remarkable-services

August 2026 Staff Picks

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 02:27:58 GMT

Originally published in the August 13, 2026 Newsletter.

Client Spotlight: How Therapy Changed My Life

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 02:25:17 GMT

by Shanthi Guruswamy, AMFT

Originally published in the August 13, 2026 Newsletter.

As therapists, the majority of the work that we do is concealed from the public. What happens inside the therapy room stays inside the therapy room, which remains a sacred container for our clients’ experiences. This gradual alchemical process, while hidden from the rest of the world, can be deeply transformational for our clients. With his permission, I sat down with John (name changed for privacy), a longtime Remarkable Services client, to talk to him about his experiences with therapy.

“Ninety percent of life is not predictable,” said John, “and people don’t overnight usually find themselves in a challenging situation. There's so little you can control as to what life comes at you. Mental health is something that you need to be aware of and monitor as if you have a cold or a chronic disease. It's the same thing. Your brain, it needs care. I didn't know that.”

Within a relatively short period, John lost his job, his home, his marriage, his pet, and many of the possessions that he had accumulated over a lifetime. Then he was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation (AFIB). The weight of these losses became more than he could bear, and he began contemplating suicide. It was only through therapy that John began to understand how the helplessness he felt in response to these experiences was connected to core beliefs about himself that had been formed decades earlier.

“I would say it started in childhood. It was a belief that I had about myself. I never had any agency. I never had any self-esteem. I never had any self-awareness. That was all taken away from me as a child. I wasn't allowed to make decisions. I didn't get agency into my 50s until I started getting psychotherapy. I was told not to dream by my parents, to just follow the plan and go work, study hard, get good grades, get into a good college, get a good job. They were very broken people, so they were very bad at leading.”

These beliefs followed John into adulthood, shaping the way he saw himself and the choices he made. At 18, as soon as he was legally able, John left his childhood home and moved 3,000 miles away from New York to San Francisco. Without a strong sense of direction or confidence in himself, he spent years searching for stability and connection. By the time he was 40, he fell in love and married a woman who already had three children. After fifteen years, the relationship ended, and John came to understand that the patterns he had learned in childhood had shaped the way he approached relationships.

“I was learning a lot of lessons the hard way. And it all starts with agency, self-esteem, and people that actually educate you and give you wings and teach you as a child what you really need to know. And so the marriage basically ended, I walked away in 2015.”

After his divorce, John faced another period of profound uncertainty. He sought out roommates again, but after several difficult living situations, he eventually rented a storage unit and began to live out of his car. He worked music gigs at farmers markets and earned extra money cleaning trucks, doing whatever he could to make ends meet.

“I made it work. I got homeless services, food banks. I was able to get showers Monday to Friday. It pissed me off that there wasn't anywhere I could get a shower on the weekend, especially during the summer. I had to spend two summers in my car, and it's horrific. Winters are easy. You just wear more. Summers, there's no escaping the heat. And homeless people are homeless every day. They're not just homeless Monday to Friday.”

John was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation (AFIB) after collapsing at one of his truck cleaning jobs. As he faced the possibility of surgery while homeless, years of grief, uncertainty, and fear resurfaced. In that moment, John felt overwhelmed by the belief that his life would continue to be defined by loss.

“That is when I decided to take my life. I said, if this is the way that my life is going to look, where everything I love, my best friend gone, my marriage gone, my pets. I gave all my stuff away and I was ready to kill myself, and I found myself in the middle of Todos Santos Park, sitting under the tree with my guitar, crying. I finally called 211. I said, ‘ I want to kill myself .’ The guy said, ‘Hey, hey, don't do it for me, promise me you won't do it tonight. I can get you help. ’ And he said, ‘Dude, we help people that have a lot harder stuff than you. We can help you. You're good. We got this. I promise. Just don't do it tonight .’”

The next day, John began taking Wellbutrin and started individual and group counseling. He had been crying every day for two years, and within a few days of starting the medication, he noticed a profound shift. Through therapy, he slowly began to feel connected again.

The combination of medication, counseling, and the gradual reconnection helped John begin rebuilding his life. Once he was able to move out of crisis, his curiosity urged him to seek deeper understanding and a new perspective on his life.

