Meet Hannah Roberts

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Hannah Roberts. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Hannah below.

Hannah, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

Becoming the psychologist I am has been a journey. I’ve always known this is the career I would pursue since taking a psychology class in high school, but I truly had no idea what I was in for.

Being a psychologist means witnessing both the best and the worst of humanity. I have heard some of the most traumatic stores and met some of the most beautiful people in my practice. Vicarious trauma is the term for the trauma response that humans have when they see or hear about someone else’s traumatic experience. This is one of the most challenging parts of being a therapist and you don’t really learn how to handle vicarious trauma in grad school. My resilience in these situations comes from staying connected to my empathy – from remembering that humans have an intense capacity to heal and that beauty and joy can come from the most challenging situations.

I’ve also found that maintaining a connection to nature has been essential in my resilience. My mom died suddenly of a brain aneurysm while I was in the middle of my residency. I dropped everything (my dissertation, my clients, my life in California) to return home to Michigan to grieve with my family. When I returned to my work, I felt numb. I was afraid I would lose my empathy and my compassion. I drove up the coast to Big Sur and sat at the base of a beautiful waterfall, surrounded by gigantic pieces of granite. I felt so small, but in a good way. I felt the mist on my skin and looked around at the green moss and ferns and realized that life continues and that I would find the strength to continue as well.

In the decade following my mother’s passing, I have uncovered stories of her own childhood trauma and pieced together secrets my family had kept hidden away. It helped me make sense of the sadness I have felt since childhood, but had never understood. Working with my own therapist has helped me learn to hold compassion for myself and for my parents, who were doing the best they could with what they had. I hope this is something I can continue to pass on to my clients – when we hold empathy and compassion for ourselves, we are capable of supporting not only our own healing, but others’ as well.

I focus on staying connected to nature as I continue to process my own grief, my family’s trauma, and the challenges my clients bring in each week. I prioritize my weekly long hike, looking out over the mountains and the ocean, and try to get on the water at least once a week, for a solitary row, or a surf or kayak with my partner. These are the ways I stay resilient.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I own two businesses that support individuals in living authentic and thriving lives.

The first is a therapy practice: Thrive San Luis Obispo. We offer affirming and supportive therapy for college students and adults throughout California dealing with trauma and anxiety. We specifically work with the queer community, creating a safe space within the therapeutic relationship. We also focus on how nature supports mental health, offering nature therapy and utilizing the relationship with nature in our therapeutic interventions. I co-founded this business with my dear colleague, Dr. Sarah Park and we have had the honor of mentoring many other female therapists as they pursue their hours and education for licensure.

My other business is Mindful Moderation. As a therapist, I was so frustrated by the lack of resources there were for women who wanted to change their drinking. I was also furious at how much misinformation I saw out there for women with drinking issues (including from therapists!). I realized it was even worse when I began teaching at a university and my grad students honestly shared their personal and professional experiences. I created Mindful Moderation to offer women support through coaching and information that is shame and stigma-free, offering realistic options for managing drinking without having to give up a social life.

Oh and then I’m an Adjunct Lecturer in Psychology at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, CA. I teach a graduate course: Assessment & Treatment of Substance Use Disorders and multiple sections of the upper-level course Abnormal Psychology. It is such an honor and inspiration to work with and mentor students each year and it keeps me fresh and up to date on all the recent research.

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?

Approaching challenges with curiosity. Asking myself what can I learn from this moment. Since childhood, I’ve been a very curious person. I want to understand the world, especially why things work the way they do. As therapists, especially in couple’s therapy and in mindfulness interventions, we often encourage clients to “stay curious” – when they feel a strong emotion, it can be helpful to get curious about it before just reacting. I think my curiosity has helped me to work with a wide range of individuals, experiencing numerous issues as well as to be a human on this planet, encountering my own challenges and traumas.

Remembering to “be kind for everyone is fighting a hard battle.” I’m not sure where this quote originates, but it’s been a good one to remember for me. Working as a therapist, I am reminded DAILY that everyone has challenges. I feel like we have lost sight of this as a society, especially with social media. It’s easy to feel like you have things harder than everyone else or to become overwhelmed by the state of the world, but staying connected to empathy and prioritizing kindness helps us remember the bigger picture.

See myself as a lifelong learner. One of the things I love about the field of psychology is that we see individuals as always evolving. Having a growth mindset and focusing on how I can learn and grow has been immensely helpful. It’s helped me have compassion for myself when I’ve made mistakes and it also helps me continue to set goals for myself as I look into the future.

How would you describe your ideal client?

I love working with highly sensitive women who are curious about themselves and ready for something different in their lives. They begin to reframe their sensitivity as a superpower. They tell themselves a different story about who they are in the world and what they have to offer. They are able to shift the trauma narratives that have existed in their families for generations.

For some women, this is in regards to a family pattern of drinking to manage stress and other big emotions. For others, it is unlearning patterns of anxiety (often learned from their mothers) and feeling small and scared in their world. For some, it is empowering themselves in overcoming the shame of family secrets and seeing themselves as strong, with healthy boundaries. With others, it is learning to embrace their true sexuality or gender identity in a way that feels honest and authentic. And for many, it is a little of each of these.

I prioritize developing a self-care practice that works for the individual person to better manage burnout and overall wellness. In our work, these women come to feel more grounded in their bodies and self-awareness. We work to get them unstuck in the areas of creativity, mind-body, and relationships. Through our work together, they learn how to recognize and advocate for their needs. They understand and give value to their emotions, viewing themselves with compassion and empathy.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.drhannahroberts.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mindful_moderation/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannahjoyroberts
• Other: My therapy practice website: https://www.thriveslo.com/

Image Credits

Outdoor photos are by Brittany App, In-office photos are author’s own