping strategy. I don’t want to put theologize what people have learned to do.

Alyssa Scolari [13:58]:

No, it’s a way to cope. I mean, eating disorders, I always say like my eating disorder is actually what kept me alive for so long. It really is. It’s a lifesaver.

Maria Paredes [14:10]:

Yeah.

Alyssa Scolari [14:10]:

But it also kills you at the same time.

Maria Paredes [14:13]:

Right. And so this is where the work gets really nuanced. How do we help people be able to more safely, more integratively, live in their body and experience their body, in ways where they are able to express and own and exist in their body, in their experience, as they are, and as they choose to be. If they need or want to suppress parts of themselves for whatever reason, and I say that because I believe in body autonomy, how do we support that while also understanding that sometimes it’s not safe for them to completely be at home in their body. Sometimes, depending on the situation, folks need to continue certain suppression of parts of themselves to be able to show up otherwise in the world.

And so that, to me, this work is more than just what I’m doing individually with a client in the therapy room, but it gets at why it’s important for me to be an advocate and an activist on the bigger level. How do we help fight racism? How do we help fight transphobia? How do we help break down systems of oppression, so that folks don’t have to suppress themselves in society?

Alyssa Scolari [15:28]:

Absolutely. I think that the racism, that the transphobia and all of that actually stops people from getting the help that they need, because when you do think of eating disorders, you do think of somebody who is white, female, anorexic, so thin, but what about the people who don’t fall into that category? Personally, I have been through a few different eating disorder treatment centers and the one thing that I have noticed is that I was the only person there who was struggling with binge eating disorder, and I wonder, everybody else there was white, struggling with anorexia, underweight, and obviously I am very privileged, but part of me wonders, I know that eating disorders are rooted in social justice, as we talked about, why are [inaudible 00:16:31]

Maria Paredes [16:31]:

Should we should say, yeah. Rooted in social injustice. Yeah, yeah.

Alyssa Scolari [16:34]:

Yeah. Social injustice. Exactly. You know, but I look around and I wonder, well, where are the folks who identify as LGBTQAI and where are the folks that are in racial minorities, because these are the folks who are struggling probably the most with eating disorders, and yet I don’t see a lot of them speaking about it.

Maria Paredes [16:59]:

Well, and I think that’s changing and a couple of things that I just want to throw in, like I heard you say, folks who are anorexic, smaller body, a lot of people don’t know that you can have anorexia and be higher weight, and so what we typically think of anorexia, what we’ve historically been taught about it was that it was just folks who are low weight and you can have anorexia and be higher weight. A lot of people don’t understand, don’t realize that. Even the fact that we name anorexia and higher weight bodies as atypical is a misnomer, because it’s actually more typical for people with anorexia to be higher weight. We have more people who are higher weight that are anorexic than people who are lower weight and anorexic.

Alyssa Scolari [17:40]:

Yep.

Maria Paredes [17:41]:

And same with BD and same with all the eating disorders. You can not tell what a person, what disorder they [inaudible 00:17:48], just looking at them. So in terms of hearing more about eating disorders from diverse lenses, there are so many more voices out there now, and I think that’s incredible. And there’s a lot more movement happening to try and increase care. Just this past week, my colleague, Anna Lutz and I do supervision groups for dieticians and therapists, and one of the things that we are noticing, and it’s a small change just in this small sphere, is that the case presentations that our providers are bringing to the table for their case presentations, are increasingly more diverse and representing cases that are representing people with marginalization. Whereas in the past, it would continue to be the same classic case of a thin, white, rich girl in her twenties.

Alyssa Scolari [18:41]:

Yep.

Maria Paredes [18:42]:

And I think that’s a great thing. I don’t think that it’s fair for us and especially us straight [inaudible 00:18:51], white women to say like, “Where have they,” this like sort of abstract they, been like, I think it’s more that, how have voices not been heard? It’s not that voices weren’t talking about it. I think it’s that a lot of us weren’t [inaudible 00:19:08].

Alyssa Scolari [19:07]:

Right. It’s that they don’t feel like they have, they don’t feel like that help is available to them.

Maria Paredes [19:14]:

I think there’s a lot of folks that don’t feel help is available to them, and I think that for those of us who are white, I think we need to do a better job of listening, ’cause I think there have been many folks who have come asking for help, asking for treatment, showing up with symptoms, but that us providers, especially maybe us white providers, haven’t maybe been as attuned to understand how symptomology might look different.

Alyssa Scolari [19:41]:

Yes.

Maria Paredes [19:42]:

For sure, I think there’s a lot of folks who may not feel safe and able t-, or able financially or otherwise to be able to go and receive care. But I also think there’s been a lot of folks who have gone in and we’ve missed it. We haven’t known maybe as much what to look for. Maybe we’re looking just for what we’ve always thought to look for. And I think part of what’s changing is that people are understanding that our assessment process, picking up on, oh, hey, this person who’s coming in for treatment in this college counseling center or wherever, oh, maybe it’s not that we need to send them to a dietician and encourage weight loss. Maybe we need to assess for what else might be going on, that maybe there’s disordered eating and body image going on. Maybe the way that someone describes her eating disorder is different than how we’ve always heard from other people.

