Your Therapist Needs Therapy 45 - Grief in the Immigrant Experience with Dr Gabby Miniscalco

Jeremy is joined this week for a great chat by Dr Gabby Miniscalco. During our talk Dr Gabby shares some insights into the immigrant experience and the pressures of conforming to American culture while grappling with her Polish identity, feeling caught in between worlds but not belonging in either. The conversation delves into the trauma and grief associated with immigration, the challenges faced by immigrant children, and the lack of support for navigating cultural integration, highlighting the complexities of identity and belonging in immigrant communities. Jeremy and Gabby also share their love of rescue animals, because of course we did, animals are the best.

To learn more about Gabby and her practice, you can check out minimentalhealth.com or give her a follow on Instagram. You can also find Gabby’s writing in the book The Grief Experience which we discussed in the episode.

Jeremy has all his practice info at Wellness with Jer, and you can find more media from him on YouTube or Instagram.

Head over to Patreon to support the show, or you can pick up some merch! We appreciate support from likes, follows, and shares as well!

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Podcasts about therapy do not replace actual therapy, and listening to a podcast about therapy does not signify a therapeutic relationship. 

If you or someone you know is in crisis please call or text the nationwide crisis line at 988, or text HELLO to 741741. The Trevor Project has a crisis line for LGBTQ+ young people that can be reached by texting 678678.

Transcript

Your Therapist Needs Therapy - Dr Gabby Miniscalco (2024-02-27 11:04 GMT-6) - Transcript

Attendees

Gabriela Miniscalco, Jeremy Schumacher

Transcript

This editable transcript was computer generated and might contain errors. People can also change the text after it was created.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, thank you for having me.

Jeremy Schumacher: Day, I'm super stoked looking into your Specialties and of things that you work with one of the things I'm really excited to talk about is working with animals. Big pet lover my dogs in the background will recording here. So I'm excited to talk about that and talking about some of the grief around that you have a lot of interests that I think overlap with mine and also some topics we haven't covered in the podcast yet. So I'm super stoked to jump into it.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, I'm actually kind of surprised that you brought up the animal part of things first because that's a newer interest of mine.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, I think it's just my personal bias because I love animals, too.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, but since we're kind of talking about it, I do want to say that I did have a rescue pitbull that I trained to be a therapy dog, and he did a few volunteer outings before we realize that his anxiety might be getting the best of him. So he put him on pause.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, it's such a process and we can get into that for how that works and The people who take advantage of it by putting a vest on their dog to fly on a plane and all that stuff, but we'll get there.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Okay.

Jeremy Schumacher: I'm jumping ahead because I like to talk about animals. So I would start every episode just kind of asking how'd you get into the mental health field? What was that Journey like for you?

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, So I knew pretty early on that. I wanted to be a psychologist probably around nine years old. I was in Middle School at the school library requesting books that they've never even heard of Sybil a child called it. So I was really passionate about the mental health field from the very early beginnings. But I think more than that. I am an immigrant from Poland. So a lot of who I am now both as an adult and as a professional has been shaped by my immigration experience.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and that's one of the topics I'm excited to talk about because that's not a thing. I've super covered in the podcast yet. Eight year old you was interested in these things because you were trying to figure out your own stuff because you were interested in helping people and trying to understand what was going on for them. What was kind of that as you look back maybe in reflect on it. what was that part for you

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, I mean I think as therapist needs therapy being polish.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Would not get me very far. So I realized very quickly that if I wanted to make it I had to conform and I had to figure out how I can be long and how I can embrace my American. ASAP so I think with that.

Gabriela Miniscalco: as an immigrant and I'm sure a lot of other immigrants can relate our children of immigrants. there is this almost unspoken or sometimes spoken rule of you're gonna make it and you have to make it because there is no other option we got you here. We sacrifice everything now. It's on you to utilize all of these resources and be successful make a name for yourself really break out of any generational cycles that have been left for you.

Jeremy Schumacher: which is a pretty heavy thing to put on a adolescent who's developing and just figuring out their own body and brain and all of that stuff to have this awareness and some of these expectations placed at that age can be a lot to navigate

00:05:00

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, yeah, so I think I also felt like I had to maybe over compensate for the lack of belonging that I felt or the lack of respect that I was given. So what better way to show the world that you belong and You deserve to be here then to become a doctor right No One's Gonna s*** talk you if you're a doctor or…

Jeremy Schumacher: sure.

