Eastside Insight, PLLC

11/15/2025

When our pursuit of the ideal career path becomes all-encompassing, it is not uncommon to lose sight of the most important part of professional development—the individual. It gives me great joy then to share “The Career Identity Course,” the latest course from Sparrow Professional Development and Counseling Center, which aims to reconstitute personal values back into the fold of finding career satisfaction.

To reach aspects of a person’s life that are not diagnosable, and yet directly connected to one’s essential needs, it means finding programs that break free from the narrow confines of treatment-focused and insurance-centric modes of traditional counseling. And which is why SPARROW is truly an auteur in this space; modeling not only what a values system looks like in a business, but by providing content distilled from the synergistic knowledge of university-educator-meets-private-practitioner. Set at your own pace, this hands-on, multimedia-based 5-10 week learning course, adeptly integrates the “best of” in terms of career assessments into a purpose-driven framework that has been structured as a “quest” for a deeper understanding of self, and wherein the goal is not to become the perfect professional, but to re-center success through personal alignment to your life.

The link in this post will take you to the web page for the course, where you can learn more:

THE CAREER IDENTITY COURSE — an online personal development & career clarity course for ages 18-30. Self-discovery, coaching, professional direction. Sparrow Counseling PNW.

10/09/2024

Seattle Children’s Hospital has opened up the first Urgent Care for Mental Health in Washington. The greatest need right now in this field is more resources for children, and so this is definitely a step in the right direction. Please forward and share this resource with healthcare colleagues, teachers, parents, and youth.

Lastly, it has been an honor to witness the perserverance of Chanel Ryssel, LICSW to help get this program off the ground with her Urgent Care team at Seattle Children’s.

Thank you for your service and dedication!

https://komonews.com/news/helping-kids-in-crisis/seattle-childrens-hospital-opens-first-mental-health-urgent-care-clinic-washington-dr-jeff-sperring-childrens-magnuson-clinic-families-resources-services-crisis

10/09/2024

Seattle Children’s Hospital has opened up the first Urgent Care for Mental Health in Washington. The greatest need right now in this field is more resources for children, and so this is definitely a step in the right direction. Please forward and share this resource with healthcare colleagues, teachers, parents, and youth.

Lastly, it has been an honor to witness the perserverance of Chanel Ryssel, LICSW to help get this program off the ground with her Urgent Care team at Seattle Children’s.

Thank you for your service and dedication!

Seattle Children's Hospital is offering a new resource for children experiencing mental or behavioral health issues, a new urgent care clinic.

02/07/2024

“I believe healing begins with being heard. Real wellness is grounded by insight into one’s personal story, and how the language, habits, and our personal reactions influence our well-being and internal state.”

Yep, she’s pretty stellar, and so is her experience in trauma, evidence-based practices, allyship, and solution-focused therapy from a feminist, person-in-the-environment perspective.

To learn more or book a free consult, please go to: https://eastsideinsight.com/about-chanel

10/28/2023

The adage ‘people remember how you made them feel more than what you said’ is well supported by studies of how our brains process information. Our thoughts and beliefs can keep us intact in our own identities, but to deeply connect with another person, beyond identity, means to not merely think about them, but to feel them. It means being in close proximity to others, leaning into individual stories, live conservations, face-to-face interactions, while all the while being tuned-in to the person before you and snoozing your own mind’s chatter of what you think you know.

When put this way, it is easy to see why so much of our communication and connection is frayed, because it takes tremendous effort and skill to engage at the core level of relationship. It means then we must be selective in terms of our output—too much connection and inability to step away and we burn up. While at the same time if we fall prey to complacent surface level practices of relationship, with ourselves, each other, communities, and the world, then we burn those around us. Balance is aspirational and seldom experienced, and yet life itself will cease to exist if there are no practices for the nearly impossible—Persistence and Trying is what unites the human race.

This image, ‘Love Armor,’ has been created for my clients (and permission to post given by my clients). My hope is that it registers where it matters. The heart of being seen. It reflects my wanting to provide protection, while also facing the reality that there is no protection that I can give. It is normal to hope your therapist can help, and probably a pretty hard take away when you learn that in certain instances, the only thing your therapist can do is bear witness to your suffering. If there was a Love Armor though, that was more than metaphysical, I would surely shield you beneath it. The best I can give you though is the promise that I will not look away. And when the levee breaks, to validate your tears with my own.

