Mental Health Matters
Resilience and Recovery with Karla Gomez
Unlock the secrets to building resilience with Karla Gomez from Aspen Growth Coaching. Karla joins us on Mental Health Matters to share her transformative journey in mental health and parent coaching, driven by her personal experiences with loss. Hear about her innovative resilience-based methods and the profound impact of addressing root causes in mental health treatment. Karla's dedication to educating families and preventing future crises shines through, offering invaluable insights for anyone navigating the complexities of mental health.
Discover the nuances of therapy language and the critical importance of recognizing individual thresholds in relationships. We delve into the value of establishing a supportive presence and maintaining a consistent baseline, highlighting how continuous support and accountability tools can foster healthier interactions and sustained progress after treatment.
Lastly, Karla and I tackle the intricate dynamics of family systems and therapy. We explore the necessity of confronting multi-generational issues and cultural considerations to foster genuine progress. Karla's expertise provides a compelling discussion on the importance of mental well-being, the significance of accessible mental health resources, and the positive impact her services bring to the community. Tune in to Mental Health Matters for an uplifting conversation that promises to offer practical tools and heartfelt insights.
Unlock the secrets to building resilience with Karla Gomez from Aspen Growth Coaching. Karla joins us on Mental Health Matters to share her transformative journey in mental health and parent coaching, driven by her personal experiences with loss. Hear about her innovative resilience-based methods and the profound impact of addressing root causes in mental health treatment. Karla's dedication to educating families and preventing future crises shines through, offering invaluable insights for anyone navigating the complexities of mental health.
Discover the nuances of therapy language and the critical importance of recognizing individual thresholds in relationships. We delve into the value of establishing a supportive presence and maintaining a consistent baseline, highlighting how continuous support and accountability tools can foster healthier interactions and sustained progress after treatment.
Lastly, Karla and I tackle the intricate dynamics of family systems and therapy. We explore the necessity of confronting multi-generational issues and cultural considerations to foster genuine progress. Karla's expertise provides a compelling discussion on the importance of mental well-being, the significance of accessible mental health resources, and the positive impact her services bring to the community. Tune in to Mental Health Matters for an uplifting conversation that promises to offer practical tools and heartfelt insights.
Hello everybody, welcome once again to Mental Health Matters on 1037 WPVM, the voice of Asheville. I'm Todd Weatherly, your host, therapeutic consultant, behavioral health expert. I'm happy to be here today with a buddy of mine, ms Carla Gomez. She is with Aspen Growth Coaching, which is a parent coaching organization. She lives in Miami, but she serves individuals all over the country individuals, parents and families who are dealing with an adolescent or a young adult that's coming out of treatment and then trying to integrate back into the world. That is the service that Aspen Growth Cunching does and something that we rely on fairly regularly in our practice as well. Carla holds a bachelor's degree in human resource management as well.
Speaker 1:Carla holds a bachelor's degree in human resource management that certainly helps With organizational behavior and a master's in psychology, with a post-master's in trauma counseling. Carla's robust experience in residential treatment ranges from clinical work to case management, to outreach and admissions, serving clients at every phase of their healing process and a constant pursuit to understand the human being beyond the traumas that confine them. Carla is informed fully by resilience-based methods and is skilled at bringing her own story of deep loss to the forefront, knowing what it is for her family not to have a place like Aspen Growth Coaching, carla has to get into the game and is on the mission to make the sort of care status quo. Karla strives to always understand the whole human, working towards autonomy and self-awareness. It takes great pride in holding space for others to become vulnerable and accountable, allowing true growth to take place. Fun fact, she's also a former sous chef, which I think is pretty cool. How long ago did you and I meet Carla?
Speaker 1:We spent time in Puerto Rico, down there doing a conference. We did, I mean we- shared our love over coffee. We shared our love over coffee, but you and I met before then. I think we met maybe at a TCA training a couple years ago.
Speaker 2:Then I think we met maybe at a tca training a couple years ago. Um, I want to say, I want to say it was either school connections or some other, some other conference like that, a couple of years ago, but I feel it was like yeah, like two and a half years ago maybe yeah and um, now I haven't worked with you specifically.
