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Sierra Dator, MSW, LCSW, 735 Stony Point Road, Petaluma, CA (2026)

04/19/2026

Have you ever wondered for yourself or someone else if there can actually be a benefit to not being well?

While that may be true consciously for some people, many times there is an unconscious process happening where a person doesn’t realize how certain behaviors are keeping them stuck and pulling them away from what they say they want: to feel better, heal, or stop harmful patterns.

This unconscious process is called secondary gain. It means that, in some way, being unwell is serving a purpose.

For example, someone who struggles with anger may have learned that exploding is the only way people listen. If the anger goes away, there may be an unconscious fear that they won’t be heard.

Or someone with severe anxiety may have learned that panic is the only way to get space, avoid pressure, or have others finally take their needs seriously. If they grew up feeling unheard, anxiety may have become the language that got attention.

So if the anger or anxiety improves, they may be left with the deeper fear: Will anyone listen to me now? Will my needs matter?

Understanding secondary gain can create empathy and insight. In many cases, it is not conscious manipulation—it is an old survival strategy that once worked, but no longer serves them.

Healing often means helping someone build new, healthier ways to feel safe, be heard, and get their needs met. Therapy can be one powerful way to do that.

If you’d like support exploring these patterns in therapy, feel free to email me at [email protected].

01/01/2026

A New Year

Within it, always room for more opportunity.

Opportunity can involve so much—like training for a race or trying something new.

It can also be the opportunity to slow down. Rest. Close your eyes.

In th spirit of being authentically you, decide for yourself what YOU need and know that is enough.

The posts and reports you see of people’s best lives, cheer them on and let them go. Release any negativity in your heart knowing you are moving to where you need to go.

Because within each of us is a landscape to create and a landscape to discover.

How beautiful is that?!

Wishing you the best start of another opportunity to be YOU ❤️

12/05/2025

Where do you feel your best?

Why is that?

Can you get there?

If not, can you recreate any piece of that for yourself?

I feel my best outdoors. In particular, in the mountains or amongst trees.

I can’t always get there but you’ll often find me looking at trees.

Because when I do, I become increasingly more settled inside.

I feel a shift and connection. My mood improves. I am grounded.

If you need sun, get a lamp.

If you need heat, go to the sauna. Take a hot shower.

If you need the ocean, listen to the waves on your favorite music service.

If you need snow, hold ice.

Close your eyes and imagine yourself there. Feel the presence. Notice the moment improving with each breath.

You deserve to feel your best ❤️

11/16/2025

How do you bounce back? From heart ache, loss, betrayals, and what you didn’t see coming?

I ask because resilience has been on my mind. I’ve been picking the idea a part and thinking more critically about how we build it.

By definition, resilience is bouncing back from a set back.

In order for me to understand this more thoroughly, I wrote down all the set backs I could think of that I’ve had in my life.

In my 47 years, there have been a truckload. Not just a tiny two seater Toyota Tacoma, but think Ford F-250 with a big-walled trailer hitched on the back. Fill that to the brim.

When I go back as far as I can, the experiences start when I’m very young. In this story I’m a toddler and hospitalized with an infection in my neck. I remember being tiny and scared with a big injection coming my way.

When I move into my teen years, there’s an experience of when a boy I had crushed on for YEARS invited me out. I was thrilled to be noticed. However, when I pushed him off me twice because I didn’t want to make out with him, he tossed me aside. I had my mom come get me. That one hurt and was humiliating. (PS. If you recognize this story as one of the 2 other people present or the perpetrator, you acted like absolute f*ckers.)

In my athletic career, there were champion game losses and injuries. There were comebacks, like when I earned only a few minutes of playing time my freshman year of college. The next year I returned and earned myself a starting spot. And that header I scored off a corner kick from Heather Mau—I’ll never forget the feeling of it knicking off my head and soaring into the upper right corner of the net.

As a parent, there was the C-Section I swore I’d never have but then had in a rush to save my little girl’s life. Then the breastfeeding that didn’t come easy, and the post partum depression I didn’t know I had until it lifted.

And my biggest losses yet include both my grandparents and parents divorcing later in life.

These are some painful highlights but there’s so much I’ve overcome to be here. Right here in this very moment.

Decisions I’ve made around how to cope and the will I’ve found to move forward.

As I’ve pulled a part all these life events, I find how we develop the ability to bounce back is through our coping.

The healthier we can cope with whatever the set back is, the easier it is to move forward. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t take time. More time than you’d ever want in some cases. I mean, it took me 7 years to get through my parents divorce and the resentment. I’m finally on the other side.

But it could’ve been much worse. I could’ve never gotten through. If I picked up my old ways of coping—binge drinking and ni****ne abuse, I surely would be reeling in not only the grief of my parents situation but other self-created problems.

