My Secret Garden Counseling Service

01/06/2026

So glad I was taught this!

It's 1961.
A 17-year-old girl is locked in a psychiatric ward.
The doctors don't expect her to survive.
She would go on to revolutionize
how we treat the "untreatable."

She spent 26 months there.
Seclusion rooms. Electroshock.
Burning herself. Banging her head against walls.

But Marsha Linehan made herself a vow:

She would get out of hell.
And she would find a way
to help others escape it too.

Decades later, she did exactly that.

She created Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).
A treatment that would save countless lives.

Here's what Marsha Linehan taught us
that we desperately need today:

1/ Acceptance and Change Aren't Opposites
↳ Traditional therapy pushed only for change
↳ Linehan realized this felt invalidating
to people in extreme pain
↳ The breakthrough: Hold both.
Radical acceptance AND commitment to change.

2/ Validation Is a Clinical Intervention
↳ Before you can help someone change,
they need to feel understood
↳ Validation isn't agreeing.
It's acknowledging their pain makes sense.
↳ People can't hear solutions
until they feel heard.

3/ Skills Can Be Taught
↳ Emotional regulation isn't a personality trait.
It's a skill set.
↳ Distress tolerance can be learned.
Interpersonal effectiveness can be practiced.
↳ What was once called "untreatable"
became teachable.

4/ Meet People in Their Crises
↳ DBT includes phone coaching between sessions
↳ Skills aren't useful if they're only practiced
in the therapy room
↳ Real change happens in real moments.

5/ Your Suffering Can Become Your Purpose
↳ Linehan didn't hide from her past. She used it.
↳ In 2011, she publicly revealed
her own hospitalization
↳ Lived experience isn't a liability.
It's credibility.

Linehan gave us one phrase
that captures her life's work:

"The goal is to build a life worth living."

Not symptom-free. Not cured. Worth living.

She understood that healing isn't about erasing pain.
It's about creating meaning alongside it.

60+ years after that locked ward,
we are helping people build lives worth living

Words by Dr. Eric Arzubi MD. Psychiatrist.

09/16/2025

Emotions. Emotion Regulation.

06/25/2025

"According to scores of research studies, when your brain creates art, it nourishes a host of other systems that affect learning, such as motor skills, brain-wave patterns, attention, emotional balance, serotonin production, and the nervous system. In short, creativity can help to strengthen overall learning."

~ Merriam R. Sarcia Saunders, LMFT

06/15/2025

02/17/2025

Such a neat idea Letting kids go free to explore and create!😀

11/20/2024

Ernest Hemingway once said: In our darkest moments, we don’t need solutions or advice. What we yearn for is simply human connection—a quiet presence, a gentle touch. These small gestures are the anchors that hold us steady when life feels like too much.

Please don’t try to fix me. Don’t take on my pain or push away my shadows. Just sit beside me as I work through my own inner storms. Be the steady hand I can reach for as I find my way.

My pain is mine to carry, my battles mine to face. But your presence reminds me I’m not alone in this vast, sometimes frightening world. It’s a quiet reminder that I am worthy of love, even when I feel broken.

So, in those dark hours when I lose my way, will you just be here? Not as a rescuer, but as a companion. Hold my hand until the dawn arrives, helping me remember my strength.

Your silent support is the most precious gift you can give. It’s a love that helps me remember who I am, even when I forget.

08/18/2024

Love this list! Adults need to hear these words too! 👍

06/05/2024

"Somewhere along the way we were taught to stop feeling instead of being taught to stop what harms us, as though the feeling was our enemy, as though the feeling was hurting us. To move forward and address the harm, we have to feel."
From the book "What it takes to heal" by Prentis Hemphill via Brene Brown