Speaker 1:my team has worked, worked with your team before with folks coming out of treatment and specifically a young adult that we were working with. I remember at least a year or so ago, but it was one of my team members was working with one of your team members and we very much enjoyed doing that. But you know you talk about in the bio, you're talking about your personal experience with grief and loss. Tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:Oh well, that's a loaded yeah, of course, I'm always willing. So I I always talk about how I agency. We don't just do parent coaching, we, we really work with mental health, altogether Right, and one of the biggest things that I am an advocate for is being of service to families that didn't have access to care. Like we didn't have access to care Right, and it's not necessarily that we didn't have access to treatment because we did, but all the other parallel processes that are that should be happening to educate the family as to what the individual is going through right, because we lost my brother a couple of years ago and it was something that really rocked the way that I perceived mental health, rocked the way that I perceived supporting a loved one.
Speaker 2:Right around that time I was going back to school.
Speaker 2:I was educating myself as to like what I wanted to do beyond the culinary world, was educating myself as to like what I wanted to do beyond the culinary world, and you know, it became very clear that I wanted to be the type of professional that I didn't have access to growing up. I wanted to avoid people from becoming the outcome that I'm currently living with and that I'm going to have to continue living with for the rest of my life, no-transcript. So a lot of what we do is really address that from a root cause, is ensuring that we're seeing far beyond the behavioral presentations. Those presentations are not our starting line. We're questioning really where is it coming from? Is there other psychological root causes, or is there something physiological that could also be interpreting that and really supporting the rest of the family system as well? So I think through my own grief I was able to find a lot of compassion and a lot of just pure passion for wanting to help other people not have to go through what we went through.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, like you say, and bring it home. And I think that that you know our work is as consultants even though we're not a direct provider, like you are we're kind of continuity guarantors. We're making sure that whoever is the quote-unquote identified patient right, that they're taking all these steps, that we're pulling in resources that cause the family to be engaged at the level they need to be engaged in and and have those come together because and you know, you and I've been trying to work with a recent referral I sent your way who's a little resistant and you know it's, I think it and I was.
Speaker 1:I was talking about this just the other day but families get hijacked. They get hijacked by crisis and then, if they stay long enough and kind of in this dyad of relation to crisis, my loved one whether it's my child or maybe it's my spouse or somebody my loved one is in crisis and I'm hypervigilant because that person's in crisis and I'm worried about them and I want it to work, and I want it to work and I want them to get the care they need. And if you spend long enough there, I find that parents don't know how to come off of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well it's. It's the chaos that they're comfortable with, right, and I think if you stay in that position long enough, you tend to seek it as a family dynamic, right.
Speaker 1:Like that's the family care.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, that's the relational dynamic that you're used to, and peace and health can be really daunting if all you've known is dysfunction and sickness and illness. Right, I think part of what we are working our butts off and part of what just makes us so intentional as to the work that we do is, yes, intervention in our world is always going to be present, right, people are always going to need help at the moment of crisis. But really, where it becomes pivotal and where we can make generational and larger scheme change is when we start focusing on prevention, and larger scheme change is when we start focusing on prevention. How do we understand and study what has been happening at a systematic level so that we can start creating strategies, a different system.
Speaker 2:Right and so that we can start educating people to understand what happened. How did you get here and how do you prevent from getting here moving forward? And if you do get here again, how do you address it in a way that doesn't entirely derail your family system or that health?
Speaker 1:And it's super important that, like, how do you see it coming? You know, like I think, that by the time you're in the midst of what is ultimately either an entrained behavioral reaction, trained behavioral reaction, either to somebody's crisis or to somebody's behavior or, um, or your own behavior in the context of the people that you're surrounded by and the circumstance, by the time you're reacting it's too late. You know, you, whatever strategy you should have used, you should have used before you got to that place and it's very hard to reel all that back. So, you know, one of the first strategies for anybody, including family members, is to see it coming and and to use like preventative skills and tools and language and different systems. You know, part, one of the things that you know you see in wilderness programming a lot um is that they'll have a language that they give to parents, so when they're, when their child comes home, they're using that language.
