Fierce Compassionate Counseling

North Austin Psychotherapy
Krejci Counseling PLLC

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Uncertainty

It’s been almost 4 weeks since the news of Covid-19 got very real for me –  SXSW had been cancelled, the NBA suspended the remainder of their season, and the Moontower Comedy festival was postponed.  Also, a couple of days later my kids school closed a day early for Spring Break.  We had planned to go to Mexico for Spring Break, but quickly realized that this shouldn’t happened and we rescheduled out trip for July, although we still feel like that may not happen.  Everything felt, and still feels incredibly uncertain.

As a social worker, I remember past work and life experiences where I’ve had to stay calm and been able to help others manage with personal disasters or natural disasters.  Covid-19 has felt and continues to feel different. I spend so much of my work with others talking about vulnerability and the importance of being genuine and honest with oneself.  However, how was I ever going to be able to support my clients if I felt so uncertain and was experiencing the full human experiences of feeling every single damn emotion – including sheer terror at 3p every day.

Fortunately, I had already planned to be out of the office the week of Spring Break so that gave me some time to sit with what I was feeling and to plan to move all my sessions remote.  As I emailed my clients about this change, I felt an incredible amount of anxiety and responsibility.  How was I supposed to encourage my clients to honor what they are feeling when this was something that was proving to be so difficult for me.

It’s been two weeks now since I began offering sessions via a variety of different platforms.  I’ve been searching to find the best one that offers the most privacy, provides the least number of glitches, and is easy to use.  I haven’t found it yet. I also have 4 different pairs of headphones next to my computer and keep cycling through them to try to figure out the best ones to use.  It’s been hard – but it’s been so good to be able to see my clients.  I’ve been more real with my own experiences through this and shared how vulnerable this situation is in session.

My pup, Randy, during one of my sessions last week

As a relational therapist, I am able to lean into the relationships that have been established meeting face-to-face.  It feels good and I’ve been able to connect with clients in a new way.  By helping others meet their own uncertainties with compassion, it reminds me to be brave and to do the same.  There is no right answer right now and everything is so completely uncertain.  We have no idea how far we have to go, how long we will be a part from one another, and how far our economy will fall as the employment rate plummets.  It reminds me of previous work that I did with disaster response.  Typically, our response was after the disaster subsided but Covid-19 feels like we are still in the middle of a hurricane. We haven’t even hit the eye of the storm for some respite.

Right now, we need to provide compassion to ourselves as everything keeps swirling dangerously around us.  This is terrifying.  This hurts.  This is almost too painful and feels unbearable at times, as we don’t know if we can continue to go on.  But imagine in the same way if you’re holding a small child with a broken arm – we cannot make that pain go away, but we can hold that child with compassion and love during the pain, we can comfort.  My hope is that we can all do that for ourselves in this moment and that soon we will be able to meet again.

“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!!