In The Other Chair: When Therapists Need Therapists

Before I completed my bachelors degree in Psychology and Ethics, I went through a major pivotal point in my life. I had hit a self-esteem rock bottom. So rock bottom that I was suicidal. And not the kind of suicidal where I was simply daydreaming about dying, but full-blown ‘I’m trapped in a fog of severe emotional torture and I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE’ kind of pain.

I remember the day vividly. I was overwhelmed with a full time job, school, a relationship, and my own personal story of not being ‘good enough’. I hated myself and I thought everyone else hated me too.
On the phone with the insurance company trying to find a therapist and make sure I was covered, I remember the intense panic I felt about graduate school. “They’re not going to let me be a therapist if they know I’ve been suicidal. Don’t tell them!” I said to my partner who spoke to them while I scream-cried in the background.

I thought therapists were supposed to be the most ‘healed’ people in the world.

Fast forward many years later and I’m in the profession. My colleagues and I are sitting around a large conference room table. We are laughing and talking about life as a therapist. We each went around and said why we became therapists in the first place. My friend started to say her story, “Well, my brother really loved cleaning and was a germaphobe, so of course he became [insert the name of a fancy science career involving this, I genuinely forgot the name], my other sibling did [xyz] so they became [xyz]. And I was emotional and a mess, so naturally…”

The room burst into laughter. We all got it. On a deep level. Broken people tend to become healers… because we get it.

Maybe that’s why I am truly honored in moments when a client comes into my office actively suicidal. I know that space. I’ve been in the trenches of that space. And being in that space alone is a losing game. You don’t survive. Luckily, I found a very dorky, loving, funny, and wildly accepting therapist who saved my life. Now I get to be that for someone else.

What about now?

The APA and ACA have ethical rules for therapists around our own mental health. It’s crucial that we stay cognitively and emotionally well to not let our ‘stuff’ interfere with your treatment.

Therefore, I see a therapist every week. I’m not in a crisis, thankfully. But I still go in for “maintenance work”. (i.e., I’m a human being and the process of being one means that we experience ALL of the emotions. Remember… The spiral goes on forever.)

One thing I’ve been told (that didn’t seem true but is 100% factual AF) is how when I am growing as a therapist, my clients also grow. If I am stagnant, my clients also get stagnant.

It’s a huge wake up call because we get to grow and heal and learn to be our true selves together.

Whoa.

I love that. Who knew that growth was a group effort in a lot of ways?? Except you Dr. Carl Rogers… 😉

So, just as doctors go to the doctor when they get sick or need surgeries, so therapists must, and I mean MUST, go to a therapist at some point during their career. It is crucial that we sit ‘in the other chair’, because if we don’t, then we have no idea the guts it takes to be completely exposed with all of your shame, darkness, and pain with a complete stranger in hopes that they won’t break the last shred of strength you have left.

Finally, I’d like to give a shout out to my therapist, Jason. You the real MVP. Not only helping me, but you’re helping every single one of my clients.

Life. Love. Growth.        It’s all a team effort.

“When a person realizes he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten. I think in some real sense he is weeping for joy. It is as though he were saying, ‘Thank God, somebody heard me. Someone knows what it’s like to be me.'”

         – Dr. Carl Rogers