The "With That In Mind" Podcast · Red Bird Mental Health Services

Episode 55 With That in Mind | Exploring Trauma and Therapy: A Deep Dive with Therapist Clair Breese

·39 min·2 clips

Claire Brees says therapy lets clients be vulnerable because they receive compassion instead of judgment.

1. The "With That In Mind" Podcast Episode 55 examines trauma, therapy, anxiety, and therapist Claire Brees's clinical development. 2. Dr. Megan Velozorzi, a psychologist and Redbird Mental Health owner, interviews Claire Brees, a Redbird therapist whose work centers on trauma, relational trauma, and anxiety. 3. The episode asks how therapists gain trauma expertise and how clients can use therapy to expand lives narrowed by fear. 4. Brees began in social work after an undergraduate internship at a Victim Service Agency became her first counseling job. 5. Brees says victim-service agencies provide counseling, court accompaniment, hospital support, protection-order assistance, advocacy, and school prevention programs. 6. Brees spent about five years in victim services, including work with domestic-violence cases and exposure to police interviews, forensic rape exams, hospitals, and court processes. 7. Brees pursued a master's degree in social work after feeling that trauma survivors needed services beyond her initial training. 8. Brees later provided immediate supportive counseling through an employee assistance program, worked at a nursing home, and found that therapeutic work held her interest most consistently. 9. Brees reports completing 40 to 50 hours of training before handling calls in victim services, with a focus on sexual assault and domestic violence. 10. Brees is completing trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy certification, has basic EMDR training, and is studying ADHD and somatic therapy. 11. Brees discusses Nadine Burke Harris's work on adverse childhood experiences and a child-centered service model combining medical, mental-health, and nutrition support. 12. Brees and Velozorzi describe The Body Keeps the Score as useful but potentially triggering, leading Brees to read it one chapter at a time with a client. 13. Brees identifies movement, including walking and stretching, as a practical way to help the body process stress after a stressor ends. 14. Brees defines exposure therapy as gradually approaching feared situations through a hierarchy from less distressing to more distressing experiences. 15. Velozorzi describes using acupuncture to address a needle phobia and flying to Europe as examples of deliberately facing feared situations. 16. Brees recounts helping a client with agoraphobia move from staying in one room toward visiting other rooms, walking blocks, and entering stores. 17. Velozorzi and Brees connect exposure work to personal values, including family, freedom, education, work, and social activities. 18. The interview links trauma symptoms and ADHD-related executive-function difficulties while noting that formal graduate training emphasized CBT more than ADHD. 19. Adults seeking trauma-informed therapy and practical anxiety tools may appreciate this clinician-to-clinician conversation. 20. Listeners seeking medication advice or entertainment rather than mental-health practice details may skip it.

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