Episode 5: Effective Communication for Teens with Mariya Pavlovsky
How do you improve communication? Talk with your EAR! That is, Empathy, Assertiveness and Respect. When we talk with our EAR, the emphasis is on listening well and trying to see the world through the eyes of the other person. In this episode, TEAM-CBT Therapists Mariya Pavlovsky and Kevin Cornelius discuss how to present the Interpersonal Model of TEAM-CBT to teens to help them learn effective communication skills and improve their relationships. Mariya Pavlovsky is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist at Feeling Good Institute in Mountain View, CA. She is available to work with new patients. You can learn more about Mariya and schedule a a free consultation to discuss possibly working with her in therapy at her website, MariyaPavlovskyLMFT.com
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Kevin Cornelius: Today we have Mariya Pavlovsky with us. Welcome, Mariya.
Mariya Pavlovsky: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.
Kevin Cornelius: Oh, it's great to have you here with us. And welcome to the Tools4Change Podcast. We'd love to get to know a little bit about you. So I know that you're a licensed marriage and family therapist, is that right?
Mariya Pavlovsky: Yes.
Kevin Cornelius: Yeah. And in private practice at Feeling Good Institute in Mountain View.
Mariya Pavlovsky: Correct.
Kevin Cornelius: Yeah. And maybe you can give the people listing an idea of, you know, who are the types of clients that you're usually working with.
Mariya Pavlovsky: Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. I work out of the Mountain View office, but I also work virtually anywhere in California. And I mean, I see people all across the lifespan, so I don't necessarily have any limits on that. I tend to get a lot of, at least recently, teenagers and young adults, kind of college age individuals. I do enjoy seeing teenagers and young adults. I enjoy seeing everyone, but I tend to get that group of people also like, you know, folks out of college like maybe in their thirties. In terms of individuals who I particularly like to gravitate to, I really enjoy, you know, aside from everyone that I see, but I do also enjoy doing like parent coaching.
I like working with parents of the teens that I see as well. I feel like that ends up happening quite a bit, even if the referral is just for the teenager, I do end up incorporating their parents. And yeah, I enjoy this job that I have. I don't even think, you know, I don't know. I love this profession. I love my job. I enjoy all my clients and things like that.
Kevin Cornelius: Wonderful. And when you said that you work with people all across the lifespan. Are you working with children younger than teens, or is it pretty much teens and older? Oh, children younger than teens too.
Mariya Pavlovsky: Yeah. So I do have kids who are younger. At the Feeling Good Institute, the youngest I've seen is like on regular therapy kind of weekly basis, was an eight year old I saw for a little while. And then just in general, outside of FGI, I guess like in other positions, I've seen kids as young as six.
Kevin Cornelius: Okay. And I'm curious, is there any type of problems that you think that you specialize in helping people with?
Mariya Pavlovsky: I guess I like to work with anxiety. I like to work also with depression. For the teenagers and my young adults who are in college, we tend to do also a lot of like habit and addiction work. A lot of procrastination happening. I think that with the teens, other than doing like habit and addiction stuff, and also some anxiety and depression, like, it's all kind of like, you know, it's all in there. But when I do introduce the parents into the work, we do also do a little bit of communication training and the five secrets of effective communication; I teach the teens and I teach their parents separately. And that usually makes things go a lot smoother when we have family sessions. Of course they're not like experts in it, but there is some understanding of how we can speak to each other kind of in a respectful way, even if we don't agree with one another.
Kevin Cornelius: Yeah, I like what you just said that when you're working with teens and parents, it's helpful to teach both the teen and the parents at least something about five secrets, so that they're already practicing communicating respectfully even when there's a conflict going on. So that if you're having a family session together, there's some kind of like understanding of we're going to attempt to speak in a respectful way to each other. Did I hear that right?
Mariya Pavlovsky: Yeah. Absolutely. I do try to set up our family sessions, and so I don't necessarily do family therapy from kind of like, from the get go type of thing, I don't take on families myself. But I do think that obviously it's important to work with families - with the parents of teens, because I see them for maybe an hour a week, but their parents have them for all the other hours. And so, I do usually incorporate them at some point. And I think what's important is to make sure that it's a positive experience for everyone. And one of the ways I know to create a positive experience in this family session is to have some sort of like outline and some sort of rules, and incorporating the five secrets helps kind of established kind of a foundation of respect in the room.
