After a long absence I am back. I have a few thoughts about what made it possible for me to come back today. Last few months have been a whirlwind for me to concentrate on this blog and muse much. I don't think there are enough hours in the day to contain what goes in my life on any given day. I am nearing the end of my 3rd year and it is only 3 months away. Hard to believe I started here midway through second year. I have bad days and I have good days.
I worry about my impending cord severing in 17 months to be on my own and it scares me to think I will be on my own. One would think moonlighting is a good practice to run solo but I still have options to consult, mainly because I am probably quite lucky to have that option. I am losing one of the best times of my life at the end of these 17 months and I feel like I want to grieve at times. I am sure, I am starting to.
One of the best things I have done for myself over the last 2 months is exactly what the title of this post says.
I worry about my impending cord severing in 17 months to be on my own and it scares me to think I will be on my own. One would think moonlighting is a good practice to run solo but I still have options to consult, mainly because I am probably quite lucky to have that option. I am losing one of the best times of my life at the end of these 17 months and I feel like I want to grieve at times. I am sure, I am starting to.
One of the best things I have done for myself over the last 2 months is exactly what the title of this post says.
Have you figured it out yet?
And if you thought of therapy; you are the winner. You are pretty awesome at this guessing game.
So after 8 months of monkeying around this idea of getting in therapy for myself, I finally gave in. The proverbial couch is literally reversed. It is quite a transformation and one that I never knew would make me think so much.
For many psychiatry residents, esp. if they are like me and see or want to see a lot more therapy patients, it is something that just has to be done. I hope all programs provide supervisors for therapy cases, as they should but I also hope that many psychiatry residents do not end up ignoring the need for their own work to be done. If you have a supervisor that is open to working simultaneously with you and on you, that is great. My supervisor on other hand never had a choice and mainly because of me. I am used to taking charge and in my mind, I had this one hr a week for case consultation, so I would walk in and use every minute of that hour for my patients. He got to get glimpses in my personality but by the time I brought up the question of my own work with him, I already had a mindset that this is an hour paid by my program and I shouldn't use it for myself. Not to mention I had 8 cases for therapy and at times 10-15, so I needed this hour more than ever.
I started noticing my anxiety as a therapist get louder, the more intense therapy with my patients got. The emotions and reactions in me were what forced me to be very honest with myself about what did I want myself to be able to do when I take on people for therapy.
I started reading more this year. Yalom, Bowlby, Beck, Wachtel, Gabbard, Robert Karen and numerous articles here and there. None of these people that I admire so much and learn so much from, got so good at what they do without having their own work done.
I want to be half as good as any of them. That is what I want. So I can't ignore the need to be the patient in order to be an effective therapist.
I finally gave in and asked my supervisor to be my therapist. That in itself was an intense experience from having to process my need to have the safe path to therapy with a known person than to open to a totally new therapist, finding a new supervisor and then realizing I lost my supervisor relationship with my now therapist. It was something that came so unexpected yet proved to be a great stepping stone into the new relationship.
Now 5 weeks into it, I have started to understand why my patients, who come sit across from me in my office; keep coming every week. I understand that they are the ones doing the work and when they ask me questions about what to do, they are not meaning to put me on spot, neither are they looking for a magic formula; but rather exactly the opposite. They already know what they are asking me, I just help crack the code. Sitting across from my therapist when I share things that make me question my own abilities, limitations and that frustration that I feel with myself many times; I hear myself say things I only think about but am too scared to admit to myself. It's like I believe, as if I am superhuman or should be superhuman. I have started to understand my worries and anxieties in ways I probably already knew. It is so odd how actually saying them out loud is akin to giving life to something many of us like to keep buried. Reversing the role makes me see how without this step, I was never going to be able to fully understand the person who sits across from me every week without doubting the process every step of the way; because I never had the experience from the other side.
Dealing with my own life and facing my own limitations, I have to do it; to do what I want to do. The proof is in this post. Took me 2 months from my pledge to write here to actually write this. The only thing that has changed is that now once a week I get to be the patient. I get to be able to let it go and face myself without reservations. Something so hard to do but has a profoundly liberating effect. Most probably one of the reasons I am back here writing again.
So if you are a therapist, psychiatry residents or aspiring to be either one of those, keep your work on yourself in your mind; not as an option but as a necessity. Not because it is cliche; but because it is anything but.
As Irvin Yalom says,
"Self exploration should continue throughout life, including entering therapy at various stages of life."