Gabriela Miniscalco: so I was thinking at the time so I stayed pretty strict with my trajectory and did High School College a bunch of internships during college and then went straight for my doctorate.

Jeremy Schumacher: To meet those expectations that were placed on you at a young age, right?

Gabriela Miniscalco: To meet those expectations. That's and to also feel like I'm American now, I'm a doctor. it's what you wanted me to do, but I think now as I reflecting on my journey and my identity I'm starting to realize wow, I was chasing this kind of attachment need that we all have right sitting in Is biological for us like it we as humans need to belong because that's how we survive. We're pack animals. we're social creatures even if sometimes it's really hard to admit that we need other people.

Gabriela Miniscalco: But I was so focused on sitting in and belonging and being one with the crowd that now I look back and I'm like, wow, I really kind of lost myself in the process. I abandoned so many parts of my identity so much of my authenticity in order to survive and in order to feel like I made it. And it kind of felt like I was holding my breath for all those years as I was pursuing my degrees and jumping through all these hoops. Once I made it to the top I was like

Gabriela Miniscalco: What …

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Gabriela Miniscalco: no one ever told me what to do after I became a doctor, Everything was just kind of go but very minimal conversation as to what happens when you get there.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah, I think the immigration piece is a separate topic obviously the Venn diagram overlaps, but I think with attachment issues, that's kind of One of the things is like there's not ever enough that you're going to do to get those. Needs met if you're not securely attaching to people who are wanting to securely attach to you back. there's no way to fulfill that need without having a healthy attachment.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, and I've also done a lot of reflecting and some professional writing about the trauma associated with immigration and can't talk about trauma without talking about grief, and I'm finally now at this place in my life where I have the words to put on these experiences. I have the labels I have the concepts. But it's truly kind of fascinating. How immigration is this monumental?

Gabriela Miniscalco: Life change so to speak and there's really not a lot of focus on it not a whole ton of conversations going on in our country about the immigration experience and it is very much one that there is some invalidation that I think happens, just kind of speaking. Really there my family immigrated here on a diversity Visa. meaning that the United States

Gabriela Miniscalco: was giving away visas for people in other countries in hopes of diversifying United States and bringing in people from other cultures to kind of expand the talents and the culture so it's made out to be as this beautiful thing like we welcome you here. And then people come here from other countries and they're kind of showing for their differences. they realize that their differences. Aren't going to be celebrated and instead those differences are going to cause them to be isolated and even oppressed.

00:10:00

Jeremy Schumacher: yeah, yeah and I talk a lot about and doing drama work with people Big T traumas and Little T traumas and I think moving across the ocean can be a big sea trauma. I think all these little traumas then of trying to fit in and not being allowed to feeling like you need to dampen your heritage or your ethnicity so that you can fit in all these little tea traumas that can also accumulate with probably the more dramatic sensationalize things we think about as on TV shows or in movies these things are depicted of there's those big D dramas and then probably a host of little tea traumas and you're saying grief being a part of that too.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, yeah, and Big Little T trauma, it's all trauma, right it affects this very similarly. but yeah,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yes.

Gabriela Miniscalco: and I think also When we talk about trauma we so often focus on the things that are memorable in our life. the abuse or the natural disasters or these events what I really like to focus on and my private practice and in my work with clients is the traumas that fall under the category of things that didn't happen. So that's neglect that things that were kind of supposed to happen.

Gabriela Miniscalco: But never really happened and how those things. Shaped our development and how those things continue to show up in our adult lives.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, yeah and doing this work. is also I imagine a lot of traumatizing or triggering because immigration is such a highly politicized topic for a lot of folks who don't know what they're talking about related to the topic and so for folks who've gone through the process to hear all the vitriol on the news and to hear some of these culture wars being fought for I would say performative politics. I imagine that you see that often in your work too of these triggers that are being hit and almost this pressure again to conform and fit in because you don't want to stick out when it's such a hot topic.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, exactly. our country does kind of force us to conform for our own safety for our own Survival. But when we conform we also have to bandon like I said that authenticity and when we abandon parts of ourselves, we suppress them. Right we kind of pretend they're not there but they're so very much living in our bodies and our minds and

Gabriela Miniscalco: Arts and actions, but that's one of the pieces of grief that I feel like I'm personally still grappling with, asking myself the questions when I was nine years old instead of fully rejecting my polish identity to fit in with my American peers. What would it have been like if I embraced my polish identity and I kind of stuck with it, right if I continued to listen to polish artists or continue to bring Polish food to school it, and maybe that's just kind of my magical thinking but there are a lot of what if that I think a company grief

