My transition to a new office also marked another transition. We wanted to expand our family for a long time and had decided to move forward with my career changes when we did not think our dream would come true. In true personality form, my second daughter came along in her own time frame and blessed our world with her presence.
The demands of raising my family assisted me in setting the boundaries I needed to separate work from home.
My work life became a whole lot of “hours in the saddle” as I continued to gain experience and proprioceptive skills.
I began teaching out of my office and ultimately produced 118 hours of curriculum on my craft.
It was a fruitful period for sharing with my colleagues. I learned as much from them as they did from me. I felt truly blessed to be surrounded by talented and open-minded therapists sharing my love for the work.
A byproduct of “becoming an expert" was an influx of patients referred by their caregivers who “did not know what to do with them."
People with chronic and complicated physical issues, oftentimes accompanied by deep wounding, filled a long wait list. They had been to every doctor, therapist, and specialist, and had tried all forms of traditional and non-traditional treatments.
To my chagrin, adding staff did not help me with the list.
I painted myself into a corner with my “expertise” and they did not want to see anyone else.
It was a bit claustrophobic to be in such demand and I became overwhelmed with a sense of “duty” toward people with nowhere to go.
I helped many of them “get back to life,” supported some in “accepting what is,” and wished well those who continued their search.
I felt commitment and compassion toward my patients and grateful that my work was meaningful. However, my body was beginning to break down from 25 years of performing body work.
Additionally, I was tired from giving myself over to another person’s journey hour after hour.
Therapists don’t talk about this as no one but a therapist would understand what this “means.”
Being present for a one-hour therapeutic session requires a lot of energy. The therapist must “get in the space” required to let go of their needs, wants, emotions, triggers, judgments and outcomes in order to create a safe space for the patient’s “self” to emerge and heal itself.
The journey begins and the therapist guards the patient’s experience, engages with their tissue, and rides with them as their journey unravels.
It is often a silent journey. Tissue releases as it is engaged and followed to a new range of motion. Ripples of insight, memories, or emotions rise to the surface and then disappear.
Sometimes the patient drifts into a sleep state and the therapist just “sits” with the body’s rhythms.
Then it is over.
The therapist shakes off the previous journey, re-grounds, and starts over.
At day’s end, the world has been traveled and there is little energy left for making dinner and raising a family.
Not all sessions carry the same weight and intensity.
While I rarely engage in “casual” conversation (mostly because I don’t know what to say and it bores me), many intimate and revealing conversations took place on my table.
People tell their therapists things they don’t tell their loved ones because they don’t want to worry them, hurt them, or reveal too much of their inner self.
I delved deeply into “anticipatory grief” with a dear patient whose mom was suffering dementia. I marveled at how bright and clever she was at managing the situation with compassion and humor.
She taught me a lot about how to assist someone in maintaining their humility while surviving the challenges of care taking.
When her mom did pass, she taught me a lot about surviving grief. Her words “you don’t get over it – you just get through it” came back to me when my dad passed years later.
Others shared the trials and tribulations of childrearing, marriage, divorce, partnership, and friendship. We delved into “family of origin” dynamics, and what it “feels like” to be a mom or dad, daughter or son, and sister or brother.
We sunk into and “owned” our part in the successes and failures of these relationships through the mirror we each brought to the table.
Together we traveled every human emotion, and I was met daily with real life examples of love, fear, joy, suffering, elation, and grief.
Their stories were both universal and unique.
They taught me that our journeys are unique to our life experience and inherent attributes, but we all really want the same thing – to feel safe and loved.
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