Kathryn Dietzway is a licensed clinical social worker and the clinical director of The Therapy Garden in Lafayette.
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Kathryn Dietzway is a licensed clinical social worker and the clinical director of The Therapy Garden in Lafayette. She earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology with a minor in anthropology from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and her master’s degree in social work from Louisiana State University.
She specializes in helping people heal from trauma through approaches that combine traditional talk therapy with body-based methods such as EMDR and somatic therapy. She primarily works with adults who are seeking relief from the impact of trauma and want to reconnect with their sense of self.
Alongside her therapy practice, Dietzway is pursuing a nursing degree at UL. By combining her expertise in psychotherapy with medical training, she seeks to provide more integrated care that supports the whole person — mind, body and nervous system.
What was the inspiration behind you pursuing nursing school?
I’ve been taking an approach to mental health counseling for about four to five years now, really intensively. That’s what led me to this route of learning about the connection between the mind and the body, learning that mental health and physical health are not separate. Mental health occurs in the brain, and the nervous system is an important part of your body, so that’s your physical well-being.
I saw gaps in mental health theory and training — we weren’t getting enough of the physical side. I got to a point where I wanted to go beyond what someone can tell me in training. I wanted to get to the hard science, where I can fully and deeply understand what’s happening in my clients’ bodies mentally and physically.
On a holistic level, I had to decide how I was going to get the science perspective, so I’m pursuing a psychiatric nurse practitioner route so that I’ll understand biology and medicine better.
Is it a hard line to balance learning and offering holistic medicine and conventional Western medicine?
Honestly, clients are hungry to understand what’s going on in their bodies. Clients usually come to me for depression and anxiety, usually related to trauma. One of the first things I do is pull out this chart that helps them look at what symptoms are normal for the nervous system state that you’re in.
Maybe they’re feeling anxious, in a fight-or-flight state because they’re in poverty. The chart allows them to normalize their symptoms based on what the body is supposed to do whenever it’s in a stressful situation.
A lot of the time, that’s all people need — a starting point of normalizing what’s going on in their body. Affirming that they’re not crazy, just a human being.
What are some tools for people to regulate their nervous system to not have that fight-or-flight response?
For some people, the fight-or-flight response is normal. So I’ll often ask what’s going on in their lives. Is there a situation in their lives that we need to work on getting them out of? Sometimes fight-or-flight is protective — for example, if someone is in an abusive situation, living in poverty, or experiencing racism.
When you’re able to identify that you don’t need this fight or flight state, or perhaps that you’d like to cultivate breaks from that state, a lot of the time it starts with psychoeducation. I’ll educate them about the body, what it means to be anxious and how that helps them in some ways — an also assess what small actions, places, animals and people help them experience relief from the anxiety.
Begin becoming aware of what’s going on in your body. I do a body scan with people. Scan from the head to the toes, and tell me what you notice.
Anchoring is a tool where you identify safe items in your environment that make you feel safe — like a tree, plants, a soft pillow, etc. Notice these items when you’re in a state of anxiety. You can do this anywhere. It provides a micro moment of connection to something supportive, which can help the body begin to come back to homeostasis.
The next step would be learning to ask yourself what you need. That might be a gentle breath in and a long exhale. It might be talking to yourself kindly. You have to talk to yourself like you would talk to a friend.
How does confidence and self compassion help with mental health?
It’s huge. Before trauma therapy, I figure out if someone has self compassion yet, because if they don’t, it’s going to be hard to do trauma work. So we’ll work on that first.
What is self compassion? Some people have never had someone be compassionate toward them, so they don’t know how to do it to themselves.
How does your non-biased approach to therapy help yourself and your clients?
My undergraduate studies were in sociology and anthropology, which gave me a cross-cultural view on humanity. It’s important, as a therapist, that I take on an unbiased perspective because I’m here to serve all humans, regardless of background. I’m sending a message that it’s what’s best for the client, not me.
Although, I’m not totally unbiased. I am still influenced by larger systemic factors. We all have implicit bias. It’s an ongoing journey where I’m reflecting on what biases I have and which ones I need to reflect on.
People are not just accepted or allowed — their identities are respected and celebrated. I look at clients through a lens of how this society and world has shaped them, based on their identity. As a White therapist, I may work with clients of diverse races and cultures. I acknowledge that someone may have experienced trauma from people who look like me.
There’s going to be an acknowledgment of that. This lens has helped me to be able to navigate those conversations.