Over my lifetime I've done lots of homework on Over my lifetime I've done lots of homework on myself. For years I've benefited - free of stigma - from mental health study and support, specifically talk therapy, but for many more I've abstained from it because finding the right mental health professional is so often time-consuming, energy-depleting and expensive. Times I most needed help were the very times I was least able to think clearly and see a path before me; least willing to assess a professional stranger and pry out of him/her/them what I needed to be reassured this could work. When it didn't, I'd feel defeated and even more lost. Vulnerable. Who could I trust to meet me at the doors of my heart and mind and keep them safe? To really see me, also a stranger, and go an extra mile out of compassion and professional integrity?
This isn't where I say one amazing doctor fixed me. But Dr. Kandice Eakes, of Sage Integrative Psychiatry, saw and heard me and gave me a safe space to learn and heal. She also is amazing. Knowledgeable and gracious. Her super powers are unconditional acceptance, compassion and heart. I heard them in her first email to me. In sessions, she is strongly relatable and emotionally intelligent. She appreciates my homework and self-awareness. She doesn't require weekly pages of, "On a scale of one to ten...", but assesses me with straight, simple, sometimes hard questions. I think she thrives - as I do - on the deep dive. She helps me articulate what I most fear, what questions I need to ask but don't know how, and then goes with me where they lead. Her kindness and understanding have changed my definition of myself, therefore, of my future.
Dr. Eakes is a psychiatric and mental health nurse practitioner currently serving Denver's homeless. She is a college professor educating female psychiatric nurse practitioners. She is a family nurse practitioner, holistic and interdisciplinary. She is accessible and affordable. And her previous field? - Google her - was mending real broken hearts! True!
Whether we need mind care or lawn care or car care, we need to be able to believe and trust our provider. We need to feel that spark of relatability, familiarity, and authenticity that offers a viable connection, even just a little one, at first. And we need someone kind who, like second nature, puts our needs and comforts first the first time we communicate. I believe trust begins there.
Dr. Eakes ticked all these boxes for me, and in every session these qualities remain front and center. I asked for relational, strength-based therapy with a cognitive behavioral approach to depression and anxiety, but she offers other approaches across many fields of expertise.
I couldn't ask for a better person to take with me on my mental health journey. My life continues to unfold with greater self esteem and confidence than ever before. I'm grateful for Kandice Eakes every day. read more