Speaking and Communicating Podcast

One of the things that I ask people all the time is, what do you want to believe about yourself, and what holds you back from believing that?

Welcome back to The Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host Roberta Ndlela.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

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Now let's get communicating.

Now let's get communicating with Karen Dwyer-Teseriore.

Karen is a psychotherapist joining us from New York City.

She is trained in EMDR.

She helps to overcome negative self-talk.

She helps with adult mental health, PTSD, ADHD, and other mental health illnesses.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show.

Hi, Karen.

Hi.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you for being here.

Welcome.

Please introduce yourself to our listeners.

Sure.

So my name, like you said, is Karen Dwyer-Teseriore.

I'm a psychotherapist in New York City.

I've been in my private practice for about 12 years, but prior to that, I worked in community mental health.

And before that, I worked in the New York City child welfare systems with different agencies, different families in different capacities.

So I've been all totaled in the field as a social worker for about 30 years now.

When you grow up as a kid and you think of social work, what do you find lights you up about it when you thought about doing this kind of work?

Well, interestingly enough, I thought I would grow up to be a pediatrician.

I thought I wanted to work with kids.

And seventh grade science did be in and it was like, no, you're not going to med school.

So that was how.

So I had to find something else.

It never really dawned on me until I had a transition from high school into college.

And that was a really rough time for me in my personal life.

And I just don't deal well with change.

My parents saw what was going on and they were like, you're either going to go to therapy or you need to move out and be on your own.

Like those are your two options at this point.

So I chose therapy and I was like, OK, let's go talk to this person.

Her name was Michelle, my therapist at that point.

We just worked together really well and then when I decided to really buckle down and figure out college and what I was going to do, everything that I was considering, I was considering being a lawyer, considering business, like all these different things.

I kept having these conversations with my parents and I was like, I could do what Michelle did.

I could sit and listen to people and listen to their problems and help them.

I was like, I think that's where I'd be good at.

I started looking into what does it take to be a therapist and that got me moving.

Honestly, what fires me up the most about this, and I say this all the time to anyone who will listen to me, it's what I learned from my clients.

Whoever my client is, whether in the beginning part of my career, it was a child or a teenager or a parent, and seeing what they were going through, having been separated and going through the New York City foster care system all the way through to people in community mental health, and even my clients today.

This morning, I learned something new that I never learned before.

So it's just my clients teach me so much, and then I get to use all the therapeutic trainings that I have and use the skills that I have to really help them progress and see the changes that they want to see.

So that's what keeps me going all these years.

And do you think that there's something in you that is more compassionate, or is it actually better to be a psychotherapist who doesn't feel too much so that you don't get so sucked in in your clients' problems?

We learn in school empathy and how to empathize with our clients, but not to take it on.

And that's a really hard thing in the beginning to learn.

It was really difficult.

I was very sympathetic to people, very compassionate.

But honestly, being able to kind of take that step back sometimes, and there's a lot of self care that goes into this, like making sure that I'm taking care of myself.

Because the one thing they teach us in grad school is that we are the tool that we're bringing to our clients.

And we know that most of the work where a client heals or reaches their goals is in the relationship with the therapist.

That's where a lot of the work is done.

It's reparative and it's healing having that relationship with that therapist.

And so knowing all of those things, that kind of helps me to stay focused every day.

And what am I working on?

Like every morning I wake up and I look at which clients am I seeing today?

Who's on my schedule?

What is this going to look like?

Where are we?

And doing the prep work to kind of be there for them in knowing what might be going on that day or where we left off from the last session.

So there is a lot of taking care of ourselves as therapists in order to bring ourselves to our clients.

And speaking of the relationship with your therapist, have you had clients where you realize this is not a good fit?

Maybe a different therapist will work much better, you'll have a better relationship with them?

Absolutely.

Especially if a client is coming in one way and then we meet and I realize, wait, there's something else going on here and I'm not trained in that modality or they need a different type of therapeutic framework, like whatever might be going on.

And I'm like, you know what, you would be better off.

And I do try and connect my clients to other therapists then that do have those trainings and do have those modalities, that would be a better fit because not every client and not every therapist are going to work well together.

