The Lighter Side of Transformation

with Lisa Wessan, LICSW

Sep 19

Empower Yourself: Enhance Interpersonal Effectiveness and Reduce Social Anxiety

by Lisa Wessan, LICSW

Take charge of your social interactions and personal growth with a 14-week Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Training Group (DBT). Learn effective strategies from expert Lisa Wessan to build confidence, set boundaries, and communicate assertively.

You can develop skills to set healthy boundaries, communicate clearly, and become resilient to others’ disapproval. Learning effective ways to interact can reduce social anxiety and enhance your success and relationships. You’ll also discover useful strategies for making requests and easing into small talk, such as discussing work, weather, or the weekend. By focusing on skill-building rather than willpower, you can foster more fulfilling social interactions.

Developing interpersonal effectiveness skills also involves investing time, effort, and resources. Many individuals choose to develop these skills when they seek change in their behavioral patterns. Sometimes your inner dialogue says “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired! I need to do SOMETHING to turn this around!” Research suggests that focusing attention on skill development leads to improvement in those areas, including social skills.

Neale Donald Walsch once wrote, “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” Yes, becoming comfortable with discomfort takes time and practice. By learning neuroscience-based skills, you can improve your ability to build new neural networks and succeed in mastering interpersonal skills.

Solution-Focused Therapy

The next virtual DBT Skills Group focused on Interpersonal Effectiveness and Mindfulness will run from September 30 to December 30, 2025. The course is taught by Lisa Wessan, LICSW, CLYL, RM, who trained directly with DBT founder Dr. Marsha M. Linehan and has over a decade of group facilitation experience. This 14-week program features weekly 90-minute sessions at $80 per week, providing participants with hands-on practice in social skills within small groups of 6-10.

To learn more, please visit https://www.lisawessan.com/dialectical-behavioral-therapy

🌀🌀 Register early for DBT groups, as enrollment involves several steps. Avoid waiting until the last week to sign up.

Onward and Upward✨

Lisa Wessan

boundaries Interpersonal Effectiveness Intimacy Uncategorized

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Sep 3

Boost your interpersonal effectiveness in 14 weeks—DBT Skills Training begins 09/30/25

by Lisa Wessan, LICSW

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a solution focused emotional intelligence curriculum that works!

For ten years, I have continued to be honored and delighted to work with my amazing DBT adult students (age 21+). We meet on Tuesday nights, 7:30 – 9 PM EST in the Zoom classroom.

Over the span of a year, you develop tactical and practical skills in Emotion Regulation, Distress Tolerance, Interpersonal Effectiveness, and Mindfulness.

FEE: New students pay $1420 for the first 14-week semester, which includes an individual intake session. The continuing students pay $1120.

GROUP SIZE:  Minimum 6, maximum 10.  

TOPIC: This semester you will study and practice Interpersonal Effectiveness & Mindfulness Skills.  

🌈🌈See  new DBT Flyer and learn more here:
 https://www.lisawessan.com/dialectical-behavioral-therapy

DEADLINE:
All registration forms, Intake Sessions
and fees must be completed
by September 29, 2025.

DBT Calendar:

September 30;
October 7, 14, 21, 28;
November 4, 11, 18, 25;
December 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 2025

Please forward this message to those who would benefit from this healing and empowering training. 

With gratitude,
Onward and Upward✨

Lisa Wessan

#DBT, #PTSD, #EmotionRegulation #DistressTolerance, #Wellness #Recovery #Peak, #Mindfulness Anxiety Social Anxiety Transformation

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Aug 4

What are the seven attitudes of Mindfulness?

by Lisa Wessan, LICSW

Mindfulness has grown into a significant industry with extensive literature on the subject. Among Western contributors to mindfulness, Jon Kabat-Zinn (1990) is one of our thought leaders on this topic. He outlined seven now classical attitudes of mindfulness. These attitudes are elaborated upon here, for your reflection and more insight.

