Musings on Becoming a Psychotherapist
~ Henry David Thoreau"It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance… to perceive freshly, with the fresh senses is to be inspired."
From Chrysalis to Butterfly (cont'd):
I have been richly blessed with the opportunity to work in the field of human services for the past twenty years. Prior to receiving my graduate degree in clinical counseling, I spent my twenties working and interning in a variety of residential, non-profit, and private counseling centers. I was fortunate to be able to work with diverse populations ranging from battered women, to abused and neglected children, to juvenile delinquents, to families in crises, as well as couples and adults with a wide range of presenting problems.
With children, I learned a great deal about nonverbal forms of communication, the expressive arts and movement, play therapy, spontaneity, humor, embodiment and the importance of utilizing my capacity for imaginative improvisation.
Some of the angrier teens forced me down to earth and out of my comfortable mental reveries with the thunder and lightening of their rage and rawness. They awakened me into the healing importance of being real, quick on my psychological toes, and, at times, downright tough and confrontational. They also taught me the enormous lesson of approaching wounds at a slant, carefully and creatively, through the back door or a tiny crawl space of tall tales and small talk.
Upon receiving my graduate degree at age thirty in clinical mental health counseling, I started my own holistic psychotherapy private practice. For the past decade plus, I have been able to live out my youthful dream of engaging in intensive depth psychotherapy with adults who often present with complex trauma histories of childhood abuse and neglect. I have had the great privilege of forming profoundly moving and healing long term relationships with an extravagant diversity of beautiful and fascinating women and men from so many walks of life.
~ Mary Oliver"He is beautiful now, and shivers into the air
as if he has always known how,
who crawled and crawled, all summer."
A full day of communing with people has been one of meandering through lush and varied gardens. One path would find me navigating the high intellectual hedges of the "wounded- into- walls –of- words" stiff collared corporate executive; another path would lead me into sitting in a wildflower field of silence with a "traumatized- into –wordlessness", bangles and sandals, artistic soul; and a third would usher me into a lively greenhouse of a women’s empowerment group in which laughter and tears cohabitated freely.
Carl Jung once wrote about the alchemical process that happens during effective depth psychotherapy. He explained that during this unique human encounter, both helper and helpee are irrevocably transformed. Each individual with whom I have been honored to share a therapeutic relationship has been a complex and evolving universe unto him or herself, a universe that I have been gradually allowed to enter and, to some extent, to intimately share and know.
I have been deeply touched and changed in my very Core by each remarkable soul with whom I have journeyed as a psychotherapist. I experience in my very bones that every life I help hold and support is precious, irreplaceable and utterly worthy of the highest quality of competent and compassionate care. I never forget my enormous responsibility as a therapist to keep on growing on every level of my being each day: to continue unfurling the petals of my awareness, knowledge, empathy and presence. Becoming a depth holistic psychotherapist is a sacred calling, a continuous metamorphosis, and the ongoing fulfillment of my childhood promise.