Harvard Medical School's Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery Certificate Training Program1/7/2021  I am SO EXCITED to be registered for Harvard Medical School's Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery Certificate Training Program. I work with so many refugees and asylum seekers in my practice! This will be immediately applicable to the work I do everyday and strengthen my clinical skills and knowledge in the area of cultural psychology.
I am thrilled to learn from top experts from the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical school, a child psychiatrist based in Italy, a pediatrician based in Australia, a professor of psychology in Rome, Italy, a clinical psychologist in Switzerland, a neuropsychiatrist in Zaria, Nigeria, a research director in Greece, a clinical psychiatrist in Sydney, Australia, and a professor at Yale University Divinity School and Columbia University School of Social Work. Mission of the Program: "More than one billion people have been affected by violence and disaster throughout the world. Our mission is to maximize a scientific and cultural approach and methodology to reduce suffering, minimize disability and increase resiliency for survivors of violence worldwide. This Program offers a transformative training experience to create a network of global leaders in mental health recovery. Upon completion of the certificate program, participants will be able to: Integrate science, culture and evidence-based knowledge and practices in policy planning, clinical care, humanitarian, and human rights activities. Implement and use advances in the neurosciences and cultural knowledge of the clinical care of traumatized persons, their families, and communities. Define effective scientific approaches for the care of survivors of the COVID-19 pandemic, racial trauma, and climate change. Demonstrate new leadership skills into program development, clinical care and research. Implement culturally sensitive and effective evaluation approaches into the work environment. Apply professional development and ethics in working with vulnerable groups and communities." I will keep you updated on the course material and share my experience in a couple months. Here's to new experiences in 2021! Now Available for Purchase on Our Website!  Adios Anxiety: A Video Series Course incorporates education, research-based theory, coping skills, and -in-course practice of newly learned stress and anxiety management techniques. This course offers stress reduction, teaches mindfulness meditation, builds coping skills, and offers in-course relaxation exercises. It is designed for those who would like to learn about psychological principles from a real licensed psychotherapist apply easy-to-learn skills right away. The course focuses on material that would be best helpful for anyone struggling with stress, anxiety, and panic attacks. What a wonderful year we have had at East Bay Area Therapy! Despite 2020 being a difficult year for many people, we have worked closely with individuals, couples, families, and immigrants to support them through this time. Our therapy services have been utilized by a diverse range of people from varying cultures, sexual orientations, immigration statuses, genders, and ages. Serving immigrants in the therapy setting or through psychological evaluations has been rewarding and eye opening. We appreciate all who have crossed paths with East Bay Area Therapy in Pinole, CA. We will a happy holiday season to those of all faiths and beliefs! Happy 2021!
About our Black Mental Health Matters Initiative:
East Bay Area Therapy warmly opened our doors to deserving members of the black community facing complex mental health issues interacting with systemic oppression, sexual orientation, religion, parenting issues, and relationship problems. Recipients were awarded five free psychotherapy sessions each - a $1000 value! We hope that we can offer more complimentary services in the future and will certainly continue to do our part as a culturally conscious practice involved in the community. Black Lives Matter!  East Bay Area Therapy is offering FREE THERAPY to members of the black community. We are doing our part to lift up the black community, especially during this time.
. . . Black mental health matters. Period. . . . For more information: . . . Email: Grace@eastbayareatherapy.com . . . Tel. (510) 621-8143 For everyone's safety, we are scheduling video visits via a secure HIPAA compliant platform. East Bay Area Therapy wishes you all optimal mental and physical health.   Celebrating Achievement: I am now a Certified Treatment Specialist for Diverse Populations (CTSDP)4/7/2020  East Bay Area Therapy's mission has a commitment to serving people of diverse communities and backgrounds with culturally competent mental health services. I recently took several classes adding up to 26 hours of continuing education to become a Certified Treatment Specialist for Diverse Populations (CTSDP). Here are the classes I completed:
Certified By: |
| Single and happy....or feeling lonely... Attached and in love... unhappily married...arguing with your partner... None of that matters. TODAY is the DAY! DO something loving for yourself! After all, you have seen yourself through the struggle, heartaches, the triumphs, the joy, the pain...you know the depths of your own darkness and the brightness of your radiant light. YOU have been the most loyal to yourself. YOU are the one you have been waiting for. YOU are your very own ride or die.... IT'S TIME to show yourself some LOVE. YOU deserve only the best loving treatment. YOU know exactly what you want and need on a day like today. |  |
Take a hot bath, get a massage, take a weekend trip, watch your favorite movie, indulge with a delectable treat, or unplug....whatever it may be...make sure to honor yourself.
