Inspired Therapeutic Solutions (ITS)
Our Philosophy (7 Main Components)
Systemic
Holistic
Collaborative
Identity Expression
Positivity
Strength and Resilience Based
Community Based
Our Philosophy (7 Main Components)
Systemic
Holistic
Collaborative
Identity Expression
Positivity
Strength and Resilience Based
Community Based
- Systemic: We acknowledge and encourage our staff and clients to see themselves as members of multiple systems-- family and various communities (academic, racial, ethnic, sexual orientation, gender, spiritual/religious, etc.) which impact all interaction, including the therapeutic relationship.
- Holistic: We acknowledge and encourage our staff and clients to see themselves as a “whole” system, which include the body and mind (and spirit, if applicable, and useful to one’s beliefs). We also encourage a blend of knowledge and intervention from both Eastern and Western ways to look at health, wellness, and the treatment of “dis-order” and “dis-ease”. We use a nutritional based philosophy, and lifestyle medicine, as a first level of defense or complimentary to traditional medications.
- Collaborative: We recognized that “dis-ease” begins with worry and stress over life factors, functions, or relationships first, so we elicit help and support for several lifestyle factors. Therefore, we strive to work within the current systems impacting our staff and clients (legal, medical, financial, etc.). As a practice, we refer between practitioners on the ITS staff, or we collaborate with outside clinicians/agencies, who are specifically trained in trauma, addictions, HIV/AIDS, immigration, sexual and gender identity, sexual assault, domestic violence, etc. We, also, provide in-house services or refer to outside "non-traditional" "eastern philosophy" licensed or certified holistic practitioners (naturopathic doctors, massage therapist, reiki masters, herbalist); in additional to our collaboration with more “traditional” medical doctors (ex: psychiatrist; primary care physicians (PCPs); workmen's comp practitioner; chiropractors) and pharmacological practitioners. We also utilize lifestyle coaches or consultants (financial advisors; legal consultants; image-consultants, etc.); and population specialist (domestic violence; eating disorders; weight-loss coaches; physical and occupational therapists; personal trainers, bariatric surgeons; sex-reassignment surgeons; etc.) . We see collaborative care as the truest way to express and execute a systemic and holistic philosophy.
- Identity Expression: We acknowledge and encourage our staff and clients to see themselves as having multiple personal identity factors, functions, and roles—which are both static and changing throughout their life span. We help the discovery process to how these factors influence values, opinions, and beliefs about one’s self, worldview, and groups to which one belongs or do not belong.
- Positivity: We are sex-positive and size-positive in our approaches to counseling and coaching. We affirm the individual’s right to define their own “normal” and “alternative” ways to define their actions, values, and identity; which may be different then one’s family and inherited identity (sexuality expressions, culture, religion, gender, etc.). We encourage positivity, self-empathy and compassion, and “normalizing” the experience of exploring “alternatives” to societal norms in order to form and define one’s authentic identity expression.
- Strength and Resilience Based Coaching and Psychotherapy: We believe that our staff and clients are stronger and more resilient when they focus on their past strengths and their resiliency narratives. By highlighting strength and resiliency, one begins to have the courage to identify past and current challenges, pathology, and dysfunction (within their own personality, behaviors, family, culture, etc.) and therefore more easily shed the shame and guilt from past traumas, challenges, and obstacles.
- Community-Based: We are committed to researching and understanding the needs of the community and work from a collectivist ideology to respond to the needs of under-served communities. We work to give voice to communities which are dis-empowered. We strive for a “bottom-up” approach to problem defining and solving when engaging in community service. Communities are the “experts” on their community, clinicians and practitioners are not—unless they also belong to the community!