We were lucky to catch up with Natalie Moore recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Natalie, so happy to have you on the platform and I think our readers are in for a treat because you’ve got such an interesting story and so much insight and wisdom. So, let’s start with a topic that is relevant to everyone, regardless of industry etc. What do you do for self-care and how has it impacted you?
Self-care was a foreign concept to me until I went to graduate school for psychotherapy. Growing up in the 90s, no one talked about self-care like they do now. My parents both worked a lot and didn’t have much time left over for prioritizing self-care, so that wasn’t something that was modeled to me in my upbringing.
Even in grad school, when I was learning about how important self-care was for being a therapist, I remember having this attitude of “yeah, yeah, I know, but I don’t really need that.” Even the self-care activities I did, like nutrition and exercise, were done more from a place of vanity than really caring for my mind, body and spirit.
It wasn’t until my first year of practicing as a therapist that I realized how vital self-care was to prevent burnout. Here I was, 23 years old, working in a very intense setting as a first-time therapist and I was completely overwhelmed. I didn’t know how to take proper care of myself. After that, I was fortunate enough to be able to take a year off of therapy work to start to truly take care of myself.
Over the years, I’ve been blessed to be exposed to so many self-care practices that have transformed my life. I’m committed to nutrition and providing my body with the nourishment it needs to thrive. I love exercise and spending time in nature. I’ve learned meditation practices like mindfulness, breathwork, visualization, sound healing and many others. I’m also a big family person and so self-care also means laughing and spending quality time with the people I love. I could go on and on about modes of self-care because there are so many.
Although life has its ups and downs I can truly say that I know how to get myself back to good when I start to feel early signs of burnout. Having solid self-care routines (and returning to them when I’ve inevitably gotten off track) is how I’ve been able to be a practicing therapist for over a decade and still love what I do.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I’m a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (#MFC107413) based in Los Angeles who helps women overcome people-pleasing so that they can finally put their happiness first. I take a holistic approach to my work incorporating techniques such as mindfulness, somatic psychology and self-compassion.
I’m an LA-native who loves everything having to do with holistic health. My passions include mental health, hiking, travel, family and having a positive impact on everyone who I get to meet in this world.
What’s special about my job is that I have the unique honor to be able to witness not only people’s stories of pain and difficulty, but I also get to watch them as they transform and move toward the life they’ve always imagined for themselves. There is no greater gift.
I’m a firm believer that everyone has the innate capacity to heal, if given a safe and supportive environment to do so. I believe that my job as a therapist is not to heal my clients, but to support the natural healing process that is already occurring.
I love building my business, because the more clients I’m able to reach, the more I can pass along amazing wisdom and teachings that have been shared with me over the years from teachers, mentors and my own therapists and healing practitioners.
An expansion in my business that I’m excited about is that I have begun to teach other therapists how to build their dream private practices so that they can have the impact that they want to have on the world. It’s really fun to support other therapists in this journey.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Mindfulness – I was fortunate to have been introduced to mindfulness in my early 20s when I was in graduate school learning how to become a therapist. What was cool and unique about the class was that the whole philosophy of the instructor was that as therapists we needed to first have our own established mindfulness practices before teaching other people how to do it. This makes so much sense to me. How can you help someone be in tune with the present moment if you’re not?
This practice changed everything for me over the years. It made me more present to my thoughts, feelings and behaviors. It made me a better friend and partner. It helped me realize that I didn’t want to use substances in the way that I had before. Learning and practicing mindfulness was a total game changer.
For someone wanting to get started with mindfulness, start simple. Download a meditation app (Insight Timer is my favorite) or type in “mindfulness meditation” into YouTube and listen to a guided meditation. There’s no such thing as “meditating wrong” or being “bad at meditation,” so just start with that and go from there. Keep exploring different mindfulness meditations and techniques until you find something that resonates with you and helps you return to a state of presence every time your mind drifts (which it will!
Self-compassion – I was introduced to the concept of self-compassion in graduate school, as well, but this practice took me a few years to really understand and integrate into my life. In my late 20s, I started to notice that I carried around a lot of guilt and shame without fully understanding why or what to do about it.
I rediscovered the concept of self-compassion and immersed myself in the practice. I listened to Kristin Neff lectures, watched Brené Brown talks and started to realize that the way I treated myself after making a mistake had a huge impact on how I felt about myself and how quickly I was able to move on from the setback.
For anyone just starting out with a self-compassion practice, start by imagining what a good friend would say to you in a difficult situation. They would be kind and non-judgmental. Start speaking to yourself with the same words and the same tone as a kind person would speak to you. Giving yourself a soothing touch on the heart, belly or arm can add an extra dimension of self-soothing to the experience, as well.
Communication – I never knew that communication was an area I struggled with until I started going to therapy in my early 20s. One of the first things we worked on together was helping me communicate more assertively in situations where I had a certain need or where I felt I was being mistreated.
Practicing these skills was difficult because it went completely against my people-pleasing tendencies that I’d held for my entire life up until that point. But I also knew that if I wanted to change my life and be a happier person that this was completely necessary. So I did the hard things. And guess what? It got much easier over time. I also realized that the more I spoke up, the more satisfied I was in my relationships.
For someone just getting their feet wet with assertive communication, I would first encourage them to get accustomed to their feelings and needs by looking at The Feelings Wheel and reading a list of needs from the Non-Violent Communication resources. Why? Because you can’t effectively communicate your feelings and needs if you don’t know what they are!
Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?
My ideal client is a woman in her 20s-30s who has been living her life for other people. She was always the “good girl” who got straight A’s in school, made her parents proud, was the accommodating friend and didn’t take up too much space.
People with this background – by the time they reach adulthood – tend to have a certain combination of issues such as people-pleasing behaviors, perfectionism, burnout, anxiety, low self-esteem and non-reciprocal relationships.
What do all of these issues have in common? This underlying sense of not being enough. When someone doesn’t feel like they are enough exactly as they are, they believe they need to hustle for their worth. They believe that they need to sacrifice themselves to make others happy.
Therapy helps address the root cause that all of these issues stem from. I help clients learn to first love themselves and take care of their needs first, so that they can be the best version of themselves at home, at work and in their relationships.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.yourspaceforgrowth.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourspaceforgrowth/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@yourspaceforgrowth
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/natalie-moore-holistic-psychotherapy-pasadena-4
- Other: https://www.alignable.com/pasadena-ca/holistic-psychotherapy-helping-ambitious-and-creative-millennials-thrive
