Therapist Mom

Well today I read a blog post by a therapist friend of mine called Lexie - so Lexie yes if you're reading this your post propelled me to think about this post and spiraled all these thoughts - talking about how we're all therapists and for the most part, most of her blog entries are about things she learns as a therapist. After reading her last post I panicked. I'm only seeing clients on Saturday and they're what you would consider your easy clients, not because they don't have real problems, but because they're willing to work and they don't trigger my own personal issues. I felt literally stuck in my own feelings as a therapist. I started thinking and wondering whether I was being stretched like I was during my training. I seriously started wondering if I was growing as a therapist, and if it was fair for my clients to be with a therapist who didn't feel all that challenged as of late. Again I panicked. This was somewhat funny, because I thought it was ironic that I felt better when I had clients that were driving me completely nuts as I felt I had to push myself to serve them better, than now that I had easier clients. I panicked because I couldn't remember when was the last time I had felt inadequate as a therapist, and I didn't like this feeling, not one bit. As I found myself panicking over my career and lack of growth that I was feeling I noticed that Alex seemed unstable hanging onto one of his toys trying to stand - he's crawling and trying to stand now - then his hand slipped and down he went but not without hitting his face on the toy. Mother fail. He started crying and I picked him up trying to comfort him. I felt so bad I had been right there next to him the entire time, and while I knew bumps were inevitable part of this new independence of his I couldn't help feeling inadequate as a mom. Inadequate. Wait did I just say inadequate? Alex stopped crying within seconds, and he was fine, and I found myself chuckling because I realized that feeling inadequate as a mom was helping me become a better therapist and that I didn't need to be in the therapy room 20hrs a week to learn more. You see, being a therapist is all about allowing yourself to be vulnerable, to be human, to be imperfect with your clients. And I quote directly from my friend's blog "What is wrong with me making mistakes as a therapist?!? What is wrong with me being imperfect and weak and growing in understanding? Why can't I treat my own humanness with compassion, dignity and ... humor? Why can't I take myself a little less seriously? Mistakes, feelings and humanity are not the enemy. The enemy... the "disease" is the idea that my weakness makes me wrong, unacceptable, ineffective, unable to contribute and have something to give in a relationship with others." All of a sudden my feelings of panic left me, and I realized that embracing my own humanness makes me not only a better therapist but also a better mom. I understood that being a mom has been the most vulnerable experience of my life, and that if anything I have learned to be more comfortable with feeling vulnerable than I was before. Inadequacy had never felt so sweet, I'm learning how to be a better therapist by learning how to be a better mom. And while learning how to be a good mom has definitely been more emotionally challenging than learning how to be a good therapist, I'm grateful that two passions in my life are so deeply connected.

When Alex was just a newborn