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At The Mindful Sistah Wellness and Counseling Services, we assist individuals, couples and families in cultivating coping tools to navigate difficult life circumstances and manage emotional flooding to foster a happier, more harmonious and less reactionary life.
Why Therapy?
There’s no doubt that overwhelm from daily life situations and challenging relationships with your children, spouse, family or co-worker can be triggering. These triggering events and relationships can cause emotional flooding . Emotional flooding is the body’s response to being overly aroused by physical and emotional sensations. When a person experiences too many or high emotions, their body may go into “shutdown” mode in order to reduce the feeling of overwhelm that comes with emotional flooding. This can look like oscillating between feelings, mentally withdrawing, or having a fight-flight-freeze reaction.
There are many situations that can induce emotional flooding, and these will largely depend on an individual’s personal triggers. Triggers often develop from early or highly impactful life experiences, and will set off the brain during situations where there is a perceived threat, where someone feels voiceless or disrespected. These can be related to specific emotions, situations, or interpersonal conflicts.
Choosing a Therapist
Deciding to pursue therapy by its mere act alone means that you have hope that things can get better. Therefore, choosing the right therapist is important but choosing the right therapist can feel like a daunting undertaking because you need to feel safe and trusting enough to be vulnerable which let’s be real…is often not always easy to do especially for individuals of color.
Questions to Ask
When interviewing a therapist for possibly working with your family, you should ask the following questions:
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Where did you get your professional degrees?
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How long have you been in practice?
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What is your experience in treating my population, couples or families?
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What is your experience in treating my specific problem?
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What is your philosophical approach to family counseling? What sorts of strategies are used?
How is the Mindful Sistah Wellness and Counseling Services Different?
The Mindful Sistah Wellness and Counseling Services is an independent private practice that incorporates experiential therapy activities such as Reiki, mindfulness, meditation and tapping with traditional modalities such as Cognitive and Dialectical Behavioral therapies to help individuals become better regulated so they can live a more harmonious and less reactionary life.
About the Mindful Sistah
Toyia Miller-Peters is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Reiki Practitioner and Mindfulness Coach with over 25 years of combined experience in the areas of community health education, mental health, philanthropy and advocacy. She holds a Bachelor's degree from Southern Illinois University in Community Health Education and a Master of Social Work degree from Loyola University Chicago. Immediately upon work graduating with her bachelors degree, Toyia began working with youth and families who were fragmented due to trauma experienced prior and while in the child welfare system. Seeing a need to be more impactful with families of color, she returned to school to pursue her Masters in Social Work with an emphasis on youth, families and schools. In 2003, she started working in the field and became a licensed clinical social worker in 2007. She has worked for 20+ years with youth, families and young adults through various educational systems. In 2014, Toyia was introduced to mindfulness and has been a lover of the practice ever since.
Her personal and professional holistic practice has evolved over the years to include meditation, yoga and reiki. She has completed her 200 DYT as well as Level 2 Reiki training. Aside from the work she does with youth, she has also worked with young and adult women through mentoring programs. During the pandemic, while listening to the plight of overwhelmed and stressed mothers and families, trying to cope while sheltering in their homes, she worked with families to help foster improved communication, partnership and relationships. She is truly one of a kind and invested in the well-being of individuals and families. Her personal mission is to inform, educate and support transformation to improve the landscape of emotional health in black and brown communities.
Services
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Women’s Wellness Services
Reiki Practitioner
Mindfulness/Meditation Coach
Individual Wellness & Coaching Services
Corporate Wellness Services
Yoga Instructor
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Counseling Services
Individual
Adolescents
Young Adults
Women
Groups
Family
Couples
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Clinical Supervision
Clinical License Supervision (LCSW and LCPC)
General
Schools Emphasis