  1. Non-Judging – Try to become aware of your mind as it judges and assesses things, situations, and people. With Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), you learn to observe your judgmental thoughts while you are synthesizing your opposite beliefs. You might even count them to detach from them. Don’t stop yourself from being critical but instead observe yourself and thoughts without criticism. This will lead after some time to the realization that you are often functioning from a critical mode. This is not the healthiest point of view. Judging yourself (and others) causes stressful cortisol spikes, for every thought becomes a chemical reaction in your body.

  2. Patience – Healing takes time, so be patient with yourself and notice small progress. Join my Recovering Perfectionists club and embrace failing forward—growth comes from stepping out of your comfort zone and learning from mistakes.

  3. Beginner’s Mind – This is a mindset that is willing to see the world as a beginner and not as someone who has all the answers. Another way to express the Beginner’s Mind is the child’s point of view – you still have some wonder and a sense openness to new ideas. Learn to be curious, not furious, about your state of being. Let go of SHAME for not being perfect.  SHAME = SHOULD HAVE ALREADY MASTERED EVERYTHING.  Nay, Nay, you can be exactly where you are without any shame, perfectly imperfect.   You’re on your way. Yes, you are good enough, as is (and you could improve).

  4. Trust – Learn to trust your own ideas and feelings. You don’t need to defer to all the experts if something doesn’t ring true for you. Begin to know that your inner wisdom is best.  

  5. Non-Striving – Sometimes you don’t need to do anything – just be. Don’t try so hard to relax, thinking about ways to accomplish relaxation – watch how you feel when you stop striving. This includes letting go of your Compare and Despair, especially on social media. People typically post their “Happy Reel.” You don’t see the grimy, depressing, conflicted stuff they are dealing with privately.

  6. Acceptance – See things as they are; do you still need to lose weight? So be it. Are you still arguing with your spouse? Life gets LIFEY! Are you chronically constipated, depressed, exhausted? You’re taking action to move on. You don’t need to sugar-coat anything. This is how your life is and recognizing the reality of your life allows you to move forward and work on healing.

  7. Letting Go – You recognize that not all of your behaviors, thoughts and feelings have served you well. You need to make some changes in your life and that can happen when you accept your circumstance, then you will begin to make changes and let go of negative patterns. The paradox of letting go includes the 3 A’s: Awareness-Acceptance-Action.   During the Awareness phase, you are just waking up to your true reality, the beautiful and brutal truth of the life you are living. When you let go of your judgments and negative self-talk, you enter the Acceptance phase, and the healing begins. Before you know it, you are taking new actions and transforming your life.

References

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1990). Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain and illness. New York, NY: Delacorte.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

Mindfulness Uncategorized

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Jun 4

Enhancing DBT: Key Takeaways from Our Class

by Lisa Wessan, LICSW

“The best part has been the content of the class. It is all so relevant! I like the way you have created an organized pathway through the workbook. DBT is truly not a “do it yourself” program. I very much appreciate the weekly page numbers for relevant handouts and worksheets. The structure you’ve created is one of the best parts of the class.  I love that each class includes guided meditation.” 
M.M., New York, NY

“I was slightly surprised that the DBT group tends to have several participants who are a bit reticent. Group dynamics are always unpredictable. I thought the participants would be much more dramatic and self-aggrandizing. I expected them to be aggressively talkative or domineering. I also thought Lisa would have had to be very hands-on in managing that. Instead, the group is rather quiet, and everyone seems so delightfully ordinary. It’s been a relief, frankly. I’m not a weirdo for having intense emotions and struggling to manage them. I’m just an ordinary person and so are the other group members.  I also didn’t expect so much humor. Your sense of humor has been quite welcome. It adds levity and makes the class feel less burdensome or “heavy.” C.S.E., Cambridge, MA

Up next: Virtual DBT Distress Tolerance and Mindfulness Skills, June 10 – September 9, 2025. Tuesdays, 7:30 – 9 PM EST. There are still a few spots open. To learn more, visit Summer DBT Group.

Good health is wealth, go for it💙

#DBT, #PTSD, #EmotionRegulation #DistressTolerance, #Wellness #Recovery #Peak, #Mindfulness

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Jun 2

Just for Today, by Sybil F. Partridge

by Lisa Wessan, LICSW

1.  Just for today I will be happy.  This assumes that what Abraham Lincoln said is true, that “most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”  Happiness is from within; it is not a matter of externals.

