A lot of people reach adulthood without ever having been asked the right question about themselves. Susan and Melissa talk about neurodivergence and why so many people, especially women, people of color, and anyone who learned early that being good was the safest thing to be, went undiagnosed for decades while quietly doing an enormous amount of work to look like everyone else. They get into what masking costs, why it tends to stop working somewhere in adulthood, and why the moment of recognition so often comes with tears that are not only relief. There is also an honest look at how hard formal evaluation actually is to get, and what you can start doing for yourself long before anyone hands you a piece of paper. Susan shares her own late ADHD diagnosis along the way.

Remember that listening to this podcast is not therapy. It might be therapeutic, but it isn't a replacement for good mental health treatment. We can help with getting you connected with a good therapist. Check out our website. Grove: A Healing Collective

Dr. Jason Clapton and Heidi Clapton have spent decades looking underneath the behavior that gets a child labeled. He is a developmental optometrist with a fellowship in pediatrics and brain injury; she is an occupational therapist, and between them they have built a practice around a single stubborn idea, which is that the thing you can see is rarely the thing causing it. They talk about why so much of what gets called ADHD or dyslexia turns out to be eyes that will not track, ears that will not keep pace, or a balance system that was never given what it needed. There is practical material here for any parent, including what movement actually does to a nervous system and why a child who cannot sit still is usually telling the truth. They also make the case for teaching first responders to recognize fear when it shows up looking like defiance.

The thoughts and opinions shared by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Grove: A Healing Collective. We bring people on because their perspective is worth hearing, not because we agree with every part of it.

Remember that listening to this podcast is not therapy. It might be therapeutic, but it isn't a replacement for good mental health treatment. We can help with getting you connected with a good therapist. Check out our website. Grove: A Healing Collective

Almost everyone has someone in their life they wish would get help. Susan and Melissa take on the hard version of that problem: what you can actually do when the person struggling is an adult who has not asked for anything. They talk through why people refuse support far more often than they admit, why fear of judgment and the cost to a job, a license, or a family is usually underneath it, and what separates an invitation someone can accept from pressure they have to defend against. There is also honest talk about what happens after, including the question most of us ask with the best intentions that lands as supervision instead of care, and what it looks like to hold a boundary with someone you love without closing the door on them.

Remember that listening to this podcast is not therapy. It might be therapeutic, but it isn't a replacement for good mental health treatment. We can help with getting you connected with a good therapist. Check out our website. Grove: A Healing Collective

Ask most couples what is wrong and you will hear the same three words: we don't communicate. But what if that is almost never the real problem? Melissa and Susan sit down with fellow therapist Christina, who works largely with couples, to unpack what people actually mean when they say communication has broken down, why even silence is its own kind of message, and how being understood is a different skill than simply speaking. Along the way they talk about staying human in the therapy room, knowing when to send someone to the right person, and why no one is meant to help everyone.

Remember that listening to this podcast is not therapy. It might be therapeutic, but it isn't a replacement for good mental health treatment. We can help with getting you connected with a good therapist. Check out our website. Grove: A Healing Collective

Some days the world hands us more than we ever agreed to carry. The constant stream of news and noise can leave us drained and flattened without our quite knowing why. Melissa and Susan sit down to talk about what all that information does to a nervous system that was never built to hold it, why staying endlessly informed is not the same as being well, and how small, honest boundaries around what we take in can help us feel like ourselves again. It is a warm, practical conversation about staying grounded when everything feels heavy.

Remember that listening to this podcast is not therapy. It might be therapeutic, but it isn't a replacement for good mental health treatment. We can help with getting you connected with a good therapist. Check out our website. Grove: A Healing Collective

Before her first official day at Grove, Kendall Deaver sits down with Susan to talk about the three and a half years she spent in residential treatment and what that work asked of her. Reaching young men who had been handed off between adults their whole lives meant giving up the idea that she needed to arrive with answers. Along the way, a belief she had absorbed growing up, that people are not trustworthy and guardedness keeps you safe, quietly came apart. There is a conversation here about what actually builds trust between two people, and it has far less to do with training and credentials than most of us expect. Kendall also shares the children's book she reads to her daughter that says it better than most clinical language can.

Remember that listening to this podcast is not therapy. It might be therapeutic, but it isn't a replacement for good mental health treatment. We can help with getting you connected with a good therapist. Check out our website. Grove: A Healing Collective

Some people know at twelve that they want to be a counselor. Diana took the long way, starting in music and songwriting before a class in disguise, a chance conversation, and a feeling that kept resurfacing led her back to the work she was meant for. In this warm conversation, Melissa sits down with Diana, a former Grove intern stepping into a new chapter on the team, to talk about the winding road into counseling and what it taught her. They get into the myth that creative people have to suffer, the way music and therapy speak to the same part of us, and why healing so rarely looks like just sitting and talking. It is a conversation about paying attention to what keeps calling you back, and about the many doors that lead toward getting well.

Remember that listening to this podcast is not therapy. It might be therapeutic, but it isn't a replacement for good mental health treatment. We can help with getting you connected with a good therapist. Check out our website. Grove: A Healing Collective

Most of us treat rest like a reward we have to earn, saving it for the moment we can barely function. By then it is rarely enough. In this conversation, two therapists get honest about why we wait too long to step away, why slowing down can feel so uncomfortable, and why the size of a break matters far less than the willingness to take it. From two-week vacations to five quiet minutes in the backyard, they make the case that rest, play, and presence are not luxuries but the things that keep us sustainable.

Remember that listening to this podcast is not therapy. It might be therapeutic, but it isn't a replacement for good mental health treatment. We can help with getting you connected with a good therapist. Check out our website. Grove: A Healing Collective