LPP #137 Reclaiming Your Mental Health Experience with Evie O’Conner

Evie O’Conner is a trauma-informed yoga teacher and therapist in training. She is currently completing a Masters in the Clinical Mental Health program in Contemplative Psychotherapy and Buddhist Psychology. Her offerings focus on awareness, allowance and integration of all layers of self: physical, mental, emotional, energetic, spiritual, societal, cultural and ancestral.  Evie teaches yoga classes, leads women’s groups and circles, offers 1:1 inner-child healing sessions, teaches Intuitive Eating and this year, is very excited to be taking on clients in her therapy practice. Evie believes deeply in each individual’s capacity for self-healing and views healing as a lifelong, non-linear journey. Her aspiration is to hold space for her clients to reconnect to the healer within themselves and the medicines of the natural world.  SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON CONNECT WITH EVIE: Website: www.evieyoga.com Instagram: @eviemarie.oconner CONNECT WITH ME: Email: [email protected]: @livengproofLiveng Proof Podcast Website IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS: Her natural curiosity & desire to learn as a child Our humanness is the doorway to the spiritual. What’s come up for her during this global uncertainty Informed consent in how we heal The western approach of the medical model. What this model excludes.  She offers an alternative inclusive approach to the medical model – for those who have not found resolution with the medical model – one that offers the patient agency and sovereignty in their healing journey. How seductive it can feel to use ways to escape reality  The non-linear journey of healing  She shares about her own struggle with an eating disorder from ages 10-19 Having gratitude for our coping mechanisms Learning to sit with our own pain rather than obsessing about the symptom.  Learning how the symptom (obsessive thoughts about food + body, or depression, anxiety, etc.) is an indicator of something that needs our attention. Working with diagnoses in mental health: when are they helpful? When are they harmful? Who do they serve? Who do they disempower? How a mental health diagnosis can feel like a trap to some and empowering to others.  Everyone is the master and expert of their own experience  The power differential that can occur between a therapist and client (therapeutic aggression).  How we can lean more towards a client centered approach where co-creation is the foundation of the relationship. The anti-psychiatry movement The history of diagnoses in mental health Psychiatry is a modern day witch hunt The history of the DSM How have mental health diagnoses created a broader cultural implication of pathologizing the human experience?  Archetypes: pathologizing the neurotic expression vs. the wisdom expression What are the causes of mental illness?  Are there some causes that don’t get validated as much as others?  At the end of the day- what matters most is how each individual/client works with diagnoses and if they experience it as helpful or harmful.  RESOURCES MENTIONED: Dr. Kelly Brogan  Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays Silvia Federici  Advertisements (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({ google_ad_client: "ca-pub-1845753290669994", enable_page_level_ads: true }); The post LPP #137 Reclaiming Your Mental Health Experience with Evie O’Conner appeared first on Liveng Proof.