Kevin Cornelius: Yeah. And I love everything you're saying, and I think that one of the things that I've learned about Five Secrets that's most important is that we're not attempting to not have conflicts. Like, conflicts are inevitable, and to try and get rid of them is probably not super helpful to anyone. But can I have a conflict with you in a way that's respectful and that actually creates an opportunity for us to feel closer to each other rather than pushing us away from each other? And it sounds like you're doing a great job of creating that possibility with some guidelines before you bring, say, parents and a teenager together in a session. Is that sound right?
Mariya Pavlovsky: Yes, that is the goal. And I think ultimately what my goal in bringing like parents and teens together in this way is to create like a different experience for everyone. Because when at home or when there's things that are happening and the parents, for example, are stressed that the kids aren't turning in all of their work. Nowadays, I guess parents have access, my parents didn't have access to any of my grades.
Kevin Cornelius: Exactly
Mariya Pavlovsky: Have access to all grades at any, like, just on their phones. And so, as they see, for example, like kids not turning in work or things like that. I mean, it's immediate conflict. It's immediate kind of an interrogation that ends up happening. And then the kids tend to feel like they're constantly being nitpicked and constantly being kind of almost harassed by their parents. And so, that kind of spirals into other things potentially with anxiety and kind of maintaining some of the negative habits of procrastination or maybe even depression and things like that. And the point is kind of similar to I think what we as therapists try to provide for our clients, which is this kind of different experience of being with another person. There's a term for it, but I forgot. Oh my gosh.
Kevin Cornelius: Therapeutic stance?
Mariya Pavlovsky: Or like this experience - I'm not going to remember it right now, but the idea being to trying to create like a different experience and for the parents and the kids to leave the room having this different way of communicating. Even if it was for only like 50 minutes, like that's something that they can then take and remember and kind of have a reference in the future for, that it doesn't always have to be like a conflict.
Kevin Cornelius: Wonderful. And I think that people who are listening to this may or may not already be familiar with the Five Secrets. And so, something that comes to mind for me is, maybe it would be great to have you show us, let's say that you're introducing the Five Secrets to a teenager because they have been procrastinating doing their homework and their grades are suffering and there's been some conflict with parents, and maybe even you are preparing for bringing in parents into a session with them, right? And you're just trying to help them understand like what the five secrets are and how that could be a useful tool for them. Before I ask you to show us how you would do that, though, I want to clarify something that, of course, we don't just throw methods at people when we're working with them. So, this is assuming that you've already spent lots of time getting to know this teenager, bonding with them, connecting with them on a personal level and creating some trust with them. You've been using testing too, too, to figure out how are they doing with mood. You might even be tracking in some way, what is their procrastination, if that's a problem that you're helping them with - lots of empathy
So I'm going kind of through the team model testing, and then lots of empathy. And then of course, a lot of assessment of resistance. So if somebody, let's say the teenager is saying, I do want to have a better relationship with my parents than I do, because it just seems like we're always in conflict over my schoolwork and my grades. Let's imagine you've already done lots of really good assessment of resistance around that, what would you do with them, by the way, to address any kind of resistance to change in their relationship with their parents?
Mariya Pavlovsky: So the way that I use the team model with teens - I mean, I do use it, but I can't say that it's like the way that I would use it with adults necessarily. I think it has to be like woven in, into just like kind of regular conversation with kids. But there's always this conversation that I do have about, you know, what are the good reasons just to continue either... well, if it's for habits and addictions, of course we do, what are the good reasons for continuing this habit. But in terms of the communication stuff, well, what are the good reasons for continuing to, for example, like, ignore your parents when they speak to you or yell or slam doors. Like, what are the good reasons?