And that's okay.

And that's okay.

Oh, yes.

It's not always a fit for sure.

And you're always, like you said, do what's best for the client.

Have you had clients who come to you and they expect a quick fix?

Oh, very much so.

My running joke to clients and my running joke to other therapists is unfortunately, are magic wands that were broken.

Like we can't just reach over, pull out a magic wand and make everything better in someone's life.

Believe me there.

I wish I could.

I wish I had that ability, but I don't.

And oftentimes people will come in and they'll be like, well, I'm okay, but I need help with my mom or I need help with my husband or I need help with my partner.

I need help with my kids.

And part of what we have to tell them is we can't change that person.

That person is not in the room.

They don't want to do the work.

They're not doing the work.

That's okay.

That's on them.

We can only change how you respond to that person.

And that's a big thing that people have to learn and kind of manage of like, wait, I have to change what I'm doing?

How am I going to change this?

And that could be setting boundaries or just looking at the relationship differently.

So depending on the therapist, we'll take that approach as well.

Yes, I did see your Instagram videos talking about the relationship challenges with parents.

And I thought, okay, Karen, it all sounds great.

But you haven't met an African parent.

So I'm not sure if this applies to me.

And if it can work, because it's one thing to say that to American patients.

An African parent is a different type of animal altogether.

And that's interesting.

And culturally, I would love to learn more about that.

You know what I mean?

Because culture plays in so much into the parent-child relationship.

It really does, especially just different values that play in culturally what goes on.

And it takes a lot to kind of recognize, like, wait, I don't know every culture that's out there.

And then is this culturally, or is it just a family dynamic?

And trying to look at that as well, it all plays into the work.

When I work with people with different cultures, I ask them all the time, like, tell me about your culture.

Tell me more about this.

I'm curious about it.

And have you found that if culturally, you know, talking back to your parent or showing that you disagree with your parent, if that's unacceptable in that culture, does then your client, who comes to you with that problem, do they find it challenging to implement whatever tools and strategies you recommend?

Absolutely.

Culture plays so much into the work that we do and how we socialize and what does it mean to be respectful?

Like, that all plays in.

Absolutely, that 100% plays in.

Now, let's talk about the work that you do when it comes to mental health.

One thing, when I lived in America, I noticed was that there's just a formidable percentage of the population who struggles with one mental health issue or another.

Can you just walk us through that, please?

And what do you think are the factors that feed into the population having these types of demands?

This is such an interesting topic.

I see so many different things play in.

We don't take care of ourselves.

Like we work, work, work.

We're giving to our kids all the time.

We're rushing from one activity for our kids to another.

We are not okay with any type of downtime.

We don't know what to do with that.

And if we're feeling negative feelings, some people avert from downtime because they don't want that time to be overtaken by those negative feelings.

So there are so many different things that play in.

It's the financial responsibilities.

It's our cultural responsibilities of our kids have to be involved in every activity.

It's overwhelming.

And people aren't slowing down enough.

We talk more and more about that work-life balance, but it's so disconnected.

People like, okay, I have work-life balance, but that means driving my kid to six different activities in a day, and school, and homework.

No, that's not work-life balance.

Work-life balance is taking time to meditate, taking time to make sure that we're eating healthy foods, taking time to make sure that we're exercising and including movement, whatever that movement might be, getting outside a little bit.

Like people just don't do these basic things to take care of themselves.

And that plays into anxiety and perfectionism and depression.

Like it just compounds itself.

Was that always the case with American society that a first grader has like six different sports that they play after school?

No, I joke around, unfortunately, that Tiger Woods ruins us.

Tiger Woods was playing golf at three years old and people think my three-year-old has to be in a sport to get that college scholarship.

And it's like, let your three-year-old play, let them play, let them just go out and explore the world and play in the sands or play in the grass and just let them play.

They don't need organized play.

It's okay for them not to be playing golf at three years old.

It's okay not to have soccer at three years old.

These things are okay.

And I think the other thing is, and I'm going to get beat up for this, more and more women in American culture are working.