Happy Valentines Days from East Bay Area Therapy.
At East Bay Area Therapy, we rejoice in the incredible diversity in the pan- African community of the San Francisco Bay Area. We recognize that there is massive variation in preference in identity, culture, level of self-acceptance, and internalized oppression through personal anecdotes, education, research, and psychological practice with our amazing clients. As a practice who welcomes and regularly works with individuals who identify as Black, African-American, Caribbean, and as African-Immigrants, we exclaim Thank You! to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for his invaluable role in furthering the positive mental wellness for the pan-African community. We know that discrimination and oppression have a severely harmful effect on mental health and stand for racial justice and restitution.
According to a video by Goalcast (https://www.goalcast.com/2017/09/12/martin-luther-king-story/), Martin Luther King was a child who suffered from episodes of severe depression. He was deeply emotionally affected by racial discrimination, oppression of African-Americans and the pan-African community, and witnessed atrocities towards him, his family, and towards those who shared his African heritage. He made his first suicide attempt around the age of 12, when he jumped out of a second-story window. He made a second suicide attempt before the age of 13, as well.
As with many people who suffer from mental health struggles, he was extremely intelligent, innovative, and was passionate about making a change in the world. He tirelessly fought for justice for the oppressed and stayed focused on his DREAM. He achieved academic excellence by earning his doctorate degree at a very young age (while dealing with depression, too!) and visited India to study a non-violent approach to civil disobedience. He knew that the guidance he was seeking could be found in a collaboration between cultures!
East Bay Area therapy prides itself on being a practice that utilizes culturally conscious counseling, and maintains a safe environment for members of oppressed communities, not limited to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, legal status, ability & disability, and any other ways in which a beautiful human being can be wrongly and unjustly mistreated in this world.
Dr. King, thank you for making it possible to serve many pan-African clients at our practice, East Bay Area Therapy. We are proud to serve African-American, black, Caribbean, and African-immigrant clients with humility, research–based evaluation and treatment strategies, and continuously reflect on our areas of privilege, powerlessness, and how we can use our given privileges to further the wellness of the pan-African community as a whole.
According to a video by Goalcast (https://www.goalcast.com/2017/09/12/martin-luther-king-story/), Martin Luther King was a child who suffered from episodes of severe depression. He was deeply emotionally affected by racial discrimination, oppression of African-Americans and the pan-African community, and witnessed atrocities towards him, his family, and towards those who shared his African heritage. He made his first suicide attempt around the age of 12, when he jumped out of a second-story window. He made a second suicide attempt before the age of 13, as well.
As with many people who suffer from mental health struggles, he was extremely intelligent, innovative, and was passionate about making a change in the world. He tirelessly fought for justice for the oppressed and stayed focused on his DREAM. He achieved academic excellence by earning his doctorate degree at a very young age (while dealing with depression, too!) and visited India to study a non-violent approach to civil disobedience. He knew that the guidance he was seeking could be found in a collaboration between cultures!
East Bay Area therapy prides itself on being a practice that utilizes culturally conscious counseling, and maintains a safe environment for members of oppressed communities, not limited to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, legal status, ability & disability, and any other ways in which a beautiful human being can be wrongly and unjustly mistreated in this world.
Dr. King, thank you for making it possible to serve many pan-African clients at our practice, East Bay Area Therapy. We are proud to serve African-American, black, Caribbean, and African-immigrant clients with humility, research–based evaluation and treatment strategies, and continuously reflect on our areas of privilege, powerlessness, and how we can use our given privileges to further the wellness of the pan-African community as a whole.
How to Take a Shower with Disabling Depression
When one is going through disabling depression, there isn't a whole lot of motivation to do much of anything. The most obvious and measurable basic self-care activities are things like feeding ourselves, bathing ourselves, brushing our teeth, changing our dirty clothing, hygienic toileting… you get the point.
All of these things become compromised when we feel depressed at a disabling level. High functioning and moderate functioning depression are certainly valid in their own struggles and levels of functional loss. We are not, however, going to discuss moderate or high functioning depression in today's blog. There are plenty of articles throughout the internet on those levels of depression.
When depression becomes disabling is when days go by in bed and we have no clue if it's Monday or Thursday.
These are times when we've been wearing the same shirt for a few days — but we aren't exactly sure how many.
We start to tell the time by how light it is or how dark it is through the window. Time becomes simplified to daytime or nighttime.
The amount of days it has been since one showered is often measured by the amount of visible grease and sweat in our hair (glamorous, I know), comments from other people, or through whiffs of ourselves in passing moments.