“In 2018, I went on an ayahuasca trip in Ecuador. I met the most amazing people from all around the world who were in my cohort, under the gazebo at night, 10,000 feet up in the Andes. I went to this doctor. I was trying to avoid the surgery, and I was trying to find a holistic way to avoid it. I sat there for two hours. When I was talking, she said, ‘So what do you think is your biggest problem? Is it a physical problem, an intellectual problem, an emotional problem or a spiritual problem?’ I said, ‘ Spiritual? ’ She said, ‘ Exactly. ’

“I said, ‘ Everything I have loved, everything I worked for, gets taken away. And if I'm going to get better, because I'm as low as I've ever been in my life, to the point where I try to commit suicide. It's like I got this mountain of work. I've got these medical appointments, I have exercise, I have diet. I have to try not to be isolated. It's just a mountain of work that I got to do. And there's no guarantee if I climb this mountain that there’s even going to be results. ’

“And she goes, ‘ No, no, see, that's the problem. There is no mountain. There's only a stream. You're creating the mountain. The mountain does not exist. The mountain's in your head. You built this mountain. Every day you wake up. Surrender to the stream. The stream knows where you need to go. ’

“That was the best $250 I had spent. It blew my mind. I mean, it just changed my perspective.”

This simple reframe changed John’s worldview. With the support of medication, therapy, and a new understanding of his experiences, he decided to shift his focus from ending his life to rebuilding it. He started looking for ways to restore his health, reconnect with others, and rediscover a sense of purpose. He reached out to the pastor at a church where he had been receiving services and asked if there was any way he could help.

“Two days later, he texted me this article from the Contra Costa Times. It was a joint venture between the Episcopalian Church and Contra Costa County. They would intake seniors and they would intake people looking for rooms. I got matched with this guy who was 92 years old. He was almost deaf. He just had his license taken away. I moved in, I started cooking for him, and we got along great. It was a match made in heaven. We got along so great. When he died, it was only four months later. But it was like, I'm good at this. That was my first foray into personal service, personal care.”

Caring for another person marked a turning point for John. What had begun as a practical solution to his housing needs became a much larger opportunity to rebuild the sense of connection he had spent much of his life believing was out of reach.

“I went from no connections to very deep connections by taking care of people, doing personal care. Reigniting the possibility of connection was very healing for me. And [so was] the perspective of knowing that you can make a difference, and you’re not worthless, and there is a place for you in this world.”

That realization became the foundation for a new understanding of himself. Rather than measuring his worth by what he had lost, John began to recognize it in the moments when he felt most connected. The more he healed, the clearer his sense of purpose became.

“I never feel more alive or more purposeful than either when I’m caring for someone or when I’m in the middle of writing a song and the words are flowing and the melodies are flowing. I can hear it, it’s like I’m taking dictation and I feel like I’m right in the right spot, right place in the universe, at the right moment, and I feel absolutely connected to the source. And it’s just like, this is where I was meant to be.”

In retrospect, John recognizes that healing was not a single moment of change, but a series of decisions to remain open to connection, support, and possibility. When asked what advice he would offer to someone who may be struggling right now, John said, “You have to make the decision that your way ain’t working, that there is a better way, and put that energy toward the other way, towards saying yes to help, and just taking one day at a time. And that’s how I got out of the pit.”

John's story is not one of instant transformation or a single breakthrough. It is the story of many small moments that accumulated into a lifetime of lasting change. Much of the work happened quietly, inside the therapy room and beyond it, unseen by the outside world. Like so many therapeutic journeys, its greatest impact is often invisible while it is happening — it can only be understood with the perspective granted by time.

Year At A Glance: August 2026

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 02:13:48 GMT

Originally published in the August 13, 2026 Newsletter.

Gail’s Corner: Refreshing Sour Grapes Recipe

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 01:54:46 GMT

by Gail Gutierrez

Thank You, Remarkable Team

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 01:46:26 GMT

by Adam Beer, COO

Embracing Your Clinical Identity: An Interview with James Parker, LMFT

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 01:39:38 GMT

by Shanthi Guruswamy, AMFT

Insights From Our Clinicians: What the NorCal Meeting Meant to Us

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 17:51:28 GMT

by Shanthi Guruswamy, AMFT

Originally published in the May 2, 2026 Newsletter.

I sat down with CEO and President of Remarkable Services, Dr. Paul Kramer, EdD, LMFT , to discuss the importance of creating opportunities for colleagues to build supportive in-person relationships while working remotely in a post-COVID landscape.

“We operate virtually for the most part,” said Paul. “We have a fair number of staff that meet in-person, but even with that, it's not like you get to see your colleagues. You meet in-person, and you're oftentimes two ships passing in the night. You're getting your client, they're getting their client.”

Because of the inherent privacy required from therapists coupled with the isolating nature of working remotely, it was that much more important to Paul to create meaningful in-person meetup opportunities for his staff. One such opportunity was the Northern California in-person team meetup on Monday, March 9, 2026.

Art Wagner, AMFT , noted that this was his first time meeting most of the team, including Paul, in real life. He observed how quickly natural conversations emerged that would never have been able to happen through a screen. Chatting with one another over food and drinks in-person, Art and I discovered we both went to graduate school at Saint Mary’s College of CA, and that we had both lived in Minnesota. Neither of those similarities between us, we both agreed, would have ever surfaced on a Microsoft Teams call.