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, yeah. I talk with clients a lot and I work with religious drama. So a lot of that idea of ignoring yourself or your authentic self to fit in is there and a lot of high control religions. And so this point of when you're safe when you get to a place where your brain can complete some of those developmental tasks that you look back and go. why did I do that then but I think it's missing that piece of if you didn't feel safe, then it made sense not do some of those things but you're talking about bringing in the grief piece…

00:15:00

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: then of kind of mourning that opportunity wasn't provided or not being given the skills and tools or The support that you need to be able to do that it's so hard to look at this stuff in a vacuum of this one individual could have done this thing differently.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, and I often talk about my cultural identity as feeling very in between because as I was growing up in the United States my family. Were pretty set in their polish identity, but my development was already embedded in the American culture. I was navigating all of these American values and American Standards American Norms that my family just didn't have the same Expos.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Or two so I always felt like with my American friends with my peers. I was just a little bit too polish for them. I was just a little bit too different. And then with my family, over the years I was too American they didn't understand my American references or what we were doing in class or some of the subjects. I was studying it. They just didn't really have a template for it. So I was really straddling this world on my own and that felt very isolating and

Gabriela Miniscalco: As I continue to develop my American identity. I very quickly surpassed my family. because I now had more knowledge on the American culture. I was speaking the language they became very dependent on me and I grew up quickly or…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Gabriela Miniscalco: I was very mature for my age because I was parentified I was put into an adult role. very quickly where my mom would attend a student parent teacher conferences and I was the one translating the feedback.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Gabriela Miniscalco: My teachers were giving my mom.

Gabriela Miniscalco: that's just one example, but making appointments for my family and my family asking me what is this in the grocery store? What is this sign say, so it just put a lot of pressure on me to be more than I think I was ready to be.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and we talk about parentification. That's like a jargony psychology word. But I think looking from this immigration lens almost out of a necessity as someone who can speak the language or read the language fluently that just gives you access to things that you need to survive that for people who are Speaking native speakers. we don't think twice about that stuff. And so great that America is offering these visas, but then the support on the back end to give people the skills and the things they need to actually succeed. I'm guessing wasn't great back in the day and still is quite lacking from what I hear now.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, and I think adults have a very different experience with immigration because they are the ones making the choice regardless of their reasoning they are the ones that have the autonomy to make that decision.

Jeremy Schumacher: Mm-hmm

Gabriela Miniscalco: Whereas kids just kind of go along with it. they don't really get a say they don't have much Choice over the matter and that's one of the Hallmarks of trauma two right feeling like your voice is being lost and that choice is being taken away from you and I think adults have the ability to kind of imagine and pre-plan and have a different sort of community that they can go into once they immigrate to another country whereas for kids

00:20:00

Gabriela Miniscalco: They're just kind of plopped into the school that's in their neighborhood. whether there's people speaking their language.

Jeremy Schumacher: right

Gabriela Miniscalco: It doesn't really matter. It's just like this is your designated School.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, yeah, if you don't mind me asking where did you move to a place that had a Polish Community already set. I'm in Milwaukee. There's a huge Polish Community here. So were you in a place where there was that or not? Really?

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, so we moved directly to Chicago which has the second largest population of Polish people next to Warsaw.

Jeremy Schumacher: Mm-hmm

Gabriela Miniscalco: So yes, a lot of Polish people and there were actually two polish speaking girls in my class which sounds like a release but unfortunately, speaking of foreign language with not cool. So they didn't really interact with me. They weren't really available to translate or to teach me not that it was, their responsibility by any means, but I think that was also a pain that I carried throughout my childhood and school age like these girls speak my language, but they why won't they just help me? So that was a big frustration even if that help is available. It's not always accessible.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, yeah and all those intersecting messages that are probably going on for them to fit in as well and these unspoken messages then. Yeah, there's a lot for developing brain to make sense of in those situations.