2.  Just for today I will try to adjust myself to what is, and not try to adjust everything to my own desires.  I will take my family, my business, and my luck as they come and fit myself to them.

3.  Just for today I will take care of my body.  I will exercise it, care for it, nourish it, not abuse nor neglect it, so that it will be a perfect machine for my bidding.

4.  Just for today I will try to strengthen my mind.  I will learn something useful.  I will not be a mental loafer.  I will read something that requires effort, thought and concentration.

5.  Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways;  I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out.  I will do at least two things I don’t want to do as William James suggests, just for exercise.

6.  Just for today I will be agreeable.  I will look as well as I can, dress as becomingly as possible, talk low, act courteously, be liberal with praise, criticize not at all, nor find fault with anything and not try to regulate nor improve anyone.

7.  Just for today I will try to live through this day only, not to tackle my whole life problem at once.  I can do things for twelve hours that would appall me if I had to keep them up for a lifetime.

8.  Just for today I will have a program.  I will write down what I expect to do every hour.  I may not follow it exactly, but I will have it.  It will eliminate two pests, hurry and indecision.

9.  Just for today I will have a quiet half hour all by myself and relax.  In this half hour sometimes I will think of God, so as to get a little more perspective into my life.

10.  Just for today I will be unafraid, especially I will not be afraid to be happy, to enjoy what is beautiful, to love, and to believe that those I love, love me.

If we want to develop a mental attitude that will bring us peace and happiness, here is Rule #1:

Think and act cheerfully, and you will feel cheerful.

Written by Sybil F. Partridge   1916 and printed in
How To Stop Worrying, And Start Living, by Dale Carnegie, 1951

LW: Whenever you set a new intention, or want to develop a positive new habit, or break an old negative habit, start something new, always remember, “Progress not Perfection.” Old ways are tough to change, but it will get done. Slowly, slowly, you can do it. You can do hard things…There is a solution…Never give up💙

Addictions Anxiety Distress Tolerance Emotional Regulation Interpersonal Effectiveness Mindfulness Resiliency Uncategorized

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May 4

UP NEXT: Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills training (DBT) on Mindfulness & Distress Tolerance, May – August 2023 on Zoom

by Lisa Wessan, LICSW

Serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace amidst the storm…

Hi, 

Thank you for your continued interest in my work. I know I haven’t posted frequently enough here – but that will change soon!

For today, I’m excited to be teaching the next 14-week semester of Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills (DBT).  This semester we will cover Mindfulness & Distress Tolerance Skills.

🌀 Click here for the current  DBT FLYER. 

With the Distress Tolerance curriculum, your will learn valuable skills and interventions to help yourself reduce your intense stress and harsh feelings in the moment – to lower the volume on your anticipatory anxiety and catastrophic thinking. These DBT skills significantly help to reduce the escalation of your inflammatory emotions, and reduce the painful, polarized and perfectionist thinking that often cause your meltdowns. You will learn to find your peaceful “Middle Path” here. 

There are many powerful skills included in this semester’s work. It is the hope of this process that you will put together your own personal Distress Tolerance tool kit with the techniques that work the best for you.

Unfortunately, there is no “one size fits all” with these various techniques, so you do need to be a good scientist in the laboratory of your life and try them all out.  You will eventually find the ones that you love, and that will work quickly and effectively for you. 

Yes, I am looking forward to continuing this exciting journey towards wholeness with this next group.  I am also deeply honored to be sharing this transformative and useful educational process with you.

If this is not for you, but you have someone in mind for this next DBT Group, please have them contact me soon at my web site – currently www.MirthMaven.com – and fill out the Contact Form which helps them briefly tell me the best times to reach them (by phone) and guides them to check out their insurance (for the Out of Network benefit).  Otherwise this course is private pay, $980 for continuing students, $1215 for new students (includes one Intake session.)  

