Fierce Compassionate Counseling

North Austin Psychotherapy

(512.761.5627
BOOK NOW

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.

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.