If Lost Start Here is a guide for the anxious, curious, lonely and lost. Featuring everyday places and at-home prompts designed to help you live a life that feels good.
In Conversation with Amanda E. White
How Therapy For Women is Changing the Well-Being World
Can you tell us about Therapy for Women, and what sets it apart from other practices?
Therapy For Women is a center for women and non-binary individuals. We specialize in issues like eating disorders, motherhood, infertility, substance use, postpartum depression and anxiety, PTSD and trauma. We are a team of compassionate therapists who have been where you are. We offer in-person and virtual therapy, which we hope to grow to all 50 states, at some point. Our practice is specifically designed to meet the needs of women. I think what is so hard right now is that we see the rise of movements for empowering women, and we understand the value of mental health, but so many of the issues women face are systemic. Women need access to maternity leave, support with childcare, flexible work hours, shifted gender expectations. In so many ways, women have had to bear the burden of the pandemic. Add to that fears around elections and laws mandating our bodies, and you’ll see that women are in a really unique and challenging position. Our physical and mental health are, of course, related, and so many women are really terrified at the moment. Therapy For Women aims to be a place where women can go to find support.
You have been such a bright light and a source for accurate information on social media and you recently said something that was so profound: “What if shame is the glue that holds self-sabotage in place”. I think this is something that so many of us deal with but have no idea how to shift.
Definitely. Dissecting shame and self-sabotage is something that I’m super passionate about because I struggled with it for so many years. I was really convinced that if I just punished myself more I would change faster. I think our culture really pushes the idea of “work harder, push through” and all of that kind of language, but if you look at the research (done by Brene Brown and others) it is just so very clear that shaming ourselves does not work.
For people who have created a habit of shaming themselves I sometimes encourage them to think of it logically. Because, yes, maybe you’ve been doing this forever and you think you deserve it, but maybe you can accept the fact that it truly isn’t effective. My recommendation is to start small. I’m honestly against super dramatic affirmations as they can make your thoughts worse and amplify the negative voice in your head. So maybe just start with something like “ok, what if I didn’t hate myself today? What could I do?” It could be something simple like going for a five minute walk or calling a friend, just taking some small action to care for yourself, even when you feel you don’t deserve it. Oftentimes, we have to start with action, and over time, our brain can begin to learn and start to believe that we do deserve good things in our lives.
While things appear to be shifting in regard to the stigma around taking mental health meds, I think we can agree that there are still some major misconceptions and some lingering hesitation, even for people who could really benefit. I’m wondering what shifts you’re seeing as a mental health clinician and how you think people might reframe these judgements?
Absolutely. I think a lot of people feel they don’t “deserve” to take meds. I absolutely battled with that for a long time. I used to articulate it as it felt like I was “cheating”. I try to help people think of it in different terms, like, if they have a headache, they likely wouldn’t hesitate to take Advil. If they had cancer or diabetes or any other physical health issue they would take medication to manage that issue. The stigma around mental health goes back years and years to when people were in asylums and they didn’t even know what mental health was. And so much of that has just stayed. Add to that the messaging coming from “influencers'' around living a “natural” life without meds and people can be left feeling really conflicted. The truth is, no one solution will work for everyone. And taking an antidepressant doesn’t mean you’ll never be depressed again and that everything is perfectly secured. An antidepressant raises your baseline and opens you up to being able to do other things you need to take care of yourself: getting outside, going to therapy, light exercise. All of those things take energy. In taking medications, we are opening ourselves up to doing more of what we need to feel good.
In addition to your therapy practice, your voice is also prominent in the world of sobriety. For anyone who might be sober-curious, or contemplating shifting their relationship to alcohol, what advice would you give for people navigating that first step?
I think it’s important to recognize, that for many of us, alcohol was “working” as a coping skill. Right? Otherwise we wouldn’t have done it. This is true for any unhealthy coping mechanism. And, of course, alcohol does numb some of our mental health issues and eases our social anxiety and help us avoid our trauma. For someone who is struggling just to get by, I think it’s important to know that your survival is number one. If you’ve depended on alcohol to get your through, you will literally be learning to survive without your primary coping skill.
And the truth is, so many of us do not learn the skills necessary to move through life, to socialize, to cope with feeling awkward, to date, to set boundaries. When we’re drinking we can maybe live with the resentments this causes. But being sober is living wide awake. You can’t really hide from yourself anymore, which is a huge gift, but a lot of work.
Can you tell us about your new book Not Drinking Tonight? It sounds like it’s going to be a really powerful tool for people navigating sobriety.
Yes! That was definitely my goal. While I have all of the “quit lit” memoirs and love them, I was always very clear that I did not want to write a memoir. With Not Drinking Tonight I wanted to write an engaging, therapy-packed, actionable guide. The book is broken up into three parts. The first is Why You Drink which delves into evolutionary psychology, shame, trauma, and why your brain is the way it is. Next we look at How to Stop which is essentially around re-parenting yourself, and filling in the gaps from when you were growing up: boundaries, self-care, emotional intelligence, all that stuff. And the third section is How to Stay Sober. This section goes into more research and deals with common pitfalls. It helps people to understand whether they’d like to moderate or stop drinking. We’ll look at how to date sober, how to navigate being with friends and family, how to redefine your body image. The book is written through the point of view of three women who are essentially amalgamations of women I’ve seen over the years. I think the format will really help readers to connect with the stories and see themselves.
Where do you go when you need to get away from it all?
This is a great question. I definitely go outside. I love being in the mountains, and I also find it really healing to be by the water, as well. It doesn’t have to be the beach, just some body of water. To me that is incredibly grounding. I think being in nature is important just as a reminder that there is something bigger than ourselves.