Tomorrow

Tomorrow, I will take the 1st of the 2 licensure exams I have to take to become a fully licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in the great state of California.

I have studied, I have prayed, and I have worried. Tomorrow I will know if I get to move on, or if I need to take it again. I am opting for the first option. I am tired of being an MFT-Intern, with its limitations.

So, I will keep you posted. Thanks for you support!

Thanks to My Clients

Dear Clients  I Saw Today,
I just wanted to say, "thanks." Thanks for coming and bringing yourself to the room to sit and talk with me. Thanks for stopping and taking the time to ask me about my holidays, too, and my comfort, instead of just yours. It means a lot to me, you know, when you see me as a person and not just a "service provider."

Thanks for humoring me and answering my silly, odd questions. Thanks for being honest with me even when you didn't like where the conversation was going, and for being willing to come back, even though I can't fix your problems like you hoped I could. Thanks for engaging with me and trusting me with your stuff. It means a lot, and helps me feel successful at my job.

Thanks for telling me about your happy moments, not just your sad ones. I love to hear your stories. I love to discover who you are under the veil of all that stress that brought you to me. You really are so special and brilliant. I feel privileged to be the one to see you and hear you. Not enough people give the time it takes to really watch another person unveil their wonderfulness, and I'm glad its me. Its like being a treasure hunter. I am amazed at your senses of humor, your way of seeing the world, and your compassion for others. Thanks for sharing so much of yourself with me.

I hope my fondness for you eeks through. I don't always find it easy to express my delight at who you are, or my intense love for you, because of my own hang ups, and because of the restrictiveness of our relationship. I can't give you a big hug or invite you to my house for the holidays. I can't always tell you how much I am your side. But I just want you to know I really love who you are. I really love getting to see you. I sure wish I could do more for you, did you know that? That it stresses me out to send you back out the door with the same problems? But I am amazed and impressed by how much you succeed even with the burdens you carry.

So thanks for sharing your life with this random stranger. Thanks.

Perks of Being a Therapist

Being a therapist has its perks. Other than getting paid to sit and talk to people all day long (something I would doing ANYWAYS!), there are certain therapeutic mentalities which fit really nicely with my own needs. Therapists all are about "congruence." What congruence means for mental health professionals, is being candid with their clients. This isn't always easy, or appropriate ("I'm totally scared of you," for example, would probably be an inappropriate use of congruence), but it means I am free to be a big basket case who makes mistakes all the time. If I mess up, I can say, "I'm really sorry, I messed up" or "whoops, I forgot" instead of having to put on a big show if I forget a family member's name or mischedule people. I can also express genuine positive emotions with my clients. If I think about them outside of work, I tell them, "I couldn't stop thinking about what you said at our last session," or "I was really worried about you!" When I am brave, I also share my dilemmas in a way you normally don't get to in a professional setting: "I'm torn on what to tell you, because on the one hand I totally get why you cussed that kid out, but I don't want to encourage you to do that again because it keeps getting you suspended."

When I first started, I would get easily flustered when I made a mistake or didn't have things perfect in my room. Now I'm learning to address what's going on instead of pretending everything's perfect when its not. People seem to move on faster if something is addressed. Its pretty nice, being able to be a genuine, flawed human girl instead of a perfect entity.

I try not to live in a vacuum, because I can't. Sometimes I'm really tired, and its better to say, "I'm sorry I yawned, its not you- I'm just tired today, " than try to act like I'm not. The clients smile and say, "me too, " and we move on. It is also helpful to let them be a human back to me, and to give them short answers about my life. "Thanks, I had a nice Halloween...I passed out candy. What did you do?" Pretending I don't exist outside this office doesn't really help anybody. Most people seem to prefer talking to a flesh and blood human.

I remember in Grad school, I asked the head of my program why she went into therapy 30 years or so ago.  I expected some lofty answer. She said "I haven't a clue," and smiled. I loved the honesty of that moment.

Sometimes, I have failed at being congruent. I have found it difficult to tell the truth when a client makes me angry. I have found it difficult to admit if I forgot to do something for them that I was supposed to do.