Alyssa Scolari [20:30]:

And that’s why conversations like this are so important because as two white women, when we have a client in front of us, as non-biased, as we try to be, it’s insidious, it’s very sinister and it’s very subtle and it’s very hard to not be biased, and I think it’s important to bring awareness to it. To clinicians, to non-clinicians, to everybody that we do need to change the way that we are assessing, because eating disorders don’t always look like you’re thin, white, rich girl in her twenties, like you said.

Maria Paredes [21:09]:

There’s a local university here. It’s a HBCU, historically black college university, and I’ve gone there to present on eating disorders at least a couple of times, and I was supposed to go pre-pandemic and now everything has been moved, but the messaging I would get at different points was, “Oh, well, we don’t have eating disorders here,” and not, I think it’s a mix of things. One, I think there’s difficulty for folks in just coming forward to talk about any kind of issue sometimes, in some black communities, again, I don’t want to talk in generalizations about all black communities, but sometimes there’s more stigma. There’s lack of access. My partner worked there for several years in their counseling center and the kind of outreach that they needed to do, was very different than the outreach that we would do at PWI, predominantly white institutions.

And a lot of that was a function of one, there being fear of going to talk to someone who was seen as a person with power or authority. There was stigma about mental health. You don’t go talk to a counselor, or you maybe go talk to your pastor. You go talk to your family, but don’t like open up to some stranger. So that was just about mental health in general, but then when you drill down to eating disorders, it was even more seen as something that was, that’s a white person problem. That’s not something that we deal with. And what’s been interesting is, just in recent years, how it’s changing and how they’re having more students come forward and saying, “Hey, this is what I’m struggling with.” And they’re, I think understanding more, I’m saying they, like the counseling center, they’re understanding more that, how they need to assess for that and what it might look like differently.

Alyssa Scolari [22:51]:

That’s amazing. It’s amazing that people are open to that change, that they’re recognizing it. I love that change is happening. Change is, it’s on the horizon. And I love working with, I do work with adults, but I also, I primarily work with adolescents and I just feel like this is the generation that’s going to change the future. They’re going to change the whole world because they understand so much more about privilege than so many other people, and they are creating some serious change and I love it.

Maria Paredes [23:28]:

Yeah. Yeah. Everything’s changing, our language, our way of understanding things, and it’s something that I had to really continue to check myself on, to remember, what do I not know? [inaudible 00:23:42].

Alyssa Scolari [23:43]:

Yes.

Maria Paredes [23:44]:

What do I not know that I don’t know, like the [crosstalk 00:23:47] levels of knowing and how to stay humble enough to know that there’s something that I’m probably missing, that there’s harm that I’m probably doing, even unintentionally.

Alyssa Scolari [24:00]:

Without knowing it. And that is, I think one of the best gifts that you can give, not only yourself, but the world is to sort of humble yourself because as people of privilege, we’re going to mess up and you have to be open to constantly checking yourself and asking yourself, “Well, is this okay that I’m saying this? Or is it okay to have this thought? Or what is this rooted in?” And I think it’s so important just to try to drop your defenses and just listen and be open to hearing what racial minorities, sexual minorities have to say.

Maria Paredes [24:40]:

Yeah, totally.

Alyssa Scolari [24:43]:

And as we listen to them, they need to lean less on their eating disorders as a coping skill, because there’s less of them that they need to hide from the world.

Maria Paredes [24:53]:

As young people come forward and say, they have eating disorders. Is that what you’re saying?

Alyssa Scolari [24:59]:

Yeah. As we continue to listen to people who have been victims of social injustice, and as we continue to help them and support them, the less, I believe that they will need to lean on their eating disorders to cope. Does that make sense?

Maria Paredes [25:16]:

I think so. And something that I’ve been trying to, I try to continue to be aware of is to really sort of one down myself of my role is not to come in as the white savior or to even assume that I know what they need, like, so maybe recovery in the way that I’ve experienced myself or the way that I offer it to some of my clients may not be what others might need. And so how, like, I don’t know if I’m making sense, but just really trying to kind of even deconstruct the idea that the goal is to get any group of people to heal in the same way, to be in the same way. Maybe some of the things that we pathologize as maladaptive, maybe they’re not maladaptive in other cultures or other communities, and so.

Alyssa Scolari [26:10]:

Right.

Maria Paredes [26:12]:

That sort of one downing, this is an old reference, but kind of like the Colombo, really kind of, assuming that there’s stuff I don’t know here and how do I, instead of coming in and going, “Okay, let me support you and let me fix it and let me have the answer. How do I go, how can I do less harm? How can I provide more access, support access? How can I even know that maybe I’m not the person or the provider that’s the right fit.” So how do I [crosstalk 00:26:42]

Alyssa Scolari [26:42]:

It’s true.

Maria Paredes [26:43]:

[inaudible 00:26:43] other providers be able to be able to provide care who may better fit it to do it than myself.

