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Welcome back to BeREAL! This week, Diana and Ednesha are joined by BeWELL Psychotherapy’s very own Becky Kavoussi. She joins the hosts today to discuss substance abuse, recovery, and her own journey with alcohol addiction.
Becky has a diverse background working with clients of all walks of life. In addition to working in private practice where she treats individuals, couples, and families; she also provides psychotherapy to individuals as an alternative to incarceration. She has also worked with former street homeless adults with severe and persistent mental health issues. Rebecca specializes in treating substance abuse issues, relationship issues, depression, anxiety, mood disorders, and personality disorders.
Ednesha begins this episode by giving a little backstory as to how the three women all know each other. Ednesha recounts stories from when Becky and Ednesha were training under Diana many years ago. Becky then switches the conversation to tell how her bout with substance use began. She outlines her family history with alcohol, and how her environment helped fuel her drinking habits.
Moving onto her college years, Becky tells about the complex “look” of her alcohol addiction. She explains how she functioned fine on paper, but in real life she was drinking daily and running into legal and relationship issues. When she began to develop suicidal ideations and the onset of depression, she reached out to a psychiatrist for medication, which proved to not be useful due to her drinking habits.
Next, Becky covers her experience interning at a substance abuse clinic while pursuing her social work degree. She explains how she would see people facing similar struggles as her own and worked with them one-on-one. Ednesha then asks Becky to retell the story of when recovery began. Becky explains that recovery is not as glamorous as some might think. To her, recovery began in college when she started to cut back on drinking. She still had substance use habits, but she was meeting little goals as the years went on. She also noted how when she began to really minimize her drinking habits, she turned to binge eating.
Lastly, Becky tells of what it is like to see patients that struggle with substance use. She goes into detail about how she chooses when to share her own experience with alcoholism with her patients and when she refrains. She explains that she only shares her story when it could be beneficial for her patient, but she prefers to keep the session about the patient and not about her.
Thank you so much for tuning into BeREAL this week! Be on the lookout for an all new episode next Tuesday. In the meantime, make sure to check out last week’s episode with Farris Fakhoury on physical therapy.
For more information on Becky, BeREAL ( our psychotherapy podcast), and BeWELL (our psychotherapy practice in Midtown Manhattan) visit the links below:
To schedule a therapy appointment text BeWELL to 484848 today
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