07/23/2023

Eastside Insight proudly presents “Adults w/ ADHD: Making ADHD in Service to You.” This is an In-Person Skills & Process Group starting September. If you are interested in attending, please look at the details listed in the attached flyer or go to our website, eastsideinsight.com.

We are very excited for the opportunity to share this information, create a safe space, and turn a deficit into what we know it can be when nurtured and understood—the strength of individuality.

http://eastsideinsight.com

It's important to find a therapist who you connect with, is knowledgeable, and supports your needs.

06/21/2023

Thank you Team Eastside Insight! On June 3rd Ei walked along the Kirkland, WA waterfront for NAMI (National Alliance of Mental Illness) for love, insight, caring, compassion, recognition, friendship, and remembrance—bringing in $1360 in donations and earning an event badge for Team Building (with 13 registered walkers). So proud of all the efforts shown to pull this off—from shopping for supplies, dedicating a long night to T-shirt crafting, fundraising, getting the word out about the importance of this organization, travel, and sharing together a beautiful Saturday morning. And certainly last but not least, thank you to all who donated—supporting NAMI and our hearts—and who cheered us on! ❤️

05/04/2023

https://www.namiwalks.org/team/eastsideinsight

Honestly, figuring out how to post events I’m passionate about often can’t sail past my Luddite skills. For the NAMI Walk though I found the motivation to push through and form a Team Page! Please come out to the Kirkland Waterfront on June 3rd to walk with us. It’s exciting to be apart of this great event once again, and yes, this is very much a plug, but it’s also an organization where donations can do a lot. If you would like to learn more about NAMI, please click on the link above.

I'm supporting NAMI!

01/13/2023

When rules become too unrealistic and controlling, then functionality is impaired. The same is true for rules applied to persons. And while we may not agree with the rules or like them, we can learn to play by them out of honor and respect for others, but if they get in the way of our very personhood, then the honor is to OURSELF to break them. One of the biggest obstacles to living in harmony comes from disagreement of the ‘rules,’ and clients often come to therapy with a long-list of rules for themself and others, while also carrying a trunk full of pain from experiencing the effects of rules that are hurtful instead of helpful. It means it is important then to examine as much as possible the rules—to keep those that are golden, mend the ones that are broken, and bury the ones that are trying to bury you.

12/22/2022

Once you love yourself, that empty space reserved for those to love you back, isn’t quite so empty anymore. Loving yourself doesn’t mean you don’t need the love of others, it just means you won’t let yourself be a beast of burden in order to receive it.

12/10/2022

“When the scale lies.” I’ve been holding onto this scale for my client for many months now. In offering to give it back, it was declined, and so we were finally able to put it to some good use, as a canvas to expose the battle of her eating disorder. It’s often said some battles are worth the fight, but recovery does more than this, it transforms. Watching her write “The Lies,” The Truth,” and “What Works” today on the scale was a moment of profound meaning, and why I asked permission to post this Art. Thank you ‘You.’ It is truly awe-inspiring witnessing the grace and grit of spirit.

09/19/2022

Often we can isolate ourselves in the centricity that life wraps around us—a perspective that can become bent into a preference for dancing with shadows on the sidewalk, instead of turning to face the actual filament from which they were born. When we can de-center ourselves for a moment, we get to observe, from a different point-of-view, the ways that life is communicating, and engage with our surroundings in a more equitable manner. Psychology is a soft science. There is no way to quantify the emotions of my cat trying to escape from his carrier, but I can provide some qualitative analysis that he is pretty no bueno about his situation. While we crave absolute certainty, sometimes what we must settle for is knowing we can read—be it reason and logic, linguistics, sense (touch, taste, smell, sound, and hearing), or paraverbally. And the more literate we become in all forms of reading, the greater our overall intra- and interpersonal intelligence becomes, and the less we fall prey to subjugation, from outside…or within.

It's important to find a therapist who you connect with, is knowledgeable, and supports your needs.