Onward and Upward✨

Lisa Wessan

“If you can recognize and accept your pain
without running away from it,
you will discover that although pain is there,
joy can also be there at the same time.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh, No Mud, No Lotus


Lisa Wessan, LICSW, CLYL, RM
Psychotherapist, Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Trainer (DBT)
Life Coach, Author, Speaker, Consultant

www.MirthMaven.com
🌀✨🌀✨🌀✨🌀

#DBT, #PTSD, #EmotionRegulation #DistressTolerance, #Wellness #Recovery #Peak, #Mindfulness Anxiety BPD Distress Tolerance Mindfulness Transformation

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Feb 7

LIFESPAN: Why We Age, and Why We Don’t Have To, by David Sinclair, PhD

by Lisa Wessan, LICSW

Video Comment: (3 min) https://youtu.be/pGSuysVYo2Y

FUN FACT: “The number of centenarians – people in their 100s – is soaring worldwide as life spans continue to grow. In 1990, there were about 95,000 centenarians, but by 2015 there were 450,000, according to United Nations estimates.  By 2100, the U.N. projects, there will be 25 million.” – THE NEW YORK TIMES [quoted in THE WEEK, 14 MAY 2021, p. 16]

To that end, here is my review of LIFESPAN: WHY WE AGE, AND WHY WE DON’T HAVE TO, by David Sinclair, PhD (2019, Simon and Shuster: New York):

“Aging is a disease…and it is the Mother of all diseases, the one we all suffer from.” David Sinclair has evidence that there is a cure for aging. This is the basic hypothesis of this work.

The good news: fresh from the labs of Harvard, MIT and many other top research institutes around the world, Sinclair shares the very exciting and hopeful reports which indicate that our life expectancy is about to grow — the average person will live to 150 years soon, and possibly much longer…

The less good news: there is quite a bit of resistance and kickback to this longevity work which creates research funding issues. People have economic, philosophical, religious and ethical issues about longevity. Tampering with our genes, reversing cell damage, increasing strength and brain function results in an increased life expectancy.

The first part of this book is highly technical – Sinclair enthusiastically deconstructs his research and his peers’ work on gene editing and other relevant experiments.

Approximately the middle third of this book is about longevity techniques, treatments, prevention, and ways to stay healthy. We learn more about intermittent fasting, cold plunges, dietary suggestions, and possibly useful supplements (surprisingly few). There is no true “Magic Bullet” here. Yet.

The last third of the book explores the implications of increased longevity, and how it will affect our culture (and Social Security questions). Sinclair successfully resolves dozens of serious conflicts and considerations that have been thrown at him – and this part was both interesting and annoying at times. The worst case scenarios are all addressed with positive extrapolations for the mutual benefit of all humans – so there is no reason not to send billions of dollars to these researchers to unlock the secret code to aging successfully.

I hope one or more of our billionaires get word of this book and send over a few billion dollars to Sinclair and his buddies so they can finally nail down the aging disease and, dare I say it, CURE AGING!

It was frustrating to learn here how people’s ignorance and fears block the funding for this work! Basically, if Sinclair and his tribe can slow down and even reverse aging, they will also be eliminating cancer, heart disease, diabetes and more chronic diseases which all arise from the aging process.

I agree with Sinclair, this is NOT a moral or ethical issue. Increasing our longevity is part of our natural evolution and is a natural next step.

IN SUM, there is a solution to aging, and when we find it, it will help our species and benefit all of mankind in amazing ways.

On a personal note, I have been affirming that I am going to be a Super Centenarian (110+) for decades already…so now, I’m correcting that and plan to live to at least 150 years or longer. I always knew I was going to peak in my 60s…so I’m not even halfway through this awesome adventure in living!

Sinclair has inspired me to ramp up my longevity activities – the one thing I have resisted is the cold plunge (the Wim Hof method). I’ve been aware of Wim Hof’s works for years – so for a while I was going to a cryotherapy tank every week and taking the cold plunge inside of -260 F tank for 3 minutes. That was very useful and I loved it.  