Jeremy Schumacher: I'm curious the undergrad school. you was immigration at the Forefront of your mind? this I want to study. This is the thing I want to work on was those internships kind of shaped you or were you kind of? Finding your way into what it was going to look like once you got in your career.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, I kind of entered the psych field super eager super excited. I wanted to dip my toes and into every possible setting every possible theoretical intervention. I was just so excited and I was trying to figure out what really truly clicked for me and I knew I couldn't do that without uncovering what this field was all about. So I've worked in some therapeutic day schools. I worked in an inpatient. So I've worked in a jail, on and on and while I loved all those settings, I think the

Gabriela Miniscalco: work that really resonated with me was trauma seeing That was the common denominator right going from some really fancy treatment programs to also, working in a prison system very different populations,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Gabriela Miniscalco: much Pain that people were holding on to that was kind of showing up in these maladaptive behaviors and relationships struggles.

Gabriela Miniscalco: And also because of my cultural identity. I've always been one to explore other people's cultural identities with and I think sometimes people are quick to say I'm just American I don't really have a culture and that's not true. Because it's kind of that metaphor of when officious swimming in water, it doesn't know it's in water but it's still in water. So I really encourage my clients or people that I work with another kind of Frameworks to really stop and think about where are your ancestors from? Where is your

Gabriela Miniscalco: family of origin from even if it's thousands of years ago, I'm a big believer that generational trauma is a thing and we are impacted by the things that are ancestors went through even if we can't fully pinpoint it or put our finger on it. We are the people that we are because of the past.

00:25:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and I think when you're raised in a privileged status you don't have to think about that. And so a lot of people just don't like it's like you said that fish and water not being aware that it's surrounded by water. that's very much a privileged status where You're not having to confront it because it felt natural or you fit in from the beginning. And so that made a ton of sense. Which I think I'm chuckling a little bit thinking about the internship placements you had because that's what I talked to therapist needs therapy learning. what does that look like seeing how some of it's systemic some of it's intergenerational like these things that

Jeremy Schumacher: Happen four or five generations ago get coded in our DNA we can track those differences. And so the ability to handle stress the ability to use healthy coping skills, or to have maladaptive behaviors attached to it. right some of that is going back before we were born a couple Generations.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, yeah, it didn't start with us. there's very specific reasons as to why we gravitate towards certain things why certain things resonate with us why certain things feel like default setting so I think I always compare therapy to detective work and I say it's the practice of psychology. It is a lot of uncovering and a lot of speculations and really seeing what fits really trying to put together our own puzzles kind of piece by piece and I think culture is often times.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Overlooked especially by people. we said it's not really on their Forefront or on their radar. So I'm pretty direct with my clients regarding their culture and how it's affected them what sort of discrepancies they feel between their parents and themselves to because there is not only this generational divide between ourselves and our parents or the adults that raised us, but like I mentioned earlier there is a cultural divide. So, my mom has a template of what things are supposed to be like in this world from her polish sort of filter. whereas for me I have to wear this

Gabriela Miniscalco: filter as much as I can to kind of stay connected to her and have that Mutual understanding but I also have to have my American filter on because this is the country that I live in this is the country that I work in so I'm always kind of Code switching another jargon word, but I've gotten so used to it, especially when I was younger, I have to be a certain way with my family. I have to be a certain way when I'm at school. and I think the grief shows up in the sense that

Gabriela Miniscalco: My family will never truly understand my work my involvement and in some of these professional organizations. I had a really hard time even explaining to my mom. What a podcast is, …

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Gabriela Miniscalco: so we don't really think about that but it's a piece of me that I feel like is somewhat lost because I don't get to fully share that experience with my mom and my family members. They just don't get it. this isn't their world. So I think I grieve the ability to have that sort of relationship with my family.

00:30:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: that code switching again depending on when we're picking some of that stuff. A lot of it is while our brains also developing and so this young developing brain hitting puberty. Some of this stuff gets locked in where it feels very natural, but then we reflect on it and it's almost a trauma response of the survival mode worked really well then and later. If it might be maladaptive and being able to kind of untangle. Why it worked in one setting and why it's not working in another.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think I'm finally at this point in my life and in my own therapy work where everything for the most part has been subtle then and kind of untangled and now I'm starting to dive into my immigration experience and also, some of the grief that I never got to address as a child because the pressure to be American was great and there wasn't a whole lot of space or opportunity to talk about being polish or my traditions or what I missed about my country because sadly

