About Onnie Baldwin, LCSW
How I Became a Therapist
Way back in the 70’s, I was married to a Viet Nam vet. I would find pictures of dead Vietnamese in draws in the bedroom and our office. One day I found guns hidden away in the bedroom closet, wrapped in some kind of material underneath a stack of sweaters. I would be awakened sometimes in the night and my husband who was sound asleep would be kneeling over me with his fist drawn back ready to punch me in the face. I would screen and he would wake up.
I found a therapist for us to go to. We were in therapy for at least two years and I discovered a whole new world for myself that unlocked so much of what I had hidden away about who I was and who I wanted to be. They weren’t parts of myself I had known before. I sat with a therapist who listened to me with his heart. Who walked me through feelings I had tried so hard to suppress and every time I thought I had gotten rid of them, they’d show up again. I learned to cherish my feelings. I learned that the bad things I felt about life, others or myself were there for a reason. I learned to honor them the same way my therapist did. And as sat with my feelings, I watched them change and grow. And as I learned how to handle them – when to act on them and when to learn from them, - my life changed.
Sadly we didn’t know about PTSD back then. We were just barely beginning to understand what our soldiers were going through once they got back to normal life, but it would be awhile before we developed the means to deal with PTSD and other effects of trauma. So I left that husband because he wasn’t learning and growing the way I was. A whole new world opened up to me of thoughts and feelings and action and I wanted to go out in the world and experience it. He wanted the woman he had married. So the marriage couldn’t work any longer.
At that time I was the Director of Development for a girls private school. I sort of fell into the job and I certainly looked the part, but I can’t say I was particularly good at it. My office was by coincidence in the middle school. Now this was back in the day when everyone wore uniforms to private schools and in girls’ schools that meant skirts and dresses. Somehow the middle school girls decided my office was the place to hang out. They’d come in and lie on the floor on their backs with their legs bent upward and crossed with their hands under their heads. After they had been coming for a while and felt comfortable hanging out with me, they started telling me their troubles with their parents. I’d stop doing whatever I was doing to raise money and listen to what they had to say. I didn’t know exactly what to say, but I knew they needed to be heard and to have someone empathize with their feelings. So I listened. And I listened. And I listened. I empathized and let them know I had a real felt sense of them. I looked forward to my days at school, not because I was raising all kinds of money for the school, but because I knew that my listening and having them felt heard was all I wanted to do.
A year later I left that job and started a Master’s in Education because I thought I wanted to teach in order to be able to spend important time with young people. The first class I took was The Psychology of Education. Then I knew. It wasn’t education, it was psychology that interested me.
Through the combination of my experience with the little girls in the private school, taking a course in the Psychology of Education, and my own therapy, I knew I wanted to help others liberate themselves from old feelings that caused them to be locked away inside their own bodies the way I had been. I wanted to listen to others the way my therapist had listened to me and to help them change their lives in whatever way they wanted to live in a life that was true to who they were.
That was forty years ago. Since then our techniques have changed, our understandings have changed and we’ve been able to provide help for a lot of people we couldn’t before help. We now know how to deal with PTSD and all other effects of trauma. The research on the brain has begun to unlock the mystery of how our emotions get processed and ways we can free the body and brain from remembered trauma. If the therapies that we have now had existed back then, I might still be married to that man, but they weren’t. But with the techniques we have now and with the understanding of the importance of a healing relationship we can mend the places broken from trauma. Now there is hope for every single one of us. Therapy is our way out of our troubles no matter how big or how small.
Way back in the 70’s, I was married to a Viet Nam vet. I would find pictures of dead Vietnamese in draws in the bedroom and our office. One day I found guns hidden away in the bedroom closet, wrapped in some kind of material underneath a stack of sweaters. I would be awakened sometimes in the night and my husband who was sound asleep would be kneeling over me with his fist drawn back ready to punch me in the face. I would screen and he would wake up.
I found a therapist for us to go to. We were in therapy for at least two years and I discovered a whole new world for myself that unlocked so much of what I had hidden away about who I was and who I wanted to be. They weren’t parts of myself I had known before. I sat with a therapist who listened to me with his heart. Who walked me through feelings I had tried so hard to suppress and every time I thought I had gotten rid of them, they’d show up again. I learned to cherish my feelings. I learned that the bad things I felt about life, others or myself were there for a reason. I learned to honor them the same way my therapist did. And as sat with my feelings, I watched them change and grow. And as I learned how to handle them – when to act on them and when to learn from them, - my life changed.
Sadly we didn’t know about PTSD back then. We were just barely beginning to understand what our soldiers were going through once they got back to normal life, but it would be awhile before we developed the means to deal with PTSD and other effects of trauma. So I left that husband because he wasn’t learning and growing the way I was. A whole new world opened up to me of thoughts and feelings and action and I wanted to go out in the world and experience it. He wanted the woman he had married. So the marriage couldn’t work any longer.
At that time I was the Director of Development for a girls private school. I sort of fell into the job and I certainly looked the part, but I can’t say I was particularly good at it. My office was by coincidence in the middle school. Now this was back in the day when everyone wore uniforms to private schools and in girls’ schools that meant skirts and dresses. Somehow the middle school girls decided my office was the place to hang out. They’d come in and lie on the floor on their backs with their legs bent upward and crossed with their hands under their heads. After they had been coming for a while and felt comfortable hanging out with me, they started telling me their troubles with their parents. I’d stop doing whatever I was doing to raise money and listen to what they had to say. I didn’t know exactly what to say, but I knew they needed to be heard and to have someone empathize with their feelings. So I listened. And I listened. And I listened. I empathized and let them know I had a real felt sense of them. I looked forward to my days at school, not because I was raising all kinds of money for the school, but because I knew that my listening and having them felt heard was all I wanted to do.
A year later I left that job and started a Master’s in Education because I thought I wanted to teach in order to be able to spend important time with young people. The first class I took was The Psychology of Education. Then I knew. It wasn’t education, it was psychology that interested me.
Through the combination of my experience with the little girls in the private school, taking a course in the Psychology of Education, and my own therapy, I knew I wanted to help others liberate themselves from old feelings that caused them to be locked away inside their own bodies the way I had been. I wanted to listen to others the way my therapist had listened to me and to help them change their lives in whatever way they wanted to live in a life that was true to who they were.
That was forty years ago. Since then our techniques have changed, our understandings have changed and we’ve been able to provide help for a lot of people we couldn’t before help. We now know how to deal with PTSD and all other effects of trauma. The research on the brain has begun to unlock the mystery of how our emotions get processed and ways we can free the body and brain from remembered trauma. If the therapies that we have now had existed back then, I might still be married to that man, but they weren’t. But with the techniques we have now and with the understanding of the importance of a healing relationship we can mend the places broken from trauma. Now there is hope for every single one of us. Therapy is our way out of our troubles no matter how big or how small.
Masters in Clinical Social Work
Catholic University of America, 1976
Catholic University of America, 1976
- Mind Body Medicine Training from the Center for Mind Body Medicne
- EMDR
- Supervision Training for MSW's to be Licensed
- EMDR Training, I, II, III.
- EFT training
- Mind Body Medicine from the Center for Mind Body Medicine
- Food as Medicine from the Center for Mind Body Medicine
- EFT
- Working with DID, I, II, III, IV
- Sensorimotor Therapy Training