All of these things become compromised when we feel depressed at a disabling level. High functioning and moderate functioning depression are certainly valid in their own struggles and levels of functional loss. We are not, however, going to discuss moderate or high functioning depression in today's blog. There are plenty of articles throughout the internet on those levels of depression.
When depression becomes disabling is when days go by in bed and we have no clue if it's Monday or Thursday.
These are times when we've been wearing the same shirt for a few days — but we aren't exactly sure how many.
We start to tell the time by how light it is or how dark it is through the window. Time becomes simplified to daytime or nighttime.
The amount of days it has been since one showered is often measured by the amount of visible grease and sweat in our hair (glamorous, I know), comments from other people, or through whiffs of ourselves in passing moments.
Motivation
It can be very hard to even get motivated before discussing The How of taking a shower. Many people might exclaim, shower? For what? I'm not going anywhere! What's the point? I will feel the same afterwards!
Those of us psychological nerds who study human behavior and psychology, and think about it all the time (AKA Me!), are aware of a couple handy principles that can be applied from an "old school" area of early psychology.... Operant Conditioning.
Even though many depressed people prefer to spend most of their day in their bed and do not necessarily want to get out of bed, they will get out of bed to either directly reduce a negative stimulus (or feeling) that they feel inside of their bodies or add a positive stimulus (or feeling). See below:
A. A depressed person gets out of bed to use the restroom, aiming to decrease discomfort (negative stimulus) that one experiences from holding urine or feces inside of one's body.
B. A depressed person who lays in bed all day may get up out of bed to binge eat on the ice cream in the freezer, to increase positive feelings (positive stimulus) in the body.
Yes, it can be very tricky when somebody claims they don't care about anything. Given that, how can one decrease or increase anything?
I call BS!
I know that there are always things that humans want to increase or decrease, based on our universal traits.
Those of us psychological nerds who study human behavior and psychology, and think about it all the time (AKA Me!), are aware of a couple handy principles that can be applied from an "old school" area of early psychology.... Operant Conditioning.
Even though many depressed people prefer to spend most of their day in their bed and do not necessarily want to get out of bed, they will get out of bed to either directly reduce a negative stimulus (or feeling) that they feel inside of their bodies or add a positive stimulus (or feeling). See below:
A. A depressed person gets out of bed to use the restroom, aiming to decrease discomfort (negative stimulus) that one experiences from holding urine or feces inside of one's body.
B. A depressed person who lays in bed all day may get up out of bed to binge eat on the ice cream in the freezer, to increase positive feelings (positive stimulus) in the body.
Yes, it can be very tricky when somebody claims they don't care about anything. Given that, how can one decrease or increase anything?
I call BS!
I know that there are always things that humans want to increase or decrease, based on our universal traits.
Method
So, the seemingly simple method for motivating ourselves or loved ones to take a shower are to provide an incentive which may be negative or positive.
Lets take two ways:
1. Increase a negative stimulus to make NOT showering intolerable
2. Increase a positive stimulus to make showering tolerable
Lets take two ways:
1. Increase a negative stimulus to make NOT showering intolerable
2. Increase a positive stimulus to make showering tolerable
How to Make NOT Showering Intolerable
Change your bed sheets to clean sheets. Getting back into them with dirty hair, body, and clothing will feel uncomfortable. Some people say that it promotes an urge to shower so that one can feel that total "fresh and new" feeling.
- Exercise 1: Smell your armpits by lifting them up and directly sniffing them three times in a row. This will orient you to how you smell (which you may not have noticed) and increase motivation to get rid of the unpleasant odor
- Exercise 2: Think about the bacteria that may be on your genitals or living on the inside of your butt. Set a timer for one minute (on your cell phone) and focus on how these regions probably may smell, how it might look under a microscope, how it might feel if you did not wash her hands after touching each region. This one is pretty rough but often does the trick.
- Exercise 3: Look at yourself in the mirror, in your camera's selfie mode on your phone, and examine the area where dirt typically collects on your body. Some people collect dirt in the folds of their neck, others use a cotton swab to examine the quantity and color depth of yellow buildup in their ears, and others look at the bottoms of their feet. Perhaps, all three might be a good start.
Make Showering Tolerable
| Turn on the music that you would like to shower to before you get in using a cell phone, speaker, or waterproof speaker inside the shower. Make sure you choose something that you like. |  |
Make it Quick and Easy
- Tell yourself that you don't even have to stand up. People who have been in bed all day prefer to be seated, lying down, and often feel lethargic. Sit on the ground inside the shower and let the water run over you.
- Eliminate overwhelm by making the process of bathing simple. Forget shaving, exfoliation, conditioner, face masks or any of the things that you did when you felt better. The goal of the shower is simply to get clean.