And for some kids, they have lots of good reasons that sometimes they want to keep a distance from their parents and this is one way to do it. And it kind of, if we're talking about like, what is a show that's really wonderful about them? Well, they want to kind of protect their energy and their space. And I think kids these days, and again, I don't know, when I was a teenager, I do not remember doing this amount of work and these sorts of level of work that the kids are doing nowadays. I don't even do it as an adult. I barely understand half the things that they say when they talk about their classwork. Kids are very smart nowadays, and I think the pressure that a lot of these kids are under is just through the roof. I do not remember it being like this when I was in high school personally.
But I think that with all of the stress and the pressure and all of that, you know, sometimes creating this distance with parents is the only way they can have a break. And I think that that is a wonderful thing, to be able to protect, you know, the little kind of mental energy that they have. But anyways, we do that. But ultimately, before we get to the point where like, okay, well, let's plan out a family session, let's try to potentially improve the situation - we do talk about, you know, in relationships whether they want to improve the relationship with their parents, whether they want to kind of keep things the same way and then just get through it in the next few years before they leave to college. I mean, it's not really a possibility, but, you know, do they want to kind of disconnect even more? I mean, that's generally not an option. Most of the kids say they want a better relationship with their parents.
Kevin Cornelius: Well, I really like that you brought that up. What you're mentioning is the concept of interpersonal decision making. So when we're doing relationship work with people, no matter what the relationship is that they're working on, whether it's a parent-child relationship or a partner or a spouse or something; everybody always has three choices about what to do in a relationship. You were just mentioning them. It's, stick with the status quo and figure out how to survive it, do the hard work of working on their own role in order to improve the relationship, or the third one is leave the relationship. And I heard you saying like, you know, maybe most teens don't really have that as an option. I'm going to leave my relationship with my parents, but they could emotionally leave it, like distance themselves even more from them and just kind of silo themselves and just kind of can't wait to get out the door and get onto adult life when high school's over. And you said that when you explore that with teens, that more often than not, they actually are wanting a closer relationship with their parents. Is that right?
Mariya Pavlovsky: Yeah. I found that most kids I end up doing this with, they do want a better relationship. They don't want to be like constantly stressed out in their own house or just around their parents. So yeah, I do find that kids are interested in improving. And I don't push it either. You know, sometimes it does happen where maybe they decide actually the status quo is fine, let's work on how am I going to just deal with the next few years? And so then that goes into some other type of work, maybe with using the daily mood log and things like that of how do they just kind of like lower their own emotional intensity around certain situations at home. But most kids do want things to get better, which is nice.
Kevin Cornelius: I think that is nice. And so I was thinking about this idea that, let's say somebody, you know, you did kind of explore with them that interpersonal decision-making, they've made it clear that, yeah, I do want to have a better relationship with my parents. I'm wondering how do you address, well, you just said you bring to life, or you kind of explore them all the good reasons to actually remain distant from them. And that sounds like what you're doing is almost like a paradoxical cost benefit analysis. Is that what that is?
Mariya Pavlovsky: Yes.
Kevin Cornelius: And tell us what that is. What is a paradoxical cost benefit analysis for relationships?
Mariya Pavlovsky: I mean, in general, the cost benefit analysis - normally the way we do any kind of cost benefit analysis, people tend to do like, what are the cons of a situation or start with that, and what are the pros? But in this situation, we actually talk about what are all of the advantages to it initially. We're trying to kind of bring to light some of that resistance to change and kind of bring to light, you know, because otherwise what happens is, obviously there's the obvious like, well, maybe you should, I don't know, have a better relationship with your parents because they're your parents. And of course - and usually kids will take the stance of yeah, but you don't understand, they're this, they're that, so it's like a yes/but situation that ends up happening.
And if we just kind of highlight all of the good reasons for them to just say exactly the way that it is, you know, for them not to get closer to them and highlight what are the wonderful reasons that are kind of underlie this experience of not wanting to get close; once we name all of those things, it tends to push people to the other side and they start to name things like, "Yeah, but it's really hard. You know, we used to have a lot of fun together as a family. I actually used to really like hiking with my dad or mom or something." They start to like, bring up all of these reasons, well, maybe it's not so great to stay the same.
Kevin Cornelius: You said so many important things just now and I'm just going to back it up a little bit. So, a cost benefit analysis in general is just looking at the advantages versus the disadvantages of something. And to make it paradoxical would be, you would look at the advantages of the way things are and the disadvantages of changing. Is that right?