Speaker 1:You know hey I just gotta I don't know, I want to bust a fab with you feeling, action, behavior. You know I want to. I want to talk about this thing with you and this is what I see and this is how it impacts me. How do you feel about that? And then they they already have this engaged dialogue methodology that can live in the home, but they're also not professionals at it. So you get a professional like you involved, who's coming into the home after the fact, and some changes have been made, the person's stabilized, maybe they've made some real growth, um, and and and turned some corners but, now they're back as back in this environment.
Speaker 1:This is, I think, what families and people don't really understand. I said, well, the hardest move you'll ever make is transitioning from treatment back into a regular environment, probably the most vulnerable time that you have. People think that the crisis is a vulnerable time. It's like, well, no, we kind of know what to do about the crisis. You know, we can see it, it's ugly, it's screaming at the top of its lungs. When you come home and you've had all this clinical care and all these people around you and all the support you've made, all these, what you feel like are growth moments, and then suddenly you're back in an environment where all those stressors show back up again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Are you ready to deal with that? And it's like if they've got somebody like you who's just like okay, let's take a minute, let's remember what we've learned, let's figure out how that exists in the home, Because it takes on its own character, doesn't it? Like it really does? There's a language that we use in therapeutic environments, but there's a language that families use that's unique to them. And those two things have to merge, they have to come together so that they have something they feel comfortable with, so it doesn't feel like treatment anymore, right?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:How do you bridge that with them?
Speaker 2:Oh, I love this question. I love the idea of utilizing language to ensure that everybody's understanding and identifying with an experience within the same context, but it can also be so detrimental if they're just kind of throwing a slip on of a language without really doing the introspective work. What does this word mean for me? How am I communicating my feelings and my thoughts and the way that something is affecting me and the family system in an adequate way where I not only consider their experience but I also consider how their behavior is rocking our existence? Right, but I also consider how their behavior is rocking our existence, right, and I think there needs to be an amplified and flexible how do I say it? There needs to be a conversation before you even understand what the language is within a home.
Speaker 1:We can't just throw a bunch of therapeutic language at a family system and hope it works and expect it to stick.
Speaker 2:And expect it to stick. I also think that can be incredibly detrimental, because what if a person is just sick and tired of hearing therapy language, which happens and it's perfectly valid.
Speaker 1:And get real therapy savvy.
Speaker 2:And then they turn it around.
Speaker 1:They throw a bunch of therapy language at people, maintain their crap, you know yeah.
Speaker 2:And then they turn it around oh my gosh, it's messy.
Speaker 2:I mean it's so important and I'm not going to minimize the importance of being able to utilize a language that does thoroughly encompass the experience right and understands what's happening for the person, understands what's happening for the person but I also cannot stress enough how important it is to ensure that there's also that introspection, that there's also the understanding that everybody is considering people at a threshold, and I tell this to all of my clients like mine and people that are outside of my caseload that are working with our organization. If you switch for a second and you start perceiving your loved ones from a method or from a lens of threshold, that is going to change your tendencies and your responsiveness and just your approach and consideration to them drastically and it's a very attainable methodology to utilize. If you start considering them to like do they have the capacity to deal with this today? Is their nervous system in a position to?
Speaker 1:even or in this moment. Like is it? Right In this moment, you might be able to do it today, but not first thing in the morning, right.
Speaker 2:I know, like I tell my kid all the time like baby, if I haven't had my Cuban coffee, don't speak to me.
Speaker 1:I was gonna say we haven't had coffee yet, we're not talking yet.
Speaker 2:That's my threshold, and so if we just give a little bit of leeway to that threshold and to that, that understanding, that capacity is at stake here, right, like we have to understand that it isn't just language, is is their ability to even comprehend what's happening. Comprehend what's happening. Comprehend what's happening throughout the day.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I'm glad that you say that, because you know, when you first start talking, I think well, it's kind of like in science, it's like definition of terms Everybody's got to be operating with the same definition, right? Yeah, they've all got to be working with the same. This word means the same thing to me as it means to you. Sure, that's important. But this, the concept of threshold, I get you know. I think that one of the one of the things that crisis does to families is that whenever they feel like something needs to be resolved, it has to be resolved right now, in a hurry.