So what happens is we go to those organized activities in order for our kids to socialize, because back earlier, like when I grew up, a lot of moms didn't work and the kids were out.

And after school, they would get their homework done and they'd go out for a little while and play hide-and-seek and play tag and all those ride a bike, go to the local schoolyard and play baseball or whatever it was.

We don't do that anymore.

Everything is very organized and regimented.

And then we're like, OK, now it's time for work-life balance.

Make sure you're breathing.

There's no like free time anymore.

Everything is regimented.

And then we realize that that's the problem.

So why aren't we making any changes to it?

Because people are in it for the college scholarships.

People think that by going to a better college, the kids are going to get better jobs.

And then they'll have the work-life balance that we're all telling them now.

We mean now.

It's constant.

It's that rat race.

And we haven't gotten out of it.

And we're still in the hamster wheel, for sure.

So if somebody comes to you and they have trauma, how do you determine when they tell you their story that, oh, they have PTSD or they have this and that?

Because the reason I ask is, as you know, in social media, a lot of terminology gets thrown around.

And I think half of us who've never been trained in therapy even know what we're talking about sometimes.

And, you know, like the word narcissist, if somebody just does your regular, oh, you're a narcissist, like people just throw terminology all over the place.

So when somebody has PTSD, what does that mean and how do you determine that that's what it is?

So there are two different types of PTSD.

So there is PTSD that we typically think about.

We used to call this big T, like big trauma.

And those are events like 9-11, Hurricane Sandy, car accident, any one-time life-threatening event.

But then what I focus on is what we call little T or complex PTSD.

And that's relationship trauma.

Those are the things that take place every day within families.

But for some reason, for some of us, our brains internalize it as a traumatic event because it's a trauma to the relationship.

And that's where I focus my work.

And oftentimes people come in initially and say, I have anxiety, I have depression.

And then when we start talking about what's going on, the symptoms, little by little people start unraveling their story.

And then that's where we figure out like, wait, this was a trauma for you.

This was a trauma for your relationship.

Whether that's with a partner, whether that's with a parent from childhood, whether it's with a sibling from childhood, because siblings can abuse each other in that way.

And not necessarily thinking, oh, I'm going to abuse my sibling today.

But when we call each other names and we tease each other, that could be trauma for somebody.

So all of these little nuanced issues that come up will manifest itself later on as people who are people pleasers, people who avoid certain places and things in other people.

So all of that is symptoms of trauma.

And so I use EMDR therapy.

I also use somatic work and body-centered psychotherapy to really help people move through those past traumas.

Oftentimes, the other thing that happens is because of those past experiences, we start to have negative thoughts about ourselves.

And those negative thoughts were really kind of projected onto us by those other people.

And we internalize them as negative thoughts about who we are as ourselves.

And when we look at that, and we can really look at like, wait, where did I first get that message that I'm not good enough, or I'm not smart enough, or whatever the negative message is, and we can relate it back to the past.

Now, we could start looking at that and looking with my clients at, well, what do you want to believe about yourself?

What are the good things that you have going on in your life?

And I'm not talking about financial, I'm talking about the traits, that who you are as a person, I'm caring, I'm kind, those things that you cannot put a price tag on, those things that innately make up who you are.

Let's focus on those good things, and then take those good things, those strengths, and let's carry them forward, and let's leave this negative stuff behind, because we may not be 100% perfect, because nobody on this earth is perfect.

But then how do we be the best version of ourselves, and how do we believe in ourselves so we can accomplish our goals?

Because oftentimes those negative beliefs of, I'm not good enough, they hold us back, and they hold us back from accomplishing our goals, whether that's a new business, a new relationship, trying a new project, trying a new activity even, this could really hold us back.

I had one client I worked with who used to run 5K races.

Here and there, she'd go out two miles on the weekends, and through our work together, she finally came to realize, like, wait, maybe I could run a marathon.

And she ran a half marathon here in New York City.

And then that same year in November, she ran the New York City marathon.

So from March to November, she got the courage to try something new.

And she ran both of the half marathon and the New York City marathon.

And she was like, I never believed that I could do that.