But I’ve learned a lot from other set backs. Alcohol doesn’t solve. Ni****ne sucks. And I want to show my daughters how to feel and deal in this life.

So you want to know how I bounced back from my parents’ divorce? It was through my dedication to coping in the healthiest of ways possible. I put my head down and worked Monday through Thursday. On Thursdays, I went to therapy. Then Thursday night I’d have 1-2 glasses of wine. I’d watch TV with my family and when they went to bed, I’d cry. I’d write in my journal. In the morning, I’d put on the Disney Moana sound track and dance with my girls. I talked with my friends and played with my puppy. I gardened and ran. I did this routine in what felt like forever, but I knew I’d get through.

How did I know? Because I learned from other set backs. That truckload I mentioned above is full of information. When we look at Kolb’s Learning Cycle Model (a post for another day), we see how experiences give us information and when we use that information, experiences transform.

So if you’re encountering a setback, be honest with yourself about how you’re coping. Know this is foundational to getting you through. Give it time—way more time than you want.

And when you’re ready, toss it in the back of the truck, roll the windows down, turn on your song, and keep going ❤️

11/08/2025

As a kid, I could have really used therapy. One unsettling night, my parents sat me on the couch nestled between them when I had an out of control moment in junior high, and they offered me this option.

I was terrified and pleaded not to go.

In the end, they didn’t make me.

Truthfully, I don’t think we had any therapists in our small town in Northwestern Pennsylvania at the time. Though I’m sure a gander through the yellow pages would have turned up a few in the surrounding area.

But it wasn’t just location and my resistance keeping therapy away. I think it was also because with therapy came stigma.

My parents were not keep up with the Jones’s kind of people. But I also think that stigma ran deeper than that. What would mental health care mean for us as a family?

I would never really know until I decided to go to therapy at age 18.

As a freshman in college, I tried out my first therapist. I had a major traumatic event and decided I needed help. I went to one session and bailed. It felt totally unhelpful.

The adult me knows how unfortunate this decision was because I continued to flounder though masked by confidence.

Later, at age 23, my supervisor in my Social Work graduate program, who doubled as a trusted mentor, saw me falling a part and suggested I see a friend of hers. So I went. And I went again. And I spent a semester looking at my life for the first time in a new way.

I unpacked traumatic experiences, my substance use, and found strength to get through one of the most difficult times in my life.

This is just the beginning of my therapeutic journey.

One I would have been wise to start long ago.

But you don’t know what you don’t know.

And you’re not ready until you’re ready.

So if you’re on the fence, check it out. Allow yourself to be curious. Know if you don’t click with the first therapist, there’s so many more out there to try. Find your fit.

And that stigma part? In some communities and families, it still exists. But my advice, don’t let it be a barrier.

This is your life. This is your growth and development. This is your path leading to a better future for you and the next generations.

❤️Sierra

10/07/2025

Let me set the stage for you:

I’m getting ready to exit the store 5Below after purchasing a paintbrush set as I’m making my college daughter a care package filled with art supplies to throw her and her girlfriends a little Halloween craft party.

Right at the exit is a young girl employee sitting on a stool. There is a group of middle-age women before me making their way out. Just as they do, the girl on the stool says, “Hey, I need to see your receipt!”

The spokeswoman for the women’s group says agitatingly to her, “You can’t make me show you my receipt. It’s against the law. What you’re doing is illegal.”

The girl says meekly, “I’m just doing my job. Can I see your receipt?”

The woman becomes even more aggressive in her tone and actions stating to the employee again that it’s illegal and that she doesn’t have to do it.

The young girl responds, “Fine, go then.“

I’m right behind them watching this all unfold. I am shocked seeing a grown woman acting this way. I go to the young girl and attempt to show her my receipt on my phone. I tell her that I’m sorry that someone treated her that way, and I tell her that I know she’s just doing her job.

I’m seconds behind the women who are slowly moving out of the store. The spokeswoman’s going off about how the girl was yelling at her. I debate whether I’ll say something as I’m not sure my words will go anywhere, and I also recognize that I am calm and cool and can handle whatever happens next.

So, the urge overtakes me, and I say to the woman in a calm and gentle way, “Hey, that young girl was just doing her job. You could’ve been a little kinder.“

The woman squares up to me and to my surprise she freezes. I wasn’t sure if she was going become verbally aggressive. Instead, she just stands there, staring blankly at me saying nothing. I wish her a good day, turn around, and head to my car. A few steps away I hear what I think is a a “F-You” from her entourage.

What’s important about this story and why I’m sharing it with you is because one of the best tools we can have in our tool bag is understanding nervous system states. In fact, I’ve worked for years to understand my own and to help others understand their’s.

