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Sometimes in my office people are curious about me. Some ask what do I struggle with? There is an assumption that therapists do not struggle because of what they know. Knowing and doing are two different types of learning. I had an anxiety disorder for most of my life. I suffered from depression and anxiety when I was a child and young adult.
During my first session with a client (also known as “the intake session”) I always ask no matter what the mental health issue—
I am told by my clients I am soft, easy to talk to, and silly. But objectively it's hard to gauge when you work alone in a room with one other person. Therapists are trained to be soft, warm, and do no harm. When we only do that, we create an environment for people to stay stuck, avoid, and ultimately not improve.
Conventionally, most people understand the concept of how our bodies operate. The brain, as the central processor, conjures up the command for an action, then, via the nervous system, sends the signal to the body part that needs moving or to the gland that will produce the hormones to signal the response that is needed.
I wish I could say that in all my inner wisdom I just knew I had to stop my overachieving and so I stopped...smh...that's how my perfectionistic brain expects things to go. But the truth is much more brutal. All real change is.
I have been called "nervous" since I was a child. I would venture to say that large doses of caffeine and chocolate probably did not help my "nervousness". As a small child, I would drink a coke and eat a bag of Hershey's chocolates and literally run in circles at family functions. We still laugh at these memories.
Trauma can have a lasting impact on an individual’s mental health, affecting their ability to cope with stress, build relationships, or even function from day to day. Treatment of trauma rests on the foundation that trauma brain or trauma-based reactions can be changed first through skill-based techniques to “stabilize” clients, and only after these skills are learned can individuals reprocess their trauma. Stabilization is the foundation of treatment and takes time to implement into our lives.
I know that it sounds so formal … TREATMENT… but depression is indeed a medical condition. We misquote the term at times by saying things like, “I’m depressed”, or “I am so depressed that my Netflix series has ended.”