But when you step out of that comfort zone of those negative thoughts, you might be amazed at what you can accomplish.

You see, you just prove our point that somebody would come to you and say, Oh, Dr.

Karen, I have anxiety, depression.

It's the same as when I have a stomach bug and I go to Google and it says, Oh, you need a colonoscopy or something like that.

You know, we self-diagnose so much.

Listen, technology is great.

And yes, sometimes it's good to check, you know, if you feel something.

But that self-diagnosis and then we put all these labels on ourselves.

And say, I am this, I am that, then leads to that negative self-talk.

Absolutely.

So many things can lead to negative self-talk.

We got to leave that negativity.

It's easier for people to believe the negative than the positive, but it takes just as much energy to believe the positive as the negative.

It does?

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Because usually, you know how sometimes someone would give you a compliment and say, oh, you know, but then there's some, but it says something negative.

It's kind of quick to think, oh, yeah.

Exactly.

Exactly.

But if someone gives you a compliment and you just say, oh, thank you, end it right there.

So many times we feel like we have to quantify it.

Oh, thanks.

I got it at Target for 10 bucks or I got it here for 10.

Like we have to quantify it.

But if we just accept the compliment of like, oh, thank you.

Like, really kind of sit with that and sit with those feelings.

And that's the body-centered psychotherapy.

Sitting with those feelings that might come up around that.

If someone gives us a compliment, a lot of times people say like, that feels really weird to me.

That feels awkward.

I want to invite you to just sit with that awkwardness and see where that's coming from.

Because it's probably from something in the past that just doesn't feel right.

But in the past, what gives that more weight than this person's idea of you and their compliment to you?

And sometimes it's a strange, why do they carry more weight?

The opinion carries more weight in you than somebody comes to you and somebody that you know has your best interest at heart.

So when it comes to negative self-talk as well, have you seen an instance where two people can be brought up in the same household, loved the same way by the same parents, but somehow they told themselves two different stories from their upbringing?

Of course.

So here's the thing with that.

No siblings ever have the same parents.

So if you're the oldest child in a sibling group, right?

You have very different parents than maybe the youngest, like if there's a sibling group of three or four, because the parents are different because they've had different parenting experience.

So at first a parent might be like, I use this joke all the time.

Oh, the parent, like the baby can't go on the floor.

The baby has to be taken care of.

Oh, the baby, the baby, the baby.

But the third baby, the mom's like, they're fine.

They're good.

Well, no problem.

Oh, they ain't an aunt.

Okay, that's perfect.

We're good.

You know what I mean?

It's just a different parenting style.

So no two siblings are ever going to have the same parenting situation growing up.

And then you factor in siblings and how siblings play into that.

So an only child is going to be very different than a sibling group of six, let's say.

Everybody's going to have different experiences of their growing up.

And when you have siblings, that adds another whole dynamic because then is there a comparison between the siblings?

Is my older sibling treated differently or better or worse than I'm treated?

So there's a lot that goes into it.

So there's always, even though it might be the same upbringing, the same parents, the same rules, how everybody experiences that is going to be interpreted differently.

And that's why somebody might in a family come in and realize like, hey, I have this past trauma related to my siblings or related to my parents, whereas everyone else is like perfectly, perfectly fine.

They have no trauma.

So it's a very different experience for everybody.

That is so true.

And in fact, there's even a support group using the term loosely of all the siblings.

I mean, I'm the oldest of all the siblings.

You know how they say, all the siblings get by here.

And everybody in the comments goes, oh my goodness, I know what that was like.

And then by the time my parents had their last born, my baby brother, my baby sister, they were a whole different.

Absolutely.

Yes.

And gender plays into that as well.

How a family treats a female older child versus a younger boy, that might be very different.

Whatever is playing into that, whether it's cultural or fight, like there are just a lot of different dynamics.

Everyone has their own different experiences and their own takeaways.

You could have two people standing on the same street corner witnessing the same event take place.

And if you interview them after, this was a big thing with 9-11.

People took away different memories from it because we all have different experiences and different things stick with us more so than other things.

So you could interview the same people witnessing an event like 9-11, pull them away, interview them, and they'll give you two different stories of what happened.

