Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Bridget Balajadia. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Bridget, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
From a young age, I knew that I wanted to help people but I wasn’t sure what that would look like. I spent the first 10 years of my career working in a variety of settings including internationally, in non-profits, schools and and hospitals. The thru-line in all of my work was supporting families who were experiencing crisis and ongoing de-stabilization. In my personal life and my professional life I saw how poverty and trauma are so inherently linked. When families experience the crushing impact of poverty, that toxic stress pours over into their parenting experience. The inverse is also true – when their is a history of trauma, striving for financial independence and freedom can also become increasingly difficult. It becomes a vicious intergenerational cycle that impacts all of society. And mothers are at the center of this.
In 2022 while I was working in a broken system at a non-profit I realized that grinding within the limits of the agency, the grants, the constraints that were put on us as helpers was never going to change the lives of the families we were serving in any truly meaningful ways. We needed something longer term, with deeper impact. It was then that I made the decision to forge a new path. I decided to start my own private practice with the goal of focusing on supporting mothers mental health and the dream of creating a space where mothers could get the kind of practical, emotional, and physical support that they need to truly heal from what they have experienced and build the lives that they want. Two years down and my practice is growing and I’ve started mapping out the next steps of building out my dream. I am on a mission to provide affordable, evidence based and holistic support for mothers and help them become their best version of themselves.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
In my practice I work primarily with mothers who live with treatment resistant depression or anxiety. Many of the women that I work with have a history of trauma, whether that was birth trauma that took place during delivery or trauma that they experienced prior to becoming pregnant and is now showing up in their parenting journey. I have a few key ways that I work with Mama’s to heal and move forward; Ketamine Assisted Therapy (KAT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Integrative Mental Health.
I feel so passionate about working with these three modalities because the mind body connection is so mission critical in healing from trauma. KAT allows us to examine the painful things that we have been through in our lives without our nervous systems becoming overwhelmed. EMDR and KAT both also help us make new connections, new meaning, new understanding of where our life path has led us and access the deepest parts of ourselves. And Integrative Mental Health really helps us develop healthy coping tools that help to create the life that we want that sustains us and helps us dream bigger. I love combining all three of these modalities in my work with mothers. More than anything, I love watching the transformation. It’s amazing what women can do!
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
It sounds so cliche but the saying of “betting on yourself is never a gamble” is really so true. I got tired of letting employers place value on my worth, my ability or my dreams. Having the courage and the motivation and faith to say “Let’s do it” has led me to every major decision in my life. From choosing to get out of corporate tech and move to Ghana when I was 20 all the way to choosing to leave a dysfunctional job at a non-profit and start my own practice – it has paid off at every turn.
My advice to people who are on the fence or feel like a major change is coming for them in 2025 is to lean into the fear. The fear of what could be possible is where you are being called. Dive in and give it your all.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
“The Body Keeps the Score” by Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk has been one of the most life altering books I’ve ever read. It has guided much of my career and was instrumental in my decision to go out on my own and start this practice. In it, he reviews the many ways that trauma treatment has evolved and also discusses the ways that complex trauma has become the largest threat our health and safety as a society. Reading it caused me to realize that contrary to the ways that insurance companies, our healthcare industry and the government chooses to address the problems that families face , these problems will never be “solved” because we are not getting to the root cause of the problem. We refuse to invest in preventative care and we treat holistic care as a “nice to have”. We make it difficult for families to survive in America and we make mothers carry the majority of the toxic stress and pain. If we ever hope to move forward, we can and must address how we address intergenerational trauma and the web of challenges that come from it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lupinecounselingsouthbay.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lupinecounselingsouthbay/
Image Credits
No credit needed (pictures are my own)
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