Alyssa Scolari [26:51]:

Right. Exactly. And now, you are a mom as well, right? Another role that you play.

Maria Paredes [26:59]:

Yes. Yes. I have three little ones and it is hard times during the pandemic.

Alyssa Scolari [27:04]:

I bet. So how old are they?

Maria Paredes [27:07]:

So I have two kids in grade school and I have a kid in preschool.

Alyssa Scolari [27:11]:

You have little ones.

Maria Paredes [27:13]:

Yes. And they’re awesome, and it’s a lot of work right now, especially because our schools are all virtual right now, and so we’re [inaudible 00:27:22] yeah, being home.

Alyssa Scolari [27:25]:

Oh my gosh. Now, is there a certain way that you raise your kids differently when it comes to eating and food, different than the way that you were raised to help them develop a normal and healthy relationship with food?

Maria Paredes [27:45]:

Yeah. So I think it’s really important to teach kids to be fat positive. We try to talk about bodies in, at minimum neutral ways, but also positive ways. Like not just talking about fat bodies neutrally, but talking about fat bodies positively. And to deconstruct that fat is not a bad thing or something to be afraid of. And in the same way, I really want to teach my kids that they don’t have to be afraid of food. That we don’t have to elevate certain foods over others and that it’s important to enjoy food, and so, we generally follow the Division of Responsibility by Ellyn Satter, just like we decide the what, where, and when, they decide whether they’re going to eat at all and how much to eat. I say generally, because as with anything parenting, sometimes you’re just surviving and doing what’s working in that moment and [crosstalk 00:28:42] that I try to follow at times.

But even that to me is important too. I don’t want to be the perfect parent. I don’t want to teach my kids that I’m perfect or that we’re always following things in exactly the same way. I think some structure’s important, but I want them to know that it’s okay to make mistakes. It’s okay to be human. Mommy makes mistakes, Papi, their dad, makes mistakes. And so we try to model neutrality around food and body and some of the concretes of those, you see me being pretty free and open about my body in front of them. It’s been interesting as they’re getting older, you know how that shifts. My oldest is like, “Mom, put some clothes on.” I’m in my bedroom. [inaudible 00:29:28]

Alyssa Scolari [29:31]:

Right, exactly. It’s about teaching them also that bodies are not inherently sexual.

Maria Paredes [29:36]:

Right. Right. Yes, and they’re growing up and becoming, they are sexual beings, and so it’s been interesting sort of exploring like, ooh, like I’m trying to do this like, ooh, body neutrality thing and they’re figuring out their own stuff. And so sometimes they’re like, that’s so gross. Why don’t you shave your armpits? Or like, why don’t, you know? I think having some lightness around it and some humor and just conversations are really important. And I love that my kids already know that it’s unfair to treat bodies differently, that when they see something that is fat phobic, that they’re able to recognize it and say, “Mom, that’s not fair. That’s not cool.” And I think that’s really neat. Like, I’ll get [inaudible 00:30:25] looks like, well, “What age should we start talking about this?” Or, we’re going to scare them. Like, no, just talk directly about it, have conversations and mess up, expose and just dialogue about it. That’s what’s going to help the most.

Alyssa Scolari [30:39]:

Yeah. And it’s what helps keep shame out of your house because shame is the ultimate silencer, and there’s so much shame around eating and bodies, and so that’s amazing. It’s amazing that you’re doing that. It’s tough work.

Maria Paredes [30:56]:

It is. It’s not always, I make lots of mistakes and it’s neat too like, even my kids, my oldest is way better at things like even remembering pronouns or even like initiating conversations around not assuming pronouns. And I love that. I love that kids can, we think, “Oh, this is so hard and how are we going to all change?” And it’s like, “Oh my gosh, kids, like these little kids can get it. I think we can, as adults.”

Alyssa Scolari [31:23]:

They’re doing it, [crosstalk 00:31:25] they’re going to change the whole world.

Maria Paredes [31:27]:

[inaudible 00:31:27] Yeah.

Alyssa Scolari [31:28]:

Yep. I love that. I love that. Now, if somebody wanted to find you, find your practice, would they just go right to your website, which is threebirdscounseling.com?

Maria Paredes [31:41]:

Website’s threebirdscounseling.com. You can spell out the word three or just, type in the letter, the number three, and then yeah, like the Instagram it’s with_this_body, with underscore, the underscore, body. So, yeah.

Alyssa Scolari [31:55]:

Perfect, and I am going to, like I said, guys, I will link her website and her Instagram in the show notes and on the Facebook page so you will have access to that. Thank you so much.

Maria Paredes [31:55]:

Thank you.

Alyssa Scolari [32:11]:

I love talking about this stuff. It’s tough. It’s so tough to talk about, but it’s so important. So thank you so, so much.

Maria Paredes [32:21]:

Thanks for having me.

Alyssa Scolari [32:24]:

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. For more information on today’s discussion and to sign up for the Light After Trauma newsletter, head over to my website at alyssascolari.com. Also be sure to check out my Instagram for additional tips and resources at Alyssa underscore Scolari underscore LPC. Thanks again for listening and take good care.

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