Oh yes, I remember to this day, they say people have different accounts.

When you're sitting that day around the two towers, yes, telling different stories of what they saw.

Now imagine if you're witnessing mom and dad and in their interactions with a sibling, you might have different perceptions of what that interaction is.

Thinking they love them more or they have a favorite.

Yeah, that's a big one.

Favoritism is a big one.

Right.

Now let's talk about the younger generation.

Do you find that this generation is pro-therapy?

Do they see it as something necessary sometimes?

I think a lot of younger people do.

So here's the thing.

I think societal wise, we're more open to mental health services.

I think we're getting it out there, but there is still a stigma attached and there's especially a stigma attached for males.

And that is an issue.

We need more men, more boys in therapy just for support.

Like people need support, like no matter what's going on, whether it's work stress, relationship stress, money stress.

And men have this mentality of I could do it on my own.

I don't need help.

And there's a negativity when it comes to therapy.

So I tell everyone, I think everybody should be in therapy.

It's not even diagnostic.

So what I mean by that is even if you don't have a diagnostic or a diagnosis to build to an insurance company, just for support, use it as a sounding board.

But everybody should be in therapy.

Like I haven't met one person who should not be in therapy.

I'm sure that's true globally.

That's for sure.

You talk about how healing it is to be outdoors.

If we think about the whole COVID years since 2020 and being forced to be indoors, what did your clients, at least, how did they experience that and did you see a surge in mental health issues that they had?

Yes.

Going back to COVID here in New York City, it happened in March and literally my son went to school that Thursday before everything shut down officially.

He was the only one in his classroom.

He sent me a video and he went around the classroom and he was the only one there.

I texted him and I said, what happened?

Where is everybody?

He's like, COVID hit the school, everyone ran home.

I was like, well, are you coming home?

He was like, no, because everybody's on the buses right now and I don't want to be around them on the buses.

He's like, I'm staying here until people scatter.

He's like, I'll be home around six o'clock.

I was like, and he literally hung around the school until he could get on a bus.

That was on Thursday.

Friday, I kept both my kids home.

Saturday and then Sunday, they shut the city down.

I made a video on that Monday morning and I put it out on my social media and I was like, this is going to take longer than they're expecting.

It's not just going to be two weeks and this is going to be dangerous to people's mental health.

And that's exactly what we saw.

As human beings, we are not meant to be alone.

And I know introverts out there are going to be like, no, I need to be alone.

I'm not talking about needing downtime and needing to recharge.

Any interaction, if you go to Starbucks, if you go to the local coffee guy on the corner, and you don't even have to have a conversation, if you see somebody on the train every day, that is a social interaction.

You know that that person is going to be there because for 10 years, you've been doing a job, you get on the train and you see that same person every morning.

There is something social in that.

And during COVID, we were forced to withdraw from that.

And that is just not good for human beings.

That's why the phones and that lack of socialization that people get on the phones, it is not good for us.

It's not healthy for us.

We need to be out and about and around other people.

So what we saw during COVID was exactly what we thought.

We saw a rise in depression.

We saw a rise in substance abuse.

We saw a rise in weight gain because people were literally going from their couch to their refrigerator.

It was the only place they could go.

So we saw a lot of the negative impact, let alone all the death that was around us and hearing.

And if you remember, they had a count on the TV of how many people died that day.

It was all way too much information and it was all traumatizing in a lot of different ways.

So COVID was really hard on a lot of people.

Some people might have little positives that came out of it.

I know for me and my kids, it got our relationship closer.

And I will say that was one positive of them seeing me work and them seeing me pivot my work from in office every day to having it.

I had no clue what Zoom was by that point.

I had to figure out real quick how to get Zoom set up and how to do video calls and how to interact with my clients.

I had to take more clients on because I had more time.

And my kids saw that.

And our relationship actually got better being in the house for all that time and being together and trying to find ways that we could go for walks and just kind of get out and freshen our world view at that point.

Literally just getting out of the house and going for walks was helpful for us during that.

So COVID was a crazy trauma nightmare.

And hope it doesn't come back.

