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Amanda Good LICSW

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Chevy Chase, MD
Amanda Good LICSW

Psychotherapist, writer, speaker. Practical and compassionate solutions for anxiety and stress

01/10/2025

🎉New year, new course offerings! 2 new live virtual trainings for therapists this February:
🗓️ Feb 7th: EMDR Refresher Course- designed for EMDR-trained therapists who want to refresh their knowledge, sharpen their clinical skills, and deepen their confidence in using EMDR therapy
🗓️ Feb 20th: Trauma-Informed Treatment for ADHD- This training explores the complex relationship between ADHD and trauma through a neuroscientific lens, offering practical, trauma-informed strategies to support healing, improve functioning, and foster clients’ resilience.
Learn more and register at Cillceu.com or dm me for more info, or share this post to get a 20% off discount code!!

01/09/2025

I love this job. I am consistently amazed by people’s resilience and by the capacity for courage, compassion, and connection no matter what’s in someone’s past or how stuck they’ve been before meeting with me.🙏❤️✨

01/06/2025

Don’t let your planning get in the way of your present✨
Another humbling moment this morning, as I remember to slow down and enjoy being in the here and now. 🤗It’s been a long couple weeks here with no daycare, a bad case of the Flu 🤧for our whole family, and more episodes of Peppa Pig than I’d care to admit. I was *really* looking forward to getting back to our routines today- seeing my clients and colleagues, getting some work done, maybe even doing a workout🏃‍♀️ without a toddler in tow.
I was so frustrated about the “bad timing” of the snowstorm, extending our break and keeping me from work and the return to routine.🤦‍♀️
👉Then I saw my daughter looking out the window at the falling snow and the winter wonderland in our backyard❄️
✨Each time I feel the tug of frustration of “messed up plans” or hear myself repeating a story of inconvenience or delays, I pause and breathe. I let go. I return to the present, where all there can really be is gratitude❤️
👉Being mindful isn’t about never having frustration or running these stories in our minds that cause suffering or anxiety. It’s about the ongoing practice of noticing, letting go, and returning to the present✨

01/03/2025

This one hit home for me. I used to think that practicing mindfulness through meditation, breathwork, yoga and various CBT and DBT therapy skills all was for the end goal of becoming calm. Most people come to me to get rid of their anxiety, to be able feel more calm and grounded - but anxiety is not the problem.
Anxiety is a symptom, a signal from our nervous system that it detects a problem, and if all we do is quiet it or calm ourselves and we don’t go one step farther to face the problem itself, then the alarm (our anxiety) will keep sounding.
Think of this: if a young child keeps tugging at your hand yelling, “help! help!” then there is some usefulness in staying calm and helping calm them down too. But after quieting them, wouldn’t you gently ask what is going on and figure out what to do to address it?
Instead of wishing away the anxiety or trying to silence it, what if you turn towards it with love, curiosity, courage?
Anxiety is not the problem; it’s an alarm that sounds when we are faced with discomfort, and our nervous system disconnects us from who we are (our wisdom, our love, our best Self) to avoid pain and to survive. Anxiety is a sign of internal disconnect. It’s our inner child wanting to run away and tugging at us to say, “help!” - and so after we quiet ourselves, we have to connect internally, with compassion, to learn why. That is when the healing happens❤️

12/23/2024

Wishing everyone a peaceful holiday season❤️ and offering this short lovingkindness practice to ease suffering and deepen joy during this time of often heightened emotions🙏

12/21/2024

Kicking off the holidays by celebrating with our fabulous team. What a wonderful gift to be able to love where you work, love the work you do, and love the people you get to work for and with!

12/20/2024

Read more from my latest blog post about how to tend to your mental health during the holidays, https://thesibleygroupdc.com/tending-to-your-mental-health-during-the-holiday-season/

12/10/2024

🎉My Intro to EMDR webinar is back one more time if you missed it! Live webinar this Friday Dec. 13th from 12-3pm EST, get 3 live CE’s before the end of the year :)
👋This course has been a big hit- it’s for anyone looking to learn more about EMDR (let’s face it, it’s hard to understand what exactly it is until you’ve done a $2k training!!!), or for therapists who have trained in it previously and are looking for a quick refresher on the basics.
✨We’ll explore the EMDR framework- the Adaptive Information Processing model which is a strengths-based way to understand trauma symptoms and the brain’s natural ability to adapt and heal
✨We’ll discuss how this AIP lens with other models for trauma treatment.
✨Learn about the 8 phases of EMDR therapy, and what it is helpful for beyond “big T” traumas.
✨Find out who to refer for EMDR and how to describe it to clients to promote understanding and empowerment in the treatment process.
Sign up at cillceu.com , see you there!

