Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Irene Yaymadjian.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Dr. Yaymadjian. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Hillside Wellness Center all started when I was in my first year of my doctorate program at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Growing up I’ve always known that I wanted to help people while working on my own and never for anyone else. I was in my grant writing class and my second semester of my first year of my doctorate program where I was given an assignment to develop a hypothetical center for a community. I developed a center that would be a place for people can come and obtain services such as psychotherapy and body work like acupuncture and chakra work and spiritual guidance. As time went on and I went through the journey of being in my doctorate program in psychology, I ended up seeing a few psychologists along the way, but there were times being student that I was not able to pay for therapy the $250 or $150 or whatever they charged. I started looking around to find community counseling health center that really focused on helping me find myself at a difficult time in my life. I found a few community centers, but they weren’t really what I was looking for. I was looking for a place that I can go and feel safe, relaxed, and be OK to work on my full self, meaning my mind, my body, and my soul. So after I graduated from my doctorate program and completed my dissertation, a year later, I continued to obsess about my center, what I would call it, and how it would look like, and so forth. I remember going to Lowe’s and looking up colors for the walls and imagining the furniture that I would have. LOL. In February 2017 I put every single penny I had my bank account and I got together a team of people that I hired to get my nonprofit paperwork ready for my center. During this time, I would visit multiple places that had open office space for lease, but my heart never stuck to any of the locations, until one day, randomly as I was heading to the mall, I looked to my right and saw a beautiful building here I was determined to find a spot, and long story short, I found it. (See going to the mall can really change your life at times.” Lucky me in October 2017 I was able to Open my nonprofit of what I know call Hillside Wellness Center. At Hillside we focus on the mind, body, and soul. We have psychotherapy services, groups, we have an acupuncturist, a psychiatrist, a nutritionist all working as a team.
One of my favorite things to do is to empower people and make them feel good in a holistic matter, and that is exactly my centers mission, to provide services regardless of income level of patients while keeping in mind and making sure that our center is beautiful clean and safe.
I really enjoy working with mothers who have new babies and working with a lot of women who were dealing with body dysmorphia, and relationship issues. I love empowering them and getting them to a place where they feel strong.
I always felt and continue to feel very proud of the work that I do and that we do at the center, and I always make sure that all our patients at our center have the best treatment possible regardless of what they pay. We are now in the process of applying for grants and we will be running our very first fundraiser as a center in Sherman Oaks in the summer. Look out for that!
In addition to running my nonprofit center I am also a professor at two universities Pepperdine University and Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena. I love teaching students and I love helping and mentoring new upcoming therapists become the best and most comfortable therapist that they can possibly become. I run around to different places and conduct self-care and burn out prevention workshops for Therapists which I love doing this was a part of my dissertation. And recently I started my own YouTube channel called the fancy therapist and I’m dedicating this channel to helping the public understand mental health and mental illness better. I know mental health has a very strong stigma attached to it and it’s important for people to feel normal for wanting to go to therapy. My YouTube channel is really focused on empowering younger women/ younger girls and helping them understand that they could really do anything that they want in their life and that they can be pretty and smart and there’s nothing wrong with that. I work with a lot of females who express a lot of how much social media affects how they feel about themselves and its very sad. A lot of girls think that they have to be famous make-up artist or model of these days in order for them to stand out or to “be somebody “in their life, however it’s important to educate girls that they could be beautiful, and they can be a doctor at the same time and they don’t have to be famous on Instagram for them to exist in the world. I grew up in a very strict Catholic family so the important factor growing up was making sure that I got married and have babies. But for some reason my mind went elsewhere, and I totally rebelled in a different way and did not get married and did not have babies in my 20s and dedicated my whole life to my education and developing my center of my dreams. Now I’m in a really good relationship, I’m about to get married, and babies will be on their way very shortly. That all worked out!
Has it been a smooth road?
The process from going from graduate school to the founder of a nonprofit therapy center was quite challenging at times, with all the paperwork and legalities that never learned I was a bit lost in the beginning and people were not very helpful I got a lot of “that sounds great, by it will take a lot of time and energy.” Thankfully my better half was there to support me and help motivate me to continue with my dream.
One of the main things that I was worried about is not having a foundation meeting stable income to be able to keep my center running so I started small fundraisers on Facebook and had family members Pitch in and donate to my center so that I could build a small foundation where I can keep it running for a month at least at a time.
My boyfriend basically renovated the entire center himself. I was very thankful for all the help he, my family, and friends gave me, without them it would have been very difficult to even get started.
So, let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Hillside Wellness Center story. Tell us more about the business.
What is so unique about our center is that we combine different therapists in the therapy process, so the patient will have some sort of body work that they would do whether it’s acupuncture, cupping, sound therapy, or massage therapy 30 minutes prior To coming into their therapy session, many of my patients have expressed how much it helps them de-escalate before session so that they don’t take up half the session trying to relieve their anxiety and start talking about what they really want to talk about 30 minutes into a 50 minute session. So, we really try to give them a very “whole” experience as I like to call it.
So, whether you’re having trouble with your body, experiencing depression, we’re having anxiety in your relationship or other parts of your life, we are here to help you at affordable rate while providing you the best treatment possible as a team. You can check us out at www.hillsidewellnesscenter.org and if you’d like we would appreciate all donations given to our center they are all a tax write off which is wonderful, but we are able to keep the center open due to donations so every penny is appreciated very much. See you at future fundraisers and please keep an eye out for Instagram postings @hillside_wellness
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Moving forward, I would like to expand hillside wellness center to a larger location in the future so that we can accommodate every patient that comes in through the door. We also take a lot of time and do community work as volunteers for different shelters which I think is very important component to our center and its mission. So that is definitely something that I will continue to do through hillside.
Pricing:
- Therapy sessions are income based and range from $30-$100 a session.
- Psychological assessments $80
- Group workshops $20
Contact Info:
- Address: 13701 Riverside Dr. Suite 727
Sherman Oaks Ca. 91423 - Website: www.hillsidewellnesscenter.org
- Phone: 818.743.4033
- Email: [email protected]
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