Speaker 2:That sense of urgency, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's always like right now and it's got to happen all at once and I want all the answers and I want it to be fixed. And I want it to be done mostly because I want to resolve my own anxiety, not necessarily because I've thought beyond that to see what would actually, you know, cause the situation to shift. Yeah, um, until I need that dose of anxiety again in which case I'll stir it up so that I can have it Then I need to resolve it. You know, there's that pattern.
Speaker 1:So, you've got to acknowledge your own pattern, emotional pattern, within the context of this relationship and what has ultimately been a crisis up to this point, and then then you can like okay, where's, let's, let's address this threshold question. Can they handle this today, when you know, do I feel like it's important? Okay, it's important. How important is it? Does that have to be resolved right now? No, Is it something we work on steadily.
Speaker 2:Yes, is it something I?
Speaker 1:need help working on, probably, you know, and so I think that that's there's a there's a beauty to what you're doing. I had an interview not long ago with Ross Ellenhorn. He's got a new book called Holdings and he talks about holding space. We're in here, we're holding the space for people, and sometimes that's through our language, sometimes it's just through our presence. You know whatever it is, but there's this beauty that happens when you add a supportive presence to a scenario where a person can kind of like it's not all on me, I can relax a little bit. If I run into trouble, I got somebody helping me. Everybody feels that way and the whole thing calms down, until what you do is you give them a baseline that they understand. They've got to like our baseline, should feel like this Carla's here helping me understand and feel and experience this baseline so that hopefully in a little while we can create this baseline for ourselves yeah and that's the, that's the.
Speaker 1:There's this subtlety, there's this beauty of the work, and that's kind of what you're doing like yeah utilizing a new baseline.
Speaker 2:You know yeah, I talk, I talk about that baseline all the time. That's language that's very much in my back pocket. Um, I AGC one of the things that we do that I find beautiful and, again, I'm very biased because I love the work that we do Beyond the sessions. You have access to us through a Voxer app, which is kind of like WhatsApp.
Speaker 2:It's an app that you can continue communicating with us and it works beautifully because you have us in your pocket as things are coming up. We're talking about that baseline. Yes, we can identify. What are the things that you need to work on? What are the things that are showing up in your family system that are detrimental towards it and towards the progress that you're trying to make? But what about accountability? What about the things that we discuss that we want to? But what about accountability? What about the things that we discuss that we want to move towards right? What about the behaviors that are incredibly detrimental and we know are keeping you in this loop, right?
Speaker 2:And so part of the work that we do is really facilitating that baseline, reminding people that we are going to tap out of certain behaviors and certain thoughts by utilizing these tools Because we can get in session right and we can have a great session. And then I walk out of the session and I'm like, well, what did I just say? Like it's so overwhelming and there's so much information being tossed out and you're kind of sorting through so many thoughts and feelings and events that you walk out floored right, like you're like what now? Like what am I supposed to do? Part of that baseline and part of the shift and I think one of the most beautiful things that we do is that we maintain that accountability through keeping us in your pocket right, like you can continue reaching out to us and, as things come up and, whether it's a fight, whether it's a crisis moment, whether it's a conversation, that you have access to different tools in that moment that are going to define what your baseline is going to look like moving forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because the healing process happens real time. You know what?
Speaker 2:I mean it's like it's not.
Speaker 1:It's hard to contain in sessions and in these scripted. You know you're going to show up, we're going to do things for an hour, then you're going to go off and you're going to have everything right.
Speaker 1:It's like no, you're going to walk out and you're going to stumble over it and you're going to try to remember what it is that we said, and you know, especially for a person who's done I don't know if you run into this, but I certainly do, and I'm guessing you do as well well, but the like I'll say I'll be on the phone with the family or I'll be having a conversation and I'll say something I'll give them. Well, you know, what you need to do is this, this, this and this, and this is the process this person is going through and this is like, and I and I'm not even because we've been in the field for the amount of time we have and and we're professionals in the field and it's like I don't even think about it, yeah. And then I realized I have to slow down. Yeah, because it's like wait, can you? I don't even know what that means.