Gabriela Miniscalco: A lot of their responses. are you not proud to be American or why don't you go back to your country then, and it doesn't get you very far. So I'm really hopeful and optimistic that there becomes more of an Embrace of people's uniqueness and the special things that they bring from other countries because that's how it was designed to be that's…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Gabriela Miniscalco: what America is all about.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yes, the mythical Melting Pot. I think too, I've talked about this with some of the other guests on the podcast like decolonizing mental health acknowledging that the profession. Kind of has this Medical model history that doesn't always fit the way the brain works and has been run by straight white males for a long time our body of research that we draw from most often is based predominantly on white males as the subjects. And so working to move away from that expert model of we know what's ailing you and can fix it and to create space and hold space for people to know how to heal themselves if we can support them and help them have space to do that, finally.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah. Yeah. I'm so glad that you brought that up because I recently read an article of sorts that talked about how we are excluding so many people from research studies on the simple fact that they don't speak English fluently and that's a huge huge part of the population that we're missing. So who are all of these studies and research trials and medication trials based off of because they're not fully representative of the people who are utilizing Services medications treatment models. So it's not really fitting and I'm a huge proponent of kind of changing our language from what is wrong with you, right? What's wrong with your brain? What medication can fix this?

Gabriela Miniscalco: Shifting it to what happened to you? what was the trajectory that kind of LED you to where you are now? And providing so much psycho education and what trauma even is and sometimes I avoid that word altogether because people are so resistant right? I don't have any trauma.

Jeremy Schumacher: yeah.

Gabriela Miniscalco: I was fine when I was a child.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, that's why I use Big T Little T. Because a lot of people I think of that PTSD capital T going to war kidding bugs being in a car accident and not understanding that trauma is anytime your brain doesn't complete the safety the stress response cycle. And so yeah,…

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: I find that resistance too of a lot of people don't like that word. Even if that's very much what they're experiencing.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, it had besides the Big T Little T. Have you found any other words to describe trauma?

Jeremy Schumacher: and I working with religious trauma. I think a lot of people assume. I wasn't molested by a minister. I wasn't excommunicated or these kind of dramatic sweeping things. And so I really couch it in those terms of safety of were you allowed to feel safe talking about autonomy a lot where you allowed to make your own decisions to space to do that. Could you speak up? And I think that for a lot of people hits home. And we kind of go from there. I try. No, I'm so working on this because I try really hard not to label people's experiences for them but balancing that psychoeducation piece of My experience tells me this is a ta response. Trying to meet clients where they're at. If that trauma word is a bit overwhelming.

00:35:00

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah. Yeah, I often say that things I use the term wound and I like to do the analogy of a medical injury because it really is not that much different right and sometimes we break a finger and we don't necessarily address it and it heals wrong or we have an infection and we put a Band-Aid over it and maybe

Gabriela Miniscalco: Fine, but then months down the road that infection comes back up and sometimes in order to heal it we do have to dig around and we have to get a little messy and it hurts and it doesn't feel good. But we have to get that infection kind of out and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Gabriela Miniscalco: and we have to address it properly and give it some love and care and attention. so Yeah.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Immigration has a lot of those little wounds.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and I was gonna do this at the end, but I think it makes sense to do this. you wrote a chapter for a book talking about grief from kind of these different perspectives and looking at the immigration piece of what grief comes along with that you want to talk a little bit about the book.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, so the book is called the grief experience and it's such a wonderful and inspirational book and I know I'm biased but it's 25 different authors that are discussing their personal and professional experiences with grief and different types of grief. So I wrote my chapter specifically focusing on ambiguous grief and disenfranchised grief and how that relates to immigration on the grief of having.

Gabriela Miniscalco: To abandon my authenticity the grief of growing up too fast and not really having a chance to be a kid and also recognizing that grief isn't just reserved for the death of a person and while that that may be the most painful and truly heartbreaking grief. there are other losses that we experience that have a very similar effect on our bodies Our Hearts our minds and we just need to get better at normalizing it and giving people the love and support that we give when someone passes away

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and I think one of the things that I alluded to when we started talking is working with animals, but I don't remember was a blog post or a social media post but talking about animal loss and how that's one of those griefs that Society is weird about even though most of us would acknowledge that our pets are part of our family. For whatever reason on a social level that's not always how the grief is treated.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, and I think the connection with animals that I have stems from this need of wanting unconditional love. I feel like all throughout my life, I was faced with so many instances where I was othered or I wasn't good enough or I had these disadvantages such as not knowing the language but animals don't care you can connect with them on such a deeper level and I think it's really beautiful that we don't always have to and there's my cat. They know they know.

Jeremy Schumacher: They do they consent that yeah.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, so it's kind of coming full circle that a lot of immigrants feel misunderstood especially by the American culture. They feel like they don't have a voice. They don't speak the language but animal love is this kind of the same and every country, right?

