Therapy For Therapists
Therapists need support, too. I know firsthand how helpful it can be to explore patterns, heal wounds, and gain perspective and self-kindness—especially for those of us who sit with others’ pain every day.
I believe in therapy for therapists! I’d estimate I’ve done about a thousand hours of my own therapy—individual, couples, group, and weekend workshops. Same for my wife (I have her permission to share that!). It’s been enormously helpful to me personally and in my work also.
I love my therapist clients. Until recently, I had never done anything to advertise myself as a therapist for therapists, but I realized a few years ago that I always have several therapists as clients at any given time … and then I realized how much I like them! Insightful, bright, invested in change: What’s not to love?
I really respect this work we do, so it’s easy to want to support therapists, whether our therapy deals with your work or not. Typically, my therapy with therapists has not functioned like supervision, but like regular therapy, yet it’s been great to be able to shift gears a bit when relevant and, say, talk about how a particular case is impacting you, what it’s like to have a chronically suicidal client, or any other challenging work. These are professional issues, and they’re also profoundly personal issues.
As a therapist, you may want to know about my theoretical orientation. I’m definitely in the eclectic camp in that I’m glad to draw from relational, narrative, cognitive, experiential, existential, and other therapies when it seems helpful for this person in this moment about this issue. Most of my training after grad school has been in experiential therapies, Hakomi and Yoga For The Emotional Body, but my sessions typically look a lot like other “talk therapists’.” I do sometimes suggest more experiential or body-oriented exercises, drawing on the above approaches or Gestalt or bioenergetics. But, again, mostly it’s talk therapy.
My favorite psych book is Character Styles, by Stephen Johnson, which provides a developmental theory and then details seven personality styles, with their characteristic wounds/etiology, coping strategies, and what I like to think of superpowers. I’m currently writing a layperson’s version of that book since Johnson’s version is so helpful, yet so full of jargon and generally hard to read. The book I’ve completed and am shopping around is a guide to emotions for analytical people.
I’m oriented toward deep and lasting change, which is typically a very good fit for therapists. I’m not a symptom-relief kind of therapist—more of a “Let’s figure out where that comes from historically, what the pattern is, how it’s helping you, how it’s hurting you, and how we can heal the underlying hurt and shift the current pattern while retaining the helpful parts” kind of therapist. It seems almost everyone starts therapy focusing on a problem, but I see the work as immensely positive—moving toward comfort in one’s own skin, authenticity, and great relationships.
I think we do exceptional work, a bit like choosing to work in an ER: You know you’re putting yourself in front of the worst thing this person has going in their whole life … and the same with the next person … and the next. And somehow making that work positive, always moving toward healing and growth. You deserve some support as a person who does this important and challenging work!