“It was great to see people in flesh and bone and actually show up for something like this, because I think it's a completely different experience than it is when we're all behind screens or in Teams meetings. I think that sort of sharing of personal space was great,” said Art.

Fiorella Calenzani, AMFT , felt similarly. “I feel like everyone got along really well, and there were a lot of side conversations that would integrate into bigger conversations. It was a good flow and mix of people. And it was a comfortable environment, very laid back. You didn't need to show up as a professional or as a therapist. It was very much: We are all humans. We all have this profession. And every now and then, we'll get together and talk about it. So, it was a great experience.”

Fiorella and I recognized each other when we met in person for the first time at the meetup. We had only met in a professional context — group supervision — but at the meetup, we found ourselves talking about our graduate school experiences, career paths, and personal life in a different way than had been possible for us virtually.

“Because we're so clinical, I feel like we don't get to [show our personalities] too much. These types of outings … build so much more community. And especially with a company that's online, I feel like that's very important. It felt like a great balance between talking about cases and also being humans and having our little jokes, asking questions outside of work. [It is so important to] especially provide a space where you can break away from that professionalism.”

Art emphasized how rare this type of genuine peer connection is outside of supervision, and how valuable it felt to him. He compared meeting in-person to what we do in therapy and emphasized how real connection happens more deeply when we’re physically present with one another. Although he had always received a positive vibe from the organization, the in-person gathering made the company’s culture feel real for the first time.

“I always feel like I get more out of someone just in terms of connection and relationship when I‘m there live with them,” said Art. “It wasn’t just somebody behind a screen. It was a human being … I would say that that is the first time that I really felt a sense of culture within the organization because it was a live event… those kinds of live events, that’s exactly what builds culture. [This experience reminded me that] there is no replacement for personal contact.”

“Even though we're remote,” said Fiorella, “I definitely don't feel alone. I feel like it's such a collaborative experience. Everyone is so, so open, so willing to contribute, so willing to help. Collaboration is such a huge part of this company’s culture. I feel very supported.”

Art acknowledged the benefits of virtual work, including access to clients across the entire state, but stressed that in-person moments are what create something irreplaceable. He even requires some of his Bay Area clients to come into the office every fourth session in order to strengthen the therapeutic relationship.

“It's not like telehealth is going away,” said Paul. “It's not. I mean, it's here to stay. But the big need right now is in-person. That's what we keep hearing about. The individuals that showed up [at the meetup] were really intentional about it. And so I think that intention gives me a lot of confidence, but also it gives me some peace too, because I think that a lot of our folks will meet the need. They'll be willing to travel, to put on real clothes again, and go back into the office.”

Fiorella explained that her intentionality stemmed from the same energy reflected towards her. “I liked how Adam and Dr. Paul opened up the floor for us. Like, do you have any questions? Do you have any concerns? Is there anything that we can talk about? They were very open and welcoming to any and all feedback, any kind of conversation. And so it was great to see how willing our leaders are, because they also flew in and drove in from SoCal. It's just great to see the effort, and refreshing to have a space like that, because I feel like it helped me feel like I'm part of this company and like my voice and feedback matters.”

Fiorella and Art also expressed hope for more frequent in-person events and greater integration between the Northern and Southern California teams — including opportunities to meet Southern California colleagues, like Clinical Supervisor James Parker, LMFT .

Paul is already planning more meetups across the state. “It’s not on the calendar yet, but we're going to do an Orange County, Los Angeles area thing. And then in July is San Diego.”

When I asked my peers what they would like to share with our fellow colleagues who were not able to attend, Art said, “You missed out … make sure that you don’t miss the next one because it becomes a lot more valuable than you might imagine it is.”

Fiorella echoed Art’s sentiments, and said, “I just wish to motivate you if you're on the cusp. I hope we can kind of push you, just a little nudge. Like, you know what? You can come. I know it's after a tiring day, but it's chill. It's so fun.”

Paul’s goal was simply to remind clinicians that if they have the time or capacity, they have the opportunity to meet up with the team in-person. Diverse clinicians attract diverse clients, and he emphasized the importance of meeting his staff members where they are at.

“It’s not required for everybody,” said Paul regarding attendance at the meetups. “We all have a voice.”

He continued, “This meetup has reinforced my confidence that we can continue to scale Remarkable in order to to meet those needs and increase our and go back to in-person, because that's the thing, prior to COVID, at the time, we had about maybe 15 therapists, and everybody was in-person. And so I'd like to see a little bit more balance. I think that's what shifted for me. It feels good that we will be increasing in-person services.”

With the increase of company meetups, in-person services, and opportunities for trainees, associates, licensed clinicians, and admin/staff to collaborate and cross-pollinate ideas, Remarkable is entering a new chapter in its journey.

“Our greatest strength is our people,” Paul said. “It's where the innovation comes from.”