Mariya Pavlovsky: Yeah.
Kevin Cornelius: So for instance, what are all the advantages of having conflicts with my, you know, kind of protecting my... well, actually no, that would be one of the advantages. What are the advantages of remaining more distant from my parents and what would be the disadvantages of getting closer to them? And it sounded like the reason to use that in a paradoxical way like that is because here you are, another adult in this teenager's life, who, if we're coming to them and saying, "Oh, yeah, you want to have a better relationship with your parents? Well, let's look at the good reasons to keep things the way that they are and also the good reasons not to, to actually change." It can almost maybe come across as like, we're kind of trying to convince them to have a closer relationship with their parents, and we want to be really sensitive to any kind of coercion sensitivity. So if we're really paradoxical with it, let's just look at the advantages of the way things are and the disadvantages of changing them. Then it gives that teenager the opportunity for them to make the argument of, "Well, yeah, but I missed them. We used to have a better relationship and I want that again. Or I actually long to like get along with my parents and there are some things about them that I like and it would be great to have a better relationship with them."
But it's all coming from them; it's their idea, once we just focused on all the good reasons for keeping the problems that they're having. And so, let's say that that's gone really well, right? Let's say I'm a teenager in a session with you. I know kind of comical because I'm a 55 year old man, I do not look like a teenager, but we'll just pretend. I'm a teenager and I've convinced you that actually, I do want to do what would be kind of hard work to work on my role and the problem with my parents - to take a look at how I could change the way that I'm communicating, even though that might be kind of unfair for me to be just focusing on myself. Maybe you could just show people who are listening, like, how would you introduce even what the five secrets are to a teenager for the first time? Because I think that that would be really great for people to hear.
Mariya Pavlovsky: Yeah. Just a side note, I just think this is kind of - because you're like the king of five secrets.
Kevin Cornelius: Well, that's a really nice thing to say. I'll just put it out there. If you were in one of the sessions that I had with a teenager this week, you might think otherwise.
Mariya Pavlovsky: But in general, for me, that's how I think of you, so it's like, oh my gosh. So for teens, again, it's not always necessarily the language of team that I use with them. But, I tend to, you know, in terms of sharing what the five secrets are, I usually say like, "I have these tools that I think will make either the family session or any kind of conversation that you're trying to have with your parents a little bit nicer to have." I always end up saying that, like, that it does feel unfair, you know, I'm going to share these tools and I'm going to ask you kind of to look at them and to use them and for us to come up with these responses. And I know that maybe all you want to do is yell at your parents, or not yell at them, just basically ignore your parents. And I know that it feels unfair, and I feel that too. And yet at the same time, you've told me that you do want things to get better, and this is kind of the, you know, not the only way, but one of the big ways that I know that we can make things better faster for you. And then I kind of go into showing them what the five secrets are, will review all of the steps to it, and then -
Kevin Cornelius: What are the five secrets, Maria?
Mariya Pavlovsky: So, the first one is the disarming technique. And that's where we try to find some grain of truth in what the other person is saying. And so for example, if the parent says something like, "Well, Hey, Kevin, you never turn your work in on time." And even though as Kevin you know that that's not true, in fact, you've turned in lots of your work in somewhat on time, you know, there is some truth to it because there's missing assignments. There's a reason why your parents are coming at you in this way. And so, I would kind of work with Kevin when it comes to like the disarming technique for Kevin to find some truth in what they're saying. So it might sound like, "You're right. I haven't turned in a lot of assignments recently. That's true."
And it's not to say that you've never turned in the assignments, but recently maybe there's been some missed assignments, and that's absolutely just the reality of the situation. And that one's hard to do. They're all hard to do, to be quite honest, especially when we're upset. And then we have the thought empathy and our feeling empathy, and the thought empathy has to do with somewhat reflecting back or summarizing maybe what the parent had said. And the feeling empathy sometimes sounds a little bit weird from the kid's perspective to say that a parent, I think sometimes when I do this with parents, the feeling empathy really goes a long way with parents using it with the teens.
