We recently had the chance to connect with Natasha Trujillo Ph.D. and have shared our conversation below.
Natasha, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: When was the last time you felt true joy?
Ah, I love this question. A recent trip to San Francisco with two my of my best friends, one of my closest cousins, and her best friend. We were exploring a gorgeous city using every mode of transportation possible and had a great mix of reminiscing/telling old stories while also making new memories together. My face and stomach hasn’t hurt from laughing that hard in months.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I am a counseling and sport psychologist dedicated to helping individuals, teams, and organizations build awareness of self, others, and the world to reach their full potential in and out of their craft. I owns a private practice where I seek to educate, consult, and provide mental health and sport psychology services that are evidenced-based and collaborative in nature. I works primarily with athletes, performers, and high-achievers to help them find balance in their pursuit of success and acceptance of their own humanity. I strive to help people learn how to simply “be”, AND get better at what they do. I have specializations in grief/loss, eating disorders, trauma, and performance psychology.
Grief/loss are my favorite clinical areas to work in. We can’t love without great loss and we can’t live without great suffering, so not to emphasize this in my work with humanity just wouldn’t make sense to me. A couple of years ago, I wrote my first book, And She Was Never the Same Again. It was a huge labor of love, and the most vulnerable personal and professional pursuit I have tackled thus far. Now that it is out, the reach and reaction has been bigger and more moving than I had anticipated. As a result, I am now working on putting together an online, asynchronous, self-paced course for high-powered professionals all focused on helping build education, awareness, and skills to help people integrate and move through grief in an empowering and meaningful way. I am also in the process of getting two additional certifications in the world of thanatology (the study of death and dying).
Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
Ah – this question is great. I believed that I needed to be perfect and that I couldn’t make mistakes at all. Now, I fully know, understand, and embrace that I will never know everything and am not allergic to mistakes. I still dislike them but my acceptance is much greater.
When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?
I think this is an evolving practice in my life. I oscillate in and out of how private vs. open I am with those around me. Writing the book I briefly mentioned is probably the most significant example of my confronting my pain in front of witnesses (although indirectly – I must admit). I was able to find a lot of strength in the process of being real and allowing others to really see me. I consider this to be more of a swinging door, there are times where it is possible and times where it isn’t.
Alright, so if you are open to it, let’s explore some philosophical questions that touch on your values and worldview. Whose ideas do you rely on most that aren’t your own?
Depends on the situation. I tend to be someone who wants to ask for different ideas and counterpoints to my own quite often. The more self-aware I have become, the more I know that I don’t know everything and will always have blind spots I need guides to call out for me. For dilemmas in my personal life, I have a small group of friends/family who provide me the ability to step outside my own critical and harsh self-talk or narrow view of a situation to think more clearly from a higher vantage point. For both personal and professional, I also rely a lot of experts in my field, mentors, and the work of authors who don’t know I exist to keep pushing my boundaries of what I think I know.
Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. What will you regret not doing?
Taking risks that align with the values and experiences I want to have with the time I have been given to be alive. Sometimes that means traveling across the country on a whim, sometimes that means planning a trip overseas, and sometimes that means going home to be sure I don’t miss something important to someone I love. I will regret not living intentionally – so I make it a point to do just that.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.npttherapy.com
- Instagram: @npttherapy
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natasha-p-trujillo-phd/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/natasha.trujillo.22191
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@NatashaP.TrujilloPh.D.
- Other: https://www.andshewasneverthesameagain.com
Image Credits
Angelina Butler
Angelina Butler
Kiley Dodson
Kiley Dodson
