Beachside Center for Trauma + Anxiety

09/02/2026

🌊 WELCOME TO THE TEAM

Alyssa Breznitsky, BA, GSBAI
Academic Case Management | Behavioral Interventions
Graduate Student Behavior Analyst Intern, Ohio State University
Enneagram 6

We’re excited to welcome Alyssa to Beachside Center for Trauma + Anxiety, where she joins our interdisciplinary team supporting children, adolescents, and families.

Alyssa brings more than 10 years of experience working with children in K–3 educational settings, with a background in early childhood development, classroom behavior, individualized academic support, and collaboration with families.

She earned her BS in Early Childhood Education from the University of Memphis and is currently pursuing her Master’s in Applied Behavior Analysis at The Ohio State University, where she is completing her graduate practicum and gaining supervised clinical experience working directly with patients.

At the Center, a primary focus of Alyssa’s role is Academic Case Management—helping bridge the gap between a child’s mental health, behavioral functioning, and success in the classroom. She works alongside our clinical team and families to identify academic barriers, strengthen organization and school-related skills, coordinate educational needs, and develop practical supports that can carry across treatment, home, and school environments.

Her graduate training in Applied Behavior Analysis adds another important layer to that work. Through behavior analysis and behavioral interventions, Alyssa helps our team better understand what may be driving or maintaining a behavior—not simply reacting to the behavior itself. This allows for more individualized strategies that support emotional, behavioral, developmental, and academic functioning.

Alyssa also serves as Program Manager for Beachside Applied Behavior Analysis, a specialized division of Beachside Behavioral Health Services, as we continue developing integrated behavioral services for children and families.

Her combination of more than a decade in the classroom and advanced graduate training gives her a unique perspective within the Beachside Center for Trauma + Anxiety: understanding that a child’s struggles at school are rarely isolated from their emotional health, environment, relationships, and behavioral needs.

As an Enneagram 6, Alyssa brings loyalty, dependability, thoughtfulness, and a strong commitment to the children and families she serves.

Outside of Beachside and graduate school, Alyssa loves spending time with her family, going to shows, wakeboarding, boating, working out, boxing, painting, and creating art. 🎨🌊

Welcome to Beachside Center for Trauma + Anxiety, Alyssa! 💙

08/26/2026

08/26/2026

🏄‍♂️ WELCOME TO THE TEAM, KEEGAN! 🌊

We’re incredibly excited to welcome Keegan Gregory to the Beachside Center for Trauma + Anxiety as our Team Rider | Adolescent Peer Support Specialist.

Keegan is an avid wakeboarder with aspirations of taking his riding to the professional level. But when we heard the story behind his passion for the sport—and the role wakeboarding played in his own mental health journey—we knew this needed to be about much more than sponsoring an athlete.

We first met Keegan through our community partner, Orlando Watersports Complex (OWC), who also supports our experiential Behavioral Activation programming within Beachside’s adolescent DBT program.

But Keegan’s story started well before we met him.

As a teenager, Keegan experienced an extremely traumatic event that left him navigating an incredibly painful and vulnerable period in his life. While struggling with his mental health and recognizing that something needed to change, he entered treatment with another valued community partner, Family First Adolescent Services.

It was during an experiential outing at Family First that Keegan discovered wakeboarding.

And something clicked.

“I used to beg my mom to take me to the wakepark when she came down for visits. It became my new obsession—a healthy one. Wakeboarding saved my life along with wanting to do the work. I wanted to work at Family First after I graduated and am interested in the mental health field.”

There’s something powerful about that story—and it fits deeply with what we teach adolescents through DBT.

Trauma treatment isn’t only about processing what happened. It’s also about helping young people develop the skills, relationships, confidence, and meaningful experiences that allow them to move forward.

Within DBT, we focus on mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. Behavioral Activation gives adolescents opportunities to practice those skills in the real world through movement, healthy connection, challenge, mastery, and meaningful experiences.

Wakeboarding didn’t replace the difficult therapeutic work Keegan chose to do. It became a healthy outlet that supported that work and gave him something meaningful to move toward.

Today, Keegan wants to use his lived experience to support adolescents navigating their own trauma and mental health challenges.

As our Adolescent Peer Support Specialist, Keegan will work alongside our clinical team providing connection, encouragement, mentorship, and an authentic peer perspective within our adolescent DBT program and Behavioral Activation activities.