Strength-Based Parenting: Key Insights from Adam’s Presentation

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 17:25:03 GMT

by Valentina Fietta, Marketing Director

Originally published in the May 2, 2026 Newsletter.

Adam Beer, LMFT and Chief Clinical Officer of Remarkable Services , presented on Strength-Based Parenting. Drawing from his professional background with foster youth, residential treatment, and transitional programs — and his personal experience as a father of three (ages 21, 19, and 16) — he encouraged parents and caregivers to shift from a corrective, problem-focused approach to one that builds on strengths and empowers children.

CORE MESSAGE

Instead of focusing on “what’s wrong,” focus on “what’s strong.” Parenting should serve as a supportive “backstop” rather than hovering or fixing everything, helping children develop self-esteem, emotional regulation, resilience, and internal motivation.

KEY INSIGHTS

Identify strengths (in yourself and your children) : Recognize your own strengths first, then ask children questions like “What do you like about yourself?” or “What are you proud of?” This builds self-validation beyond grades or behavior.
Shift your lens - focus on what’s strong, not what’s wrong : Use the math test analogy. Celebrate the correct answers instead of fixating on mistakes. Children internalize the language we use about them.
Use positive, sporadic reinforcement : Highlight specific effort (“You worked really hard on that”) rather than generic praise. Reinforcement works best when unpredictable.
Be the backstop, not the helicopter : Allow age-appropriate mistakes and independence. Over-helping leads to learned helplessness. Normalize failure as a learning opportunity.
Adopt empowering language and the platinum rule : Treat each child the way *they* want to be treated. Adapt your style to their unique personality and use language focused on effort and understanding rather than blame.
Model emotional regulation and vulnerability : Demonstrate self-time-outs, deep breathing, and healthy emotional expression. Teach coping skills through collaboration, not dictation.
Practice active and reflective listening : Give full attention, reflect back what you hear, validate feelings, and use open-ended questions instead of closed ones.
Build daily strength-based practices : Create family routines like “peaks and pits” at dinner. Celebrate effort and growth. Your voice becomes your child’s inner voice.
Collaborative change process : Involve children in creating their own action plans for change by asking questions rather than giving direct instructions. This promotes ownership and sustainability.

CONCLUSION

Strength-based parenting shifts the lens from correction and criticism to empowerment and connection. By focusing on strengths, empowering language, safe mistakes, and genuine listening, we help children build self-esteem, resilience, and emotional regulation.

Small, intentional changes can make a profound difference. The goal is to create a safe environment where children feel seen, valued, and capable — because how we make them feel matters most.

remarkable-services

August 2026 Staff Picks

Client Spotlight: How Therapy Changed My Life

by Shanthi Guruswamy, AMFT

Year At A Glance: August 2026

Gail’s Corner: Refreshing Sour Grapes Recipe

by Gail Gutierrez

Thank You, Remarkable Team

by Adam Beer, COO

Embracing Your Clinical Identity: An Interview with James Parker, LMFT

by Shanthi Guruswamy, AMFT

Insights From Our Clinicians: What the NorCal Meeting Meant to Us

by Shanthi Guruswamy, AMFT

Strength-Based Parenting: Key Insights from Adam’s Presentation

by Valentina Fietta, Marketing Director

CORE MESSAGE

KEY INSIGHTS

CONCLUSION

Moments That Matter: Reflections from Our Northern California Meetup

by Adam Beer, CCO

Reclaiming Connection: Why In-Person Matters More Than Ever

by Dr. Paul Kramer, CEO

April 2026 Remarkable Connections Newsletter

Interview with Paul Kramer:

Interview with Fiorella:

Interview with Art:

remarkable-services

August 2026 Staff Picks

Client Spotlight: How Therapy Changed My Life

by Shanthi Guruswamy, AMFT

Year At A Glance: August 2026

Gail’s Corner: Refreshing Sour Grapes Recipe

by Gail Gutierrez

Thank You, Remarkable Team

by Adam Beer, COO

Embracing Your Clinical Identity: An Interview with James Parker, LMFT

by Shanthi Guruswamy, AMFT

Insights From Our Clinicians: What the NorCal Meeting Meant to Us

by Shanthi Guruswamy, AMFT

Strength-Based Parenting: Key Insights from Adam’s Presentation

by Valentina Fietta, Marketing Director

CORE MESSAGE

KEY INSIGHTS

CONCLUSION

Moments That Matter: Reflections from Our Northern California Meetup

by Adam Beer, CCO

Reclaiming Connection: Why In-Person Matters More Than Ever ﻿

by Dr. Paul Kramer, CEO

April 2026 Remarkable Connections Newsletter

Interview with Paul Kramer:

Interview with Fiorella:

Interview with Art:

Reclaiming Connection: Why In-Person Matters More Than Ever