Eating Disorder Recovery, Dance, Perfectionism, Body Image and Healing Trauma, with Joelle Rabow Maletis

Today I’m talking to Joelle Rabow Maletis, MAEd, MA, LMFT,who is a licensed clinical psychotherapist, TED-Ed speaker/author – on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, CEO, trauma expert, and podcast host for Switch! as well as Bipolar Girl.

Joelle’s initial passion was dance, training as a ballet dancer, immersed within the dance world for over 20 years. She had a career-ending injury and decided that therapy would be an interesting profession, particularly after finding it to be an invaluable tool in navigating her own mental health struggles, including eating disorders, perfectionism, dealing with trauma and body image. Joelle fell in love with psychology: it helped her understand her internal world better and guided her to make life-long changes necessary to thrive, rather than simply surviving. Joelle felt called to work with trauma and began working with broad spectrum eating disorders, trauma and eventually military psychology.

Becoming a psychotherapist became as much of  a love as being a dancer for Joelle.  Her therapy practice was started to help others discover their hopes, dreams, and abilities to thrive through adversity. This led her to mentoring as well as teaching students, interns and associates  to do the same. Joelle’s ongoing goal is to teach thriving through adversity!

Joelle is a native Californian and adores spending time with her family – partner, two children and pets, Cleo and Madeira. Outside of the office, she enjoys all adventures, especially being an avid skier! When not working, Joelle loves traveling, sports, cooking, baking, running, biking, hiking, reading, writing and watching women’s soccer!

In the episode today, you’ll hear about Joelle’s recovery story, and the pressures of the dance world around body image and perfectionism. Joelle shares candidly about her experiences of therapy; her resistance to change at different points and what truly helped her heal. She also explores an eating disorder as a psychological coping strategy and the importance of creating safety and alternative ways of soothing, to allow healing. Joelle talks about lapsing and becoming aware of triggers, so you can recover faster and get back on track. Joelle is incredibly generous with her sharing and vulnerability in this episode, so you get a deep insight to a recovery journey.

I hope that you enjoy the episode.

To find out more about Joelle:-

Website: https://joellerabowmaletis.com/

Instagram: @official.joelle.trauma.therapy

TED-Ed video: https://www.ted.com/talks/joelle_rabow_maletis_the_psychology_of_post_traumatic_stress_disorder

This week's sponsor: Amber Romaniuk amberapproved.ca