Nervous system states are what we do when we sense there is danger, whether real or perceived. When our body senses something, it may drop into fight, fight, freeze, or fawn. When we drop into those states, we are no longer able to respond to life in our calm, cool way. That is not until we rise back up into what is called our Ventral Vagal state. This is the state where we are calm, cool, and can really hear the feedback someone is offering.

When that woman squared up to me, I wasn’t sure which state she would be in. I approached her when she was in the fight stage, rattling off about how that worker was yelling at her (for the record that is not how I experienced that situation whatsoever). So it was a big risk for me to try and talk to this woman when she was in an activated and defensive state. However, she moved out of fight and dropped down into freeze. I saw this shift right before my eyes. And it was then that I knew my words would only get somewhere if I remain kind and calm so I was very intentional with my voice and in keeping my distance.

Because it is true that in these nervous system states, we’re often unable to hear people. It is true that I probably wasted my breath. Because when we are in those nervous system states, we aren’t focused on what people say. We’re focused on how they’re saying it, and we focus on our own internal experience. The words don’t get heard until we’re back in that calm, cool place.

I share this story with you to encourage you to reflect on your own nervous system states and the people around you that you’re trying to communicate with. When we understand nervous system states, we understand that timing of conversations and our tone of voice can be everything.

So did I change the world with that interaction? Probably not. Will I be recalled as some b*tch villain by the 5Below entourage? Quite possibly. Was the psychology nerd in me fascinated in noticing each of our nervous system states and deciding what to do from there? Absolutely.

Remember, knowledge is power. Understanding nervous system state is beyond beneficial to our relationships and helps improve communication.

09/11/2025

I was in graduate school in New York State on 9/11 when the Twin Towers were hit. Students in my classroom, some from New York City, got up from their seat absolutely panicked. Classes dismissed that day, and I went home with no family to return to. I was scared. And I did what every other person in this country did in that moment, I turned on the TV and consumed myselfwith the news.

For hours, I watched image after image.

The next day I went to my internship at Crisis Services in Buffalo, New York. The calls flooded through with people feeling distraught. And there was young me, fielding calls and trying to do my best. At some point in the day, I met with my team to talk about how to really support people in this time when I too was just as anxious as the caller. The feedback from my superiors was simple: encourage people to stop WATCHING the news. I said this to people on phone calls and to the schools and community organizations we presented to over the next few weeks with people who were emotionally overwhelmed. “Turn off the news. If you need information, listen to the news. Read articles. But stop consuming images.”

Because here’s some truth.

You don’t have to look and looking may not help.

The news, the banter, the chatter.

The debates, the anger, the violence.

The catastrophes, tragedies, and accidents.

You don’t have to look.

Images are a source of holding onto trauma. They get stored in the mind and burrow into your cells to be brought up again and again. Often re-traumatizing or at least drumming up anxiety.

You can be in the know without the images. You can understand what’s going on in the world without seeing.

You don’t have to look.

Your mental health matters. Your ability to function and carry on with the living and doing what you and your people need is vitally important.

With your mental health in tact, you are a better partner, parent, and friend. You are someone who can come from a grounded place to support and make change versus being wrapped up in anxiety and fury and possibly doing more harm than good.

Nothing good happens from an unregulated nervous system state.

Everyday, if I want to truly help others, I need to be regulated. In New York, I stopped watching the news and got information from other sources. And some days I didn’t.

Some days I just went to class, my internship, did my homework, and headed to the gym. I needed life to be normal if I was going to survive.

So I share this with you to let you off the hook. You have no obligation to look. Your family and friends might consume the media like an icy cold glass of lemonade on a hot summers day, and may judge you for not joining them, but you don’t have to. Decide what makes sense for you. Keep yourself intact and go from there. Understand your own tolerance about what you can handle moment by moment and day by day. Let the guilt go and put your mental health first. And one way to do that is to limit images and media consumption.

Photo Circa Graduate School
days

08/18/2025

It’s a bummer how often we go around worrying about what others think of us.

I catch myself sometimes falling prey to the unbridled thoughts about my likableness. And when I hop down the rabbit hole of those thoughts, they generally aren’t good.

For me, these unhelpful thoughts come from a younger time where everything I did mattered so deeply and felt like they were seen by such a critical eye. Ironically, the reality was, the most critical eye was mine.

Yes, some people are judgmental. Yes, some people do think negative thoughts about others.

Now though, my adult self is aware just how often we’ll never know what others are thinking and it often doesn’t ever matter.

The caveat is that when we aren’t aware, what we’re left with instead is a terrible narrative we’ve created about who we believe other people think we are. And if we’re not careful, our anxious and self-deprecating parts will take the lead in this story.