But I work on it, and try to give of myself as much as I can, and improve the rest of the time. Which is what I hope for my clients, too. And you know what? I find myself really enjoying that kind of mutuality with my clients. As much as the therapy is about them, its also about how they relate with me. The families that really succeed are the ones with which I form a strong relationship with goes both ways. If I can accept them as valuable, but real people, and they can accept me the same way, well, the work is almost already done!

How God Has Worked in My Life

I don't know how to explain to you, if you don't know Christ, how God has worked in my life, but He has in a very personal and real way. For those of you who do know Christ, you know what it's like to experience Him as a friend, helper, and counselor.

One of the things which continually amaze me is how He answers my prayers, directly and appropriately, every time. I have brazenly asked Him for a variety of things in my life, things I have no right to. I have asked him for a husband, for a career, to be able to travel, for advanced education, for a house, to pay off debt...I will never quite understand how He has been so faithful in giving me what I ask but doesn't always give these things to other people.

God answers prayers differently for different people, I know that, and He has a different plan for each of us. Sometimes we get everything we ask for, and sometimes He says "no" because He has something different and better in mind we don't know about yet, or we have prayed a foolish prayer that he mercifully denies. Sometimes He says, "wait."

But there are a few things I have noticed about how prayer has worked in my life. The Bible says, "you have not because you ask not." I have, as I said above, asked Him directly for lots of things. I trust Him and I try to remember to bring all my needs before Him. Sometimes I think people forget to even ask and they don't know why He hasn't answered them. So I bring all my little, provincial needs to My Lord, and He comforts me and guides me. Like a child, I come to Him, aware He can say "No" but that I can ask for anything.

Secondly, I rest in the knowledge that God Himself gave me my desires and interests and has a purpose for me. He will not leave me without tools to accomplish His will! So when I ask for things to take care of my family and succeed in ministry, I believe He will give me what I need to do it, and He does! I am not asking selfishly, I am asking in order to accomplish His purposes, and I am blessed along the way because He is so merciful.

Thirdly,  I've profoundly felt the prayers of others in my life. My life has been a CAKEWALK in comparison to most people on this spinning globe, and the only thing I can really attribute that to is that before I was born and before I was old enough to pray, and even today, people have been praying for me. My parents prayed for their future children before we were even conceived, and I have been immersed in prayer ever since. God hears the prayers of the saints, and I know I have been protected and blessed, not due to my own righteousness, but because God has lovingly answered the prayers of his faithful people for me. I have walked through this world clothed in peace because of their prayers. Likewise, I hope to be a prayer warrior for my children, family, and the people who I encounter to continue to pass along His blessings which I have been so grateful to receive and He has given me the eyes to see.

None of this means I am immune to illness, or that God doesn't sometimes allow trials and pain to come to people who pray or are prayed for! After all, Jesus tells us "in this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world." God has a purpose in His actions bigger than our comprehension. I have not always received what I have asked for when I asked for it, and that is part of His goodness, too, and I know I will not escape trouble in this life. But there is such joy in knowing that My Heavenly King hears my cries!

What about you? How has the Almighty God worked in your life?

The Hardest Thing I've Ever Done

I am still coming to terms with the fact that being a therapist is, hands down, the hardest thing I have ever done. It has brought me to my breaking point more than once, and I am daily faced with challenges I don't know how to meet. It is hard. I have sometimes wished I'd picked a less challenging profession, but I know myself too well. I would have kept pushing and challenging myself until I found some equivalent situation where I was, once again, up against the wall.

I have to come face to face with my own shortcomings over and over again. I have to work with people I'm not comfortable interacting with. I have been criticized, complained about, condescended, by some very sick folks, and sometimes, to my shame, some not so sick folks. I make mistakes, many mistakes, and sometimes seen the consequences of those mistakes in the lives of my clients. I have failed some of my clients. I have dropped the ball more times than I like to remember. I have under-performed, felt under-motivated, resented my clients, coworkers, and company for "making" my life so hard. I have personalized the impersonal, been affected by my environment, and have experienced the sickening feelings of self-doubt and self-loss. In the middle I didn't seem to be able to make sense out of what my life had become and I frequently fantasized about just walking away from the tremendous pressure I felt every day.

