I’m so excited to share the conversation for this week’s episode because instead of going outside of the house for the interview we are going inside!

Introducing Meghan Olson, licensed therapist on the unPERFECTED team!

Meghan is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Certified Brain Health Coach, EMDR Practitioner, and my ride-or-die in the business. I feel so incredibly grateful to have someone so talented, so special, and so real on my team, and in this episode we got the chance to cover all things brain health, mental health, career, boundaries, EMDR, and so much more. Let’s peel back the curtain of the business, baby!

I wanted to kickstart the conversation by first having Meghan share a little bit about how she got into counseling and brain health to begin with.

Meghan was originally led to the helping profession by an interest in psychology, curiosity around how people work, and wanting to understand the brain itself. She jumped right into the intense world of mental health by starting her career as a therapist in a domestic violence shelter and later as a clinician for the Colorado Crisis Line, and she found a passion for helping people discover their true potential regardless of their situation. 

“While most people view this work as being depressing and hard, I like to think about it as the opportunity to help people get better, take power back, move through hard moments, and turn things around for themselves.”

Given her experience working with such tough cases, I wanted to know more about what Meghan practices and suggests to others when working through hard emotions. She shares her current top 3 strategies:

1. Acknowledge how you feel. Name it. If you have a hard time identifying how you feel, pull up a list of specific emotions and point out the ones that resonate with you in the current moment. And if you find that certain emotions pop out easier for you (anxiety, anger, etc.), start challenging yourself to identify one completely different emotion that you haven’t given attention to yet. 
   

2. Learn more about where your emotions stem from and stop shaming yourself for them. Don’t argue with them. Allow them to be there and allow yourself to work through them. A lot of us tend to gaslight ourselves without realizing it, telling ourselves we shouldn't be feeling what we're feeling or that we’re overreacting. The emotion you experience has arisen for a reason, whether that's a trauma response or a defense mechanism or whatever the case may be, and we don’t need to talk ourselves out of it. 
   

   “Vulnerability isn’t comfortable for anybody. Shame, grief, all of these things are awful — we know this. But the second we start to normalize it and remind ourselves that it’s okay that we’re feeling it, it becomes easier to move through.”
   

3. Tune into what you are needing in a moment and follow it. Whether you need to release stress in a workout or take 10 minutes to yourself to regulate your emotions, you have to be honest with yourself about what works best for you. 
   
   

As a practitioner who has used many different treatment styles with clients, Meghan shares that EMDR is also an incredible option for people looking to heal from trauma and conditioned beliefs that don’t serve them anymore.

“When using EMDR we end up getting to this core feeling that's called the negative cognition, which is the shit that people are carrying every damn day and don't realize it. Oftentimes we have this root cognition or conditioned belief that we get from our life experiences, from how we were raised, from our conversations, or from whatever else in our life, and these cognitions often tell us something unhelpful like I'm not worthy enough. I’m not deserving. I'm not good enough. I'm too much. I'm too little. I'm all these things. Healing from these beliefs and getting relief from them is the real nitty-gritty of EMDR.”

I feel so proud of what we're creating and the help that we're offering, whether it’s through the counseling, mental health coaching, groups, programs, or any of the other things that we do — it all comes from such a heart-led place. I hope that you find something in this conversation that you can put in your toolkit to help you and the people that you love, mamas.

If you or someone you know is looking to start your own healing journey, Meghan has openings!

To Connect with Meghan:

Schedule a Free Consult: calendly.com/xmeghanolson
Instagram: @xmeghanolson
Phone: (720) 468-0509

Take care of yourselves and therefore each other!

xo, brooke jean