Vanessa Ogaldez, LAMFT

SPECIALTIES:

Trauma

Couples Communication

Identity/Self Acceptance

https://www.dcctherapy.com/vanessa-ogaldez-lamft

From Her website: 

Maybe you have said something like, “What else can I do?” and it is possible you feel stuck or heartbroken because you can’t seem to connect with your partner as you want or used to. Whether or not you’re in a relationship and you have experienced trauma, hurtful arguments, or life changes that have brought on disconnection in your relationships, there is a sense of loss and heartache. You may find yourself in “robot mode” just going through your daily tasks, causing you to eventually disconnect from others, only to continue the cycle of miscommunication and loneliness. Perhaps you feel misunderstood, and you compensate by being helpful to everyone else while you yearn for true intimacy and friendships. Sometimes you feel there are so many experiences that have contributed to your pain and suffering that you don’t know where to start. There are Cultural norms you may feel that not everyone can understand and therapy is not one of those Cultural norms. I believe therapy can be a place of safety, healing, and self-discovery. As a therapist, my focus is to support you and your goals in life and relationships. I am committed to you building deep communications, connections and feeling secure in the ability to share your emotions.

Danielle (00:06 ):

Good morning. I just had the privilege and honor of interviewing my colleague, another therapist and mental health counselor in Chicago, Vanessa Les, and she is located right in the midst of Chicago with an eye and a view out of her office towards what's happening with ICE and immigration raids. I want to encourage you to listen into this episode of the Arise Podcast, firsthand witness accounts and what is it actually like to try to engage in a healing process when the trauma may be committed right before someone comes in the office. We know that's a possibility and right after they leave the office, not suggesting that it's right outside the door, but essentially that the world in which we are living is not as hopeful and as Mary as we would like to think, I am sad and deeply disturbed and also very hopeful that we share this power inside of ourselves.

(01:10 ):

It's based on nonviolence and care and love for neighbor, and that is why Vanessa and I connected. It's not because we're neighbors in the sense of I live next door to her in Chicago and she lives next door to me in Washington. We're neighbors because as Latinas in this world, we have a sense of great solidarity in this fight for ourselves, for our families, for our clients, to live in a world where there's freedom, expression, liberation, and a movement towards justice and away from systems and oppression that want to literally drag us into the pit of hell. We're here to say no. We're here to stand beside one another in solidarity and do that together. I hope you join us in this conversation and I hope you find your way to jump in and offer your actual physical resources, whether it's money, whether it's walking, whether it's calling a friend, whether it's paying for someone's mental health therapy, whether it's sharing a meal with someone, sharing a coffee with someone. All these things, they're just different kinds of things that we can do, and that's not an exhaustive list.

(02:28 ):

I love my neighbor. I even want to talk to the people that don't agree with me, and I believe Vanessa feels the same way. And so this episode means a lot to me. It's very important that we pay attention to what's happening and we ground ourselves in the reality and the experiences of black and brown bodies, and we don't attempt to make them prove over and over and over what we can actually see and investigate with our own eyes. Join in. Hey, welcome Vanessa. I've only met you once in person and we follow each other online, but part of the instigation for the conversation is a conversation about what is reality. So there's so many messages being thrown at us, so many things happening in the world regarding immigration, law enforcement, even mental health fields, and I've just been having conversations with different community members and activists and finding out how do you find yourself in reality what's happening. I just first would love to hear who you are, where you're at, where you're coming from, and then we can go from there.

Vanessa (03:41 ):

Okay. Well, my name is Vanessa Valez. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. Before becoming a therapist five years ago through my license, I worked in nonprofit for over 20 years, working with families and community and addressing what is the need and what is the problem and how can we all get together. Been involved with different movements and nonprofit organizations focusing on the community in Humbolt Park and Logan Square in the inner city of Chicago. My parents are longtime activists and they've been instrumental in teaching me how to work in community and be part of community and to be empathetic and thoughtful and caring and feeling like what happens to me happens to us and what happens to us happens to me. So that's kind of the values that I come from and have always felt that were true. I'm a mom of three and my husband and I have been together for 29 years, so since we were teenagers.

Thank you. But yeah, so that's a lot of just in general who I am and culturally, I come from an Afro Latina culture. I am a Puerto Rican born here, well born in New York where my family was from and they migrated from Puerto Rico, my grandparents did. And in our culture, we are African, we are indigenous, and my dad is Puerto Rican and Native American. So there's a lot in here that I am a hundred percent all of it. So I think that's the view and experience that I come from is knowing who I am and my ancestors who are very important to me.

Danielle (06:04 ):

I mean, that encompasses so much of what I think the battle is over who gets to be American and who doesn't. Right? Yeah, definitely. From your position in your job and you're in Chicago right on the ground, I think a lot of people are wondering what's really happening? What are you seeing? What's true? Can you speak to that a little bit?

Vanessa (06:32 ):

Yeah. What's really happening here is, I don't know, it's like what's really happening here? People are really scared. People are really scared. Families that are black and brown, families that are in low income situations, families that have visas, families that have green cards, families that are undocumented, all of us are really scared and concerned, and the reason is because we feel that there is power being taken from us without any kind of accountability. So I see my friends and family saying ICE is in our neighborhood, and I mean a block away from where I live, ICE is in our neighborhood, in our schools. We have to watch out. ICE is in front of our church or ICE is patrolling our neighborhood, and we have to all come together and start throwing whistles and we have to know what it is that we're supposed to do if we get interact, if we interact with ice or any kind of federal agent, which is just in itself disturbing, and we're supposed to just get up in our day and send our kids to school, and we're supposed to go to work and do the things that we're supposed to do.

(08:07 ):

So it's traumatic. This is a trauma that we are going through, and I think that it only triggers the traumas that a lot of us, black and brown people and community have been trying to get the world to listen and recognize this isn't new for us. It's just now very aggressive and very violent and going backwards instead of forward.

(08:39 ):

I think that's how I would describe what is really happening in Chicago. On the other side, I think there's this other place of, I'm kind of really proud of a lot of our people where I think it is understandable to say, you know what? It's not me or mine, or I got my papers all together, so that's really unfortunate, but it's not something that's happening in front of me. I could understand that there are some of some people who feel that way because it does feel like a survival situation. I think though there are others who are saying, no, what happens to you is happening to me too, I'm going to keep accoun