12/03/2024

👋Bookmark this one!
🌪️Especially with the chaos of the holidays, it is important to practice grounding into self-awareness and intention✨
⏸️Pause for one minute at the beginning, middle, and end of the day to do this quick mindfulness practice; or make it more meaningful once a day and write down each answer. Set a phone reminder to practice until it becomes a habit!
✨Tuning in to your emotions, sensations, and thoughts can increase your self-awareness and reduce stress 🧘‍♀️Focusing on your intentions and gratitude can improve your mood and help you feel more connected with yourself and others🙏
👉Think about it as daily mental hygiene, just like brushing your teeth but for your mind and your mood 🤗

11/28/2024

Happy Thanksgiving! ❤️🧡🦃

11/25/2024

✨Mindful Monday thoughts as I reflect on gratitude this week with Thanksgiving approaching. 🧡The holidays bring out so many emotions- some joyful and some more painful. While it can be so hard to learn to “sit with” the more painful feelings or truths, being mindful - aware, accepting - of all of our emotions is what grounds us in the present and allows us to experience more gratitude for what is good in and around us.🙏

Wishing all of you a peaceful Thanksgiving🤗

11/22/2024

💕Gratitude is proven in study after study to lead to greater sense of joy and happiness.
👀Noticing things you’re grateful for can increase your attention and awareness of positive things around you. ✍️Writing it down deepens the process, at a neurological level.
📣Expressing gratitude out loud to someone adds in a feeling of connectedness by giving a feeling of joy to someone else.
✨Doing these things repeatedly over time can alter your brain functioning in wonderful ways! You become more aware of positives, you feel them more deeply, and your connections grow and bring more joy.💕

11/16/2024

Back by popular demand! Register now at cillceu.com for live online 3CE webinar THIS WEDNESDAY 11/20 12-3pm EST.
If you’re a provider who is curious about EMDR, or maybe you’re interested in learning more before deciding to invest in a full training, or you’d like a better grasp on what it is and how it works so you can describe it when you refer a client: this online workshop is for you!

Learn about the basic concepts and see how EMDR works, and earn 3 live interactive CE credits!

11/10/2024

You’ve probably heard of a lot of different therapies to help with mental health symptoms and disorders like anxiety, depression, and ptsd…but have you heard of Memory Reconsolidation?

This isn’t a therapy. It is the reason *why* good therapy can help and it explains *how* healing happens vs just symptom management. Swipe through to read about what Memory Reconsolidation is and how it works to treat symptoms by healing at the root cause (ie healing the pathogenic memory- see my previous post for more info on that!).

What do you think?

10/16/2024

Sometimes symptoms like anxiety or low mood are easy to figure out a source and a solution. Other times, chronic symptoms, triggers, and/or physical illness seem to slowly build up and nag at us in spite of our best efforts to resolve (or ignore) them.

Pathogenic memory is just what it sounds like- memory that is at the root of illness. And uncovering it through reflection, or in therapy like EMDR, can help us access real change by healing symptoms at the root.

My next post will cover memory reconsolidation- which is how pathogenic memory gets repeocessed and stored away adaptively so that symptoms get fully cleared.

10/05/2024

In case you missed it! I’ll be offering a live 3CE online training on Nov 1st ftom 12-3pm on trauma-informed treatment of ADHD. Learn about the connection between ADHD and trauma, and tools to treat symptoms of anxiety, avoidance, and shame.

09/30/2024

🙋‍♀️A little mindful monday lesson! This diagram and the concept of wise mind/rational mind/emotional mind come from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT).
👉A lot of people think of mindfulness practices like meditation or breathing as strategies to use during distress, when stuck in emotional mind- it can be super helpful, but these calming strategies can also be hard or frustrating for some people when they’re emotionally activated!
✨Mindfulness is not just about a coping strategy for overwhelm- it’s about learning to recognize your different states, and being able to shift to wise mind more flexibly and with more ease. Mindfulness practices like meditation and breathing are good to practice daily, just like brushing your teeth. Think of it as mental hygiene🤗
🧠Mindfulness is about building the wise mind muscle (in actuality, strengthening the connections and growing gray matter in your prefrontal cortex), so that we can be aware of times that we are in rational or emotional mind and choose go shift into a more balanced, integrated and conscious state where we feel fully ourselves.
💪Mindfulness increases your resilience through greater awareness and connection to your wise mind!

09/17/2024

🙏Sending this Metta meditation into the insta universe and wishing you all well❤️
👉Try this as a lovingkindnesss practice today or any day: Take a minute to say and feel these words- imagine sending these intentions towards someone you love, then sending them out towards other people you know- friends, neighbors, and even towards people you don’t like. Then imagine feeling these intentions towards yourself❤️
✨Through this practice, you are exercising neural circuits in your brain that enhance your sense of connection and calm presence.
So if you think meditation isn’t for you, maybe you can see that it can be this simple- focusing on lovingkindness for a few minutes of your day🤗