But feeling empathy is kind of putting yourself in the other person's shoes. So, Kevin putting himself in the shoes of his parents, and we kind of talk about like, "Well, why are your parents even coming at you in this way? Why are they upset?" And kind of talking about, you know, and usually the kids say, "Well, they're frustrated that I haven't turned in this work. Or they're feeling nervous because the end of the semester is coming, or they're feeling angry because I also haven't been cleaning the dog poop outside, and here's just another thing that I'm not doing." So, we do kind of talk about what are all kind of, maybe the feelings that parents are having that they're, again, upset with the kid.
And one of the other parts of the five secrets is stroking which is basically saying something that they genuinely kind of feel is like a positive, whether in the parent or they're in the relationship. It might sound from the kid's perspective like, you know, it's weird because from the kid's perspective, it's a little bit different. And I'm just thinking as a kid what I might say to a parent, but might sound like, you know, I really love you and I value this, I value our relationship; I don't want it to be so high conflict. Maybe they're not using these words, and we always try to like use the words of the kid if we're working with the kids. There might be some slang in there. I don't know. Kids also have a completely new vocabulary nowadays with how they talk.
Kevin Cornelius: Yeah, I like all the things that you're saying, Maria, and I'm thinking, let's imagine that, you know, what my parents said to me was, "Hey, Kevin, you never turned in your homework." And so far you've mentioned three of the five secrets, right? Disarming, which is where I would try to find something that I could agree with, with what the parents are saying, even if it was unreasonable or unfair. And then thought and feeling, empathy. The thought empathy is being able to kind of repeat back what it is I'm hearing, and then the feeling is imagining what the parent is feeling when they say that to me - so what feelings might they have. Let's face it, for a teenager with a parent, they're probably not thinking about that a lot usually. They're probably maybe more focused on themselves and their feelings and what's unfair in a situation like this.
And then stroking, which is finding something that's true, that's positive that you could say about the other person, right? Considered just even those three of the five secrets for a moment? Maybe let's trade roles for a minute. Let's say I was the parent and you were a teen who was going to use those secrets well; see what it's like to respond to me when I'm the parent saying what I'm going to say to you, which is the thing we set up. You're a teen and you're going to try to use disarming thought and feeling empathy and some stroking. "Gosh, Maria, you never turn in your homework."
Mariya Pavlovsky: You're right - Dad. You're right, dad. I really haven't been turning in my homework, especially in the last two weeks. I imagine you're feeling really angry with me right now. But I guess I just also want to say that I love you, but you're right, I haven't turned in the work.
Kevin Cornelius: Okay, great. I think that that was a really good demonstration of those three secrets, and in pretty teen friendly language, I would say, right? Maybe some teens might bristle at, you know, do I really want to tell my parents I love them when they're getting out...?
Mariya Pavlovsky: I know. That's why I also was like, I don't know,
Kevin Cornelius: Yeah. There's another secret that we haven't talked about yet. What's another one that we could maybe throw in here that might make this actually a little bit easier to respond using those other secrets?
Mariya Pavlovsky: Yeah, so there's also an "I feel" statement that comes from the teen. So, if the feeling empathy is, you know, what is the other person kind of feeling during this interaction, for example, the parent; the I feel statement allows the teen to talk about how they're feeling. Maybe they're feeling angry, which they usually are, or frustrated or disappointed or annoyed. And so, it allows them to kind of speak to what's happening for them as well. And oftentimes I find that there's a lot of comment, you know, the parents are angry, the kid is angry. Or there's disappointment that the parent has and usually the kid is also feeling disappointed about something as well in the interaction. So it's kind of also a nice way to connect on kind of on the feelings level because everyone kind of understands that feeling of anger or disappointment or whatever it may be.
Kevin Cornelius: Great. So I was just imagining if I was the teen and my parents have just told me, "Hey, you never do your homework," and I'm jumping right too and finding something about that to agree with, it might be really great to also share how I'm feeling hearing that. Like, "Yeah, you're right. I haven't been doing much of my homework lately, and you're probably feeling pretty frustrated with me right now. I have to admit, I'm feeling kind of defensive, like I want to defend myself and point out things I have been doing. But I get it that you're noticing the things that I didn't turn in because you're concerned about me. And I think that that's a good thing. You're trying to help me and make sure I do the best I can in school. But I definitely do get irritated sometimes when you're trying to help me." So I was just using just those secrets, the disarm, the thought and feeling empathy, the stroking, and then also some I feel, right? Now, what's the, what's the one we haven't talked about yet?
