"Normal is broken," Melanie and guest Erin Doerwald agree. Erin's a licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist, mindfulness facilitator, and mindfulness program developer based in Santa Fe, NM. She was the Program Director for The Sky Center of the New Mexico Suicide Intervention Project for many years and developed the core programming of Sky’s Toolkit for Wellbeing model. Finally, she's a member of the Board of Directors of Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center.
Erin's an expert when it comes to mindfulness and how to manage when normal is broken.
She's also an incredibly articulate and compassionate psychotherapist who shares insights on life in a (sort of) post-pandemic world.
What does the process of meaning-making look like? What's resiliency? What's that "skillful place in the middle" that Erin mentions?
This conversation is wide-ranging, in-depth, full of curiosity and insights and laughter and hope.
For the truth is, there's always hope. There is always a way to create a little more space in our nervous systems and psyches. Which allows us to adapt to an ever-changing world, deepening into what's real and true and good and possible.
Erin mentions the internationally respected resiliency researcher, Dr. Ann Masten.* Resilience is basically the capacity of a system, whether that be an individual, a family, an organization, or a culture, to adapt in adverse circumstances.
One of the ways to strengthen our ability to adapt in adverse circumstances, to strengthen our resiliency muscle, is by practicing mindfulness.
How that works is a big part of this episode.
Among other things, Erin works with individuals and families in therapy, and teaches virtual affiliated mindfulness classes from UCLA.
Mindfulness, "normal," successfully adapting to an insane world ... so much in this 25-minute show!
Dr. Melanie Harth's website here
*here's a link to Dr. Masten's free YouTube talk on the role of resilience in the face of COVID-19
