An Interview With Savio P. Clemente
Gratefulness is essential. What are the things and people in your life who mean the most? Be intentional about thanking them because we are generally way more blessed than we acknowledge.
Resilience has been described as the ability to withstand adversity and bounce back from difficult life events. Times are not easy now. How do we develop greater resilience to withstand the challenges that keep being thrown at us? In this interview series, we are talking to mental health experts, authors, resilience experts, coaches, and business leaders who can talk about how we can develop greater resilience to improve our lives. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Brianna Gaynor. Dr. Brianna Gaynor has been a Clinical Psychologist in Georgia. At her private practice, Peace of Mind Psychological Services, she has the honor of serving children, adolescents, and adults in identifying and treating mental illness. Her vision is to help clients find peace in every circumstance, which she achieves with the help of her incredible clinical and administrative team.
Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory?
Igrew up in New Jersey as an only child. Since I can remember, I’ve always enjoyed helping others. My community was always important to me — my friends became my family. It sounds cliché, however, I recognized early that I am what some would call “a people person”. So when I had the chance to choose my career path, I thought psychology would be a great fit for me. I love the fact that I have the ability to change lives daily and I’m lucky I get to run my own show.
Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
The most interesting stories from my career come from clients. Over the past 10 years, my staff and I have experienced the gamete of lessons from practice. It may [or may not] go without saying in my line of work that we’ve had our share of kids yelling, upset parents, and crying. For example, we once had a client about 10 years of age, refuse to leave the car. Four adults attempted to talk to him out of the vehicle, each trying to get the child to come inside to discuss his issues in a safe space.
The child never got out of the car. We decided to pause and not complete the evaluation that day. The four adults needed to understand that any issues weren’t going to be resolved that day. However, we did get the child to calm down. No, pausing didn’t resolve what we needed at that moment. We adjusted to what the child needed at that moment instead. The end resulted in the parent feel supported in the moment as well because that parent dealt with this kind of behavior for some time in private and having the support of professionals gave her tools to use in the privacy of their own home to help calm the child in the future.
In hindsight (in that moment), the 10-year-old was actually running the show that day and the adults needed to pause, take a deep breath and hear the child out. We all want to feel heard and know that what we say matters. Listening, generally, goes a long way in defusing conflict.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
We genuinely care about the people we serve. That translates into taking extra time to listen to clients’ issues, providing resources for services we don’t provide, providing an honest assessment of their needs regardless of if Peace of Mind Psychological Services […]