Mariya Pavlovsky: Yeah. So the last one is inquiry. So that one has to do with opening up kind of... well, for asking a question, you know, what has it been like for the other person? So, what's it been like for you, Dad, to look at my Schoology and see that I haven't turned in my work in the last week? But basically what is it like for the other person and the goal being to kind of open the floor up to them for them to kind of speak to their feelings of whatever frustration or being disappointed and to kind of get their perspective.
Kevin Cornelius: I think what would be really probably good right now is let's see what it would be like I'll be a parent again, and I'll hit you with that same criticism, and then you can respond using all five of the secrets, so we can hear kind of like, what's a great response to a parent saying this to a teenager.
Mariya Pavlovsky: I don't know if it's a great response. It'll be a response.
Kevin Cornelius: A response. Well, a response using the five secrets. And let's keep in mind like the reason why we use the five secrets. And tell me if I'm right about this. The reason why the teen would want to use the five secrets is so that instead of just focusing on the problem of the homework hasn't been getting done and trying to solve that problem, or even solve the problem of the parents getting on your back for not doing the homework; what we're doing is we're using the conflict over homework completion as an opportunity to get closer to each other. To understand each other more and to share our feelings with each other, even when we're feeling kind of negatively towards each other. We're kind of putting problem solving aside and saying, you're important enough to me that I want to know about your feelings even when you're frustrated with me. Does that sound like it?
Mariya Pavlovsky: Yes, because the content isn't that important. Like whether it's homework you didn't do, or you didn't clean your room, or you said you were going to do the dish, like it's all the same ultimately, and it continuously like repeats itself in just kind of different ways. And so yeah, this is a way of kind of coming together on a deeper level. Because all of this other stuff, the homework, the dishes, like, it's very superficial, and it could be solved if we weren't maybe harboring certain emotions towards one another.
Kevin Cornelius: Okay. I brought that up because I think that the thing that I learned that helped me the most with using Five Secrets, not just in my own life, but also with clients, is this idea that problem solving is the cause of most problems in relationships. And refusing to solve problems is usually the solution to relationship problems. And what we mean by refusing to solve problems, what do we do instead? Well, we focus on what are you feeling and what am I feeling? What's it like to be in this conflict with each other right now?
Mariya Pavlovsky: I guess like another point I would kind of make on this when it comes to what I've noticed with teens is that, it's not that they don't know what the solution is. They know that they have to turn their work in, but there's usually something that's happening kind of under the surface, where either this motivation is being affected, but it's usually having to do with the kind of day-to-day interactions that they're having with their parents, with teachers, with friends. But I found that a lot of it does have to do with the interactions that they end up having at home with their parents, where they kind of end up feeling less motivated or just kind of like, almost out of spite sometimes. I don't know if it's conscious all the time, but kind of like, "Well, I don't want to do this right now, I want to be left alone in general." So yeah, there's usually something under that. And so, the five secrets helps to get to that.
Kevin Cornelius: And so what's give you now that opportunity to use all five secrets while responding to the parent, if that's okay? Hey Maria, you never turn your homework in on time.
Mariya Pavlovsky: Hi, Dad. You're right! You're right! I haven't been turning my homework in on time, especially this past two weeks. There's probably a lot of zeros that you've seen in my Schoology, and I imagine you might be feeling really frustrated with me because we keep having this conversation over and over again that I should be turning my work in. You might even be feeling angry that I'm not turning this work in. To be honest, I've actually been feeling kind of angry myself. I've been feeling kind of frustrated with some of the interactions that we've been having and kind of feeling kind of low motivation as well because of it. And I guess I'm bringing this up because I appreciate you checking on my schoolwork and I know you're doing it from a good place. You know, I know you care about me, I know you want me to do well, and I love you for that. I guess I'm just wondering also, what it's been like for you to look up my Schoology account and I guess see all of those zeros. Maybe you can just share more about what it's been like for you.
