I am thrilled to share some incredible news...I've been named the 2025 Best Counselor in Ponte Vedra, Florida!

Out of over 41,000 votes in this year's, "Best of Ponte Vedra," I was selected for this honor and I am still taking it in. What a moment. What a gift. 

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase." 

I took that first step years ago with heart, with fire, and a vision for a practice that would be human, healing, high performing, and never cookie cutter. A space that educates, elevates, holds people accountable, and reminds them how damn powerful they are no matter where they are in their lives. 

I built this thing brick by brick, laugh by laugh, and breakdown by breakthrough. And today being named Best Counselor in Ponte Vedra feels like one of those landings on the staircase...the kind you pause on, catch your breath, and smile. 

This honor is mine, but the magic is ours and I am so eternally grateful. Thank you, Ponte Vedra. Andiamo! 

My heart feels so full as I share that I have officially earned a Certificate in Military Mental Health from the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences (USU). 

Supporting those who serve and those tho carry invisible wounds with impossible strength has become one of the deepest honors of my work. 

This certification is not just another credential. It is a reflection of the intention, care, and precision I bring to the people I work with every single day. 

I love this work, I have chosen it with my whole heart, and I will keep showing up with everything I've got. 

If you are a provider, clinician, or someone serving military or first responder communities, keep going. The work is sacred and it matters more than most people will ever know. 

The human body is an amazing and complex system, and understanding how it works is essential for true healing. Most people are beginning to understand the importance of physical and emotional health, but few understand the connection between the two. That connection is fascia, the connective tissue that runs throughout the body and hold every blood vessel, bone, nerve fiber, and muscle in place.

​Fascia is also responsible for the transmission of neurotransmitters (e.g. serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine) throughout your body. This connective tissue transmits hormones such as adrenaline and oxytocin throughout your body as well. What does this all mean? The long and the short is that your fascia is deeply intertwined with the nervous system.

Fascia plays a major role in how we physically experience stress, including traumatic events. When the body experiences trauma, it creates tension in the fascia that can cause pain and limit movement. This tension can become chronic and prevent the body from healing completely. When emotional trauma occurs, the body also responds by creating tension in the fascia. Lack of moment, emotional stress, physical injury, and previous unresolved trauma can lead to physical and physiological changes to the fascia, which is often then associated with the symptoms most frequently seen in patients with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic pain, and inflammation. 

If you scroll throughout this blog, it is apparent I frequently refer to the vagus nerve in my posts. To briefly review what the vagus nerve is, the vagus nerve plays a key role in communicating changes that occur within the fascia to your brain. The vagus nerve assists in maintaining the channels of communication between the brain and body that helps regulate your autonomic nervous system (ANS). The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) which is associated with fight or flight will increase the speed at which your body wants to respond or react to stimuli and the vagus nerve provides a steady brake to slow things down. In situations that are traumatic or life threatening, this “emergency brake” can kick in abruptly, bringing you to a sudden and hard stop. Sometimes this may result in physical symptoms including nausea, dizziness, or fainting. 

Fascia is the largest sensory organ in your body and its primary role is to communicate information about what is happening in your body to your brain. When we experience trauma, we either move into freeze (immobility) or faint. If this trauma response does not resolve we can feel stuck and over time, lose our connection to our bodily sensations. We may feel more disconnected or dissociated. 

When working to heal trauma, it is so important to understand how these vital physiological and anatomical structures play a pivotal role in not only recovering from traumatic events, but to also understand how we can work with these structures using mind-body sensory awareness. The key is to progress slowly on the path towards reconnecting with your body and restoring a relationship to your body after trauma.

`I am counting down the days until the 2022 Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE) Food Allergy Summit officially begins! This year the summit will be taking place in Orlando, Florida. 
I am both thrilled and honored to be co-leading a mental health presentation with Catherine Walker, who recently began studying as a freshman at Tufts University. Catherine has not let her food allergies define who she is and her story is so inspiring. You can read more about Catherine and her story here. 

I am also delighted to be leading an adults only workshop where will be discussing mental health and practical tips on how we can support overall mental well-being for adults and everyone in the family. 

You can learn more about FARE and the 2022 Summit by clicking here. 

Now that the June 15th deadline has passed and college coaches can reach out to high school athletes, the pressure felt by athletes is palpable. When I work with athletes, we collaboratively establish a mental game plan to assist them in preparation for a diverse variety of challenges ahead. 

