I am a therapist. I carry a license … ok, so I don’t really carry it, but I do have one, and I’ll show it to you if you ask. It’s in my office with a bunch of books, and a frightening amount of paperwork that just never seems to be “caught up.” Such is the life of this therapist.
Evidently, I am hilarious, and a hilarious therapist is a surprise to many. The way of the world seems to be that hilarious people need an outlet for their hilarity, and thus began idea of THE BLOG. A completely narcissistic endeavor, if you had asked me a few years ago. A one-sided conversation with complete and total strangers – the epitome of “LOOK AT ME!!!!” Well, then I read some blogs. And I found them helpful, and comforting, and a refreshing break from the usual. In some ways it was like a novel that never ended, but was delivered in small, manageable chunks.
Clients often kind of look at me sideways and say things like “you’re not like other therapists …” One client used the word “unorthodox.” (One calls me "Yoda" :-) ) While my “unorthodox” approach to therapy isn’t a good fit for everyone, it seems to work for most. I like to LAUGH in session. In fact sometimes my office mates knock on the door to ask us to keep it down a bit. It’s not all fun and games in there, of course, but holy cow it’s not deadly serious either! It’s life, folks. Life is like “it’s a small world” at Disneyland. Everyone goes through it once, it’s not very exciting most of the time, but there’s a lot to see and the scenery changes around every bend. There are parts of it that you find interesting, and parts that you’d rather forget about. The music might drive you a little crazy, but if you sit back and not fight it, you have a common experience to share with the rest of us. (Do they still have that ride? I haven’t been there since 1988). We have ups, we have downs. The hard times follow the joyous ones, and vice versa. I figure you can pick whether you want to laugh or cry about it, but you just have to do it . . . like “it’s a small world.” (Seriously – everyone gripes about it, but have you ever met anyone who has been there and didn’t go on it?)
But I digress – and I do that a lot. Also, I am the queen of parenthetical commentary (my college roommate the professional writer may have suggestions for me there).
So yes, I am a therapist. But I’m also a person, and a mom, and a participant in a variety of relationships. I am a lover of music, and red wine, and some kinds of art. I ride horses, and participate in a sport called endurance riding that no one has ever heard of and when they do they think I’m crazy. I am a proponent of religion as the practice of being a decent human being, not religion the exclusive cult. I sing in my church choir and I listen to the sermon every week (which also surprises people because I’m not one of those people who just oozes religion out every pore. It helps that the pastor of my church used to be a therapist, but beyond that, he is one of the smartest, most learned people I know. Pretty sure that’s why I can stand him. I’m sure I will have more on that at some point. It’s a soapbox). I go to work, and go home, and pay bills, and try to maintain a healthy lifestyle just like a lot of other people out there. I overreact, have bad days, get distracted and forget things, lose my temper and holler at my kids from time to time (not that I’m proud of those things – just sayin’). The point is, I’m just like my clients in most ways. The one difference is that I have paid attention to the way minds, relationships, and emotions work for 15 years. When you do that every day for a long time, you start to notice that you’ve been flying by the seat of your pants with little emotional plan, and that there are little (note the writer’s use of understatement) discrepancies between what you tell people to do and what you actually do. Well, me anyway. I know a number of therapists who behave completely differently than they advise others to and don’t seem to notice. But that’s another soapbox. So I’ve spent 15 years thinking about how to take this pie-in-the-sky therapy stuff where everyone hugs and holds hands at the end of the session and turn it into something useful in a really complicated (and frequently kind of crappy) world. Unorthodox? Perhaps.
Read On.
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