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Videos

“The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?” - Jack Kornfeld ✨Wisdom from a wonderful meditation teacher. Your thoughts, your words, your actions are all opportunities to grow compassion and love. Mindfulness practice strengthens our ability to notice and choose what thoughts, words, and actions we want to nurture and grow. The practice, like gardening, can feel slow. But the outcome is deeply rewarding✨🌸🌻 #personalgrowth #selflove #compassion #mindfulness #mindset #mindful #mindfulliving #selfhealers #progressnotperfection #selfcare #growth #selfcompassion #selfcarematters #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthmatters #therapistsofinstagram #emdrtherapy #meditation #metta

Watch this! The butterfly hug🦋👐 can be helpful for getting through intense emotions. This is a technique used in EMDR therapy to help process the distress clients feel in their bodies from trauma, and it works outside of therapy too as a way to self-soothe, self-regulate, and get through moments of higher distress✨ . #emdrtherapy #somaticexperiencing #selfhealers #selfhelp #selfhealing #emdrtherapist #themoreyouknow #selfcare #selflove #selfcompassion #reparenting #reparentingyourself #mentalhealth #copingskills #mindfulness #copingstrategies #recovery #cptsd

Watch to learn about ONE word you can stop using and what to say instead, to make a big change in your internal dialogue and your relationships 🤗 . #friday #cbt #mindfulness #mindfulliving #selfhelp #selfimprovement #healingjourney #communication #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthmatters #

🙋‍♀️Let’s let go of the sunday scaries and the monday moods and all that “working for the weekend” mindset. Let’s just pause and appreciate each good moment as it comes✨ Let’s savor all the last bits of summer☀️ Let’s be mindful of our urge to hold on to the past or to plan or rush ahead, and just be in our bodies and breathe🧘‍♀️ Let’s keep practicing all this!🙌 . #mondaymotivation #meditation #mindfulness #mindset #mindsetshift #positivethoughts #focus #cbt #mindful #mindfulnesstherapy #cbttherapy #therapist #motivation #healing #cptsdhealing #growthmindset #healingjourney #selfhealers #selfhelp #copingskills #selfcare #selflove #inthemoment #peacewithin #deepbreaths

I love this flip chart by @drjjfisher for teaching about trauma. Yes, I’m a huge nerd🤓 And, understanding what’s happening in your nervous system will give you better self-awareness, and help treat symptoms at their root. 👉Rather than just managing symptoms like anxiety/hyperarousal (overwhelm, reactivity, anger, racing thoughts) or depression/hypoarousal (numb, shut down, disconnected, can’t form thoughts), why not also look to what the root causes are? Your symptoms are patterns in your nervous system and in therapy - approaches like IFS and EMDR and SE - we can rewire those patterns. 🙌REAL healing, not just symptom managment . #ifstherapy #selfhealers #selfhealing #healingjourney #emdrtherapy #emdrtherapist #therapy #therapyiscool #recovery #stressrelief #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthmatters

🤗To all my fellow/recovered people-pleasers, give this a listen!! We can find ourselves conditioned to avoid or judge our own anger. After all, being “nice” doesn’t seem like it involves being angry right? 🤔 The problem with avoiding anger is it can leave us feeling frustrated, stuck, resentful, and powerless. ✨Anger can be really helpful! It points out to us when we are scared or hurt, when our values are threatened or when a situation *feels* wrong. 👉Listen to your anger, get to know what it is trying to protect, and find a way to honor or express it that feels right for you! . #selfawareness #selfcare #communication #emotion #mindfulness #mindful #mindfulliving #nonviolentcommunication #therapy #therapistsofinstagram #angermanagement #anxietyrelief #copingskills #copingstrategies #selfhealing #selfhelp #selfhealers #progressnotperfection #

⏸️Pause for a moment with me and take a deep breath! Do you notice any change in how you feel? Don’t understimate the impact of small actions repeated often, and use that to your benefit by repeating little moments of self-care, joy, compassion, affirmation, gratitude etc. throughout your day! . #selflove #selfcompassion #breathwork #mindfulness #mindfulliving #breathe #cbt #dbt #therapistsofinstagram #fridaymood #mentalhealth #wellness #wellnessjourney #manifestation #wellbeing #copingskills #mentalhealthawareness #selfhealing #selfhealers #selfhelp #breathing #pause #selfreflection #liveyourbestlife

Self-compassion helps us get through difficult experiences. Learn more in my short video:

You only need ONE minute to incorporate mindfulness into your day✨ So many of us feel unmotivated or don’t have time to do long sitting meditations- that’s fine! Just take small steps each day to intentionally tune into yourself. Just like with weight-lifting to increase strength, it’s all about repitition of small amounts to build up your mindfulness💪 Every time you do a practice like this one in the video, you connect the emotional/unconscious center of your brain with the thinking/conscious part: this increases your self-awareness and control of your emotions!

Self-care during high stress times means recognizing the effect on your body and taking breaks to relax and recharge. Learn more here with this week’s video:

Is this normal or do I need therapy?

Is this normal or do I need therapy? Lately I’ve had a lot of people reach out to ask me whether their challenges are an expected reaction to pandemic life or a sign of problems requiring therapy. My latest video helps to answer that!