Meet Our New Therapist: Yvany Peery, LICSW
We are thrilled to welcome Yvany Peery, LICSW, to DC Talk Therapy. Ms. Peery specializes in working with young adults with complex trauma, as well as anxiety and depression.
 
She offers daytime and evening appointments and does most of her sessions virtually.
 
In addition to trauma, Ms. Peery enjoys working with clients of color and different cultures.
 
Ms. Peery uses an eclectic approach, incorporating EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), as well as elements of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), internal family systems (IFS), mindfulness and somatic experiencing.
 
Prior to joining DC Talk Therapy, Ms. Peery worked for nine years at Vesta, Inc., a community mental health clinic in Silver Spring, Md., as a psychotherapist and clinical supervisor.
 
To schedule an appointment with Ms. Peery, call 202-588-1288 or email us at info@dctalktherapy.com.
Tip of the Month
To be more efficient with your time, start practicing the law of OHIO, which stands for 'Only Handle It Once'.
 
Let’s say you bring in the mail and put it on your kitchen counter. Rather than walking past it many times over the next few hours, thinking ‘I should really look through that’ each time, instead go through your mail the moment you get it. Open the important letters and quickly recycle the catalogs. You’ll save yourself a good bit of time and mental energy.
Books We're Reading
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The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. M.D.
 
This book, which has been on The New York Times bestseller list for more than 30 weeks, is considered to be the most important book in many years on the topics of trauma treatment and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
 
van der Kolk, a Boston-area psychiatrist, shows how trauma literally rearranges the brain’s wiring and how these areas can be reactivated through a variety of innovative treatments such as neurofeedback, mindfulness, EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) and yoga.

He focuses on the physical aspects of psychological injury, suggesting that working with the body is the clearest and most effective approach to healing. Not surprisingly, van der Kolk is not a big fan of psychopharmacology to treat trauma.

Be forewarned: The beginning of the book has some disturbing details of traumatic experiences that could be triggering for someone with PTSD.


Beginners by Tom Vanderbilt
 
This book, which came out in January, is about a middle-aged man’s quest to learn new things.
 
Inspired by his young daughter’s growing skill at chess, Vanderbilt decides to spend one entire year learning new skills purely for the sake of learning. So, he takes up chess, singing, surfing, drawing and juggling. Vanderbilt is the “beginner” in the book.
 
The book is mostly a collection of his experiences – some funny, some sad, others profound. It also includes interviews with psychologists, scientists and researchers that help explain learning at different ages.
 
A few key takeaways: It’s critical to adopt a beginner’s, or child’s, mind to learning; learning any new activity makes you see the world differently; and focus more on the process than the results of any new activity.
Podcasts We're Listening To

This podcast is designed to help couples recover and heal from the impact of betrayal, or what the hosts call “relational trauma”.
 
Started two years ago by Marnie Breecker and Duane Osterlind, two marriage and family therapists and certified sex addiction therapists in Southern California, the podcast has more than 100,000 downloads.
 
The podcast offers a mix of personal stories from couples about their experience healing from betrayal and interviews with experts in the fields of sex addiction, neuroscience, abuse, and attachment theory.
 
Episodes run anywhere from 20 minutes to one hour.
 
One recent episode entitled ‘Couples Therapy: Too Soon or Not Soon Enough’ explored important indicators for when it’s clinically recommended to start couples therapy following a betrayal.
 
Helping Couples Heal is available on Apple and Google.
 
Osterlind hosts another popular podcast called The Addicted Mind, which focuses on healing from addiction: https://theaddictedmind.com/
It has more than 825,000 downloads and is available on Apple, Google and Spotify.

 
Our Clinical Team
DC Talk Therapy | info@dctalktherapy.com | 202.588.1288 | dctalktherapy.com