I am excited to be interviewed this upcoming Monday by Business Talk, on TuneIn Radio.
If you want to here me live, click HERE on Monday (2/10/20) at 10:28am, but they will also give me a link to the recording (Update: Listen to the interview in their archive here.
To prepare, they asked a few deceptively simple questions in their Pre-Interview Questionnaire. I thought I’d share my answers here, for anyone who might be interested in learning more about how LiveWork Solutions came to be and where it’s going.
Business Talk Radio PRE-INTERVIEW QUESTIONNAIRE
Basic Information:
Name (As you want it to appear): Jennifer Convissor, LCSW
Business Website(s): liveworksolutions.com
Company Background:
Please give a description of your company and the products/services you offer:
LiveWork Solutions is a holistic mental health service that helps people manage stress, find their joy and improve their life/work balance. We provide:
individual psychotherapy sessions for adults and adolescents
play therapy for children
couples counseling
support groups
clinical supervision for mental health practitioners
and professional development
We're proud to be part of the Healing Collective wellness center in White Plains, NY, which offers, massage, Reiki and other healing services & classes.
Tell us about your background of your business and yourself.
I grew up in NY and studied Creative Writing and Psychology in college. Writing had been my passion, but as I started working in the profession, I found it was too lonely for me and I wanted to work more directly with people.
Around that time, I suffered from chronic stress headaches. One night, a friend of mine invited me to a free Reiki introduction in Manhattan. Incredibly, the practitioner cured my headaches with one short sample treatment. (Reiki is a form of energy healing based in Buddhist tradition.) I was obviously intrigued. I began studying Buddhism, practicing Zen meditation and became a Reiki master in 1999. I went on to develop a holistic healing method, called Infinity Wellness, which is still the backbone of my psychotherpy practice.
However, much I was benefiting from a lovely deep dive into Eastern philosophy and healing, when I tried to market this as a viable practice, I found I was alienating a vast percentage, who didn't know what to make of this still obscure methodolgy. I knew I needed to widen my scope and help alleviate suffering on a broader scale. Meanwhile, I was dealing with my own process of self-discovery, and was inspired by sessions with a clinical social worker, who helped me understand my own past and how to live more fully in the present. She encouraged me to become a psychotherapist.
After many years of being a social worker in schools and clinics in the Bronx and Brooklyn, I became an LCSW myself. Once I started a family, I moved out to Westchester and started a private practice so I could affect my own life/work balance. Now, I’m delighted to be truly blending all my passions together with LiveWork Solutions. I get to write, on my online blog. I create tailormade mindfulness practices for my clients. I run parenting groups for the Shames JCC on the Hudson. I offer clinical supervision for new social workers and professional development on for organizations. It’s such a pleasure to be doing a job that incorporates a lifetime of interests and inclincations.
What inspired you to pursue your profession?
I have always had the dubious gift of feeling a huge range of emotions. Luckily, my love of writing allowed me to find words to communicate that experience, for myself and others. Growing up, there were a lot of strong feelings in the home and I unconsciously made it my job to be the peacemaker. All these strong emotions also made me very curious, which led to a fascination with the human mind and why people do what they do.
I really feel lucky that being a therapist is a profession, because I know it’s what I’d naturally be doing. Sometimes, I feel a deep drive to “save the world” and get overwhelmed, almost to the point of inaction. The more I do this work though, the more I’m sure we all have our own roles to play in saving the world, elevating humanity and healing the planet.
I love the puzzle of helping people cultivate loving compassion, for themselves and for others (especially for those we fear, or don’t understand). To be human is to suffer, every human on the planet has that in common. This is our true link to other and the key to compassion for others. At its core, LiveWork Solutions depends on one equation: Radical Honesty + Self-Compassion = Transformation. This is how we uncover our brilliance and what we have to offer the world.
At the very least, I believe it’s our personal responsibility, to get to a place where we are active and not reactive in our lives, where we can act with intention and manage our own feelings. I am honored to be practicing this path right alongside my clients, learning from my work with them, as I learn from my own individual process.
Where do you see yourself in the near future?
As I mentioned, my wellness center is expanding, and I hope to eventually bring on other practitioners that complement my practice. I love talking to groups and would love to do more professional development for larger organizations. I am also pretty seriously exploring the idea of creating a Q & A-type therapy podcast, where listeners write in with an issue they’re struggling with and we explore it with qualified experts and/or my own research and clinical experience. I am also a singer-songwriter and use my songwriting to explore complicated emotional questions I’m grappling with. I have a ragtag band, but we’re all over-committed parents and entrepreneurs. However, we are hoping to put out an album soon and I’d love to share that with my clients and maybe bring on a music therapist. Creating music helps me transform something difficult into something beautiful and I’d love to be able to offer this up, in the event it could help others.