His role isn’t to be a therapist. It’s something different—and incredibly valuable.

Sometimes an adolescent needs someone beside them who can genuinely say, “I understand what it’s like to struggle. I accepted help. I did the work. And I found something worth moving toward.”

Peer support can make treatment feel more relatable, reinforce healthy coping and DBT skills, and help young people see that what happened to them does not have to define what comes next.

And if we can help Keegan chase his dream of going pro while he helps other adolescents discover their own healthy outlet, purpose, or passion?

That’s exactly the kind of community we want to build.

Welcome to the Beachside family, Keegan. We’re SO stoked to have you. 🤙🌊🏄‍♂️

Beachside Center for Trauma + Anxiety
A specialized program of Beachside Behavioral Health Services

Rewrite Your Story.

BeachsideBHS.com

08/15/2026

Ride it out. Talk it out

This week for Behavioral Activation Group, we headed out to Orlando Watersports Complex (OWC) for a day on the water wakeboarding. 🌊🏄

Behavioral activation is about more than simply “staying busy.” It’s an evidence-based approach that helps people intentionally engage in meaningful, rewarding, and goal-directed activities—especially when anxiety, low mood, fear, or avoidance are telling them to withdraw.

Wakeboarding gave us an incredible opportunity to put that into practice while reinforcing the four core skill areas of DBT: Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotion Regulation, and Interpersonal Effectiveness.

🧠 Mindfulness: Wakeboarding demands present-moment attention—body position, the pull of the cable, the board underneath you, and what’s directly ahead. It’s mindfulness in motion.

🔥 Distress Tolerance: Falling, managing frustration, getting back up, and trying again means experiencing discomfort without immediately escaping it.

🌊 Emotion Regulation: Behavioral activation reminds us that we don’t always have to wait until we feel ready to act. Activities that create movement, mastery, enjoyment, and accomplishment can interrupt avoidance and create positive reinforcement. Sometimes action comes first—and emotion begins to shift afterward.

🤝 Interpersonal Effectiveness: Asking for help, receiving instruction, communicating needs, encouraging each other, and celebrating progress all strengthen effective interpersonal behavior.

That’s what makes experiences like this so valuable: skills practiced in real life become more than concepts discussed in a group room. Participants get to approach instead of avoid, tolerate discomfort, build mastery, connect with others, and experience the reward of doing something challenging and meaningful.

A huge THANK YOU to Orlando Watersports Complex for investing in mental health in our community and helping us create experiences like this.

Special thanks to Daniel, Louis, Juan and the rest of the boys at OWC for getting us dialed in with boards and equipment—and a huge thank you to Hyperlite Wakeboards for the gear and support. 🤘

If you haven’t been to OWC and have been wanting to ride—or want to try a sick cable park—head out and see Daniel and the crew. or check them out at orlandowatersports.com The park is insane, and these guys are huge supporters of mental health in Central Florida. 🌴🌊

Talk it out. Ride it out. 🤙

Beachside Center for Trauma + Anxiety
A specialized program of Beachside Behavioral Health
🌎 BeachsideBHS.com
📞 (321)978-4041

📸 Taken and posted with individual written consent

08/05/2026

Change doesn’t happen all at once—it happens one skill at a time.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is one of the most well-researched treatments for helping people manage overwhelming emotions, reduce impulsive behaviors, improve relationships, and build healthier ways of coping. Decades of research have shown that DBT can improve emotional regulation, decrease distress, and increase overall quality of life for individuals facing a wide range of mental health challenges.

The four core skill areas of DBT work together to help people:
🧠 Stay present through Mindfulness
💙 Get through difficult moments with Distress Tolerance
🌊 Understand and manage emotions with Emotion Regulation
🤝 Build healthier, more effective relationships through Interpersonal Effectiveness

These aren’t just concepts—they’re practical, evidence-based skills that can be learned, practiced, and applied in everyday life.

Whether you’re working through anxiety, trauma, depression, or simply looking for healthier ways to respond to life’s challenges, developing these skills can help you feel more confident, balanced, and resilient.

Every journey begins with a single step—and every new skill is another step toward creating the life you want.

07/23/2026

Behavioral Activation Group
Surf Therapy

🌊 🩵 Behavioral Activation is more than simply “staying busy.” It’s an evidence-based treatment that helps individuals reconnect with meaningful experiences, reduce avoidance, and retrain the brain following trauma, depression, anxiety, and other high-acuity mental health conditions.

