Alethia2

Alicia is the CEO of Mindful Life Consulting, a psychotherapy business that supports people facing challenges in their work or personal life. She helps them address barriers, develop coping strategies, and integrate a wellness plan into their daily lives. Alicia's upbringing in a community-minded family and her experience working with youth led her to start her own practice. She believes in cultural competency and providing therapy to people of color who may face unique challenges. Alicia is passionate about removing barriers to mental health care and mentoring therapists of color. She emphasizes the importance of therapy for those who may not realize they need it due to stigma or lack of cultural understanding. Welcome. My name is Esther, and this is the Canadian Businesswoman Podcast. Today I have a previous guest. She was on a previous episode talking about a wellness retreat that she's putting together, and now she's back to give us an update and also talk a little bit more about what she does. So welcome back to the show, Alicia. How are you today? Hey, Esther. Thanks for having me. The initial goal when I reached out to you a few months ago was to actually do a one-on-one interview with you, but you are so community-minded and so giving, you're like, no, I have this event. I have these people that are doing these great things. You let everybody know about my podcast. You filled out my schedule and then had such a great interview with multiple panels of people. So I thank you for being community-minded and bringing so many people together, but I still want to shine a spotlight on what you do and your work. So can you give us a little introduction about yourself, your earlier life, and what led you to start your psychotherapy business? Sure. Let me start with the fact that my Mindful Life Consulting and community practice has been open for four years. I am the CEO of the company, and what we do is we support people that might be facing challenges, whether in their work or personal life, and it's causing them some emotional distress. So what I do is hold space for you to address those barriers that are holding you back, develop coping strategies so that you're able to manage your emotions a little bit easier, and now I'm helping people integrate a wellness plan into their daily life schedule that includes activities that help increase and promote our wellness lifestyle, reduce stress, and also help them to live and do things with ease so that they're able to build resilience and lead with confidence. And how I do this is through cognitive behavioral therapy. I do some mindfulness where we're really identifying and being aware of our emotions, and I also talk a lot about emotional mastery, which is how to manage your emotions effectively so that you can do things and communicate clearly and reduce the amount of anxiety and stress that you're under. Is there something else in your earlier life that led you to this point to start this business? I immigrated here when I was seven years old from the UK. My parents are from Grenada, and they always did things in a collective community, which meant if there was a sale going on, you'd get everything in bulk. You only support your community, and we would only shop at specific places. So for me, it was a natural thing to give back. My parents were active in the community, active in my school environment. They were always involved. People knew who they were. So I thought it was just a natural thing for me that when I was in high school and I was ready to move on, I started thinking about some of the professions that I could get into, and I just happened to work at a clinic with youth whose parents were going through therapy, and what I did was I was hired to work with young people and support them with games and arts and crafts while their parents were receiving therapy. Social workers would come out, and they would talk a little bit about what happened during the session, and I would say to myself, you know what? This sounds like something that I would do. So then I took it upon myself to go to all the different colleges and start reading on what would make sense for me in terms of working with a particular group of people. And I'm not trying to say that I had a great upbringing when it came to my social interactions. I had a lot of friends from diverse backgrounds that were experiencing difficulties, and they weren't able to live at home. And I remember one of my friends taking me to a group home, and the parent kicked them out of the house, and they had to live there. And I thought, hey, this is a job that I could do. So I never knew that people could live out of their homes if they were having difficulties and they can go live somewhere else and come back when they were settled. But then when I got into the field as a child and youth counselor and then I became a practitioner, I realized that there's a reason why people leave home. And it's not just because they don't get along with their parents. There could be some really complex issues. So I made it my mission and my purpose to support people that might be going through some challenges, and here I am today having gone through teaching background. I've worked in adolescent psychiatry. I used to do mobile crisis. I used to support people in their homes that were experiencing firsthand trauma. And I thought with all these skills that I have, and also the George Floyd murder, it really impacted the way that I thought that our people, in terms of my own community, the Black community, the African community that I identify with, to have more options for support. And there was a call to action that people of color and therapists that were Black to step up and support their community. And I thought, you know what? With all this experience that I have and the way that COVID was going, I thought, why not start my own practice? I am a certified child youth practitioner, which means that I support youth across the developmental age span that might be having some challenges in their ecological environment. And when we talk about ecological environment, what are the spaces that youth frequent that would help them thrive and grow? So we're placed in education. We're placed in the community. We're placed in detention centers. We're placed in other spaces, even in clinics. And we're working with youth under the age of 21. And I wanted to expand myself with the experience that I have of working in adult mental health and adult addictions. I thought it would just be a great time for me to work with both ages and look through that transition that people go through when they're moving from adolescence to adulthood. And I was able to understand that. And, you know, it was amazing mentoring people along the way. My alma mater is TMU, but, you know, we changed the name now. And I won an award for mentoring students in the Race Forward Program and the Tri-Mentoring Program. And I thought, yeah, this is my calling to support therapists of color that are studying psychology and child and youth care and that are doing community development. I will mentor them and allow them to understand what those opportunities look like for our community and to support them in learning what they can do to support the development and the growth that they need for themselves to be good clinicians. The stigma around getting, I think, therapy and counseling that could still exist, unfortunately, I think it's getting better, but there seems to be barriers around that. Why do you think that people need therapy at all? Some people are like, I'm fine. I know my problems. I can do it myself. Who do you think needs it and why do you think it's needed? Well, I'm going to talk about three things. I'm going to talk about the lack of cultural care, cultural competency, and also our treatment plan, the treatment plan in terms of how to actually work with people that are not white. So let me get to the first one, right, in terms of cultural competency. There are studies out there that show that people feel more comfortable when they are working with a therapist of color that looks like them and that can identify with their life experiences. Now, I may have gone through a different