World We Imagine Pitch Post 3

 TherapyMe

Our mission is to make therapy affordable for everyone 

Have you ever been, or wanted to go to therapy? 

I have been force-fed a hefty amount of therapy since my parents divorced in 2005. Though I had mixed emotions about it when I was younger, looking back on it as an adult, I can see how it helped me through the turmoil of divorce. Also, as someone who is currently in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, I believe it to be absolutely essential to the progress I have made in myself, my relationships, and my goals. 

When I tell people about how much therapy has helped me and ask if they have ever considered going, the most common response I have heard is, "I would love to, but it's just too expensive."

That conversation is exactly what inspired me to create, TherapyMe. Currently, people pay anywhere from one hundred to two hundred dollars for one therapy session, making the monthly cost of therapy around five hundred dollars if you are going once every one or two weeks. I see this number as outrageous! How could something so essential cost so much?

I believe that the root issue is that in our capitalist society, we are programmed to value the health of the body over the health of the mind when they should be valued equally. If we have a cold or the flu, we won't think twice about spending money on medication to feel better. But when it comes to a mental issue we can't work past without help, we tend to put it aside partly because we value it less and also because the cost of aid is too high!

Clients subscribed to TherapyMe will no longer have to push their mental struggles aside. TherapyMe offers people a monthly subscription consisting of 30-minute Dialectical Behavioral Therapy sessions once a week at the fraction of the cost of traditional therapy methods. 

Before diving into the logistics of TherapyMe, it is essential for AMDI investors to gain background in the type of therapy provided by the program. Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) provides clients with skills to manage painful emotions, past traumas, and undesirable behaviors. DBT focuses on four therapeutic skills within the areas of:

1. Mindfulness focuses on improving an individual's ability to accept and be present in the current moment.
2. Distress tolerance is geared toward increasing a person’s tolerance of negative emotion, rather than trying to escape from it.
3. Emotion regulation covers strategies to manage and change intense emotions that are causing problems in a person’s life.
4. Interpersonal effectiveness consists of techniques that allow a person to communicate with others in a way that is assertive, maintains self-respect, and strengthens relationships.

Though clients will receive less facetime with their therapist when compared to the traditional and more expensive approach, they will learn a skill set that will allow them to eventually tackle issues on their own that would have required the help of a therapist. Clients will fill out worksheets during the week about past traumas, current issues, vulnerabilities, quality of relationships (with people and things like food/substances), work, goals, etc. When filling out these worksheets, clients will have informative sheets that help identify what they should be writing down. For example, if someone was questioning whether they should write down "relationship with food" on their weekly worksheet, the informative worksheet might aid them by prompting them with "if you feel guilty about eating, that is a cause for concern" (meaning the client should write that down).

During the therapy sessions, therapists will give clients strategies to combat some (not all) of the issues written down on the weekly worksheet. Clients will then work on their issues during the week and record their progress in addition to other indicators of overall well-being such as mood. It is important that the program will work around tackling the most concerning aspects of the client first. Examples of this include self-harm, eating disorders, addiction, and abusive relationships. For example, if someone struggled with bulimia, we would work on that before working on having an organized room. 

I see TherapyMe as nothing less than revolutionary as it will make for a happier, healthier, and more understanding society. I believe that AMDI should support our company/program because it will fundamentally change humankind's mental health. 

WORLD WE IMAGINE POST #1

WORLD WE IMAGINE POST #1

Similarly to Novogratz, my first step in making the world a better place is to pursue a career that gives me the opportunity to do so. As a wide-eyed (yet close minded) college freshman, my career path had everything to do with material gain and almost nothing to do with helping others. I wanted to become an investment banker working 70-hour-weeks, making tons of money, and retiring early. That all changed when I took Stephen Finlay's philosophy course, The Meaning of Life. Finlay's course required me to look deep into the catacombs of the meaning behind our existence, forcing me to realize the futility of material desire. I quickly realized that the path I was on was one of fleeting pleasure and insatiable sensual hunger. For the next three years, I explored different career paths in investment banking, construction, waitering at a high-end sushi restaurant, and social work. Out of those experiences, my time as a social worker held supreme. 

After that experience, I knew that I wanted to pursue a career that focused in helping others. This realization has made me rethink my career path. Already three years into my business degree, I am committed to graduating from USC's Marshall School of Business. However, after graduating, I plan on attending another institution to pursue a degree in Psychology, eventually making my way into the realm of therapy. Though working as a therapist is completely different from working for an NGO like Novogratz, it is nonetheless still a means of bettering this world. If every person in this world strived to follow a career that, appealing to their natural strengths, bettered this world, I truly believe we could achieve Novogratz's goal of establishing basic human rights for all people.

