This is the point in my story where I’m stuck. So far I’ve taken you through my most challenging and influential experiences. Getting divorced, my first Vienna trip, and my hiking/anxiety journey have been the most life-changing events of my life. As far as chronologically, this now brings you up to the last year. While there were still a couple of important experiences in my life since then, they are too close for me to have finished processing them.
That’s the thing about self-disclosure online as a therapist — you always have to keep in mind that a client could and probably will read this at some point. (Hi, guys!)
It’s a delicate dance of being authentic to the person that I am and being mindful of how I want my clients to perceive me. My general approach to therapy is to role model. To use clichés — I do my best to practice what I preach and not be a do as I say, not as I do kind of therapist. I encourage authenticity and vulnerability in session with the hope that people will practice it outside of session. But at the same time, people don’t want to know if their therapist is having a bad day, struggling with self-esteem, going through a break-up, struggling with their health, etc.
Nor do I want them to know the delicate details of my life that are happening in the moment. At this point in my career, I’ve easily seen hundreds of people seated across from me in therapy sessions. For the most part, they have been kind, caring individuals that would be very willing to hear me out if I were struggling with something. But as empathic and wonderful as that kind of connection can be, that blurs the boundary lines. That takes a therapy session from being about the client to being about the therapist, which is pretty much completely frowned upon.
There was one time when I was going through that difficult period of anxiety and sadness that a client said something that just hit so close to home — and I cried. I had to keep from full on sobbing and luckily it went pretty unnoticed due to their own emotional reaction. But it left me wondering how effective I could be in regards to certain topics when I was struggling to cope with it myself. So I decided to take a break from accepting new clients dealing with that specific issue.
The real issue with being transparent and truly authentic in these online forums is the fear that your competence will be questioned.
Do you want to know that your therapist has moments of being a hot mess too? Some people don’t and that’s okay. It is okay to want to come into a therapeutic environment where you don’t have to know anything personal about your therapist so you can solely focus on your needs in session. You want to feel that you are in the hands of someone capable, knowledgeable, and objective.
But honestly, I do want to know. I want to know how she manages through the shit that life can throw our way. I want to know that she’s human, can understand my experience, and that she has a personal experience of trudging through it to get to the other side — the brighter side that is filled with hope and optimism. I don’t want someone that can rattle off diagnoses criteria, coping skills, the definitions of attachment styles, etc. without knowing what any of that truly means on a personal level. I could read a book if I wanted a stale, clinical approach. I want to know that she not only has the roadmap of how to get to that brighter side but has also driven on that unpaved road and can get us there with minimal detours. At the end of the day, knowing all of that about my therapist doesn’t change the fact that I am still in the hands of someone capable, knowledgeable, and objective. It just means that I know she gets it.
What I pride myself on, as a therapist, is that I aim to make a genuine connection with the person sitting across the room from me. I want them to feel heard, valued, and understood by a genuine, caring human because so much of what people are missing in life is just that. We all just want to feel like our experiences and life in general are valid. We want to feel like we matter.
We want to know that we exist in this giant world where it is easy to blend into the background.
Sometimes that connection comes from being able to relate to one another. And sometimes that means a certain level of disclosure — always keeping in mind if it is helpful and for whose benefit am I sharing.
While the authenticity-versus-anonymity dance is a delicate one for therapists, I realize that this is also something that people come across every day in their interactions on and offline with others. Shame researcher Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW defines authenticity as “a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.”
I suppose you can call this blog my collection of choices to show up and be seen publicly — to honestly share some of my difficulty and how I got through it. I want to continue to role model authenticity and vulnerability in order to encourage others to practice the same. Can you imagine how beautiful the world would be if we could look beyond our own shame and fear of rejection to speak from the heart? If we could all do this, then maybe we wouldn’t really have such strong feelings of insecurity and self-doubt. Maybe we would feel more connected to ourselves and to others. Maybe we would be more understanding and better coexist.
So while I challenge myself to keep up this blog from a place of authenticity and vulnerability, I am also going to challenge you. I encourage you to show up to your next interaction from a place of authenticity. I encourage you to take a deep breath and express your truest self. Then take another deep breath and applaud yourself for doing it.
