Work

In a recent peer counseling group, we were talking about self-care. In the field I am in, there is so much discussion about compassion fatigue and burnout. I actually began to see that the work I do is a deep form of self-care. I feel doing this work is a prompting of my soul and in following that, I feel guided in sessions and awed by the shifts clients experience and what transpires in sessions. Maybe it’s that my own deep healing journey is what led me to go back to school to become a therapist and because I have come to it at age 50, I sense it is what my soul is meant to do. In session with clients is where I feel the greatest alignment and meaning in my life.

Of course I have other outlets which give me great joy, including family. I wrote about how Dance is very meaningful to me in the last post. Yet, in therapy sessions, there is this sense that everything that has ever happened in my life to inform who I am today is fully present and available for the client. And the deeper I go, the deeper my clients are able to go. The more fully I can accept myself, the more fully a client can accept themselves and share and be open and reveal, knowing they will not be met by judgment but with curiosity and kindness. Knowing that self-acceptance is actually something that catalyzes healing in people I work with, I have learned how self-acceptance and taking responsibility for life can co-exist and in fact does. And boy has it been such a relief to not keep beating myself up for my perceived failings! And because my inner persecutor had been very strong, I can recognize it in others and try to cajole it to loosening its grip just a bit, through curiosity and acceptance of its presence when it shows up. 

I am sometimes just shocked how a client could bring up an issue they are wrestling with and it could be something I just addressed in my personal life a week or 2 prior. And sometimes, clients can trigger in me insecurities and resistances that I need to not internalize but work on so I can become even more finely tuned in my work. Inner work is what fascinates me through and through - how we can truly live from within and that all the things that have ever happened to us and all the things that are happening in the world do not need to limit our potential for experiencing meaning, fulfillment and contentment. I guess while some folks are fascinated by outer space, I am all about inner space.

What happens in session is nothing short of magical – where people go and what they experience, what they reclaim in themselves, what grievances they can finally let go off and just ultimately realize that it is more productive and mature to address inner feelings and triggers rather than blaming anyone else for causing them to feel the way they do. Any triggers from outside are just invitations, welcome ones albeit painful, to illuminate the stuck pockets that are now ready to be illuminated, metabolized and integrated. When people truly heal, there is a change in form. 

“Man must after all be changed from within; otherwise he merely assimilates the new material to the old pattern.” (Carl Jung) 

Knowing about the theme of our wounds can be helpful - complex trauma, a mother wound, narcissistic parents, insecure attachment, etc. Yes, all that can be important for awarenesses and to have an understanding for why we are suffering. But, to truly go past that, we need to take the risk and have the courage to travel to the frozen pockets of pain when they surface, and they will and do, and feel the experience to the other end of it. And usually, at the other end of the pain is the healing elixir, if we are able to stay and not run away from the pain. Our deepest developmental wounds often play out in current relationships. So, we are given plenty of opportunities for our core wounds to arise and to heal.

Many of my clients, usually around midlife, are drawn to do inner work catalyzed by feelings of depression, anxiety and relationship issues, etc. The crux of my work is with men and women navigating midlife and transitions. I think it’s because my journey of healing also started around then, when what I had built in the first 39 years of myself could no longer fulfill me – even though everything looked fine on the outside – and there was a restlessness that could not be calmed. 

What if our symptoms and neuroses are actually designed by our soul for us to 

experience them and navigate through them to find our way back to ourselves? And when that happens, maybe our nervous systems can relax and it becomes safer and easier to inhabit within ourselves.

For people who feel something is broken or wrong with them and wonder why they are so messy and riddled with symptoms and neuroses, maybe we can view it as the soul calling us to return to something more essential by working through the obstacles and challenges. I was not always able to say this when I was going through my journey of healing. Instead, I often lamented, “What’s wrong with me? Why am I like this?” And now, having held on to my life with tenacity and grit and worked on myself quite deeply, I can say that my soul designed this experience, as painful as it was, for me to grow and evolve and become who I am truly meant to become. So, in looking at that, how can I not just be grateful and feel blessed as well as be filled with a sense of awe about the journey of unfoldment? That is what I so wish for and see in clients who do the deep inner work by traveling through the landscape of symptoms and challenges. 

Truly heroic, in my book!

If what you've read resonates and you would like to explore the prospect of working together, please send me a message and we can schedule an introductory call.