At Beachside Center for Trauma + Anxiety, our Behavioral Activation Group takes that concept beyond the therapy office and into the ocean through surf therapy.

For many individuals living with complex trauma, personality pathology, or severe emotional dysregulation, the nervous system becomes conditioned to survive—not truly live. Surfing creates a unique opportunity to gently challenge that pattern.

🌊 Why surf therapy?

• The ocean naturally promotes mindfulness by requiring full attention to the present moment.
• Learning and mastering new skills helps rebuild confidence, self-efficacy, and resilience.
• Physical activity has consistently been shown to reduce symptoms of depression and improve mood, making it one of the most effective behavioral interventions available.
• Healthy social connection, exposure to nature (“blue spaces”), and purposeful activity are all associated with improvements in psychological well-being.

That’s why our approach is different.

Surf therapy at Beachside is not recreational surfing alone. It is intentionally integrated into a comprehensive treatment model that includes:

🏄 Behavioral Activation
🧠 Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
🌊 EMDR Therapy
👥 Group Processing
💙 Trauma-Informed Care

Our goal isn’t to create better surfers.

It’s to help people rediscover confidence, reconnect with life, and begin rewriting the story that trauma tried to write for them.

Beachside Center for Trauma + Anxiety
Rewrite Your Story.

🌐 www.BeachsideBHS.com

📸 Taken and posted with individual written consent

07/19/2026

🖤 Moral Injury: The Hidden Wounds That Don’t Always Heal

When people hear the word trauma, they often think of fear.

But sometimes trauma leaves behind something different.

Moral injury occurs when someone experiences, witnesses, or feels unable to prevent events that deeply conflict with their values, beliefs, identity, or sense of what is right. The result can be overwhelming guilt, shame, self-blame, grief, or a loss of trust—not just in others, but in yourself.

This is something we frequently see in individuals living with complex trauma (C-PTSD) and in many people struggling with the lasting effects of childhood emotional neglect, abuse, family dysfunction, or invalidating environments. It can also contribute to the emotional pain experienced by individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and other trauma-related conditions, where shame, identity disturbance, and difficulties in relationships are often rooted in early traumatic experiences.

Healing isn’t about pretending the experience didn’t happen. It’s about processing what happened, making sense of it, reconnecting with your values, and learning to move forward without being defined by guilt or shame.

At Beachside Center for Trauma + Anxiety, our specialty trauma program integrates evidence-based treatments including:
🌊 EMDR
🌊 Comprehensive DBT
🌊 Trauma-focused individual therapy
🌊 Behavioral activation
🌊 Family education and coaching
🌊 Case management and coordinated care

Our goal is not simply to reduce symptoms—but to help people reclaim their identity, rebuild healthy relationships, and create a life that aligns with who they truly are.

Healing is possible. You don’t have to carry these invisible wounds alone.

🌐 www.BeachsideBHS.com

Rewrite Your Story.

07/15/2026

🖤 Adolescent Primary Mental Health Daily Outpatient DBT Program

Adolescence is one of the most critical periods for mental health intervention. Research consistently shows that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), chronic trauma, depression, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, and substance use rarely occur in isolation—they often reflect underlying difficulties with emotion regulation, attachment, distress tolerance, and coping. Left untreated, these challenges can increase the risk of academic difficulties, strained family relationships, hospitalization, substance use disorders, and ongoing mental health concerns into adulthood.

At Beachside Center for Trauma + Anxiety, we believe early, evidence-based intervention can change that trajectory.

Our specialized Daily Primary Mental Health Outpatient DBT Program is designed specifically for adolescents experiencing high-acuity mental health concerns. Unlike traditional weekly therapy alone, our structured program provides increased therapeutic contact, consistent skills practice, and coordinated family involvement to help teens build lasting change.

Our program integrates evidence-based approaches including:

🩵 Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) to improve emotion regulation, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness, mindfulness, and reduce self-harm and suicidal behaviors.

🩵 Trauma-informed treatment, including EMDR when clinically appropriate, to address the underlying effects of complex trauma rather than simply managing symptoms.

🩵 Behavioral activation and experiential interventions to reconnect adolescents with healthy, meaningful activities.

