Fierce Compassionate Counseling

North Austin Psychotherapy

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Growth during change

About a month ago, I resigned to the fact that I’ll likely be doing online sessions for a while.  I had been going to my office periodically to water my plants.  I love my office and plants do too.  A large sliding glass door lets in a lot of natural light and all the plants that I’ve brought there have thrived. When I went to water I was surprised and excited to see the new growth and them all looking wild and happy.  My office is unlike my house, where I have two children, two dogs, and two cats.  There’s decent light, but nothing like my office.  Bringing plants into my home is like a death sentence – a random succulent or ivy will survive, but that is only because they’re the sturdiest of plants and they are put far from the reaches of children or critters who may hurt them.

Last month I decided to bring these plants home.  I felt like I was sentencing them to death.  So, I found the best places in the house and hoped for the best – but expected the worst.  Surprisingly within a week, two of my plants from my office had grown new leaves.  How could that be possible? How could growth still happen when they’re being chomped by our newest puppy, didn’t have the best light, and just experienced a change in environment?  It was exciting to see and the lesson wasn’t lost on me.

Frequently with clients they come to therapy struggling with something in their life – there can be a lot of pain and suffering. Something doesn’t feel right. Often someone may feel stuck and unable to make the changes they want in their life.  However, I’ve found that even under these circumstances people can move through these difficulties and still grow!! Positive change can still happen even when we have the proverbial puppy chomping on us.  It’s truly incredibly and helps remind me in my own life that when things feel difficult that growth is still possible and will happen – just be patient, be curious and compassionate.

Courage

In my practice I am amazed at the courage people show.  As someone who has been in therapy a good part of my adult life and one who has stopped therapy to only start again, I realize how terrifying the whole process can be.  Truly one of the hardest parts of therapy is making that first phone call or sending that email asking for services. Also, what if you don’t get a call back?  – eek!! –

It can be incredibly challenging to find someone whose schedule aligns with yours, someone who takes your insurance, and, on top of all that, someone who is a good fit, can help you identify your goals and help you work toward them.

Not to mention, actually showing up for therapy is hard.  To sit across from another human and let them truly see who you are…it is terrifying!  It takes an immense amount of courage to be able to show up in this way.  The therapy space is one where clients courageously show up to attend to their own needs and explore patterns that they may have developed over time with gentle curiosity, so that they may be able to change.

My hope is that within that space I can meet clients with unconditional positive regard.  This was a term developed by Carl Rogers, a humanist psychologist.  With unconditional positive regard my intention is to show support, acceptance and love for a client, no matter what they say or do, placing no condition on acceptance.

As a client courageously shows up for therapy, I respect them immensely as a human being with their own free will and also believing that they are doing the best she can. By trying to practice unconditional positive regard, I see each my client as inherently human and inherently lovable.

I firmly believe that every person was born with the potential to develop in positive and loving ways.  Within the space of therapy, I strongly believe that if clients have the courage to show up there is a chance for them to feel welcomed, understood, and accepted.  I really am lucky to do what I do and see clients show a tremendous amount of courage in their lives.  It helps remind me that I can be brave and continue to walk on with gentle curiousity.

“This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-hearted.  It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one’s potentialities.  It involved the courage to be.  It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life.” -Carl Rogers.

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!!