Finding You: by Dr. Brad Reedy

Dr. Reedy takes live questions from parents on the topics of the shadow, when we feel overwhelmed by parenting, and how to create an emotionally space for someone while still maintaining our boundaries

Dr. Brad Reedy discusses some of the ways you can know whether your therapist is right for you--or not. He also explains how to think about and approach therapy in order to get the most out of it.

Dr. Brad Reedy answers questions about how to get over the guilt and shame of seeing your child wrestle with the same difficult issues you do, how to research and choose a therapeutic boarding school, and how or if to intervene when you know your child is engaging in risky behaviors. He also supports a parent who reports an abusive therapist and addresses another who wants to know how to authentically connect with her teenage son who has a potential personality disorder.

Dr. Brad Reedy discusses the three types of therapeutic Intensives Evoke offers: Finding You, Finding Connection, and Finding Family. He elucidates Evoke's practice of Attachment-based therapy and how and why it helps. He also offers and in-depth description of each Intensive, as well as its benefits.

Dr. Brad Reedy addresses questions about what to do when you feel you've tried everything and your soon-to-be adult child rejects it all, how to proceed when your child "doesn't believe in boundaries," and finding balance between curiosity and consistency, among several others.

Dr. Brad Reedy talks about wilderness therapy and how it can be effective for struggling children and young adults--and their families. He covers how being in a therapeutic setting in the wilderness forces a digital detox, fosters grit and mindfulness, allows clients to play again, all while exposing them to positive mentoring and experiential therapy. Wilderness therapy is especially effective with resistant adolescents and allows kids to build self-esteem through tangible accomplishments. It removes the negative influences from home, allows individuation, and supports connections to things "greater than" or outside themselves like the group--and nature itself.

In a live Q&A parents asked questions about a child with a potentially devastating mental health diagnosis, the basics of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and how it might help, what to do when you are overwhelmed by guilt about the ways you have "dented" your children, and one parent reached out expressing fear and loneliness because her son's involvement in gangs has left her feeling like she has no parental peers in the treatment world.

Dr. Brad Reedy, recently back from vacation, speaks of lessons learned during his time off, through the lens of the works of Dr. James Hollis, a Jungian psychoanalyst. One of Dr. Reedy's opening quotes from Hollis's book The Middle Passage, perfectly previews this talk: "But such is the first [half of] adulthood: full of blunders, shyness, inhibitions, mistaken assumptions, and always, the silent rolling of the tapes of childhood. If one had not set forth and made those mistakes and crashed into those walls, then one would have remained a child. Reviewing one's life from the vantage point of the second half requires understanding and forgiveness of the inevitable crime of unconsciousness."

Dr. Brad Reedy interviews public school social worker and Evoke Intensives therapist and coach, Clement Wilson.

Evoke Intensives Clinical Director, Travis Slagle talks about the myth of being good, and how our need to be "good," bred into us from the earliest parts of our lives, can destroy our agency and authenticity. "It's better to be a Self, than to be 'good.'"