Jason Wasser, LMFT 🎗️Founder, Shevet Collective · Therapy & Coaching for Entrepreneurs, Family Businesses 🖥 Certified Neuro Emotional Technique Practitioner Founder Shevet Collective 🎧Host:You Winning Life Podcast 🎤

“The room adapts to you”. You Winning Life Podcast guest Dana Cavalea

8 Sept 2020 · 2 min

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1:58

In this segment of the You Winning Life Podcast, therapist Dana Cavalea explains her approach to working with clients. She emphasizes that when a person is authentic and knows how to be themselves, the environment (the "room") adjusts to them, eliminating the need to conform. Cavalea observes that most clients seek therapy because they fear looking bad to others, often presenting with high stress, anxiety, or concerns about weight gain—these are the "easier" cases for her. The more challenging clients appear to have no apparent problems, prompting her to question why they are in therapy; she then uses her personal experiences and therapeutic tools to build immediate trust. She frames herself as someone who can survive in any room by being true to herself, allowing the room to adapt rather than the individual adapting to the room.

When you are who you are and you know how to be, the room adapts to you and you don't have to adapt to the room.
Is there a certain personality predisposition or certain belief predispositions that you see that right off the bat you're like, okay, this is going to be an easier person to work with versus a more challenging person to work with based on what they're playing in their head or the story that they're telling themselves? Yeah.
For me, what I find is a common thread is that most people don't want to look bad. So they spend a lot— anybody that's like, hey, I'm worried about the externals, what other people think, they don't want to look bad, they usually come in to me. They have either high stress, high anxiety, or they're dealing with, you know, hey, I got this extra 30 pounds. So those are the easiest ones for me. The harder ones are the ones that come in tough and like they have no problems, or they have nothing going on, and they're sort of just, you know, doing great, and I'm saying, well, then why are we working together? So, I always know that there's a little bit something, so I have my chisel out, and sometimes I'm always just chiseling away, but we— and then we end up getting to something. And a lot of times, you know, some of the people I work with, they don't have the trust upfront But that's where, again, I use a lot of my baggage and tools to create immediate trust. So I look at myself as, hey, there's not a room that I can't survive in because I'm myself. And I'm not there to please everybody, really anybody. I'm just there to be. And the room sort of— when you are who you are and you know how to be, the room adapts to you and you don't have to adapt to the room.