THERAPY FOR
THERAPISTS WHO ALREADY GRADUATED THERAPY

Them: “You can’t pour from an empty cup”
You: “Hold my cardigan and watch me.”

YOU KNOW THE STORY:

Girl goes to college. In the span of freshman year her parents divorce and she breaks up with her high school boyfriend. By the second semester of sophomore year, she finds herself in therapy for the first time.

Fast forward:

That first and only experience in therapy was so helpful she changes her major. Two and a half degrees, a practicum, three internships, and 3,000 supervised hours later, and –

Voila - a therapist is born.

Fast forward again and here you are:

Doing therapy for a living, but you haven’t been back on the couch after graduating to the chair.

Well - at least not long enough to leave an actual butt print on the couch. You scroll Psych Today every once in a while if you’re having a bad day, but the browsing is short-lived - everyone’s profile is such a turn-off (more on that in a bit). 

Besides - you’re fine. A little tired maybe - but really, you’re fiiiiiine. 

DO THERAPISTS NEED THERAPY?

I get it. I’m fine when I ignore reality, too - and here’s yours:

You can hold more space for other people’s emotions than you can your own.

The culprit on the surface?

Your damn analytical nature. Your brain is way too busy understanding your emotions to ever let you feel them. 

The culprit underneath?

Your fear of taking up space, rather than creating it for others. You can’t stand to let other people hold space for your emotions - so you avoid it by holding space for theirs instead.

You know things *should* be, theoretically, different in a therapeutic relationship. But still, you hesitate to be in therapy yourself because you are keenly aware that the person on the other end of this arrangement has needs, feelings, and struggles. You would never dream of burdening them with yours. 

WARNING:
here comes my first callout.

You “know” (ahem, assume) that your struggles would be a burden to your therapist because you FEEL it all the time: a low-key, shameful resentment that your clients don’t realize you have needs, feelings, and struggles.

So you mask your avoidance, calling it thoughtful consideration:

  • What if you talk about grief and I just lost someone?

  • What if you talk about having an affair and I’m going through a divorce after experiencing infidelity in my marriage?

  • What if you talk about pregnancy and I’ve just miscarried? 

  • Blah blah blah - we can come up with any tragic or non-tragic example to illustrate the reality that as helpers and healers, we witness and hold all manner of trauma, big and small, and you don’t want to burden me with yours. 

By the end of this thought exercise, you’ve convinced yourself that YOU are taking care of ME by not coming to therapy. And that makes you feel better; you like taking care of others.

  • They talk about grief and you just lost someone 

  • They talk about having an affair and you’ve just experienced infidelity in your relationship 

  • They talk about pregnancy and you’ve just miscarried

Until your next client comes, and –

You want to slap yourself when you remind them about the importance of self-care. You hear yourself as you do the whole “you can’t pour from an empty cup” bit - all the while knowing it’s a damn lie because here you are, at this very moment, pouring. 

Your client presents the same objection you have: self-care feels selfish. You don’t WANT to put yourself first. No shade on those who do - it’s just not how you roll.

SO…DON’T.

Don’t put yourself ahead of anyone else.
Just include yourself.

Therapy for your clients,
and for you.

Healing for your clients,
and for you.

Space for your clients,
and for you.

THERAPY HAS BEEN A CATCH-22 FOR YOU.

In talk-based therapy, you seem to uncover three problems for each one you solve. And while you figure a lot of stuff out, no matter how much you talk, there’s always a lingering sense of incompleteness at the end of each session.

On the other hand, EMDR successfully decreased your activation about some old wounds and you’ll always be grateful for that - but you are a verbal processor and it feels like something is missing without the connection created through story-telling.

You don’t need dx or behavior reduction specific modalities like DBT or ERP, and you also don’t need short-term or solution-focused models like ACT or SFCBT because you don’t need therapy for 6 weeks or 6 months to address a specified singular problem - you need long-term support for a long term career as a healer.  

And somatic modalities kind of freak you out (though admittedly, you’re curious and know you will probably try them one day - just not today). You worry it will be too much, too fast, and you feel safer processing verbally but still want to pay attention to your body.

These therapies - good in their own right - have been misaligned with your needs.

You need therapy that is verbal, but also experiential.

You need a therapeutic relationship that helps you connect to yourself, not go outside yourself.

You need someone to hold you the way you hold others, while you learn to hold yourself (instead of bypassing your internal experience by helping others with theirs).

You need an IFS therapist.

IFS THERAPY FOR THERAPISTS: LONG-TERM SUPPORT FOR LONG-TERM HEALERS

Before you roll your eyes because you are sick and tired of hearing “a part of me this” and “part of me that” and god forbid “my inner child is…” let me explain.

IFS therapy for therapists is:

VERBAL

We talk - of course we talk. Talking is the currency for our work. What’s different is that we move from talking about your thoughts and feelings, to talking to and with them. And once it no longer feels strange, it will seem asinine that we ever did anything else. 