For example, when a student athlete learns to focus on small, but impactful goals, I notice a shift in their mindset. As the internal pressure for perfection decreases, the motivation to instead achieve excellence increases. Instead of focusing on the outcome of performance, we work on developing intentional awareness to areas of the game they want to improve. 

I believe sports are played with the body, but are won in the mind. And if an athlete concentrates primarily on impressing others through their performance, they are creating extra-tension which clouds purpose, passion and can lead to burnout. 

If you or your student athlete is feeling overrun with pressure, let's get a game plan together. 

Do you ever have a gut feeling that you know you need to listen to? Our bodies are part of our minds and they speak to us every day. And when you pay attention, it can improve your life. 

Sometimes your body knows what is right for you. It sends you signals. When your feelings are in a spin, the message from your body becomes very clear. However, the message or messages can become difficult to interpret when our mental health is in poor shape. 

Anxiety and inner conflict arise if our inner compass is cloudy and if our mind is at odds with itself in a constant state of cognitive dissonance. In my practice, I both encourage and educate my patients to learn how to listen to their own insides and actively tune into the sensations they experience in their bodies. By doing so, we can identify what is right for us and and feel empowered to take the small, safe steps towards healing. 

This type of somatic awareness can help us to become aligned in our thoughts, feelings, and actions. The gut feelings we experience are not just for emergency "fight or flight" situations, they are present all the time. Just as you are reading this blog post, if you focus your attention on the heart and gut regions of your body, you will begin to notice a response to my words. Just notice if any part of you feels my words to be true, or perhaps you feel "no that can't be true". Perhaps you notice your attention going elsewhere? Like reading ahead to see how much longer this post is? Just notice how quickly or slowly your body is able to take a complex situation and summarize it quickly, or moment by moment. 

There is to come on this topic, so stay tuned! 

In recent news, Dallas Cowboys Quarterback, Dak Prescott had the courage to speak openly about his depression and grief. A sports columnist openly dismissed Presscott's vulnerability, going as far to say it weakens his leadership qualities. ESPN anchor, Scott Van Pelt responded to the remarks by using his voice to acknowledge the person behind the helmet who spoke openly and bravely about his mental health and emotional pain. Van Pelt also took the opportunity to use his platform to validate and empower athletes to speak openly about his or her mental health. Thank you Scott Van Pelt for saying what needed to be said. We must continue to build a culture within sports where we can drop the veil of shame in speaking openly about mental health. There is NO shame in mental health. 

If you are not already aware, Shark Week on the Discovery Channel begins tonight! That being said, Sharks are my most favorite animal in the entire world. Unfortunately they get a bad reputation for being blood thirsty and aggressive predators. The photo you see above is from a trip to Jupiter, Florida. We traveled to Jupiter just to swim with sharks in the ocean.
The day we were out on the water, we initially encountered some very shy bull sharks. Gradually once we passed the vibe check and the sharks could trust us, there were twenty-one plus bull sharks coming to the surface. Because the sharks could trust that we were not going to harm them and were not weak or injured prey, they allowed us to swim closely with them. The bull sharks approaching us was not an instant process. They key word here is PROCESS. 
​Trust is critical for any working relationship. In therapy, trust is an important if not critical factor for successful outcomes and progress. 

Have we met yet? If not, I want to take this time to introduce myself.

1. I am Amy Pope-Latham - Licensed Clinical Social Worker in the state of Florida. I am originally from Long Island, New York or as it is pronounced back home, "Lawng Guyland".
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2. I am a Certified Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) therapist. I utilize a Somatic Attachment Focused EMDR (SAFE) model in my practice as a trauma therapist.

3. I specialize in working with athletes and adolescents! I also have the privilege of working with a variety of amazing people, regardless of my specializations.

4. I love medicine and I have tremendous respect and admiration for the human body. That being said, I largely use biology, neuroscience, and physiology concepts in my practice to better help my clients.

5. My posts on social media and this blog are not therapy and should never be considered a replacement for therapy. You are allowed to laugh and enjoy the content I share though!

Thank you for attending my Ted-Talk. Enjoy the rest of your day!
-Amy

As a mental health expert specializing in working with elite and professional athletes, playing a sport won't "solve" or "cure" issues related to mental health.
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What I generally observe is a disconnect occurring between the mind and body, affecting performance, and ultimately affecting emotional safety and health. This cycle circulates in one big loop, or what I love to phrase as a "pattern". 

At the same time, it is also important to recognize that an athlete is still a human being under the helmet or uniform he or she wears.
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Just because a person can compartmentalize and carry pain well does not mean it is not heavy for that person.