Editorial
Front Page - Friday, January 14, 2011
Emily Stone helps her clients transition life shifts
Erica Tuggle
Emily Stone is a marriage and family therapist in Cleveland, Tenn. She helps her clients in many areas including chronic illness and pain management, therapy for athletes, addiction counseling and help with life shifting events such as having a child, going through a divorce, getting married, retirement and others.
- Erica Tuggle
Having a baby, retiring, entering middle school and divorce are all life changes that can bring issues with them that may leave the recipient feeling anxious or depressed.
Emily Stone, a therapist in marriage and family counseling, says that when this happens, she’s there to help her clients through these life-altering events.
Stone grew up in Cleveland, attended Baylor School and completed her undergraduate degree at Lee University for psychology. She went to a seminary in Cleveland for her Masters of Divinity, and then married and moved to California to complete her second master’s degree in family and marriage counseling.
Her husband, she and their first child then moved to the Czech Republic, where they were missionaries for a year and she had a second child in Prague. Afterwards, they moved back to Cleveland and she started practicing while doing postgraduate work in sports psychology, addiction counseling, counseling adolescents and chronic illness and pain management therapy. Stone uses all her life experiences to help her clients though theses areas as well as the traumas of bullying, the transitions of aging and more.
This wide range of areas to help individuals is what Stone says she likes about families and couples counseling and that all ages come to her for assistance. In her practice, Stone sees a lot of women struggling with anxiety and depression, and with her training as a marriage and family therapist, she has additional training in relational theories so that although the client might come in as an individual, Stone thinks about what is going on in the context of their relationships, past and present, to see how those relationships affect them currently.
“The reason I wanted to do this kind of work is I wanted to see things in that context because I think relationships are what it is all about,” Stone says.
Stone sees children and adolescents within the family perspective meaning that she always meets with parents first to have their consent and to also treat that child or teenager within the perspective of the family, their dynamics and develop a treatment plan for inside and outside the office. She says she sees many adolescents in their teen years, when it is tough and they are navigating some life changes.
“All these changes tend to bring up issues. It’s not a bad thing, but a time to work on some of this stuff. If someone comes in during one of these changes and is struggling with depression or anxiety, it’s really easy to get down about that and see it in a negative way, but one way to look at it without trivializing it is your body, your mind and your relationships [are affected because] this depression is kind of like a red flag. Let’s see this as an opportunity to look around, see what the depression trying to get you to change and to work on it.”
Stone says it is exciting to help clients see these challenging places that are very overwhelming, and she is in awe of their ability to come in and talk about these difficult issues.
For premarital counseling with Stone, couples work on communication skills as well as looking at their families of origin. From talking about how finances were handled in their parent’s relationship to hashing out ideas on sex, children and past relationships, these sessions are not a magic wand to fix everything or guarantee a couple will not have problems, but rather to give them extra tools to work with, Stone says.
In marriage counseling, she approaches the same issues, but the dynamics are different.
“Before you get married, things are so wonderful and you have the rose tinted glasses on,” Stone says. “The glasses come off and you see each other as real people – and that’s a blessing you need to, but that can be tough. They may just need to come in and take care of that, talk about it and learn some skills to work out here and out there.”
Bullying also comes up in Stone’s line of work, and has taken on a whole new look because of the Internet. Stone strongly suggests that children and teenagers talk to someone if they are being bullied.
“There is a lot of advocacy in schools for educating children and teenagers for not bullying, but even with that going on kids still think if ‘I tell someone, nothing is going to happen or there is going to be some kind of repercussions from other teenagers.’ My experience is that its better to tell, because teachers and principals want to know and will take action immediately,” she says.
Parents should also become involved in making sure that they are touching base with their kids and nonchalantly talking to them about letting them know if bullying happening. Designating a five-minute time each day to sit down and do nothing but listen to their child is one way to do this, she says.
Because of her close connection with clients, Stone says she feels it’s important to find ways to detach and share the trauma she is vicariously receiving from her patients while still making sure their privacy is secure.
“It’s not just a personal issue but an ethical issue. If I’m not taking care of myself, I can’t do a good job for them and might miss something vitally important,” she says.
This is why she meets once a month with a group of therapists from surrounding areas to discuss client’s cases, without using patient names or violating their privacy, and allowing a therapy session for herself.
Stone says she won’t see more than a certain number of clients each week, because she knows if she gets past a certain number of clients a week she is not going to be the therapist, mom, or wife she wants to be.
“My work keeps me on my toes, and that’s why I love it. I talk about [my clients] and am forced to review my own things, and they force me to grow,” she says.
For updates on Stone’s practice and tips for maintaining mental health visit, www.forhopeandhealing.com.
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