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When I started my career as a therapist, my reasoning was personal. I wanted to learn how to heal myself. With a history of childhood anxiety, I had experienced years of unexplained stomach pains, headaches, and throat problems, that no doctors could quite understand. I had already enjoyed a successful career in entertainment, but something was missing. I wanted to finally understand the somatic experiences that I had dealt with all of my life and those answers started to unfold as I switched my focus to the study of Psychology.
I was already the mother of two small children when I decided to study Psychology and by the time I started my Master’s program in Professional Counseling, I was a mother of three. One thing was certain at the time, I did not want my children to experience the debilitating emotional pain that had become so commonplace in my own life. As one of the most cool, calm, and collected people that I know, my husband was of little help. He is an awesome person, but anxiety is one of those things that is hard to understand unless you have physically experienced it yourself. He did not get the honor (insert sarcasm here) of sharing his own stories of panic until the 2020 Pandemic (which left most of us reeling).
During my Master’s program, I experienced an academic stretch that cannot be compared to anything that I have ever experienced in my life. In addition to that, I was involved in a car accident just one month after starting the program (that left me emotionally unable to drive for the duration of the program). I also was misdiagnosed as hypertensive (good ole’ anxiety rearing its head again), and I faced challenges in my interpersonal relationships because getting an advanced degree does not exactly allow one to be particularly social. It was a difficult time, defined by late-night study sessions, novel-length research papers, and four-letter words.
The one word that I recognized that was NOT simply another four-letter word was, HELP. For the first time in my life possibly, I understood that if I wanted others to eventually trust me with their healing journeys, I had to allow others to extend the same grace to me. That is when I started seeing help as an acronym that represented a greater concept; Hope, Encouragement, Love, and Patience.
Fast forward to almost two decades, two additional kids, and thousands of client interactions later and the acronym still applies to how I approach my work. I remind clients and even potential clients that help is NOT a sign of weakness, but instead one of strength, courage, and wisdom. When someone starts the process of therapy with me, I start from a place of hope. I believe in the triumph of the human spirit. I do not believe that people are sick. Instead, I see them as discouraged and so I use a strength-based model to encourage them to show up as the best versions of themselves.
The L may seem a bit controversial, but I do in fact love what I do. I also stress the need for self-love with my clients. I say that it is controversial because many colleagues stress the need for research only! “Feelings have no place in Science,” a well-meaning, but deeply misguided colleague once stressed to me. My argument is that we are in the business of feelings and there is no way to truly help people when you do not deeply care about the work that you do with them. That takes patience because therapy is a process. I liken it to watching grass grow. At times, it is slow and steady, and other times it is rapid. Whatever the case, it is all a part of the process of hope, encouragement, love, and patience. There is nothing dirty about that!
