Conversations with Emily Krushefski

Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Krushefski.

Hi Emily, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
As a child, I was always fascinated by people, constantly watching what they do and guessing at the intentions behind their actions. As would be expected, a deep empathy for humans–myself and others–went along with this general interest. Studying psychology in undergraduate and graduate school, I became a licensed counselor in my mid-20s. Complicated, multi-faceted life problems have been my specialty throughout the 25 years that I have been a Licensed Professional Counselor in Montana and then in Arizona. I am never satisfied with “good enough” in these endeavors, pushing me to achieve Certification in DBT from the Linehan Board of Certification, and to seek training in several other evidence-based forms of treatment including EMDR, CBT, and Prolonged Exposure. All of these training efforts advanced my abilities to help people reach their mental health goals, but it still never felt efficient enough. The glaring need that I wanted to address was the vast number of people who need mental health tools, but are not mentally ill to the point that they need the expertise of a therapist to create a fulfilling life. I wanted these people to have an affordable, easy-to-access option to learn the basic, practical techniques that almost everyone needs to build the life and relationships they want. With my husband working behind the camera, I used all of my knowledge, expertise, training, and experience to create this sequential, on-demand video program at emotionalinnovations.com.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I read recently that life always involves struggle–the trick is to find the struggles that you prefer and try to enjoy doing those. I really care about my relationships with my husband, my kids, friends, and professional connections. I also like learning, building businesses, helping people, and creating polished, professional products. Given these two priorities–personal and professional–many of my lifelong hurdles have involved cultivating strong interpersonal connections with my closest people and building quality services for the public. With my family, so many struggles have surfaced; maintaining and developing a fulfilling long-term marriage, along with all of the trials and tribulations involved in raising two strong-willed children into empowered adults. We have dealt with financial issues, work overload, family disagreements, politically polarized beliefs, and the list goes on and on. Emotional Innovations has required me to learn a whole new industry, such as hiring an acting coach, which has certainly been a lesson in humility. My husband also had to learn to shoot and edit videos, which was a complete pivot from his past career in medical device manufacturing. In Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), we are taught that hardships provide us each an opportunity to practice the skills we learn, and need, to build the life we want. Each of these hurdles has presented just that. With each new difficulty, I was forced to learn an effective strategy to handle the situation. These marriage, parenting, professional, and general life struggles are what I have based the lessons in Emotional Innovations upon, so that the viewer can learn from my challenges and mistakes, and hopefully allow them to benefit vicariously from my lived life as a wife, mom, and counselor.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
In 2015, I was one of the first therapists to be certified by the DBT-Linehan Board of Certification (LBC) (https://dbt-lbc.org/). This process required three years of preparation and included consultation, testing, video samples for auditing, case formulations, and a ton of practice. DBT is a complicated, evidence-based form of mental health treatment for chronic suicidality, Borderline Personality Disorder, and people who struggle with problems in multiple areas of their lives. I have provided DBT treatment to this population since 2002, focusing on helping people struggling with these intense issues to learn the practical skills needed to be able to create a “life worth living.” I am incredibly proud of my time providing DBT and other forms of therapy to those in need. I still work as a counselor and even now, due to the rigorous requirements involved in DBT Certification, there are just two LBC certified clinicians in the State of Arizona. I was recently acknowledged in the LBC Clinician Spotlight for being one of their first certified therapists (https://www.instagram.com/p/DOL63VskQou/). Currently, my primary focus is on building the Emotional Innovations on-demand video program that features a progressive series of 50, 5 to 10 minute on-demand videos, that pair with journals and worksheets, to teach basic, practical tools for being able to calm down, motivate, create personal routines, keep your thoughts in line with your goals, understand your emotions, manage your own behavior, and build healthy, strong relationships. I am enormously proud of the tens of thousands of hours I have spent sitting with people in pain, helping them to learn effective ways to navigate difficulties of life that we all share. I am also proud that I have made practical mental health tools, based on experience and evidence-based practice, available online at an affordable price. I’m not sure if any of this sets me apart from other therapists as I think we are all in this together. We each play our part in working toward compassion and health as a team.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
The people who have helped me the most are my immediate family members. I could not have done any of the projects discussed without the unwavering support of my husband and the challenging honesty of my two adult children. I am now happy to also include my kids’ significant others in that mix, and could not be more grateful for our family. Alec Miller, PsyD, also helped enormously serving as my Consultant as I prepared for DBT Certification; Dr. Marsha Linehan, created the DBT protocol for the benefit of all; and the many Volunteers at the LBC worked so hard to create and uphold this higher standard for mental health treatment. Without these many individuals, I certainly couldn’t have learned what I have. Additionally, as part of the DBT Program, clinicians are required to participate in a weekly Consultation meeting with other DBT therapists, providing therapy to the therapist, keeping our personal challenges out of the counseling room and holding us adherent to the modality. All of the Clinicians who have sat in Team with me over the years–challenging, teaching and offering me compassion–also deserve significant credit for where I am today. Finally, a regular meditation practice is required for DBT Certification. Even though it isn’t a person, I do believe that my 25 year, nearly daily meditations have carried me through so many challenges and uncertainties, and have given me the self-awareness and presence to manage in some pretty tough situations. Meditation is also where I have been able to formulate the structure, process, and development of the Emotional Innovations video program.

Pricing:

• Emotional Innovations: $24.95 per month

Contact Info:

• Website: https://emotionalinnovations.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emotional_innovations/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emotionalinnovations
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-krushefski-37a62366/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@emotionalinnovations?lang=en

Image Credits
Photos taken by: Garrett Krushefski
Photos edited by: Judd Krushefski