So while I embrace 2021 for the semblance of relief it promises, mostly I’m happy to see 2021. Because it marks the ten-year anniversary of some of the biggest and most important events in my life.
In 2011 I got together with my husband. I met my best girlfriend. I saw my first psychotherapy patient. And I moved from Esalen on the cliffs of Big Sur, California to Berkeley. To plant roots and make a long-term home and community for myself in the Bay.
It was a big, momentous year that followed what had previously been a very dark and hard one.
I don’t know if 2021 will feel the same way (though I certainly hope more good things are coming!), but the calendrical changeover certainly has made me reflective about all that I’ve learned in this last decade as I’ve trained as a psychotherapist and found my voice and clinical expertise in this niche area of relational trauma recovery work.
From shaking with anxiety the first time I ever saw a “real” paying psychotherapy client as a student intern in 2011 to now being a licensed psychotherapist with expertise in my content area, founding and running a boutique therapy center with a staff of 8 other trauma-informed clinicians, to being a psychoeducational online course creator, to having my clinical opinions featured in media and press over 120+ times in outlets such as Forbes, NBC, The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and more, to having 40,000 unique monthly visitors to my website and niched blog, I’ve come a long way as a therapist.
Seriously, what a difference a decade makes!
So, in honor of those ten years, of those lessons learned personally and professionally, I wanted to write up some of my reflections on relational trauma recovery work. Things I know now that I didn’t necessarily know then. That I want to pass on in case these ideas and thoughts can be of support to you, too. In your own healing journey.
Reflections On Relational Trauma Recovery Work
1) Not having an accurate name for this kind of experience causes people to not see themselves or get the right kind of support.
To be clear, I didn’t head into grad school or my clinical internship experiences thinking, “Hmm, I can’t wait to specialize in relational trauma recovery work!”
No one had ever said this term to me before. And, in those early days of learning and training, I was patchworking together my ideas. Moreover, even what the cluster of experiences I and others had gone through should even be called.
Childhood abuse was a term that felt limiting and somewhat divisive. C-PTSD didn’t seem to take into account the complexity of how adverse early experiences could manifest. And that diagnosis still isn’t in the DSM, actually.
