We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Laura Fish a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Laura, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Is there a heartwarming story from your career that you look back on?

I’m fortunate to have a career that provides many fulfilling moments. Most recently, I worked with a veteran who saw a lot of intense combat and was suffering from intrusive flashbacks from those experiences.

He was depressed, anxious, and in recovery from a long history of substance abuse. He had tried “a lot of therapy,” but was willing to try EMDR with me. “I guess I have nothing more to lose,” the client told me, “My life is a mess.”

Over a series of sessions, EMDR revealed that this man’s core issue was the complex trauma of his childhood. He was repeatedly abused by his mother and neglected by his father. Using EMDR to target these toxic experiences from early childhood helped us readily desensitize the combat experiences, stabilizing them in an integrated form.

The result? No more flashbacks. In fact, the client told me, “If I try to hold those images in my mind now I can’t. I see them, but they don’t last and they don’t have the charge on them anymore. I’m free.” Everything from his past still happened, but the charge on those experiences had lessened. This is what trauma informed work, like EMDR, can do for people.

Experiences like these, that I’m fortunate enough to have weekly, drive me to do this work. Why should anyone suffer from traumatic experiences when there are ways to navigate those challenges in healthy ways?

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My career began as a preschool teacher.

With a B.A. in Psychology from the University of California at Berkeley, teaching was an opportunity to work with young children and their families in support of mental health and well-being. But I wanted to offer more targeted support for children and adults with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges, so I returned to graduate school while I was teaching to earn an M.S. in Counseling.

With this advanced degree, I shifted from classroom teacher to behavioral/mental health specialist for early childhood educators and the families they serve. Whether in the home or classroom, I focused on designing healthy environments and relationships for all children, strategies to meet their unique developmental needs, and support plans for children with challenging behaviors, special needs, or disabilities.

A large part of this work centered around teaching adults how to develop nurturing, responsive, and attuned relationships with children. To accomplish this, I helped the adults update their knowledge of current research so they could teach and parent based on science, not habit.

Over the next decade, I began working as a therapist with various populations: CPS-involved families, severely mentally ill adults in an outpatient program, children in residential treatment, and San Diego’s LGBT Community Center. Throughout this time, I maintained my early intervention efforts as a consultant providing trainings and coaching for early childhood educators. Honestly, my vision was to do such a great job developing children’s social, emotional, and relational health that they don’t need therapy when they are adults!

Currently, I am a therapist in private practice serving individuals, couples, and families in their pursuit of mental health and well-being. I’ve honed my practice to predominantly draw from the field of interpersonal neurobiology: focusing on the mind and brain in the context of relationships. I teach clients how to use their minds to change their brains and vice versa to help them elevate the quality of their relationships. My specialty is still young children and their families, but I also use Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy (EMDR) for my work with adults to heal from trauma.

My therapeutic work informs the trainings and classroom coaching I continue to offer early childhood educators, coaches, mental health consultants, and families. I help make the science understandable, translating the data into practical strategies developed through my direct experience both in the classroom and my private practice.

My training series, entitled “Teaching and Parenting with the Brain in Mind,” draws from the fields of interpersonal neurobiology, the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics, Trauma Informed Care, and other evidence-based practices. I leverage my unique background as both a teacher and therapist to help adults “see the child behind the behavior.”

If you want to work smarter, not harder when it comes to children contact me. Or, reach out for counseling. There is no need to suffer. I am happy to help.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

One of my graduate school professors asked me what “modality” I would choose when I became a therapist. I answered that I would draw from a variety of modalities depending upon what issue the client presented with, the client’s culture, and the current research outcomes.

He told me I was being wishy-washy and I should choose one modality or I wouldn’t be successful.

When I later shared that I intended to go into private practice as a private pay practitioner, that same professor told me I would fail because therapists must take insurance to stay in business.

30 years later I have never taken insurance, for ethical reasons, and I am grateful to report that I have a thriving practice using the modalities I feel are most aligned with the person’s needs.

Something within me trusted my gut more than this professor. I chose to believe in myself even when others did not.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

A common practice when working with children is punishment. Cross-culturally, adults use punishment as a tool for behavior change with children.

I had to learn that “teaching changes behavior, not punishment.”

My mission is to help adults understand what this means, why it is true, and how to shift from our habit of punishing to that of teaching the child what to do instead.

It is very challenging to change adults’ position on punishment. But I am committed to helping people see that teaching will achieve the same goal without the social, emotional, and relational harm that often comes with punishment.

Contact Info:

• Website: consulting.laurafishtherapy.com AND laurafishtherapy.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurafishconsulting/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LauraFishConsulting
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurafishtherapy/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/LauraFishTherapy

Image Credits
Pixel Creek Photography