We’re back after a short break! Our guest today is Melissa Wasserman, psychologist, speaker, consultant, and trauma expert. In this wide-ranging episode, we talk about her untraditional career journey and how the pandemic has caused a lot of chaos in our personal and work lives. Melissa also shares her best piece of advice about navigating challenges, cultivating resilience, and some tools that you can use to implement in your daily life. 

Learn more about Melissa and her story at: www.growingcareersandcompanies.com.

“One of my biggest values and such a big part of my identity is being relational and being human.” 

 

03:52

Melissa grew up in a Jewish family and her parents both worked in the real estate industry. She was always very active as a child and valued meaningful relationships. She attended religious school growing up and attended religious studies in college.

 

During her years in college, Melissa had a class about American religion and its impact on the Vietnam War. She learned about family traumas in military families and realized that this was her calling in life. She became a licensed psychologist and a trauma expert.

“Communication is a mega resilience factor in systems to buffer the impact of mental health symptoms.”

 

16:47

Melissa shares some advice on how to navigate through challenges. 

• Reflect on previous challenges that have already passed. How did you go through those? What have you learned?
• Identify some strategies that you already used successfully in the past and think about how could you use those in your current situation.
• Be aware of the warning signs of burnout. Don’t wait until you feel completely burnt out, practice self-preservation and self-care continously.

 

Melissa is a trauma expert and specializes in generational family traumas. In her experience, family traumas are stronger in families where they don’t have good communication with each other. Communication is key and it is a huge resilience factor, so it’s important to learn how to communicate well and listen to each other.

 

Melissa started her business just a few months before the global pandemic. This presented a lot of challenges for her, but she loves the dynamic work environment and wearing many hats as a business owner. 

The Final 3 Questions

 

 

• What is the lesson that has taken you the longest to learn?

 

Patience - not just with others but mostly with herself. Making mistakes is part of the human experience, so we need to be kind to ourselves and learn from them.

 

 

• What are the 2 principles from the Growing Careers & Companies Framework that resonate the most with you?

 

Purpose and Community. These two words are greatly interconnected to Melissa as she finds purpose in community and through connectivity. 

 

 

• What do you hope others take away from your story?

 

That we are all human and we are all resilient. Be gentle and kind to yourself and others. 

About Our Guest, Melissa Wasserman

Dr. Melissa Wasserman (AKA Dr. Meli) is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist (PSY30983).   She has specialty in traumatic stress, particularly how trauma-related challenges impact interpersonal relationships (e.g., couples, families, social, work relationships). While trauma can include a wide variety of experiences and challenges, her expertise includes working with individuals who have experienced interpersonal/relational trauma, war-related trauma and violence, civilian and military sexual trauma, and traumatic loss.  She is trained in evidence-based and trauma-informed interventions including Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Families Overcoming Under Stress (FOCUS). She is also trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).

 

Along with her clinical work, she is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Education & Psychology where she teaches master’s and doctoral level psychology students.  Additionally, Dr. Meli is the Co-Director of the Pepperdine Union Rescue Mission Counseling Center, a collaboration between Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Education & Psychology and the Union Rescue Mission, a faith-based mission located on Los Angeles’ skid row.  Dr. Meli is a member of the American Psychological Association, Society of Indian Psychologists, the International Society for the Study of Traumatic Stress, and Psi Chi Psychological Honors Society.

A warm thanks to Melissa Wasserman for taking the time to share his unique insights and experiences with us.

Resources from the show:

 

• https://www.drmeli.com/

• Her LinkedIn

• https://www.growingcareersandcompanies.com/

• https://www.crerecruiting.com/

• https://www.creatwork.co/

• The Growing Careers and Companies Framework

• Allison’s LinkedIn

 

 

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