About the CEO

My name is Lila Galustian, I also go by the name Lili. I am a licensed marriage and family therapist and the owner of Re-Discovering You, a marriage and family therapy corporation. Yup, that mouthful is the company's real name. :)

I opened Re-Discovering You to begin helping fight back against the stigma of the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and to provide a space for those with the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder to learn how to recover, heal, and leave treatment knowing themselves better than when they walked in, with help and utilization of CBT and DBT skills.

I began my career in the mental health world as a mental health tech at Clearview residential treatment programs in 2012 when the program was owned by Michael Roy and run by Dr. Alina Gorgorian Ph.D., meanwhile, I attended Antioch University to complete my master of arts in psychology, specializing in early childhood development. I completed my education in 2014 and my associate hours as an employee of Clearview under the supervision of Dr. Alina Gorgorian in 2017. I was recruited to begin working as a program director and then was promoted to clinical director of Resilience treatment programs under the ownership of Andrea Garai. My expertise is the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder and behavioral patterns.

Throughout my career, I have received countless trainings on CBT and DBT treatments from reputable trainers and programs.

Lila is a natural teacher of mental health and has 3 specific trainings she provides to the mass community. If you, your program, or a group of people are interested in any of the following training, feel free to reach out via email or call.

Assessment and treatment of borderline personality disorder

This training is specific to mental health providers in treatment centers and programs searching for extra help and support for their staff to provide higher quality care to those struggling with BPD symptoms. This training provides the staff a better understanding on how to assess, diagnose, provide effective utilization reviews for insurance companies, and trains the mental health techs on navigating the difficult symptoms of borderline personality disorder.

DBT and CBT skills understanding and implementation

This training is specifically tailored for hospitals, schools and companies that need more support for their staff. This training teaches the staff DBT and CBT skills which help them more comfortably navigate deadlines, long work hours, chaotic days and self-care while accepting the difficulties of their daily responsibilities at work. This training helps decrease burnout and increase self-satisfaction, which in result automatically increases productivity.

Mental Health Psychoeducation and Mindfulness

This training is specifically tailored for teenagers and adolescents who are starting to understand and learn more of mental health but do not fully understand the severity and intensity of each diagnosis. This training is meant to provide more information for teens and adolescents on what can cause mental health struggles, what are normal teenage problems vs mental health symptoms and how to not use mental health diagnosis as a form of insult or communicating needs. This training also helps provide mindfulness skills to help teenagers and adolescents go through the phase of puberty and hormonal change with a better grasp of their emotions and reactions.

About the Skills Application Model of Therapy

At Re-Discovering You, we accomplish success in change by providing an honest conversation of problem behaviors, and functions of the behaviors, identifying the patterns of those behaviors non-judgmentally, discussing the change with a willingness to implement evidence-based skills, and learning to observe the change with patience and self-validation. We do believe that validation is key to understanding and invalidation helps guide us towards change. Consequences of actions are part of our learning and learning to use skills to tolerate our consequences helps our brain begin wanting to change. Fear of change is real, and the opposite action to the fear helps build confidence and self-esteem.

The common statements clients will hear are, "The brain is the smartest and dumbest organ. What you communicate to it is the reality it will work hard to create for you." and "The world might have caused your problems, and right now you're the only one that can begin changing it, no one else but you needs to do better for your life to get better". Those are the skills application mottos.

Symptoms

Symptoms we specialize in working with:

Borderline Personality Disorder AKA BPD

People experiencing symptoms of BPD experience emotions very intensely and abruptly which lead them to make decisions in a very emotional and short-term fix state of mind. Their coping mechanisms and behavioral choice cause them to be judged often and invalidated by others, they tend to lose friendships and relationships due to their inability to regulate their emotions and tolerate things not going the way they had planned, negative things that happen in life and overall emotional discomfort which often feels like physical discomfort. BPD symptoms can be acute in which cause problems for the person at school/work, in relationships and with their own self, they can also be minor issues that only effect self-esteem and self-worth. People with BPD might have experienced trauma in life and trauma is not a requirement to experiencing the symptoms. Acceptance of the emotional reactivity is important in learning how to manage them and DBT skills help with learning to tolerate discomfort, regulate emotions, and slow down the time between emotional reactivity and reaction to begin making more effective and wise decisions and CBT helps learn how to communicate with oneself to begin having more autonomy with your actions and a different perspective on life.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder AKA GAD

People experiencing GAD experience the emotion of anxiety extremely often and extremely intensely for just about anything. The emotion of anxiety is a fear like emotion that is a protector of possible danger, which means when one experiences anxiety their thoughts lead them to begin thinking about all the possible catastrophes that could come from a certain circumstance or situation, which then leads them to either avoid or begin panicking trying to solve the catastrophes. It’s very difficult to identify the trigger of the emotion and there is an important acceptance piece that the emotion of anxiety is not going to go away. The DBT skills help one tolerate the emotion of anxiety and lower the intensity of the physical discomfort while learning to notice catastrophes, challenge them with Socratic questioning and then bring yourself back to the present moment with mindfulness to begin thinking through if your anxiety is going to help you or do you need to begin acting opposite of what your anxiety is telling you for a positive future outcome.
Attention Deficit/ Hyper Disorder AKA ADD/ADHD

Those experiencing ADD and ADHD tend to have very similar symptoms, the one difference is, one is much more energetically hyper and has a difficult time sitting still vs the other is hyper minded. The symptoms otherwise are the same and mostly problematic when one gets overwhelmed often with their thoughts since their thoughts are extremely fast and this then causes them to get overwhelmed and avoid doing tasks or problem solve in a state of overwhelmed and impulsively, which really does not work well for anyone when we problem solve in any heightened emotional state. The work we do is mainly learning to practice mindfulness skills to slow down your response time to your thoughts and bring you to the present moment, begin using pros and cons and cope ahead skills for problem solving, and practice CBT behavioral activation skills to get you to be more efficient with tasks. Another thing to possibly radically accept and not be mad at yourself for is you will more often be late, and if as long as you are you are trying your best to be on time, you are doing your best to be respectful of others and their time.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy AKA CBT

CBT is a behavioral modality of psychotherapy, which means it focuses on behavior and utilizing techniques taught by the modality to modify behaviors. The philosophy of CBT is that our thoughts, the way we communicate to ourselves, our emotions, the triggers that send signals to our brain to engage in action, and our actions, the actions we choose to engage in, are all connected, and one triggers the other. Since one is connected to the other CBT believes that if we change the way we communicate and think then we can change the way our emotions send signals to our brain and change the way we behave. CBT has a set of skills that people must practice daily and preferably hourly, to gain proficiency in changing their thoughts to change the patterns in their body and modify unwanted behaviors.

Below is a list of specific symptoms that we specialize in working with using Cognitive and Dialectical behavioral therapies. Instead of giving you the full DSM spiel, I’m going to try to describe the symptoms in simple terms. I hope this is helpful to understand the symptoms and the work that we do to help you learn how to manage and begin being in a way that matches your personality and your values.

Contact

Interested in joining our skills application team and re-discovering yourself? Reach out and let's talk.

lilagalustianmft@gmail.com

747-228-2621

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