- Choose one cleansing product — shampoo, body wash, soap — and that's all you have to use. Start with your hair and soap it up at least one time. Forget the conditioner.
- Put your chosen cleanser on a washcloth and, starting with your face. Rub the washcloth down all of your torso and limbs and end with your butt. Do not reuse the washcloth.
Wishing everyone suds and bubbles,
Grace
I am overjoyed to announce that one of my inspirational clients has been granted asylum in the United States of America. This individual, who just so happens to be a transwoman, demonstrates what it means to be a woman by exhibiting profound internal strength, mental endurance, a passion for life, the ability to rise up through the darkest despair, and an uncanny ability to hold her head up high through some of the most excruciating moments of existence. Transwomen are so severely mistreated, abused, and tortured all over the world — the United States is not an exception. However, there are certain laws and rights that do protect transwomen, transmen, and others who do not subscribe to a binary gender.
After suffering from verbal abuse, physical violence, sexual violence, severe childhood neglect, torture, threats, and hate crimes — without even minimal protection from law enforcement (they actually were perpetrators of assault) nor safe family members, this asylum-seeking transwoman has received that what she already deserved as her birthright — asylum in the United States. Like all of the colorful hummingbirds who stop at East Bay Area Therapy for a short sip of nectar, may she fly!
After suffering from verbal abuse, physical violence, sexual violence, severe childhood neglect, torture, threats, and hate crimes — without even minimal protection from law enforcement (they actually were perpetrators of assault) nor safe family members, this asylum-seeking transwoman has received that what she already deserved as her birthright — asylum in the United States. Like all of the colorful hummingbirds who stop at East Bay Area Therapy for a short sip of nectar, may she fly!
East Bay Area Therapy provides psychological evaluations for immigrants with various types of legal immigration cases not limited to U Visa, asylum, the extreme hardship waiiver (I-601A, I-601, I-929), VAWA, T Visa. All services are provided by Grace Pacheco, M.A., MFT, a liicensed psychotherapist in the state of California who is fluent in both English and Spanish languages. She commonly works with interpreters who speak languages from around the world and has access to interpreters who speak Mayan indigenous languages (Mam, K'iche'), Brazilian Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Tagalog, Hindi, Arabic, and more.
To learn more about psychological evaluations, click the button below:
To learn more about psychological evaluations, click the button below:
California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists Supports Keeping Families Together
12/7/2018
As a lifetime member of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT) and one of the few bilingual Spanish speaking MFT's in the San Francisco Bay Area, it is validating and exciting to see CAMFT taking a public stance on keeping families together.
I frequently work with immigrants who request a psychological evaluation as part of an immigration case. Some immigrants are facing deportation and will be separated from their spouses and/or children, others are terrified to return to their countries of origin where a threat to safety is imminent, and others have been victims of violent crime in the United States and have helped U.S. law enforcement identify a violent criminal.
East Bay Area Therapy is owned by Grace Ohikere, M.A., MFT, a bilingual psychotherapist who often provides expert court testimony at San Francisco Immigration Court. She is thoroughly aware of the positive effects of a social support group on mental disorders, the value of physically intact families among those from collectivist cultures, and the risks that a loss of of a support system poses to one's mental health and general well-being.
Grace Ohikere, M.A., MFT is a adamant supporter of human rights, the right to a fair and just trial for all, and the availability of health services available in one's language of choice. She speaks fluent Spanish and English and has access to language interpreters who speak Haitian Creole, Mayan languages (Mam & K'iche'), Brazilian Portuguese, Tigrinya, Arabic, and others to offer the best standard of care for immigrants from all over the world.
I frequently work with immigrants who request a psychological evaluation as part of an immigration case. Some immigrants are facing deportation and will be separated from their spouses and/or children, others are terrified to return to their countries of origin where a threat to safety is imminent, and others have been victims of violent crime in the United States and have helped U.S. law enforcement identify a violent criminal.
East Bay Area Therapy is owned by Grace Ohikere, M.A., MFT, a bilingual psychotherapist who often provides expert court testimony at San Francisco Immigration Court. She is thoroughly aware of the positive effects of a social support group on mental disorders, the value of physically intact families among those from collectivist cultures, and the risks that a loss of of a support system poses to one's mental health and general well-being.
Grace Ohikere, M.A., MFT is a adamant supporter of human rights, the right to a fair and just trial for all, and the availability of health services available in one's language of choice. She speaks fluent Spanish and English and has access to language interpreters who speak Haitian Creole, Mayan languages (Mam & K'iche'), Brazilian Portuguese, Tigrinya, Arabic, and others to offer the best standard of care for immigrants from all over the world.
