Therapist Thoughts Thursday
My first installment!
So far in the course of this newsletter journey, I have found myself steering pretty clear of anything connected to my professional life. Partially this is because young children occupy approximately 168% of the brain’s energy, as any parent of an under-5 can attest - the welcome exception to this is in the actual therapy space with a client, which is part of why I appreciate my job so much. It is also why outside of that space I am behind plus-or-minus 6 months on case notes (if you are an auditor of some variety, OBVIOUSLY HAHA JK. If you are a fellow therapist, sending a Katniss Hunger Games Salute meme your direction.) Another reason, however, is that privacy and confidentiality is maybe my (and my profession’s! I am not a unique holy Chosen Social Worker) very top value, rivaled only by anti-oppressive practice/doing no harm and commitment to continuing education. In short, I’ve simply been a bit scared to write anything connected to therapy! So even though the insights of my clients are truly some of the most profound and moving tidbits I get to regularly experience and I often reflect on how they change my own perspective, I have still shied away from sharing anything that might possibly, conceivably, potentially, constitute identifiable information. But no more! (Not the not sharing identifiable information part, I will still not do that of course.) Being a therapist is such an important part of my life and is a deeply cool job that I want to talk about, so I’m challenging myself to pick a topic to reflect on (maybe weekly??) and share with you all, my future paid subscribers! (I’m joking, probably).
As a fun fact, the Friendship Heartbreak post from a few months ago was conceptualized for a blog explicitly to promote my therapy practice. In writing it, however, it became much more personal than felt appropriate to share in that context or directly and intentionally link to my whole Professional Thing™, and now my practice is actually mostly full, except for very good fits or direct referrals. I have also since learned about myself that the way I write is just … personal! Obviously this site is all discoverable information online and it may be that someone who sees me for therapy also reads it one day (hello if that is you!), which is fine and something I consider before putting it out into the ether, but the more dry, clinical, ascetic posts that might better befit a therapy-practice blog just don’t interest me or jive well with my writing style. (I might in that case have to intersperse fewer sentences in parentheses throughout which I would abhor.) So this is not a therapy blog I am linking to my website persay, but it is therapy adjacent, and I’m grateful for that attempt to create a marketing post because my pleasure and fulfillment in its writing process was one of the reasons I decided to finally take the leap and heed my spouse’s good advice to start a Substack and stop blessing mostly Facebook with all my lengthy opinions for free. (Now you have to click on a link from Facebook to read all my lengthy opinions for free, take that Zuckerberg. Or you can subscribe to read them here!)
As for what I’ll write about, I already covered the “meaningful friendships ending” topic to the extent I am going to for now but I’d love to hear other ideas if you have them! Some of the things I’m drawn to thinking and writing more about include finding a therapy niche, imposter syndrome in the therapy room (/screen), being a fit (or not) for certain clients, and some more specific concepts that fascinate me like Rejection Sensitivity Disorder in ADHD presentations and social media’s portrayal of personality disorders. (I’m finding that my challenge with this newsletter in general is not coming up with ideas to write about, it’s having the time and energy to actually do the writing! I do however always love more ideas, and it’s not like my Notes app/running Google doc can get any MORE chaotic so bring it on.)
A slight variation to that concept is having this be Dear Abby/Agony Aunt column-esque, where folks write in with questions or dilemmas and I share my professional opinion. I have some lived experience as a mom, a therapist, and a human, and although I’m not YOUR therapist (most likely) or YOUR mom (kids if/when you get a Substack I hope I’m not hearing about it here first), I just might have some insight to share. So! Send along any questions too, and I guess you’ll just have to subscribe and see what happens! And in the meantime I’ll leave you with a poem that I do keep meaning to write about, and maybe will someday, but that is not today and the poem is beautiful and you deserve beauty so here you go. Tata!
ONE OR TWO THINGS
by Mary Oliver, from New and Selected Poems: Volume One (Beacon Press)
1
Don't bother me.
I've just
been born.
2
The butterfly's loping flight
carries it through the country of the leaves
delicately, and well enough to get it
where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping
here and there to fuzzle the damp throats
of flowers and the black mud; up
and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes
for long delicious moments it is perfectly
lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk
of some ordinary flower.
3
The god of dirt came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever,
4
which has nevertheless always been,
like a sharp iron hoof,
at the center of my mind.
5
One or two things are all you need
to travel over the blue pond, over the deep
roughage of the trees and through the stiff
flowers of lightning-- some deep
memory of pleasure, some cutting
knowledge of pain.
6
But to lift the hoof!
For that you need an idea.
7
For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then
the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
"Don't love your life
too much," it said,
and vanished into the world.
So good honey thanks for writing! Love seeing my VIP email show up