What is your background and therapeutic approach?
Hi, my name’s Ellie. I’m a social worker and I work here at Optimum Joy. I work with teens, adults, and anyone who’s looking for some extra support. My background is in social work and specifically working in schools. And what I’ve experienced from being in these systems is that, you know, we’re all a part of different systems, right? We’re not just individuals living on islands. We are people who live within families that work within jobs who live within specific communities. So oftentimes my approach when working with someone is to think about those different systems and how do they all interact and how do we interact within them?
How do you incorporate physical aspects into your sessions?
Working with teens and adults, I found something that I’ve valued at every stage of life is incorporating some physical aspects of therapy. Whether it’s things happening in the therapeutic session beyond just talking—movement, stretching, arts. I often think about what’s happening outside the therapeutic session as well, right? Therapy might just be an hour a week. But it’s what’s happening in those other hours that ultimately it’s going to get you to reach the goals that you’ve set for yourself or just to have that success that you’re looking for.
How do you view trauma and the healing process?
If you’re someone where a specific trauma or a diagnosis has been feeling like it’s been holding you back, our work together can be not seeing that trauma as an end point, but rather as a starting point for healing, for hope, for whatever is next. And using that knowledge and using specific therapies, move forward and process that to get you to a place where you feel your best self.
Why do you enjoy working with teenagers specifically?
I love working with all types of people and I especially love working with teens. I think that that time of life is so exciting and big and overwhelming and potentially scary and anxiety producing that it’s a really perfect time to connect with a mental health professional. Not only to navigate kind of that process of teenage years, but also to prepare for the adult years. A lot of the things that we’re going through as teenagers, if it’s not dealt with or processed, it comes out later when we are adults. So yeah, I think that it’s worthwhile to invest early on.
What is your “Garden Metaphor” for counseling?
Something that I would want people to know about counseling is the way I approach it is very similar to a garden. So right now I’m growing some cucumbers and similar to a garden, there’s a lot of seed planting. There’s that daily watering and there can be after the big excitement of starting the garden, a little bit of that boring middle part where you’re just watering each day and kind of just waiting to see what’s about to happen.
So as a gardener, I think that that patience translates to that therapeutic session of those consistent little adjustments that we make in our life or how we relate to others have huge benefits later on. Um, but it’s important to kind of stick with that middle ground to, you know, see the flowers of the fruit later on.
What is your favorite thing about being a therapist?
My favorite thing about being a therapist is sitting with people and getting to examine the strengths they already have. Right. So we are forming that relationship. We’re building that rapport. And oftentimes people might not be even aware of the things that are going well, the things that they have overcome. And so I really like to see therapy as that relationship building. And as a therapist, I’m able to see maybe a little bit later on. I’m able to see maybe some of those positive things you’ve already done that we can build on.
What brings you joy outside of the office?
There are a lot of things that bring me joy. I think being in Chicago is, um, not by chance. I love the restaurants here, the Broadway shows, being by the lake, biking, um, and then all things creative. Um, I’m getting more into sewing right now. And I’ve always loved painting.
