Why Our Therapy Practice is Called “Conscious Roots Counseling” by Jenny Liu

Content Warning: This blog article includes mention of suicide and sexual abuse. 

There are several reasons why I became a therapist. The profession certainly suits my personality - I enjoy listening, learning, and reflecting. I work best in environments that are more calm. I like working directly with people instead of a product. But mostly, my life experiences have led me on this path. 

During my second semester of freshman year at Hanover College, I took my first psychology class and I was hooked. I loved learning how and why people thought and behaved. Then, after my exams that semester, my grandmother died by suicide. I was changed in many ways that day–but my career goals were set. I wanted to know more about why my grandmother chose to die by suicide. Then I wanted to help others in the way she was not able to find help. 

This led me on a professional journey to find the “source” of mental illness. 

Part of my grandmother’s story is that she was sexually abused by a family friend as a child. Unfortunately, my grandmother lived in an era in which mental health concerns were silenced, ignored, or at worst ostracized. From what I understand, when my grandmother told her parents about the abuse they stopped seeing that family friend, but otherwise the issue was not dealt with. As a result, my grandmother struggled with depression and other symptoms of mental illness throughout her life. She attempted suicide many times, and each time she would go to a psychiatric hospital for several weeks or months. Her medication would be changed and she would be discharged, but she was never given the opportunity to truly heal. 

This part of my grandmother’s story had me focus my early career on working with children. I particularly wanted to help children who had been abused.

I wanted to be the therapist my grandmother did not have when she was a child.

I studied play therapy and became a Registered Play Therapist. I specialized in working with children with trauma. While this work was rewarding and I was able to help several children with abuse histories, I struggled engaging parents in treatment (a fault of mine, not the parents), and parental engagement is crucial for success in child therapy. I knew that to have a greater impact, I would need to try a different path to find the “source” of mental health. 

I then changed course on my journey and started working with adults. My grandmother’s mental health difficulties had obvious effects on her ability to parent her children. Because her children grew up in an environment in which my grandmother’s moods were unstable and unpredictable, they also developed mental health concerns. My hope was that if I worked with adults and they were more emotionally and mentally healthy, they could support their own children as needed. I want my clients to be the parents my grandmother could have had - supportive and encouraging of getting mental health help. 

This change in focus has been a wonderful professional decision for me.

But because my early career was mostly focused on children, I needed to learn more about how to best work with adults. I chose to be trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). EMDR changed the framework of my therapy practice. “The past is lived in the present,” is a phrase often used in EMDR. I want you to read that again: “The past is lived in the present.” If we can understand how our past experiences–or even how others’ past experiences–affect our present lives, we can change. Because of EMDR, I am more conscious of how my grandmother’s life story carried into my mother’s life, which continued into mine. Now that I am conscious of it, I can hopefully grow from it. Her story continues with my journey. 

At Conscious Roots Counseling, we work with children and adults.

We work with you.

We work with you to find the source of your mental health concerns. Maybe how you were parented affects your parenting, which affects your child. Maybe you or your child experienced a traumatic event. Or maybe it was multiple stressors at one time and/or over a long period of time. Whatever the root cause, we can help you become conscious of it. Then we can help you change it.