Speaker 1:You break that framework down for me and you know the compliment I got recently which I you know it was one of the biggest compliments I ever got was, like you do such a good job of making all this complex stuff and framing it in a way that makes it understandable. I'm like that. I have literally been trying to work on that for 20 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I had an experience when I you know some of my early time in the field. That was when I worked at a reeducation center in North Carolina, um called the right school in Durham, north Carolina, one of the first places I ever worked out of college and I was doing a class with. These are kids that are, like, referred from the regular education system, got behavioral challenges. They're given an alternative classroom experience in a therapeutic environment so that they can hopefully reintegrate back into the classroom. So you've got a lot of kids from impoverished families and different scenarios and everything like that. You've got just a fairly wide population.
Speaker 1:So I've got a bunch of kids sitting there and I'm giving them a biology talk because I partially love biology and felt like I could deliver the topic oh yeah, great, I almost majored in it and so I was like so we're going to talk about, you know, we're going to talk about humans and human beings and and we're going to talk about behavior and we're going to talk about how it interacts with the, the natural world and some of your and some of the functions, the body and all that and this this kid's looking at me just she's got, she's got the, got the deer in the headlight and I'm like, looks like you're not like what can I help you?
Speaker 1:with what's happening. She's like what is a human? Didn't know what the word human meant and it smacked me across the face. I was just like you know, like dude. It's humbling.
Speaker 2:It's face. I was just like, you know, like.
Speaker 1:That's humbling too, it's humbling. Yeah, it's humbling. It's like, okay, apparently, I'm going to have to slow down.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, you get those moments, enough times that you're like okay, let's take this a chunk at a time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And help this family approach this in a way that's meaningful and significant to them.
Speaker 2:And I think that that's, you know that's.
Speaker 1:That's not only what you're doing, but you're you're also crafting a new vision for them. Aren't you Like helping? To craft this idea of family right.
Speaker 2:I can almost like equate that to when I'm in the kitchen I cook with my nose right, like I've been cooking for so many years that I don't need a recipe. I cook with my nose and it drives my heart and that's the recipe. Like that's how I show up in the kitchen. It's very similar to the way that I show up in sessions. I because I've been doing this work for so long.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you just know, you know what's happening and and you can assess beyond just the presentations that either the parents are reporting or that a potential assessment has reported in the past.
Speaker 2:Right, and I think it has so much more to do with like asking the right questions and digging a little further than what's currently being presented to understand, like, how did we even get here? Like your best judgment landed you in my caseload, your best judgment landed you in a position of looking for help because you understand that you're way outside of context here for your realm of understanding, and how do we ensure that the what's happening here is as easily applicable to your world and to the way that you live your life and to the comprehension and the way that you show up as a human being too? Right, like I could talk about multicultural approach and consideration and multi-general, multi-general what is it? Multi-generational consideration for ages, because I think that's where we're at right now. There's these larger gaps of generations and such wildly different considerations and approaches to lifestyle that I think do show up time and time again in the work that we're doing. There's a, you know, an expectation and outcome. There's an expectation in relational dynamics.
Speaker 1:There's an expectation in how people should be behaving, and that shows up both in a larger social scheme but I see it time and time again playing out and familial dynamics yeah, you know, I think of that because I used to do, um, family mediation, like divorce and separation and stuff like that, custody, okay, um, and you would, you would run in, especially when you've got uncles and grandparents and things like that going on, cause it was a community mediation center.
Speaker 1:So we were dealing with people who couldn't afford attorneys essentially. But we're looking for a way to kind of navigate through Um and and you, you'd run into that kind of you'd run into a lot of that. You know, one wanted it this way, one wanted it that way, and they would start putting a bunch of rules and things like that. It's like, well, I want to do this, that and the other, and I would sit back every once in a while and I'm curious about your experience here. But, um, I'd sit back and I'm like this feels like an elaborate ruse. All this stuff that everybody's writing down, these details, they feel like it's just to me my gut's just saying like none of this is actually important because none of it's the actual thing that anybody wants to talk about yes.
