Fierce Compassionate Counseling

North Austin Psychotherapy

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Safety

This is the 13th week that I’ve been providing sessions remotely.  Prior to that, I always provided it on an as needed basis.  For example, with clients with a sick kiddo at home, someone traveling for work, for a mom who could not get away completely from work and we had to do session during her lunch break, or for a client who felt so depressed that she could not leave the house.  This has been a completely new thing providing therapy services through a screen full time. In some ways, I feel fortunate that my clients adapted quickly, and that I was able to continue to provide support during such an uncertain time. But I miss the space that’s created when I’m sitting with my clients.  I miss my office, my plants, and being able to actually sit with someone. Doing these sessions from home, just feels different.  However, truly one of my favorite parts of doing remote work – meeting the fur family members of my clients.  I’ve loved seeing every cat, dog, even some baby raccoons that are being rehabilitated before going back into the wild.  These are animals that I hear so often about in session that I now get to meet.

As things open up more in Texas, clients ask when I plan to go back into the office.  I’ve always replied with I don’t know yet.  I’ve listened to other therapists argue that we must provide services and that we must do it in person.  Others strongly argue that it is incredibly risky for ourselves and for our clients to meet in person.  I thought that I could just look to someone else to help me to decide what would be best.  Tell me the right thing to do and I’ll do it. However it’s no that easy. It’s not straightforward. Like most things I found that I had to sit, and think, even feel some discomfort in order to decide what works best for me and my practice.

I began to realize that right now, today, if I sat in a room with someone, I would wonder if I was potentially getting  them sick or if I could get sick and pass it to someone else in my life.  My thought is, that this fear would be an undercurrent of our sessions and that potentially the safety that is so important in my therapeutic work would be challenged by this.  As a relational therapist, I try to root the foundation of my work in the relationship established between me and my client.  Along with my client, I strive to create a strong, collaborative and secure relationship. Unfortunately right now, with the risk of transmission of COVID-19, for me that very safety is compromised.  Yes, I could wear a mask and ask my clients to do the same, but I just don’t have eyes that can communicate emotions well, and I wonder what that would be like if my clients couldn’t see what I was feeling.

However, by continuing to do sessions by video I sit closer to my clients than I ever have in the office where we can both share an emotional experience. I can see them and they can see me.  We’re able to rely on the already established relationship from previously meeting face to face, and I hope that sometime soon we can meet again in my office.  For now, I’m here and look forward to seeing you, even remotely.

 

“choose you, my love, because you are a profoundly beautiful light”

art by Roza Nozari, MSW @yallaroza

Lately because of my own personal work and also the work that my clients bravely undertake, I’ve been holding the words from “The Bridge” by Nayyirah Waheed “…you never ever have to inspire anyone to meet you on the bridge. You never ever have to convince someone to do the work to be ready. There is more extraordinary love, more love that you have never seen, out here in this wide and wild universe. And there is the love that will be ready.”

Love often feels so conditional that we expect that we have to be a certain way, act a certain way, have accomplished certain things in order to deserve love.  It’s also a fickle thing where we fear that suddenly someone will stop loving us – just because. We worry that people will find out who we really are and no longer love us.  That our flaws, which are a part of our personality, make us undeserving of love.  This breeds shame and embarrassment about who we really are. At our core, we often feel that we are unworthy of love.  This is unfortunately something that is cultivated when we are young, and persists as we get older through social situations, advertising, etc.  Through these influences we are told that there is something we need to change about ourselves – only then are we lovable, only then are we to be accepted.  Our desperate desire to belong causes us to compare a ourselves with our peers and focus on our differences.  We learn to hide our differences when we’re young and as we grow, it becomes much harder to learn how to embrace our differences.

I’d like to challenge that it is our differences that should be celebrated, that our flaws are not flaws at all but something that has developed because of some pain in our past.  That we are worthy of love and acceptance.  However, this is much easier to write than to accept and put into action.  Unfortunately, too often our default is to compare ourselves to others, or to think there is some part of our self we need to “fix.” This often leads to judgement of, and isolation from others.  However, if we can hold the thought that “I’m am worthy of love just like my neighbor, just like my friend, just like the woman at the grocery store,” then we can begin to accept ourselves as we are – no strings attached.

