Today we’d like to introduce you to Concetta Troskie.
Concetta, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
When I was a little girl, I danced in my room for hours on end and put on hundreds of choreographed plays with my friends. I felt most alive and full of joy when I was dancing and acting. My love for movement and performance never left me, and as I grew older, I moved through several incarnations of these passions as an English teacher, a yoga instructor, a dancer/choreographer of my own dance company, and as an actor in theater, commercials and radio.
No matter my job, I fell in love with the people I worked with, and mostly, with the way they wore their life stories on their bodies, their faces and in the way they interacted with the world. When I was a teacher, I was fascinated with my students’ ways of learning, their personalities, their psychology. I had the same fascination for the characters I would play, for my company’s dancers and for my yoga students. I always wanted to know more, understand more and help others express narratives through their bodies and voices more freely. For example, when my yoga students became emotional, or shared a life struggle with me after class, while I could offer empathic listening, I felt limited in the tools I needed to help me guide, reflect and heal in a richer, more effective way.
I knew it was time to go back to school. I had heard of Dance/Movement Therapy (DMT) while living in Boulder, Colorado, and the idea of working with movement and psychology at the same time absolutely thrilled me! I eventually found a school in New Hampshire, Antioch University New England, that offered not only Dance/Movement Therapy but Drama Therapy and Clinical Mental Health Counseling as well. I was over the moon with this trifecta of awesomeness and fell more and more in love with the undeniable power of the expressive arts during my studies.
Fast forward seven years later, and I find myself in Dallas, Texas. After working in an assisted living facility, an eating disorder treatment center and a hospital, I realize the importance of bringing expressive arts and body-based healing into the mental health community. I also realize that Dallas lacks expressive arts resources and education, especially for DMT and for Drama Therapy (I think I am one of only two Registered Drama Therapists in Dallas), so I started Mindfully Embodied in 2018.
I use dance/movement therapy and drama therapy to help clients heal from anxiety, depression, trauma and eating disorders. I work with clients from ages 13-100 and invite the body to speak at every stage of life.
When the body’s language is included in a therapy session, unspoken material is revealed. Much of what drives anxiety and depression is difficult to rationalize cognitively, and these underlying emotions must be felt on a body level to be processed. Likewise, trauma happens non-verbally and is stored in our cells. Movement helps to free blocked and buried memories and the body begins to heal naturally when stuck emotions are released.
The expressive arts are especially powerful when used with eating disorders. Eating disorders’ primary function is to impair the sprit’s relationship to the body. Since emotions are experienced in the body, they are numbed and become difficult to feel. Dysregulation becomes the new normal, and the body’s innate wisdom is replaced by the eating disorder’s rigid rules. Dance/movement and drama therapy re-establish trust in the body through kinesthetic empathy, spontaneity, imagination and increase movement repertoire. The body starts to lead again. Without remembering how to trust the body, healing from an eating disorder is impossible.
I use carefully integrated principles of evidence-based treatment models (including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Mindfulness and Behavioral Therapy) along with dance/movement therapy and drama therapy. I tailor my therapeutic approach to the individual needs and diagnoses of each client and collaborate with my clients to encourage self-regulation and personal agency.
I weave the body’s wisdom together with the subconscious to decode and to demystify the emotional healing process. Depression, anxiety and trauma are overwhelming, and clients can feel lost and disconnected from themselves. Anchoring our work in the present moment, physical sensations as well as integrating body wisdom with cognitive organization, helps my clients find their way back home.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
During my first year of graduate school studying DMT and Counseling, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor on my Pituitary Gland. I had a very rare illness called Cushing’s Disease. It was devastating for me. Over a period of about 6-7 years, I couldn’t recognize myself on the inside or the outside. While it was terrifying, it was also strangely beautiful to be studying about the body’s innate wisdom and power when I got my diagnosis. I took a medical leave of absence for a year, had a (very lucky) successful surgery, and returned to school with even more dedication and devotion to the field of body-based healing. I could not have gotten sick at a better time and place in my life, and I am forever grateful for my classmates, teachers and for my practice of expressive arts during my healing.
Getting sick gave me a profound respect for the impact of moving, breathing and creating on the body’s healing process. I was sort of like a client and a practitioner all at the same time.
Another bump in the road came when I first moved to Texas with my dual degree in Dance/Movement Therapy and Clinical Mental Health Counseling. I was eager to get my Licensed Professional Counselor Intern credential and had already started working as a Primary Therapist. About six months after starting my job, my application for LPC-Intern was denied on the grounds that my degree was “not recognized” in the State of Texas. In fact, there was a clause in the Licensure by-laws that excluded Dance/Movement Therapy as a counseling modality. Over the past decades, several of my DMT predecessors had tried and failed to gain LPC-Intern status in Texas. But I knew that my degree was equal parts DMT and Counseling, and I knew what I needed to do.
I hired a lawyer and spent almost a year, and a lot of tears and frustration, preparing a case for the Licensure Board to advocate for the right to have LPC status with a dual degree as a dance/movement therapist. It was a long and arduous road, but I finally won LPC-Intern status after a heated hearing with the State Board in Corpus Christi in front of over 200 attendees. The best part of that story is, that after my case, at least three more dually licensed dance/movement therapists have now gained LPC-Intern status in Texas!
Please tell us about Mindfully Embodied. What should we know?
Mindfully Embodied is Dallas’ first expressive arts counseling space to integrate DMT, Drama Therapy, Yoga and Counseling. I opened the Design District studio in June 2019, and currently, run individual expressive arts sessions as well as groups and workshops.
I watch the magic of body-based therapy transform lives every day. Not everyone heals in the same way. Sometimes, talking just isn’t enough. I am thrilled that now have the tools to help my wonderful clients transform their wounds through the art of imagery, breath and movement. At the end of most days, I smile to myself and know with soul-satisfaction that this is what I was put on the planet to do.
I also work with immersive theater artists in Dallas and promote the integration of mental health awareness and the performance arts through expressive arts workshops with actors, playwrights and audience members. In 2019, alongside the immersive theater company Artstillery, Mindfully Embodied hosted the first-ever community talk-back about the impact of trauma on the body. We had over 60 people attend, many of whom had never had the opportunity to talk about trauma openly and ask questions directly to therapists. I am proud that we could de-stigmatize and de-mystify the discussion about trauma, and also expose people to the healing power of the expressive arts and of theater all at the same time. That has been my dream for a long time. Artstillery and Mindfully Embodied are doing another mental health theater evening in 2020 and I am already excited for it!
I am excited to grow Mindfully Embodied into an expressive arts resource center for DFW, and in 2020 will expand expressive arts programming, collaborate on integrative health research with UT Southwestern’s Oncology Department, add a healing movement class, and host several expressive arts clinicians and teachers who will provide workshops for the mental health community in Dallas.
As the President of the Texas Chapter of the American Dance Therapy Association, I also host quarterly DMT meetings that the public is welcome to attend to learn more about DMT.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
A deep passion for advocating and educating the world about the healing power of creativity fuels me. There is so much to gain from integrating the body, the imagination and spontaneous expression into the mental health model. I simply cannot shut up about it. There is probably a healthy dose of Sicilian stubbornness in there as well.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1430 Dragon Street
Suite 15
Dallas, TX 75207 - Website: https://www.mindfullyembodied.org
- Phone: 214-200-6042
- Email: concetta@mindfullyembodied.org
- Instagram: @mindfullyembodied
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindfullyembodieddallas/
Image Credit:
From the Hip Photo, Photo Noire, Anna Kin, Dallas Truth Racial Healing and Transformation
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