Speaker 1:Because it feels too ugly yep somebody like maybe, maybe grandma doesn't want to be a mom again yeah you know, or maybe it's you know, or maybe the separating parents, you know, don't want to separate her, or you know they they're going to fight over something that's very contentious and they don't want to go there, or whatever it was, and so they throw a bunch of stuff out. You know well, if we're going to do this, we've got to do this. And I'd start taking notes and everything else and I'm like this is a bunch of BS. Is what this is Like? Come on, like, come on.
Speaker 2:Really, give it to me what Like, come on, give it to me.
Speaker 1:What's really going on here, and sometimes you just have to separate people out and be like look, can you just tell me what the heck's going on here? For a second, I feel like we're not getting anywhere with this.
Speaker 2:And I think I know why Do you find that happens? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And I think that's why I love our model so much because I call it- the velvet sledgehammer.
Speaker 2:I'm going to get in there and I'm going to start addressing the elephant in the room that hasn't been addressed for the last 30 years. You're going to sit in session with us and we're going to talk about this and we're going to figure out what are the next action items that are going to be presented and how we're going to move away from this. But absolutely, I mean, it's very easy to fall into, both as a professional and as a human being. It's easy to fall into these patterns where you can talk about it and talk about it and talk about it, and you can try to intellectualize a problem all you want, but at what cost? And at a certain point it's not just going to be with you, it's going to be with the generations that follow. This is exactly why I got in the line of work that I'm doing. I don't want my kid to have to deal with what I dealt with. I don't want and it isn't because my parents did anything wrong, but it's just the organic exposure that I had through the problems that we endured growing up. And so it's up to me, as her mother, to ensure that what has happened across three generations at this point doesn't happen again, but it requires me talking about the things that nobody has wanted to talk about, addressing the elephant in the room and bringing up a lot of things that people weren't necessarily prepared to be brought up.
Speaker 2:Right, and I think that's really what happens in family systems. You have these big secrets, you have these big events that happen or these behaviors that happen, and it's much easier for people to just have an identified patient and somebody that's just the rebel, somebody that is just yeah, they're the problem. This is who's messing up right now. This is messing up our reputation and the way that the world perceives us. But what is the family system and what are the behaviors and the environment that have supported and enabled these tendencies?
Speaker 2:Right, and that isn't to generalize it, because there are so many different ways that problems like that can emerge. But I do think that people tend to kind of sweep things under the rug and present what they believe will get them a level of interaction and feedback, whereas the work that we do and where we can be much more efficient and valuable as professionals is bringing out the things that we know are hidden behind those, behind those words. Right, like we can see beneath that. That's like the the nose in the kitchen all over the nose of the kitchen.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what it is, yeah yeah strongly intuitive, you know yeah um, it's a tool, uh, and I think that it's, you know, for people who are kind of suited to be in the work. It's a, it's a tool you use without you also to get towed under you know what I?
Speaker 1:mean like you're not snagged by the family dynamic and you're not towed under by the energy that's being put out in the room and this stuff and it's just like, okay, you know it's gonna, it's gonna water, water off the ducks back on me. It's not mine, you know, I've got my own stuff I deal with right you know, but and I do my work, but, um, I don't have to take yours on yeah and be careful about that it's so hard we talk about.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you have a team of professionals that are your peers that can catch that on, that's incredibly helpful to have. But in the work that we do, it's emotionally and psychologically charged. Right, it's both, and I was talking about this and I even wrote about it. It's both beautiful and devastating within the same breath. It's beautiful because we get to dive right into the epicenter of problems that have probably been spewing for decades and across generations, and this is just the way that it's resurfacing and that it's projecting to the outside world. Right, it also is incredibly heavy for us, right. More so if we're people like I'm, somebody that has been through a lot. Right, I need to be incredibly aware of when things are potentially activating me on, when they're disrupting my own functioning and my own bias and my own ability to support a family system. Either this is too much for me and I need to transfer it over to somebody else, or what do I need to do for myself to get ready and to prepare myself to be able to support this family system?