🩵 Individual therapy, family coaching, case management, psychiatric collaboration, and phone coaching to promote skill generalization outside the therapy office.

Research has repeatedly demonstrated that DBT is one of the most effective treatments for adolescents struggling with:
• Chronic emotion dysregulation
• Self-harm and suicidal ideation
• Depression and anxiety
• Trauma-related symptoms
• Impulsivity
• Interpersonal conflict
• Emerging personality-related difficulties
• Co-occurring substance use

We also recognize that healing extends beyond the adolescent. Families receive education, coaching, and support to better understand trauma, strengthen communication, reduce conflict, and create an environment where recovery can continue at home.

Every adolescent deserves the opportunity to develop resilience, healthy relationships, emotional stability, and hope for the future.

Healing is possible. Recovery is possible. Together, we can help teens and families rewrite their story.

🌴 Beachside Center for Trauma + Anxiety
A specialized division of Beachside Behavioral Health Services.
🌐 BeachsideBHS.com

07/08/2026

🎨 Art Therapy Group: A Journey Through Healing 🩵

As part of our Art Therapy Group, patients continued the second part of a two-part expressive art activity exploring trauma, healing, and hope. After completing both paintings, one patient shared a powerful interpretation of their artwork with the group.

The first painting reflected a heart consumed by pain, grief, and emotional burden. Yet even in the darkness, a small red heart remained—a symbol that hope, love, and the capacity to heal still existed. The chaotic background represented the emotional overwhelm that often accompanies trauma.

In the second painting, the larger pink heart represented growth, compassion, and healing. The smaller black heart remained, reminding us that recovery doesn’t erase painful experiences—it changes our relationship with them. Trauma became part of the story rather than the entire story.

This progression beautifully reflects one of the central goals of trauma treatment: not forgetting what happened, but reducing the power those experiences hold so they no longer define who we are. In many ways, this artwork captures the essence of EMDR, DBT, and other evidence-based trauma therapies—moving from surviving to healing while honoring every part of the journey.

Art therapy is an evidence-based intervention that can improve emotional regulation, reduce symptoms of anxiety and trauma, increase self-awareness, and help individuals express experiences that are often difficult to put into words.

Sometimes healing begins with a paintbrush before it begins with a conversation.

🌴 Beachside Center for Trauma + Anxiety
A Specialized Program of Beachside Behavioral Health Services
Rewrite Your Story
🌐 BeachsideBHS.com

07/04/2026

🌊 Parenting Teens Is Learning to Watch from the Beach.

When our children are young, we protect them from every wave. As they become teenagers, our role shifts from rescuing to preparing.

For families navigating anxiety, depression, trauma, substance use, or emotional dysregulation, that transition can be incredibly difficult—but it’s also an important part of healthy development.

Here are a few realities we often discuss with parents:

🩵 Trust takes time. Research shows the therapeutic alliance is one of the strongest predictors of successful treatment. Many teens spend the first 4–8 weeks testing limits, minimizing concerns, or hoping treatment will end before they begin fully engaging.

🩵 Recovery isn’t linear. Approximately 50–70% of adolescents with mental health disorders receive no treatment, and among those who do, setbacks and periods of resistance are expected—not signs that treatment has failed.

🩵 Family involvement matters. Research consistently shows that involved families experience better treatment retention, stronger emotional functioning, and lower relapse rates. The most effective involvement isn’t micromanaging your teen—or the licensed professionals treating them. It is maintaining healthy boundaries, staying engaged, asking thoughtful questions, and partnering with the clinical team while allowing your teen the space to develop responsibility and confidence.

🩵 Trust your clinical team. Nearly 1 in 5 adolescents experiences a diagnosable mental health disorder each year. Accurate diagnosis requires a comprehensive evaluation—not internet symptom checklists or social media. Mental health conditions often overlap, making individualized, evidence-based treatment essential.

The goal isn’t to control every wave. 🌊

🤙🏼The goal is to help your teen become the kind of person who can confidently say:

“I can handle this.”

At Beachside Center for Trauma + Anxiety, a specialty primary mental health daily outpatient DBT program of Beachside Behavioral Health Services, we partner with teens and families every step of the way. Recovery is strongest when parents, adolescents, and clinicians work together with trust, communication, and shared goals.

📞 (321) 978-4041
🌐 www.BeachsideBHS.com

💙 Rewrite Your Story.