00:40:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and I think again looking at it from a trauma lens. We have all this body of research that says combat veterans do really well with emotional support animals and service animals and The field is very slowly starting to expand some of that research out a little bit to look at. there's obviously more trauma than just combat veterans. what else does the science tell us about how people respond to these service animals and it's overwhelmingly good even when I was in higher ed, we had two Comfort dogs on campus and just watching the stress during midterms or finals drop when you walk into a room with one of the dogs is incredible. So I think it's exciting to think in terms of how that field can start to expand and the scientific Community can start to Branch out on our research with that.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, and I think still to this day the Mental Health Community it's still very hesitant about emotional support animals and writing the letters. I feel managed care probably has something to do with it, but we're very

Gabriela Miniscalco: We're very hesitant. I think to propose alternative treatments that don't have to do with medication and I think and maybe it's a conspiracy theory that there is kind of this Fear Factor regarding therapist needs therapy Housing Act. Those things are written in such a way that explained that a person just has to have a diagnosable mental health condition to be eligible for an animal that provides some support. So

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, I'm a ponent huge advocate for animals and both the Therapeutics Facebook but also for emotional healing.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, yeah and listening to you talk about it I wrote a blog post about when my dog who's very much my dog the dog always wanted this great. Dane mix just this bundle of love and as I was deconstructing this High control religion. I just kept thinking but Izzy is unconditional love not the Bible my dog who loves everyone all the time no matter what they do. that's the idea of it. And so yeah, I tend to be really big on it too and not just I mean service animal has a specific legal meaning but emotional support animal especially from a housing perspective. we're not flying with them. We're not taking them everywhere we go. We're having them in our safe space with us so that we can decompress in a safe way and service animals are incredible some of the things there they're able to do now but emotional sport animals. I've written letters for rabbits guinea pigs horses, like animals are so attuned to our emotional

Jeremy Schumacher: kind of environment. So I think yeah I'm with you on that it's really this thing that is healing for a lot of people that were limiting for not a particularly good reason.

Gabriela Miniscalco: you yeah, yeah emotional support animals service animals and also therapy animals right Being able to bring animals into facilities that don't really have access to animals on a consistent basis like hospitals prison system though. Those are the people that I think sometimes benefit the most because they're done talking right? And they're expected to talk all day long sometimes about what their issues are. But as we know a lot of that pain just lives in our bodies and can't be fully expressed verbally, and I think that's sometimes where animals bridge the gap.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, yeah, and you mentioned having a rescue dog I have several as well. I love the analogy the metaphor they used to of how we have Grace for these creatures that were potentially traumatized or didn't get their needs met. But then we as humans kind of compare ourselves differently or have different standards. And so I love the metaphor space as well for right, but you wouldn't treat your animal that way. Why are you treating yourself that way?

00:45:00

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, yeah, they're so many beautiful things that animals can explain or can kind of do to shift our own perspectives.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah Gabby. this has been awesome. There's so much we could do, three more hours on these topics because like you said, I think it's one of those things that a lot of folks don't have a much Awareness on but if people want to learn more about the work you're doing your practice that they want to check that out. Where can they go to find you?

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, so my practice is called Mini Mental Health Services. I do have an Instagram that's pretty active. But I'm also available by text by email calling but I'm a millennial so I don't love the phone calls,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Right. Yes.

Gabriela Miniscalco: but I'm always looking to connect with people whether it's for Professional Services, but also to just be like hey, I relate I've been there and I am also site packed certified which means that I can practice and almost all of the 50 states.

Jeremy Schumacher: yeah, yeah, which is awesome and another way that we've Slowly take it longer than it should have but started to remove barriers for people working with someone who would be a good fit for them. Yeah, your Instagram's awesome will link to your website and Instagram and the book. Came out recently looks out.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Yeah, the book came out. Yeah, it's available on Amazon. So if anyone is looking for some reading that that would be both healing and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Gabriela Miniscalco: inspirational. Please check it out.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, we'll link to that in the show notes as well. I love those written from all these different perspectives pulling in people with unique voices. So we'll have those links too. Gabriela has been awesome.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Cool, absolutely.

Jeremy Schumacher: Thanks so much for taking the time to chat today.

Gabriela Miniscalco: Thank you.

Jeremy Schumacher: And to all the wonderful listeners out there. Thanks again for tuning in. We'll be back next week with another new episode. Take care everyone.

Meeting ended after 00:47:16 👋