Endings and beginnings

In the midst of the pandemic, I noticed a specific kind of isolation therapists were experiencing. We sat in our home offices, corners turned in to presentable spaces, hoping clients couldn’t hear the barks of our dogs or children laughing outside. Sometimes the reflections of our family members showed up in the glass of a picture frame as they passed by windows. In a field where we were often expected to uphold a professional image, to be a blank slate in order to be the client’s mirror, this moved us in to a new space. Our humanity was no longer able to be hidden. We were connecting deeper with clients than ever before as our humanity showed through. It seemed, instead of being the blank-slate therapists holding up a mirror, clients and therapists were holding up mirrors for each other. In these mirrors, therapists found a new depth with their clients, but many found a new isolation within themselves. We no longer had offices to check in with colleagues throughout the day. Instead, we held sacred stories within our own homes, exiting our makeshift offices to hug our children directly following trauma processing with our people. In connecting with our people, in allowing them to see our humanity, we found a new type of isolation as therapists. It was in this hunger for connection with other trauma therapists that my consult and training group, Parts of the Therapist, was born.

Friday, I welcomed a new cohort in the morning, and said goodbye to our prior cohort in the afternoon. It was in this meeting of a hello and goodbye that I found the group’s purpose. Of course, I’d known the purpose to some extent when I started. What began as a group for therapists to enhance their knowledge of working with trauma and examine what comes up in them in response to their people, became a place for therapists to move more deeply toward their own parts and each other’s. To build connection in a time that was so tinged with isolation. It became a place to grow, as moved toward vulnerable places, held by the group.

The group moves gently through the phases of trauma therapy, beginning with the body, moving toward attachment, then parts work, and ending with memory reconsolidation, or the processing of traumatic material. In the process of trauma therapy, we begin with containment and resourcing. We internalize something pleasant or soothing within ourselves that we’re able to return to throughout the process of therapy. A big piece of this work can be the client internalizing the therapist and the therapist holding hope for the client. It is in that space we begin to build relationship and connection. (The catalyst for, and perhaps most important piece of healing). We create this deep connection with our clients, yet many therapists feel very alone due to the nature of our work. We hold sacred stories for our clients yet we can’t speak about our work to those who aren’t within our field in order to protect confidentiality. This means our friends and partners who aren’t therapists often misunderstand our work.

While the group had important pieces in supporting clients through trauma work, what we built as clinicians was containment and resourcing through connection. Our group became a net. In creating space to share our vulnerabilities, to deeply connect in what it means to be a trauma therapist, and welcome each part of us that awakened in response to the training material, each other, and our clients, we internalized the loving presence of each group member and the group as a whole. As humans, we need people who connect to become our net. We need people who function as our internalized loving presence. As therapists, we need to become a net for each other because that net doesn’t hold just us, that net is a holding space for us, and in turn, each of our people.

I hear myself say often as a therapist, “connection is the antidote to trauma,” yet so often we are asked to disconnect once the session is over. We turn inward as the sacred stories our clients hold become a part of us. We feel the weight without a way to release it. When we build our net as therapists, we can hold that weight together. Internalizing loving presence and connection so we can send that out to world. Holding the hands of those who are the keepers of sacred stories. This beautiful work should not be done alone.