SOMATIC

Despite the transformational shift in how we’ll be talking - some things still transcend language. While we talk, we’ll also be paying attention to how what we’re talking about shows up in and around your body.

DEPTH & INSIGHT-ORIENTED

Talking with your parts will give you laser-accurate insight like you’ve never had before. We don’t have to figure out the answers because you’ll be relating to yourself in a way that allows them to be revealed.

EXPERIENTIAL

If your prior experiences in therapy have produced a lot of insight about yourself but you’re still lacking true compassion for yourself, it’s because the therapy was very cognitive, but not very experiential. Insight is great - but insight for insight's sake is a dead end. Experiential insight = movement.

Confused what I mean by “experiential?”

Picture it this way: imagine you’re one of these parts we talk about in your system, and you get drug into therapy every week to be talked about, but never talked to. Stories are told that hypothesize why you do what you do and how to get you to change, but no one ever actually talks to you. 

That’s how life as a part is…until IFS therapy that is. With IFS, suddenly, someone starts talking TO you ABOUT you and your experience, and boom -

Notice how you felt reading the paragraph about being talked about vs with.

Kind of low-key annoyed and maybe a sense of urgency to be heard, right?

Now how about when you read when it changed and you were being talked to and with?

Relieving,
right?

That’s what experientially grounded, insight-oriented therapy brings to the table - relief.

PRESENT FOCUSED

Each session, we’ll start off with what’s showing up in the moment, using it as a trailhead. It might be the same thing week to week for a while. Other times, it might change each week. Both are fine.

PAST INCLUSIVE

If what’s showing up in the present is connected to something in the past, we might visit it. If it doesn’t, we don’t. #efficient

NOT PROBLEM OR SOLUTION FOCUSED – IT’S YOU FOCUSED

You don’t need to come to our first (or 187th) session with a self-assessed case conceptualization complete with dx and footnotes to justify taking up a spot on my caseload. You might not even know what it is you need help with - and with me, there’s no need to prove it and no pressure to be a “good client”. All you need to say is that you’re a helping professional - because that’s enough. 

Seriously, when filling out your intake form, just write “I’m a therapist” - I’ll get it.

FOR THE
LONG TERM

This is a paradigm for living. The shift you will experience in how to relate to yourself will fundamentally change everything about how you tend to your internal experience and engage with your external one.

WHAT’S THE CATCH?

Judging by the fact that you’re still reading, I’m guessing you’ve felt equally seen and offended and as such - we’re probably a good fit to work together.

Which means we are standing at the corner of Commit-And-Book-A-Consult and Exit-Out-And-Move-On-With-Your-Day. There’s just one thing left for us to cover, and that’s the nitty-gritty details of schedules & finances.

Are you ready? Here it is.

Sessions are $295, I don’t take insurance or do superbills, and you have to come *weekly - no bi-weekly or monthly sessions.

I know - I KNOW. You are a pinball machine of thoughts, feelings, and reactions right now. If you haven’t already exited the browser tab, bravo. Take a breath, and then stick with me. 

IF YOU FEEL

SOMETHING AKIN TO:

SOMETHING AKIN TO:

  • frustrated or angry

  • discouraged

  • defeated

  • disgusted

    ask the voice that says “I just can’t do that” to hold on while you keep reading.

TAKING UP SPACE IN THE
THERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP

Amongst all of the reactions you’re cycling through - here’s the one we have to talk about, right here, right now:

The part of you that is mortified - potentially even offended - that I could have the audacity to take up that much space…in a therapeutic relationship no less.

But - isn’t that what we’re here for? Space - and your relationship with it? Your need to learn how to take up space instead of just creating it for others in perpetuity?

After all, what is money but space?

Back up though - I’m getting ahead of myself and some inevitable pieces of our work together. Here’s what’s happening in this decision to work together that is so damn uncomfortable:

We are making you a high priority.

And, I am taking responsibility for my needs in our relationship, so you don’t have to.

Read that again. I will be bearing the responsibility for my needs in our relationship so you don’t have to.

You, who was conditioned to be a caretaker in your FOO and then told to do it at your own detriment mentally, emotionally, logistically, relationally, spiritually, and financially when you started to do it professionally.

I’ve learned how to not give to my own detriment, which means you can trust the space I offer and actually sink into it.

The discomfort of paying more out of pocket for therapy than you ever thought you would will eventually give way to the relief of the sweetest kind: not having to take care of someone who is taking care of you.

You need space. I’m offering it - and because I can afford what I’m offering, you can trust it. So - will you take it?

IF YOU WANT TO LEARN TO TAKE UP SPACE, YOU BETTER BE WORKING WITH SOMEONE WHO IS COMFORTABLE DOING IT THEMSELVES.

Ready to get your butt back on the couch?

*see the What To Expect page for my consistency policy and how I handle cancellations