pathway when I migrated here, but some of the complexities and some of the social determinants that cause us to have some effects on our mental health, that is something that is a reality for a lot of people that are immigrants or people that are nonwhite because they don't have that privilege of being able to go through society without having things affect them. And that's when we're talking about the microaggressions, lack of employment, lack of proper education, lack of proper health care and medical care. And when you are going through those social determinants, it does affect your mental health if you're not being validated and you're not being seen and you're not being heard. So, I made it a point of myself to get into the medical system and work in these spaces and see what is it like. Are there people of color that are in decisions where they can make some changes? And I'm talking about structural change and also policy change, not just being a frontline worker. And I don't have a problem with being a frontline worker because I find that that's where you are really hearing the person's voice and that person should be advocating for them. And I always loved being in that role throughout my career because I felt like it was important for me to have a voice for my patients, a voice for my clients and the people in the community. Even though I was there as a professional, I had those struggles too of being a professional and not being heard and not being respected for the community and what we have to offer. So, for me, it made sense that I would assign myself to those patients and those clients that look like me to help them understand the system and how to navigate it. And I'm really proud of the work that I've done throughout the years. And most of my work was providing mental health education to a community that wasn't even aware of some of the things that we had access to because we weren't given that information to begin with. And then when I started discovering that some of the barriers are imposed, that pissed me off even more. And I said, no, let's try and find a way to remove these barriers so we can get the mental health care that we need. And with the cultural competency piece, I grew up here. My parents were Caribbean. So, anything that I understood in terms of their experiences was something that was part of the storytelling growing up in my home. So, I already had a little bit of cultural awareness of how people migrate here, how people settle here, how we make connections and network as a community. And I noticed that there was a lot of disconnect. And I did say to myself that when I got older that I would try and do something about that to understand community and how we actually operate. And my parents would tell me about the partner and the susu in terms of their financial security that you can always go to a place and save your money. You don't always have to go to the bank. You can go to your community and somebody is holding money and you can just go there and get a draw. And I'm like, oh, that sounds good. So, I ended up doing that. My parents would always tell me, by and bulk, we have a large family. I'm still buying one or two, three things. And then when I noticed what I was doing, I'm duplicating some of those things. Like, you know, I remember watching my favorite show, Coupon Wars. And I'm dying at the cash register to save those. I learned these things from my family. So, I thought, alright, when I get in the position of being able to support people, then I'm going to make sure that I have all these resources. I'm going to make sure that I know who I can network with and talk to. If people need things, they should be able to know where to go. So, I also try and do some resourcing. And that's why it's so important to have being a collaboration. I'm not isolating myself and working in a silo. I'm reaching out to others and I'm, you know, expanding my network. And then if somebody needs something, then I should be able to go to my network and say, hey, there's a parent or there's an individual that's just starting work. What are the resources that are afforded to them? And then I can go to my community and say, hey, this is a settlement place. Hey, they live in this area. They can go to the community center. Oh, I know a place where they can get food. So, then it reduces the stress and reduces the stigma that we don't help anybody. The person can come and then I should be able to resource them. And that's what I'm really proud of doing. You may have already discussed this. We have a bad connection. But just to get a little bit more deeper into what somebody can expect, if they want, if they were to meet with you one-on-one, what's the difference between psychotherapy, psychology? Like there's so many titles. And what specifically do you do during your session when you're treating somebody and helping somebody? Okay, well, psychology and psychotherapy are similar because we examine the thoughts and the feelings of somebody that might be going through a situation or an event. That's causing them some stress. They become emotionally dysregulated and they need some support getting back into focus and being present. I use CBT and a psychologist would use the same thing. They might use some assessment tools to come to an evidence-based conclusion. I already have the evidence based on your story, your life experience, and some of the things that you've tried in the past to help yourself soothe or to heal from that situation. So what I would do is on my first interview with you is just to gather some information about what resonated with you about my description. What was it that you were seeking? Because obviously something really struck that pain point with you. So for me, I would like to know, okay, well, now that you've identified what that struggle is, how can I support you in giving you the tools that you need so you can heal yourself? So we talked about what were those past experiences that caused you to be here? Have you had therapy in the past? And if you have, what were those goals that you achieved with your therapist? Did you feel that it was working for you? And if it was working for you, would you like to continue on those goals? Because I find that some people think just because they saw a doctor in the past that your file was closed and you had to start new information. I'm saying, no, we can do a continuation. If it was something that you were pleased with and you noticed the progress, then why stop that? Let's just build on the skills that you already have. And you know when you're a teacher, we call it scaffolding, right? For little kids. When you're giving them bits of information and then they put it together and they're able to build from there. So that's what I do. I would say to you, okay, if you didn't think it worked for you, then we're going to discard it. But if it works for you, then tell me what was one thing that was helpful and let's continue. So I let people know that this space is for many different things. It could be for you to unravel and unpack some of your past and your childhood traumas or your wounds or your attachments. It could be just a vent and you just need a sounding board. Someone to talk to that has a different objective and a different perspective. And then we can talk about how we can change our perspective based on having different points of view. And then I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the education piece, which is the evidence-based information. I'm going to talk about some of the tools that we've used to really help you stay focused and reduce that stress and to think more clearer and increase your communication. I'm going to talk to you about that. How to improve those relationships that could have been strained because of the stress and the sadness that you were facing. Or maybe you're a manager or a CEO like myself and you're really having a struggle making decisions for your employees and really caring about them. You want the best. So I would help you sift through those emotional pieces so you can make those clear logical decisions without putting any personal feelings in it. 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