She believed she could but she was tired…

We live in a world where we are told that we can have it all – we can be a great mom, the perfect wife, and have a growing career…we just have to work hard enough. Success is defined by how busy we are, how much we accomplish, and how high we have climbed the ladder or how big we’ve built our business.

Somehow being able to survive on only a few hours of sleep becomes a bragging right and how much stress we have in our life is a badge of honor. As women, we’re told we just need to “lean in” – that we’ve been doing it wrong and need to use the resources around us so that we can have it all. This myth of having it all sets us up to fail and then we never feel like we’re good enough. It can leave us feeling burned out and, frankly, bone tired.

In my 20s I found myself working until 2am or willing to do overnight shifts. I was able to climb the proverbial career ladder, found myself making more money, and had a job with more responsibilities. My hard work was paying off! Yes, I was only sleeping 5 hours a night and every day drank a “red eye,” which was a drip coffee with 4 shots of espresso…eek! (It makes my stomach ache just thinking about it now). Although I took so much pride in what I did and it brought about meaning in my life, I was burning myself out. I found myself absolutely exhausted, but I ignored the exhaustion and kept pushing myself.

Around my 30th birthday I had a breaking point. I had to do something different – I crashed and burned. I couldn’t keep up with this same pace of life and I was in desperate need of something changing in my life. Through a lot of therapy and discussion with my support network I was able to quit my high stress job, and instead pursue a career that was just as meaningful but with a better balance. I was terrified of this change, but I knew I needed to honor my own needs, what felt right, and try not to compare myself to others. I had to determine what was needed for my own self-care.

Right now, self-care is having a moment, which is good, but unfortunately it seems that it’s often used as a marketing tool to get us to spend more money. However, in my opinion one of the best and most useful types of self-care is rest. My favorite is burrowing under a blanket like a squirrel and hiding for some of the morning or late afternoon, likely curled up with my cat.

Just being is enough. Through my own practice of meditation, therapy, and self-exploration I’ve learned how crucial rest is. That maybe our worth is not defined by busyness, that maybe we need to listen to our body and minds and rest. That, really, it’s ok to just be for a moment, or maybe even longer than that.

Do therapists need therapist?

That’s me sometime in December waiting to see my own therapist.  I find myself ridiculously nervous. I do not want to be there – at all!! It actually begins the week prior, when I was thinking that maybe I don’t need therapy.  I’m a therapist after all and have been doing therapy on and off since I was 22. I decided that I would cancel the appointment but needed to have a “good excuse” and find time to call to cancel.  However, it never happened and I found myself in the waiting room 15 minutes too early.  Just enough time for me to worry about not having something to talk about, wondering her judgement of me, wondering if I was boring her and she dreaded her appointments with me, or wondering if maybe she would think that I’m not good enough to be a therapist myself.

Feeling the urge to quit and cancel an appointment abruptly is surprisingly not a new place for me.  I’ve seen it both in myself and with the people who I see in my own practice.  Often when we want to quit that’s the time when progress is about to be made.  That healing may happen accidently as we begin to give compassion and kindness to ourselves.  It’s not pretty though, and usually for me personally I cry A LOT!! I’ve learned that the tears are usually an indication that something is moving through me, usually something big…and I’m feeling it.  It’s interesting, in my own practice, that people will apologize for crying in session, and I apologize too in my sessions with my own therapist.  But really, crying is good, as uncomfortable as it can be.  When I have a client in session who is crying all I can think is how brave they are and holding them in compassion and kindness.  Somehow in my own work with my therapist, I find it hard to hold myself with the same compassion which I hold my clients.  It really is something that I have to figure out.

As a therapist, being in therapy has been one of the most transformative experiences personally and has a significant impact on my own practice.  Sitting on the couch across from a therapist is terrifying, but also incredibly necessary.  As I constantly remember how scary it really is for someone to really seek treatment and see me, it reminds me of the courage that my clients have each time they come for an appointment.  Whether it’s someone coming in for their first appointment, or someone I’ve been seeing for years returning yet again.  I am inspired by the courage of my own clients, and I decide to stay in the waiting room and flip anxiously through my phone as I anxiously wait another ten minutes for my therapist to call my name.  Eeek!!