I have recently had to face my own juvenile tendencies, and come to terms with the fact that no one is going to come in and save me from my situation. There will be no deux ex machina to swoop in and allow me to go free. I can't go over it, I can't go around it, I have to walk through it. No matter how I cry out to him that "it's too hard!", God has been unwilling to release me in my darkest moments. It is time to put on my big girl panties, as a friend of mine is fond of saying, and face things myself.

I have come to the painful realization that we all do, eventually, which is that no one else in the world can accomplish my goals for me. No one else will fix me or make it all better. My mommy can't come and rescue me from this big, bad world of frustration and personal failure. I am the only one who can walk this path through to the other side.

But I am learning lessons through all this that I couldn't have learned otherwise. I'm learning that perseverance really is the one thing that ends up mattering in the end. Everyday, I get back up, not because I want to, but because I must. Everyday, I go back to work. And everyday, I learn a little more, and put in a little more time, and do a little more toward the future. It feels like so little, but it adds up. And somewhere in the madness, a person is emerging. I was so afraid she would be bitter and used up, but instead, she is older, more forgiving, more humble, and more aware of the challenges of life. She is more appreciative of the sunrise, of fresh fruit, of frozen yogurt and good coffee. She better understands her clients and the pain that just living can cause. She better understands what it means to feel trapped and powerless, but also what it takes to overcome. She is more appreciative of family and true friends, and has become more honest about her own shortcomings with people around her. She has fewer blind spots about her own stuff. She gives out compliments more freely and requires less excitement in life in order to feel content. She better understands the power and importance of encouragement and acts of kindness because she has relied on them so desperately to get through. She imagines she can now better understand how Jesus felt, willingly submitting himself to an earthly body with all its frailties and confusion. His sacrifice started long before the cross.

    Part of me would like to reject these changes. It would have hurt less to stay in the shallow end, to still be naive to the pain of living. But I don't think any of us really get that option. If I didn't learn these things now, I'd just have to learn them later. I'd rather start today, before kids, so I don't have to make as many mistake on my family as I work through my own disillusionment and grappling with what it means to be a person.

A New Hope

A week from today I begin teaching an undergraduate psychology course. For the longest time, teaching at the college level has been a goal of mine, and now, that day is a lot closer than I expected it to be, and actually easier to get into than I thought. Turns out, full-time clinicians were being sought in my area for the clinical experience we bring to the classroom, just as I was seeking to expand my professional experience to teaching! It's one of those glorious marriages of goals that don't come along everyday. Now that the first cat is in the bag, I am starting to get nervous. A lot hinges on this plan- this is a stepping stone to the future for me, so I have to do a really good job if I want to keep teaching additional classes. Don't screw this up, self. I hope I do a good job! Eep!

Random Acts of Power

           
There are many, many things I wish were run differently in the bureaucratic system where I work. This is the nature of bureaucracies. It doesn't seem to matter which one you are apart of, the same sorts of problems persist.

           This inability to dictate how my day goes has been a source of frustration to me since...forever. "I don't like that policy," I say, and the answer, however nicely phrased, is "too bad, its a part of your job." And when people do try to make policy changes, things seem to have a way of drifting back to their original forms because people do their job the way they always have.


           So powerlessness is a feeling I grapple with each work day, and it can consume me up in frustration, irritation, anger, and hopelessness. None of which makes a productive employee. It makes a disgruntled employee.

           But this summer, when I was on a well-needed rest from work, I did a lot of praying and a lot of thinking. One of the revelations that resulted was this:

1. I have very little power over the bad things that happen where I work. It doesn't seem to matter what I do, they don't get fixed or changed by anything short of an act of God.

BUT:

2. I have A LOT of power over the good things that happen where I work. It's much easier to make good happen than stop bad from happening! So a well-placed prayer/hug with a coworker, a treat for my office mates, a drop by and say hello to a lonely fellow employee- these things make the day much more palatable for myself and others, even if we can't seem to control the system which dictates our work day.

            I am sure there are bureaucratic gurus out there who know how to "fix" these things and make amazing, streamlined choices which benefit everyone by removing systemic problems. I am not currently one of these people.  But right this minute, right now, I have the skills to improve my working environment through addition rather than subtraction.

           So that is my new goal. And you know what? I don't feel so powerless anymore.