I'm Not The Worst Therapist, And Neither Are You
When I’m in therapy, I feel like the worst therapist in the world.
And that lets me know I’m doing it right.
I show up messy as hell with my therapist. And each time I do, I have these thoughts…
Will she fire me for being too difficult? Like, is she rolling her eyes in her head the whole time I'm talking?
Will she inadvertently disparage my name in our local community, and everyone will know that I'm truly just a mess?
Does she question “how does this girl actually sit on the therapist side of the room with her own clients?”
And then, we get to the end of the session and she has somehow guided me through my own little hell and out into the world again whole and in tact. In other words, she holds space for me no matter how I show up.
We constantly tell clients to show up authentically all the time, so why do we hold back in our own therapy? It's a paradox…
So… with all of these good reasons keeping us from opening up, how do we move past this and into a more balanced state for ourselves and for our clients?
I know it’s a common fear for therapists to feel judged by their therapist, even if they know their therapist isn’t there to judge them. The judgment we have toward ourselves is what’s showing up, and we project that onto the other person in the room.
Finding a therapist who can hold us in our ugliest moments isn’t easy - it took me 13 years of actively being in therapy before I found someone who could do that with me.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not fearful the entire time I’m showing up with my ugly parts.
However, I’m such a firm believer in the fact that we can’t bring our clients through waters we haven’t been through ourselves. That doesn’t mean we have to go through the same types of hardships. It means we have to navigate the same types of triggers and emotions and come out on the other side better for it.
So I show up ugly in my own therapy. And my hope is that you will too. It’ll feel hard at first… actually, it’ll feel hard every time. But it does get easier the more you practice and the more your therapist reminds you how safe they are.
Here’s what grounds me when I want to show up authentically…
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Experiencing the ugly parts of myself is a lot less scary in with safe people. Rather than trying to pull ourselves together in an effort to prove our worth as therapists, let’s promise to start intentionally showing up dishevelled. Moving through the treacherous parts is what helps me become a guide for others through their treacherous parts.
Mindset, though, is never just about mindset. It's also about environment. So dip your toes into the water with your therapist if you don't quite trust that you can show up ugly yet. Don't expect them to be perfect, but do expect them to not say something that throws you back into the waters of "see, I should've already known this!"
You shouldn't know what you don't already know. "Knowing" takes time and it requires quality mentorship. Our post-graduate experiences are no longer set up in a way that really requires us to be guided by a quality mentor. If you're one of the lucky ones who did get that experience, I hope you pay that forward by becoming a mentor yourself! But for those of you, like me, who just couldn't seem to find it... we had to pave the paths ourselves. And if we're being honest, it's likely a recreation of our childhoods.
So the cycle breaks here. No more showing up perfectly put together and intellectulized to numbness.
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In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, my main modality of choice, we use the art of mindful awareness around our thoughts, goals, life vision, and behaviors in an effort to live the life we want to live.
The skill of mindfulness doesn't alleviate anxiety or make it easier to show up messy. Instead, it's the tool we use to keep us from quitting when things get hard. If a rock climber has their equipment, climbing the rocks is still hard, but it's safer and a much better experience.
The first mindfulness skill I was ever able to actually implement was The Pause. In the pause, we literally just pause our thoughts. Sometimes we use our breath to do this, other times I use another skill, labeling. I'm the type of person who doesn't do well in boredom, and pausing can feel pretty boring. So give yourself a job to do during the pause, and label what's happening for you.
Ex: "'I'm noticing that I feel angry, and I want to show up more put together." That skill of pausing and noticing gives our brains just enough time to move out of the fear-centers of our brain and into the memory and logic parts of our brains. This then lets us make a choice about what to do next, and hopefully we choose to do something that gets us to where we want to go instead of detours us back into numbing, avoiding, or dissociating.
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Practice where you feel safe enough. Remember, safety is relative, it’s not a goal to feel 100% safe. That’s a myth. We have to be aware of the risks involved with just being alive and accept that this is just how nature works, and that’s ok. It’s good, even.
My go-to is to practice in community. Which, again, isn’t ever going to be 100% safe. Community means being around people who love and accept you as you are, but it also means that sometimes some people in the community will judge, shun, or become angry with you.
Being aware of the relative and appropriate risk in your practice environment actually INcreases your safety signals in your body, because it lets your body know that you are being alert, aware, and ready, so long as you don’t veer into hyperalert mode.
After a therapy session when I feel like utter garbage, I almost always have the best day after. I showed up messy and allowed someone else to carry me. And that was exactly what I needed so that I can continue carrying the ones I care about - both personally and professionally.
Looking for your own therapist community? If you’re a therapist with chronic pain and illness who works with chronic pain and illness clients, you’re gonna wanna check this out…