Speaker 1:get clear, yeah, and be clear when you're in the, when you're in that moment, or you'll drag your own crap into it, you know absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Do you ever like? Do you remember any experience that you've had where that has been a decision you've had to make?
Speaker 1:um, I think early on, you know when you get, you know I I entered into the field in a pretty intense environment. You know like five days on shift single covered, 12 adjudicated. You know, court referred youth, yeah, inner city kids now in the woods for the first time having to do treatment instead of going to jail. I mean, you know like they, those kids taught me a lot, yeah, and you know you'd go home.
Speaker 1:You'd go home and just like have to shake it off yeah, you go home and you're like, okay, bye family you know, I, I go home and and like I mean, this is, this is the early 90s, so I'd go home and watch bebis and butthead and just I love that show I'm like these are my kids. You know what I mean. Like these are my kids. They really are um in the best kind of way, and it's like um and you just had to.
Speaker 1:You had to figure out ways to do release yeah um, and and I think that's important you know, it's like when you figure out how to do release, when you figure out how to do it like you can do it more economically and efficiently, you can do it absolutely um, but like when you're when how to do release, when you figure out how to do it like you can do it more economically and efficiently.
Speaker 2:You can do it Absolutely, but like when you're, when you're getting started you have to figure it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's tough in the beginning, yeah, and I mean I think, and I still think, that there are people just like anything. You know I was not. I was not built in the world to be an account you know what I mean, thank God, there are accountsants.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, it's not that I can't do math, I just don't like doing it same same thing.
Speaker 1:Um, I I'm actually quite good at math if I have to do it, but right, trying to focus on it is just like I might get it wrong and I I'll screw up some numbers and you know somebody who does that and likes doing it, and that's their temperament yeah same I was built a certain way and people look at what you and I do and like how do you do that? I'm like I don't know how not to do it now exactly.
Speaker 2:I think the work that we do is all about systems and it's funny to talk about mental health and how to how to be a professional in this world and talk about systems, but I cannot stress enough how often and how efficient it's been for me to understand mental health and the way that it shows up in a family system, when I understand them beyond their systems. How is this showing up in their nervous system? How is it showing up in their bodies, physiologically and psychologically? How is that then showing up behaviorally right and just tying up or connecting those dots, connecting those dots right, connecting the dots and being able to be like oh, these are the systems that are then employing the way that they're showing up in the world. And then this is how we can either reverse, engineer it or then adapt this new system to be able to get them new results. So I can talk about systems all day, every day.
Speaker 1:Right, kind of like a kitchen really.
Speaker 2:It really is, I know, I know. So I'm very much like operationally like that.
Speaker 1:Totally, totally Well, the and there's also the, you know, especially with the level of mental health that we deal with, you know pretty intense and complex cases and everything else and you spend long enough in the field like you see it out in the world, like it goes.
Speaker 2:There's the nose. We talk about the nose.
Speaker 1:There's the nose. I can smell it.
Speaker 2:You can smell it from a mile away.
Speaker 1:Smell bipolar from a thousand yards.
Speaker 2:I know, and it's so hard I talk about this with my friends all the time it's so difficult to shut that off because you want to. Just I mean, it's really hard for me to not immediately want to like offer help and say like, hey, there's something that's showing up for you and that's also not my place, right, like, unless somebody has made the intentional decision to seek help, we can't really be putting that out there, I'm not at work. Yep, I'm not at work. I can be human for a little bit.
Speaker 1:Sometimes they still find you, but you know.
Speaker 2:I know. I know Sometimes they do. That's okay, you're welcome. If you show up and you ask for help, I'm going to give you whatever I can. Oh, same, I mean, yeah, I, I was built for this. I was built for this.
Speaker 1:I was definitely put on earth to be able to just offer help and support to other humans. Well, Carla, I'm glad that you found your way to us all. Thank you. Beautiful things that you do. Thank you so much for being on the show today. This has been Mental Health Matters on 107 WPVM, the Voice of Asheville. I've been Todd Webley, your host with Carla Gomez and Aspen Growth Coaching. Carla, thanks a lot for being with us.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me and sharing my cafecito. You're welcome, thank you, thank you.