If this happens to you, I want to invite you to make a choice. Because when you are aware you are feeling overly concerned about what someone thinks of you, an opportunity arises.

The opportunity affords you the option to either:

#1 Decide whether you’re going to invest your time, energy, and thinking into a terrible narrative about why you aren’t likable.

Or

#2 Whether you’re going to choose something else to focus on—and this focus could be on anything

I know it may not sound this easy, but I’m telling you, it can get to be this easy. When you embrace the fact that you have choice in your life, you can make powerful decisions for yourself. It may take practice and many attempts at first. However, with awareness, we can make really great decisions for ourselves. Choosing not to hop down the hole of worrying what others think about you is one.

Give it a try. If it doesn’t work the first time, try again. Living well is about going to drawing board again and again.

PS. This post comes from a place of exercising the choice I just described above. Sitting on the sofa thinking about if people like me and then deciding I don’t want to expend my energy on those thoughts. I use this tool, and you can too when you need it.

07/23/2025

This place is where dares happen and risks are taken.

Where courage is brought to the table.

Stoked with inner determination and outer encouragement.

And with enough tries, confidence surfaces.

To soar through the sky.

To leave the ground and for a moment take flight.

Until plunging into the recently thawed mountain water.

Sure to take your breath away.

Rope swings.

One way to take risks and build confidence in your abilities, especially for kids (you’ll see one dangling on the left-hand side of this picture).

But as you move into and through adulthood, many more opportunities emerge.

Asking tough questions

Expressing your feelings

Sharing experiences of your upbringing especially when those around you saw it differently

Making new friends

Loving someone

Becoming a parent

Going alone

Moving towns or states or countries

Making contact with mortality

Listening

There are so many risks to be had and yet these risks have the potential to ignite life.

Speaking your truth, professing your love, inviting someone along, forging solo, changing scenery—all of it has great potential to build your confidence.

But you’ve got to be willing to get uncomfortable.

To have life look a bit ragged.

To flail through the air.

Knowing it’s going to be cold down there.

Just like on that rope swing.

Despite that jolt of frigid water, odds are good, you’ll be ready to try again.

Maybe even climb a step higher as you launch.

For it is this aliveness making life rich.

07/10/2025

I’m sitting next to mom feeling the chilly air conditioner buzz around us. She’s in bed idly snoring, and I’m remembering the mom I had and the mom I love.

Just as both Alzheimer’s and Vascular Dementia have taken my mom, I feel deeply entrenched in the reality of not being promised another day. The tragedies of the recent flood in Texas, where lives were unjustly lost including those of several little girls, shows us once again how little control we have over life. That reality is both scary and devastating.

In my therapy practice, I work with many individuals who have a deep-seated fear of death. Sometimes this manifests in generalized anxiety and other times as OCD symptoms.

OCD involves obsessive thoughts accompanied by compulsions attempting to prevent bad things from happening. Compulsions can include checking things repeatedly, engaging in rituals having nothing to do with the actual fear, and never trusting for long any positive information.

Within this fear, life for some can be limiting. The obsessions and compulsions prevent someone from living their life fully. In this case, fear is the thief of joy. It’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop. In my opinion, this is no way to live.

And trust me, I get it. I’m terrified of developing Alzheimer’s and Vascular Dementia. If you took a look at my family history, you’d see why. Odds of skirting around it are slim.

But I’ve made a very conscious decision about how I want to live my life.

It’s a way I have been living much of it but up until recently it’s been called to the forefront of my consciousness. Maybe because of my mom or my age or the state of the world. Maybe because I work with my patients in this way.

This path forward is difficult for some to get on board with, but I’ll share it with you in case it can help you or someone you love.

My solution is about moving towards a place of acceptance of death AND towards committing to the way I want to live my life. It also includes not letting the fear of the unknown get in my way.

Which leads me to this photo here. I went solo backpacking for the first time ever. Because I accept that I can die at any point and also choose to live accepting this fact, I am committed to living my life fully and doing things that I want to, like spending more time in the woods. So off I went; I had the most soul-soothing experience.

Truthfully though, I wish those little girls at Camp Mystic and their parents had more time. I wish my mom had more time too. I wish I had more time with her. She’s been slipping through my fingers for the past 8 years. It’s sad and it’s hard and it’s scary but I’m showing up to this life fully.

In closing, I want you to know you have a choice. You can choose the solution I’ve offered which is moving towards accepting what you fear and committing to living your best life while you’re here. That’s what I’m doing; I hope you consider this writing an open invitation to do the same.

Sierra Dator, MSW, LCSW

04/19/2026

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12/05/2025

11/16/2025

11/08/2025

10/07/2025

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