Spring 2022 Quarterly Newsletter
From the Director: New Year Reflections
The past two years have held so much, and we know emotions are running the full spectrum as we continue to face challenges and changes. Whether you feel despair, joy, excitement, apprehension, grief, hope, or anywhere between, Willow Counseling looks forward to supporting you.
One trend that has become apparent over the past two years as we have weathered a pandemic, tornados, a bombing, instability in both our daily routines and plans for the future, political clashes, global unrest, cultural awakenings, and untold personal trials and traumas, is that it has become acceptable, expected even, to admit that we are not always okay. Sometimes we need help.
The demand for therapy has risen dramatically since early 2020, not just at Willow Counseling but with almost every mental health provider across Nashville. Willow Counseling has added office space, hired more staff therapists, brought on graduate-level interns to give reduced rates, and provided both in-person and telehealth offerings in order to have more space, availability, and opportunities for scheduling. In fact, we have already more than doubled our number of clients helped this year compared to this same time last year.
Even as we grow, our goal has always been and continues to be to provide quality care for you and anyone else who walks through our doors (or clicks ‘join’ in our telehealth windows). As you skim through our new year newsletter, we hope that in the midst of the updates and plans for the future, you will also see a consistent thread – that we exist to provide quality, trauma-informed care through a wholehearted lens.
Update: We’ve moved down the hall!
Willow Counseling has moved down the hall! The move to Suite 440 gives us more office space for our therapists, allowing us to offer greater session availability as well as a room for sand tray therapy, family therapy, and play therapy.
Meet the Staff Therapists
Spring 2022 Groups
Wholehearted Wellness – Outdoor Group for Stress & Anxiety
Healing from Compassion Fatigue- A Group for Nurses
Prepare & Enrich Couples Relationship Workshop
Therapy Spotlight: Compassion Fatigue
Compassion fatigue is more than just burnout. Compassion fatigue is what happens when we experience burnout in addition to witnessing or learning about pain and trauma in someone we care about. Individuals in helping professions or caregiving roles will develop compassion fatigue at some point in the course of their work. At Willow Counseling, we help individuals struggling with compassion fatigue through two primary avenues – resiliency skill building and trauma therapy.
Resiliency skill building: This component of compassion fatigue therapy can incorporate cognitive restructuring, values reassessment and realignment, self care strategies, attachment work, self-regulation and wellbeing education, support system development, emotions awareness and expression, self-compassion practice, and more depending on your needs.
Trauma therapy: Processing, discharging, and healing the effects of secondary trauma can include modalities such as EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, Sandtray Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and Brainspotting.
In addition to helping you heal from the pain and trauma exposure of your job, we support you in creating a more sustaining and fulfilling relationship with your job and life purpose that better balances your whole self.
Resources
Are you looking for some quick reading that informs and aids in your personal growth? Every other week, Willow Counseling releases new articles in one of the following areas: Anxiety, Compassion Fatigue, Depression, Grief, Trauma, Mind and Body, and Therapy Basics. Check out our top 5 articles below.
Unpacking Religious Trauma: How Spirituality Can Harm
5 Benefits of EMDR (Even If You Haven’t Experienced Trauma)
Mind-Body Connection: Unpacking the Relationship Between Nutrition and Mental Health
On the Healing Journey: How to Engage in Self-Care for Trauma
5 Powerful Things to Keep in Mind When You’re Healing From Sexual Trauma
Wholehearted Wellness
At Willow Counseling, we have come to embrace the concept of ‘Wholehearted Wellness,’ a term we use that embodies our commitment to your whole health – your body, your mind, and your spirit. Willow Counseling recognizes that our mental health, physical health and spiritual health are interconnected.
For example, we know that trauma dysregulates the nervous system, which can lead to physical symptoms of inflammation, muscle aches and pain, difficulty sleeping and more. In addition, compassion fatigue and burnout can result in spiritual symptoms of losing faith in yourself, in humanity, and/or in your sense of purpose.
With a commitment to wholehearted wellness, Willow Counseling seeks to bring wholeness and hope to every aspect of your life, allowing you to live life from a place of fullness. You will see us incorporating values work, somatic interventions, trauma processing modalities, narrative and storytelling interventions, dialectical and cognitive skills work, sand tray therapy, and more into your sessions as we work together to find YOUR wholehearted wellness.
Willow Counseling, PLLC – Nashville, TN
Willow Counseling, PLLC exists to provide quality trauma-informed mental health counseling to the Nashville community, recognizing the interconnectedness of our emotional, spiritual and physical selves. We work together to alleviate symptoms, learn better coping skills, relieve burdens, remove the pain of trauma, and so much more. However, our greatest desire is for you to know what it means to feel purpose and joy again and to recognize the strength and worth you have to offer the world.
