"Some [wo]men see things as they are, and say, why? I dream things that never were, and say, why not?" -George Bernard Shaw quoted by Edward Kennedy
Dr. Mann grew up with a love of the mysterious and supernatural, reading every book her local library offered on ghosts, witchcraft, unexplained events, and other psychic phenomena. The shadowy places that terrified most people were her favorite escapes.
She wasn’t just interested in learning about what lurked in the shadows, and on the boundaries of human understanding, she wanted to solve these mysteries. So, she imagined a career as a paranormal investigator, and she was uniquely tasked for the job. It seemed she had been born with a 6th sense, getting glimpses of the future, sensing others’ emotions, intentions, and sometimes, even reading their minds. She was able to see patterns, find what was missing or didn’t want to be seen, bring it to light and solve the mystery. Furthermore, her parents instilled in her skills of deduction and the values of ambition and resourcefulness, planting the seeds for her entrepreneurial journey. The only missing piece was a way to access the underworld, where these shadowy phenomena she longed to meet, often lived. Trauma would provide this vehicle.
As she grew into adulthood, she learned that becoming a socially acceptable member of polite society was the most important aspiration of any human being, much more important than pursuing her dream of working with the paranormal, so she picked a respectable path that approximated her childhood aspirations. She graduated high school with honors, and went to college with plans to become a psychologist.
Her doctoral program was a thoroughly disillusioning experience. The high-powered academic atmosphere was rife with brutal competition, grueling hours and abuse of power. It was here that she had a crisis of faith. She realized that none of it actually mattered, the publications, the research discoveries, the prestigious title. What mattered was enjoying how you spent your time and who you spent that time with. But, that ingrained value of ambition ultimately caused so much fear of regret that she couldn’t bring herself to quit. So, she did all the things socially acceptable people do: She finished school, got a job, and married someone she met on the internet.
Then, one day, some very painful and traumatic events caused that carefully constructed, socially acceptable life to come crashing down. She felt shattered. The world no longer made sense. Her life felt like it had been a lie. She was heartbroken, traumatized, and financially ruined. And, in her darkest hour, she met someone.
She thought she was ready to rebuild from the wreckage and start a new life, a better life, a fairy tale life…but she wasn’t ready. She needed to do some serious repair work. This meant becoming the type of person who was living the fairy tale life. And, she knew from reading old fairy tales that “the fairy tale life” involved a path filled with obstacles, fool’s errands, dungeons, slammed doors, pit vipers, charlatans and the slaying of a dragon or two. It was not until the heroine had succeed in overcoming all of these challenges that she got her happy ending. So, into the dark woods she went to begin the next phase of her harrowing journey.
She started intensive trauma therapy, and made so many trips to the depths of hell that she became eligible for dual citizenship. Next, she conducted the cliched “taking stock” of her lifestyle and relationships. She also found a mentor who helped her finally realize her dream of becoming a paranormal investigator, though this career looked different than she had originally imagined. This involved reconceptualizing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from medical disorder to supernatural phenomena. As a trauma expert, she’d certainly experienced how enigmatic trauma was to find and treat, but she’d never realized it lived in the same shadows as the supernatural. This new conceptualization provided her with a more successful way to find and heal trauma.
She combined traditional and esoteric training with her intuitive abilities to help clients find and heal what was lurking in the shadows, so they could break out of their prisons of responsibility, give up their mask-wearing charades, stop losing their shit and learn that freedom and joy weren’t just pipe dreams.
Now, not only are her clients improving more quickly, they are reporting that their lives feel more connected, unburdened, meaningful, and magical than they did before their work with her. More and more of their dreams have started coming true. As for her fairy tale happy ending…well, she’s managed to manifest her dream house, a group of awesome soul friends and her dream career. The rest of her ideal life seems to be making its way to her.
Both she and her clients used to hold out hope that maybe someone would rescue them along the way, would save them from the perils of this journey. No such luck. It seems the lesson here is this: The hero/ine needs to ultimately rescue themself in order to have the fairy tale happy ending.
Dr. Mann holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Missouri, St. Louis, which is an American Psychological Association (APA)-accredited program, and completed an APA-accredited internship at the VA Medical Center in Iowa City, Iowa. She spent two years working with Dr. Aaron T. Beck, the father of Cognitive Therapy, at the University of Pennsylvania and has extensive training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). She also has training in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT); Prolonged Exposure (PE), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), and CBT for PTSD; Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) for OCD; Motivational Interviewing (MI); Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS); Client-Centered Therapy; Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT); Jungian Analysis; inner child healing; dream interpretation; consciousness evolution; meditation and mindfulness; mysticism; extrasensory perception; energy clearing; pagan magic; the Law of Attraction; and psychological shamanism. She has completed all requirements for licensure short of sitting for the licensure exam. She has chosen not to complete the final stage of the licensure process because she believes that the laws of the State of Minnesota and the rules and regulations of the Minnesota Board of Psychology do not, in many cases, serve the best interests of clients and therapists. (To learn more about the clinical work Dr. Mann does and her approach, click here.)
Dr. Mann believes that helping people heal their wounds and start dreaming again will change the world. Take the next step by scheduling an appointment or by learning more about her dream interpretation course below.