In addition, my teacher Tim Ferriss has discussed and explored this work on his podcast to the point where I feel like a fool for not doing it regularly. (Ferriss takes ice baths regularly). My version of the Wim Hof method is to walk outside in cold weather wearing a light coat or vest and NOT bundling up all the way. (I wear a hat, scarf and gloves to avoid frostbite.)

So I’m excited about the possibility of living WELL at 150+ years of life, and to empower others to do the same. Yes, it’s the TEAM WORK that makes the DREAM WORK!

May we all age well together🌟

Longevity Uncategorized

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Nov 6

Learning to Live in AMBIGUITY with peace, even joy

by Lisa Wessan, LICSW
Voting super early in October…
Here’s gratitude galore to artist Sam Durant (b. 1961 – ), for this powerful piece, Like, man, I’m tired of waiting, 2002. It’s currently on display at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum in Hartford MA. (The Wadsworth is definitely worth a trip!)

So here is my Cultural Appropriation du jour…I hope Mr. Durant does not mind me borrowing his racial justice motif for these politically toxic times…Mea culpa, mea culpa, I just can’t resist.

I know that learning to live in ambiguity with any measure of peace — even joy — is a clear marker for how healthy I am inside.

To improve your mental state, I ask you to find ways to feel more useful. To that end, I think it’s ALWAYS more effective to replace the WHY questions with the HOW questions. Let me unpack this a bit…

When you ask WHY IS THIS HAPPENING, you never get a satisfying or truly acceptable answer. Plus, no one really knows exactly WHY harsh things happen. Oh yes, there are tons of theories, but ultimately, it’s never quite known for sure. There are too many complicated, multi-dimensional issues to pinpoint “The Reason Why” something – or someone – is in such a negative state.

That’s why I think that asking the HOW questions is going to give you a big payoff. For example, asking “How can I be helpful? How can I be useful? How can I make this better?” in your micro world, at home, work, school, will shift you into taking positive actions. Then you will start to feel as if you are part of the solution, as elusive as it may seem to be at times.

Plus asking “How can I help?” takes the focus off of you…dare I say it? So much mental anguish comes from the Pity Party we have for ourselves. Moreover, too much self absorption leads to the impulse issues being activated, such as drinking, drugging, food binges, shopping, gambling, porn and so on. As I’ve heard it said, “Poor me, poor me, POUR ME A DRINK!”

In sum, compared to sitting and watching the news on your digitals, having a depressing Pity Party, marinating in fear and anxiety, asking the HOW questions is surely a better path.

Here is the beautiful and amazing 5D Flow…Peace in your heart can bring peace to the world. Yes, as you feel more peaceful and useful, you radiate that energy out and it definitely has a ripple effect.

As it is written:

Peace in my heart brings peace to the family.
Peace in the family brings peace to the community.
Peace in the community brings peace to the nation.
Peace in the nation brings peace to the world.
Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.
~ Author Unknown ~

Best of all, when you ask HOW questions, you are no longer feeling like a victim! When you ask “Why is this happening [to me]? ” “Why don’t they just blah blah blah?” You feel powerless, impotent, ineffective and probably a tad depressed or anxious.

Ideally, with good inner work. you could become bulletproof to the news. At your best, you want to feel all the feelings in the grief-rage-sadness spectrum, and then move on quickly to what you love. Why? Because as I have learned from many teachers, what you focus on INCREASES…where your attention goes, your energy flows. If you focus on hate and all the haters, you will feel more hateful and angry. Simple, but not easy.

Finally, you’re probably tired of people reminding you to cultivate an attitude of gratitude, but truly, that is a big part of the solution here. Learning to ask How can I be useful, coupled with a daily — even HOURLY – gratitude list, could carry you a long way during these challenging cockalocka poo poo slinging times.

❤Here’s to learning to live in the WAITING ROOMS of life with more peace and joy❤

Related Reading:

On the myth of closure, ambiguous loss and complicated grief by Lisa Wessan

The Art of Living is the Art of Waiting by Lisa Wessan

Copyright © by Lisa Wessan 2020. All rights reserved.
www.LisaWessan.com

Ambiguous Loss Living in Ambiguity Political Transformation The Waiting Room Uncategorized

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