Practice of Being Seen

Sex is a richly complex part of being human and there’s no one way to experience it.  It can be a catalyst for spiritual connection or a source of deep trauma.  It thrives on play.  It emphasizes pleasure for pleasure’s sake.  It enacts politics and power plays.  It insists on respect and permission.  And, in our culture, it is tightly bound to shame.

n a field where, more often than not, women tend to be the ones more often drawn to our therapy practices, working with male clients in a therapy practice can pose unique challenges.  Men generally aren’t equipped to talk about their feelings in the same ways that women are and they can often feel like their sense of self is under attack while under the clinical microscope.

Money as a conversation piece is as taboo as sex.  It’s as difficult to discuss as racism.  We simply just don’t go there very well.  And, it’s not really our fault.  We generally aren’t taught how to have a healthy relationship with money. We don’t have good (or any) mentorship around it in our careers and we certainly don’t bring money into conversations within the clinical space.  There’s something about money that brings up all the shame and fear.

I've had some realizations about my mentorship program that I wanted to share with you. I may not be doing what is recommended, but I am doing what feels right for me. I hope you will also give yourself permission to also do what feels right for you.

Laura Long, LMFT wants us all to undo all of those fears by unleashing our inner badass.  Today she chats with me about how her coaching business, Your Badass Therapy Practice, came to be.  She talks about the power in making your own rules, how she strikes a balance with her home and work life, and the unanticipated gifts she’s found in doing brave things.

What is your relationship to self-care?  Self-care is quite the buzzword these days, both within our chosen field of work but also in mainstream media and culture.   As therapists, we know it is a vital part of our practices to avoid burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious traumatization.  In other words, it helps us to do the work better, to show up more fully for our clients and for our families outside of work.  But, for all we know about self-care, and for all the tips and tricks available to us, many of us still struggle to feel like we are doing much better than running on empty.  Often times, we feel we are just maintaining, rather than thriving.

 

Why is that?  You could say that Dr. Matt Hersh knows a thing or two about this, and today, he’s sharing his thoughts with me on the #POBScast.  

 

Dr. Matt Hersh is a psychotherapist, mindfulness meditation teacher, and heart-centered entrepreneur.   He is the founder of The Thriving Therapist, which aims to help therapists and healers provide the same care for themselves as they do for their clients.  

 

In this episode, Matt and I discuss:

• How we create sustainability in our self-care, the “over-striving for ease” paradox, and how to do it differently.
• Self-care a part of who we are or what we do, rather than another to-do, and how to tell the difference.
• What our deeper values tell us about the self-care we really need.
• The personal truths informing our self-care needs, the underlying universal needs contained within, and why they’re important.  
• The discovery pathway for sustainable self-care, on both intellectual and somatic levels.
• Matt’s personal story, in which a life-altering situation imposed an urgent and consuming need for self-care without the seed of sustainability, and how a fear-based relationship with self-care gave him insight into what most self-care practices are missing.
• Finding ease as meaning-making beings and choosing the “Or…”.
• Energy Psychology and what ease and being “in flow” really mean in mental, physical and energetic terms.

 

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Matt’s recent live-feed lecture "Psychotherapists and Our Self-evolutionary Path to Sustainable Well-being".

 

Matt Hersh references Nick Ortner’s work with EFT Tapping. 

 

Connect with Matt Hersh online TheThrivingTherapist.org.

 

If you are a therapist or healer who is looking for more support, accountability and community, to move through your fears and implement better habits, so that you can be held in your vulnerability while you vision and take action toward your more integrated, sustainable and fulfilling practice, consider joining the inaugural Connectfulness® Method Mentorship Program. 

 

People of color--black women in particular--have always been an underserved population when it comes to therapy.  Though there are many factors, one important one that we therapists can work on changing is a matter of trust and safety.  A lot of black women want a black therapist because of fear of being misunderstood by a therapist who can’t relate to (or worse, disbelieves) their experiences.  In this present social climate, this is a conversation we all need to have with ourselves and our colleagues.  It starts with seeing ourselves.

 

This is what Dr. Joy Harden Bradford and I are talking about in episode 39 of the #POBScast.  Dr. Joy Harden Bradford is a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia.  She is the host of the podcast, Therapy for Black Girls and saw a need for a Therapist Directory for therapists of color for clients of color, so she took the initiative to create one. She talks about following her heart in her work, our need to curate the media we consume, how to be better allies, and what she’s got percolating for future projects.

 

• What “cultural competency” means and why our clients need us to demonstrate it.  
• Ways that both therapists and clients can begin taking steps toward improving cultural competency in the therapeutic space.
• Power differentials in the therapy room.
• Importance of trust in the therapeutic relationship and opening a door into the conversation of difference and allowing the client to choose whether they want to enter. 
• Being in flow in your work by doing the things that matter to you, being of service.
• Being intentional with the platforms we have and showing up for the communities that need us even when we feel like we just can’t show up as fully as is expected of us.
• Our urgent need for safety in these disruptive times of social and environmental turmoil and adjoining together in that truth.
• The media as an “assault to our psyches”, filtering as self-care, and when and how to not just filter what we consume, but also curate it.
• The conversation we really need to be having first in order to make progress on issues like gun control, which we as a culture feel more apt to debate.
• Why the problem isn’t in that we aren’t aware of our own biases, but in our insistence that, because we don’t see something, it doesn’t exist...and what we should do instead.
• Taking a knee, splitting, and the “right way” to speak up.
• What allyship really means and what we all can do right now for minorities and people of color.

 

 

Referenced in the episode:

Robin DiAngelo’s work on white privilege. And, the “lady with glasses” mentioned is Jane Elliott. (You’ve likely seen her videos on social media before.)

 

You can find Dr. Joy Harden Bradford and her therapist directory online at TherapyforBlackGirls.com.  Check out her podcast Therapy for Black Girls on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher.  Connect with her on social media:  Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

 

 

Birthing new projects is no small act.  I’m thrilled to invite you to consider...

Fraud feelings and overwhelm. Squelched desires and jealousy.  How do you differentiate between fears designed to keep you safe and fears beckoning you to toward your potential?  

The friction of change during growth periods in our lives is never very comfortable, but for all our fears, we rarely meet our utter demise on the other side.  So, why is it so hard to break through it?  And what can we learn about ourselves from it?

Something magical happens when people gather together in the same space.  Something that can’t happen in online gathering spaces in quite the same way.  Gatherings take many forms: Retreats, workshops, conferences.  Walk-outs, protests, sit-ins.  Tea parties, play groups, picnics.  But the one unifier is that buzz, the energy, that each person feels when they’re there.  A buzz they’ll each carry with them long after.

In Episode 36 of the #POBScast, John Clarke and I thread connections between imposter syndrome, niching down and generating enough income in our practices as therapists, to making the space for reflection on the relationship we have with ourselves and how this informs our marketing message and confidence in the room with our clients.