Jaime Gleicher, LMSW

10 Things to Know About Jaime Gleicher, LMSW

1. Why did you choose to become a therapist?

It feels as if my career chose me! I am very open about my own past struggles with mental health and was endlessly inspired and helped by my own mental health professionals throughout the years. I looked up to them and when I graduated from Barnard College with a major in English and Creative Writing, I knew I needed to do something else in addition to writing.

I took nearly every psychology class offered at Barnard and at the time of my graduation, I was mentoring adolescents with addiction, and I subsequently was hired to do the marketing/outreach for an adolescent substance abuse treatment center. While I liked doing both, I realized I wanted to work more closely with the adolescents and the next natural step was to go to social work school and continue to write in my free time.

I think being a writer and therapist are quite similar. I listen to my clients’ stories and narratives, I help them connect themes and pull language apart to make deeper sense of it. I value the power of words. While I never dreamed of being a therapist, especially while I was struggling, it now seems to make sense that I am.

2.  What’s your favorite thing about being a therapist?

Being the “keeper of the story”. I am honored that my clients trust and value me enough to share themselves with me. It is such a privilege to be someone’s “person”.

I am also in the constant state of learning through this work. My clients give so much back to me. The secondary benefit of being a therapist is that I learn so much about myself from my clients. It is impossible not to. This allows me to keep growing and evolving as a therapist, as they grow and evolve through their therapy process.

3.  What is your general philosophy and approach to helping?

I let my client do the work, and I tell them up front that they will be the ones doing the work. I follow that up with the absolute reassurance that I am there to support them and coach them as the work is being done. While some people enter therapy feeling pretty awful, and while the work can be hard, there is no better feeling than actually doing the work and knowing you have done the work.

When I struggled as a teenager, I so badly wanted therapists to do the work FOR me. I realize those who pushed me to really do the work myself are the ones who helped me the most. As the DBT manual states, “We didn’t cause all of our own problems and we have to solve them anyway.” There is such empowerment and growth in the process of the “solving”. I aim to let my clients “solve” while I support.

4.  If you weren’t a therapist, what would you be doing instead, or what would your life be like?

I can’t imagine not being a therapist, and yet, I can imagine myself doing other things… so I do them! In addition to being a therapist, I am a writer working on finishing up my first memoir, and I am also a jewelry designer for my own line, Live Rainbowfully.

My eventual retirement plan is to buy a huge plot of land and then adopt as many rescue dogs as possible. I’ve already started on this goal: I have five! In addition to these things, I would say I’d be pursuing my childhood dream of being on Broadway (I studied musical theatre as a child/teenager) or be a pediatrician.

5.  What do you do as self-care? (Mindfulness practices, exercise, etc.)

Jump in the ocean whenever possible! The beach is my happiest place. Since that is not always possible… I rescue animals and give them all the love! It is so rewarding. I also bead and make jewelry and work on building my jewelry business. I go to the theatre as much as I can. I exercise regularly: I love spinning, cardio dance and yoga (fun fact: I completed a 200 hour yoga teacher training).

Above all for self care, though, is that I ask for help from my own support system if and when I need it. I think that asking for help/support is the ultimate self-care.

6.  What’s your favorite quote or mantra? 

Too many quotes to pick one, so I’ll focus on some mantras:

“Be who you needed when you were younger” keeps me mindful of why I do what I do and what my goal is as a therapist.

“Everything is figureoutable.” Because it is. It may not be perfect or the way we want things to be, and we can always figure out a non-catastrophic solution to something, even if our thoughts try to convince us otherwise.

7.  What advice would you give your 16-year-old self?

Value the superficial things less.

8.  If you could invite three famous people to dinner, alive or dead, who would they be? 

Michelle Obama, Elisabeth Moss and P!nk. I’m going to be a little rebellious here and add a fourth, because I’d have Frank Sinatra provide the entertainment for the evening. He could duet with P!nk— how awesome would that be?

9.  What’s something you are most proud of? 

My resilience. I’ve gone through some incredibly dark moments in my life. I never take for granted how lucky I am to have grown through all of it, and recognize how grateful I am to those who have supported me through it. And… my work with rescue animals. I think I’m a really good dog/cat mom!

10.  What do you wish other people knew about mental health?

That the idea of “mental illness” has been over stigmatized. It is not so black and white. We all have brains, therefore we all have a scale of mental health that will waver over time, just as our physical health does. We need to be mindful of keeping our minds healthy (i.e. feed and nourish them the way we do our bodies), use preventative measures, and not judge when we don’t feel well. And when we don’t feel mentally well, we need to seek treatment, rest, and not push through and hurt ourselves more.

I wish the world treated mental health like we do physical health: regular screenings, more empathy, less stigma.