Random Post #2

My Favorite Strategy For Overcoming That Little Voice In Your Head

Take a moment to picture yourself as a high school senior. Remember the clothes you liked to wear, what you had on your mind at the time, what mattered to you, the weather, and what your high school actually looked like. Now picture your high school crush. Remember their appearance, their demeanor, and the feelings that arose when you were around them. Now put yourself in this hypothetical scenario: graduation is in one week and this is your last chance to tell your special person how you really feel about them. Class just got out, you see them walking out of school, and you decide to start fast-walking towards them because this is your chance! 

You approach them having prepared what you are going to say to win them over, but when you finally make it to them, all you can get out is, "Nice day today, huh?" The person responds, "Yeah it really is!" You get an overwhelming feeling of anxiety. You feel like you just don't have it in you to confess your love to this person. You panic and reply "Ya! Don't forget to wear sunscreen. See ya!" Your crush, your PERSON, jumps in their car and drives away.

You are devastated. Your stomach sinks and you being to feel weak. Your mind is racing. The voice in your head starts to go and before you know it... it's telling you, "You are an idiot! 'Nice day today, huh?' Who even are you? You sound like your Dad's lame attempts at small talk. You are pathetic! They probably think you are such a loser. They will never like you. How could someone like THAT like someone like YOU! That was your one chance and you blew it. You'll never get to tell them how you really feel." 

Can you relate to this scenario? How often does your mind berate you in a scenario similar to this one? Consider what your thoughts are after a failed job interview, a poor score on a test, or the morning after a long night out. Probably similar to this hypothetical right? How often do you find that voice in your head saying things to you that you couldn't imagine saying to someone else? That little voice in your head, the voice that has been with you since you can remember, is the topic for my blogpost today. 

Let's play with the voice to understand it and its nature. Can you make it say the word "China"? Great. Now can you make it say the word "China", but in the tone of voice that Donald Trump would use... so... "Gina"? There you go! Let's dive deeper. 

Think about this: when you see a beautiful tree, doesn't that little voice in your head go, "Wow look at that beautiful tree"? How strange is that? You know it is a beautiful tree, don't you? Why then, does that little voice have to tell you that it is beautiful? You would know the tree is beautiful without the voice telling you it is, right? 

If you truly take time to observe this voice in your head, you will learn that it is capable of many things. The voice can sing an Adele song, in her voice! It can degrade you one moment and feed your ego the next. It can use the first person, second person, and third person. 

So now that we know what the voice can do, let's review really quick. This little voice in your head is capable of many things and plays an omnipresent role in your life. Also, and more importantly, you can hear this voice. You can observe what this voice is saying. Observing something means that you are separate from the object of observation. Therefore, you can conclude that you are not this little voice in your head! You are the observer of the voice. 

Personally, this little voice in my head can drive me crazy. It has fueled my depression, anxiety, and other undesirable facets of my mental and physical health. How wonderful it would be to exist without it! Although practices like meditation can weaken the voice, or for masters of the practice, subdue the voice for a period of time, there is no getting rid of it. 

So how can we live a happy and healthy life with this little voice in our heads nagging us 247? There are actually countless strategies for dealing with this voice and how to navigate through life without letting it dominate you. In this blog post, I will be talking about my favorite strategy in dealing with the voice, a strategy called, "Check The Facts."

Let's revisit the high school scenario at the beginning of the blog post. Think about what the voice in your head was telling you. Does it truly reflect the reality of the situation? Of course not! This is precisely the thinking behind the "Checking The Facts" strategy.  

So, let's put this into practice. Thought vs Fact. Let's try applying this strategy to three of the thoughts in the hypothetical above.

Checking The Facts vs The Thought:

The Thought: "You are an idiot...You are pathetic...They probably think you are such a loser"

The Facts: Are you really an idiotic, pathetic, loser because you couldn't say what you wanted to your crush? Of course not! Let's be real... being vulnerable and risking rejection from someone that you are attracted to is really hard! You are not a loser for messing it up... countless people have gone through the same thing.  

The Thought: "They will never like you. How could someone like THAT like someone like YOU!"

The Facts: Put yourself in the shoes of your crush. Someone comes up to you, tells you that the weather is nice, and then reminds you to wear sunscreen. Though that may not be a typical interaction, it is a genuinely kind one! Unless the person is in a bad place mentally, they would not think to themselves "What a loser that guy is." If anything, the person would find it cute and endearing. 

The Thought: "That was your one chance and you blew it. You'll never get to tell them how you really feel." 

The Facts: Is that really true? Was that your one and only chance to tell this person how you feel? NO! Of course not. You will see them again, and if for whatever reason you don't, you can always give them a call or a text expressing your true feelings. 

This strategy has been so helpful throughout my journey. I wanted to share it with you all because I really love this class and the people in it... and if I have the opportunity to share any bit of knowledge that may help you along your journey... I think I should do so. Much love to you, and thank you for taking the time to read my blogpost.