Yes, because we certainly need to be outside.

And then when it comes to negative self-talk, because we are all about communication, how do we start communicating with ourselves internally in order to offset the negative self-talk?

So I actually have some journal prompts on my website in regard to this, because I think this is such an important topic.

And the first thing I tell people is write down, don't put it in your phone, don't put it in your computer, write it down on a notebook or a piece of paper, a list of all of your traits that you like about yourself, those innate traits about you that people give you compliments on.

I want you to start with that.

Once you have that list down, then what I want you to think about is think back five, ten years ago to that younger version of yourself, and what would you want them to know about yourself now?

What would that look like?

And write a letter to yourself.

And then the next step is write a letter to your future self.

And where do you want to see yourself in another five or ten years?

So we're going to look at the past and we're going to move to the future.

One of the things that I ask people all the time is, what do you want to believe about yourself, and what holds you back from believing that?

And I tell people all the time, we use body-centered psychotherapy to check in with ourselves and see how does this feel to you, this other version of you that you want to believe about yourself.

How does that feel internally?

Where do you feel that in your body?

Let's work with that and let's see where that takes us.

And where's the disbelief if you think, oh, that's just preposterous, I'm not that person.

Yeah, people say that.

And I'm like, where does that disbelief come from?

Who gave you that message about yourself?

And what was their experience?

We may not know what their experience was, and they're projecting that on to us.

So if we look at it that that was their experiences, and they projected that on to us, how do we move forward from that?

And I'll give you a prime example.

When I first started my private practice, my ex-husband, he was my husband at the time, turns out I uncovered a whole financial mess that we went through.

And I literally had just started my private practice.

I was enjoying getting it off the ground and getting new clients in.

And a part of me started immediately thinking, financially, I need to go back to community mental health.

I need a steady paycheck.

And I went on a couple of interviews, and I was coming back on the St.

Island ferry.

And I was like, why do I need to go back to community mental health and agency work?

Why can't I do my private practice and grow that and support my family right now?

And when I thought about what was holding me back, it was all these negative thoughts that were instilled in me by other people.

And I was literally on the St.

Island ferry.

And I was like, if I was a doctor, a lawyer or an accountant, nobody would be telling me to go back to agency work.

They would be telling me, you're a professional, you can make your own business and you could succeed in that.

And when I looked at it from that perspective and I was like, okay, what do I need to do to live in that reality?

And I realized what I had to start doing.

I never went back to agency work.

I turned down the job office I got and I built my practice.

I divorced my ex-husband and I'm a successful business person right now talking to you on a podcast.

So it's been amazing.

It's been an amazing ride.

Once you just shift that and you dare to believe in yourself.

When you dare to believe in yourself, anything is possible.

Dare to believe in yourself.

Anything is possible.

Karen, the psychotherapist from New York.

Please share with us the website where you said we can find the journal.

Sure.

My website is KD Tessererro.

I'll spell that.

It's K D T's and Tom E S's and Sam O R I E R O LCSW dot net.

K D Tessererro.

LCSW dot net.

LCSW dot net.

I'll put that in the show notes.

Thank you so much for those free resources, Karen.

And I have a life coaching business.

I work with people in New York and Florida as a psychotherapist.

And I work with people in other parts of the world as a life coach.

And through my life coaching business, I have the podcast is coming.

I just not there yet.

We'll sure be able to tune in once you get that started.

One last question as an SNL fan.

When you take the Staten Island ferry, have you ever seen Colin Jost?

Have you seen him?

I have not seen him.

I don't take the ferry as often as I used to, but I have not seen him.

Okay.

No, there was just one problem because I love SNL.

Anyway, thank you so much for being on our show.

I've really learned so much from you today, and I'm sure that our watchers and listeners have as well.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you so much for having me.

This is so much fun.

It certainly was.

And before you go, please give us your website again.

Sure, kdtesererolcsw.net.

kdtesererolcsw.net.

That is Karen Dwyer-Teseriore, the psychotherapist in New York who helps you overcome negative self-talk, and she is trained in EMDR.

Thank you very much for being on our show today.

Thank you.

My absolute pleasure.

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