Kevin Cornelius: Okay, great.
Mariya Pavlovsky: Did I miss one of them?
Kevin Cornelius: I think you got all of them in there. I heard some disarming, I heard some thought and feeling empathy. There was inquiry there at the end that was really great. There was lots of stroking and you also talked about your feelings.
Mariya Pavlovsky: Yeah. And with kids, we don't do all of like, you know, when I teach them, I teach all of them and we practice like all of them. But usually when we get into like a family session, I don't expect anyone, you know, first of all, I don't expect a teen or a parent to necessarily like know the five secrets and be able to use all of them. So there's usually like parts of them are being used. I think to me, like in a family session, the ones that I tend to like to hear the most is feeling empathy. I think it's nice when parents are able to say, "You know, I imagine it's been really tough for you that I've been nagging on you this whole year."
Like some of them, especially in a family session that I personally like to highlight quite a bit, and the other thing that I think in a family session that ends up working well is that when the feelings are brought up, it's a kind of a nice way for me as the therapist to be like, "Well, it sounds like both of you guys have been really angry." Kind of, where's the commonalities in all of this? It sounds like both of you guys have, or the whole family has been really frustrated and angry and this has been like, incredibly stressful for everyone that the work isn't being turned in, or something like that. And we kind of come together as like a unit at that time because we're all kind of having the same experience, and we're all kind of then able to look at this problem together because it's bothering everyone.
Kevin Cornelius: Yeah. Well, the time is flying by here and we're almost at the end of our time together for this podcast. I'd love to find out some information about you and your availability for working with people. Do you have room in your calendar for new clients often? Or sometimes?
Mariya Pavlovsky: Sometimes. I tend to be kind of booked. Although, if somebody does either email me or call me, you know, depending on the case and depending on the time that they need, I do try to make room for people. And the other part is like, I can't really, you know, like for example, I'm full right now, but I can't predict what next month is going to be like necessarily as people graduate. There is more availability in the summers as people kind of like taper off, especially kids, they take breaks. And in the summer, I would have more availability for things like more intensive therapy where there's more hours that I could give to a particular person who might need it in a shorter amount of time. It's hard to know. Like right now I'm a little bit full, tomorrow I might not be, so I don't know.
Kevin Cornelius: Yeah. I'm sure people are who are listening are feeling a connection with you and really interested in the way that you're talking about how you work with people and they may want to explore the possibility of having you as their therapist or a therapist for their family member. If they wanted to explore that with you, they could probably make an appointment for a free consultation with you, right? And how would they reach you for that?
Mariya Pavlovsky: Yeah, it would be my preference. My calendar is currently closed to consultations because I am full right now, but on our website, my email is listed, so if people just email me, that's one way, and then I could set up a 15 minute consultation kind of on my own with them. The way that our website works, like technically, my calendar's not open to that right now.
Kevin Cornelius: So a person could contact you and it's Mariya@feelinggood institute.com, is that right?
Mariya Pavlovsky: Correct. Yes.
Kevin Cornelius: And that's Mariya with a y? M-A-R-I-Y-A, is that right?
Mariya Pavlovsky: Yeah.
Kevin Cornelius: At website at feelinggoodinstitute.com. And also, I don't remember, I think you have your own website as well, don't you? What is your website that people can visit?
Mariya Pavlovsky: I do. My website is, let me bring it up because I don't have it off the top of my... It's mariyapavlovskylmft.com.
Kevin Cornelius: And that's at lmft.com?
Mariya Pavlovsky: No, no, it's just .com. This is the website that
Kevin Cornelius: Wait, I'm sorry. What's wrong with me? It's not an email address. Mariyapavlovskylmft.com. I'll put that in the the notes for this episode. And then people, if they want to, they could go and read about you and make appointments with you. They couldn't do better than to have you as their therapist. That would be so awesome. Thank you so much for being here with me. And for those of you listening, we'll be talking to you next time.
Mariya Pavlovsky: Thank you. It was fun.
Kevin Cornelius: Thank you..