Well hello there PIBlings! I’m working on the name of what I want to call you (all three of you) who read my little blog here tucked away in this corner of the internet. Anywho, I can’t even remember when the last time I wrote on here was, but it must’ve been awhile. I was editing and updating the site and my bio said “22 years old” – I am very much 24 now. So assuming it’s been 2 ish years since I’ve been on here, boy oh boy you’ve missed quite some lore. Let’s see, in the past two years I: moved to Chicago, started and finished my Master’s Program, decided to stay in Chicago (for now), formed new relationships and strengthened older ones, became a real life therapist, found new hobbies, moved apartments and created a new home for myself, and WHOLE LOT of personal internal growth. It’s quite ungraspable how differently I feel than the girl I was 2 years ago. It’s bittersweet to think about it, really. I would not trade who I am today for who I was back then at all, but there was a certain ingenuity and energy back then that I find myself longing for. That said, I am so proud of the person I have become since then. I have become a more aware, introspective (even more so than before), kind person who spends a lot of hours pouring into myself and others. Which kind of brings me to the topic of today, I want to talk about my experience being a person and a therapist and how the two worlds have inevitably bled into each other. How I show up at work versus at home or the lack of the “versus” at times. How an occupation that is so rooted in being personable, empathetic, understanding, emotionally available, etc. can begin to seep into your life or how people with such qualities are preemptively drawn to this field because they possess such qualities. It’s something that has taken up a lot of brain capacity in my mind over the years and now, more than ever, it’s something I’m trying to be very intentional with in my life. 

This a topic that feels so complex yet so compelling to explore as it literally shows up in every facet of my life. It’s a conversation I’ve had so many times with my therapist friends and even my non-therapist friends – who have had a front row seat to the formation of “therapist Danyah” while also witnessing the growth of just “Danyah”. I think I first noticed the collision of both worlds way back in my first year of grad school, when I stopped knowing how to show up for the people I love as a person and not as a therapist. Learning to become a therapist was like a muscle I learned to activate; once you’ve exercised it you know how to feel it and where to look for it. And obviously with continuous growth and professional development – you only start to get better and better at it (or at least one would hope). Once I learned to show up for my clients in the most empathic, nonjudgemental, present, warm, thoughtful, and reflective version of myself – how am I supposed to be any less for the people I care most about? How do I go backwards? I’m not sure, and I’m not sure I even remember how I used to show up for people before embarking on this journey. And the true icing on the cake is: I don’t want to go back. 

Once you become aware of the weight and gravity your responses hold to others (as seen first hand in my practice), you become so hyperaware of the way you show up because you never want to be unintentionally unempathetic. Like if a friend called me and talked about how they were feeling (assuming negatively, for this example), I obviously am not going to just respond with “aww don’t feel that way…” because although that has its time and place, I know it’s not actually that helpful to hear in moments of heightened emotions. Instead, I’ll lean into the reflective/ socratic questioning, or challenging thoughts, cognitive reframing, etc… It’s weird because often times I don’t even realize that I’m using the “therapist” hat, as its become so intertwined with who I am as a person that there is not a clear distinction. Becoming a therapist not only trains you to talk to people in a certain way – more notably, it trains you to think in a specific *clinical* way. It teaches you to be curious and exploratory to make connections. It enhanced my ability to recognize patterns, and to present things in a way that increases insight. I see it firsthand in just writing this where I’m thinking to myself “is this too jargony?”, I can’t even tell anymore. Interestingly, it did not help that for the two years I was in grad school, I was so immersed in that experience and I lived and breathed the ins and outs of this field (which is to be expected). You hit a point in grad school where you’re doing clinical work, writing papers about clinical work, going to class to talk about the nuances of clinical work and theory, and ultimately it just takes over your whole world. Your assignments also ask you to write about current clients or volunteers from your personal life – inviting to use that lens in your personal world as well. And if you’re like me, and most of the friends I have in Chicago are folks from my program, well then it takes over your social life as well. You’ll be at a gathering or hang out talking about the newest thing happening in your practice and case load. 

This is all so easy to envision, but in reality, living it has come with its challenges. Aside from the nature of the work being rooted in helping others and being there for people at their worst moments – its tendency to consume a lot of headspace makes it hard to notice when it is taking a lot of unnecessary mental energy. I believe this comes from a place of caring and empathy, you never want to “care less” about your clients so we, as therapists, let it take the headspace. However, I think there’s a difference between thinking about my caseload out of office hours and thinking with a therapeutic lens out of office. Its funny, in grad school they took a whole year in supervision teaching us how to separate our personal experiences, biases, and beliefs from our practice – but they never taught us how to do the opposite. The work we do is focused on emotions, feelings, thoughts, experiences, and many things that are just simply personal. You don’t leave the office like you’re cardiologist and stop looking at hearts for the day – you continue talking to friends, families, partners and all of those aforementioned things will inevitably come up after the work day has ended. With the ramp up of my caseload, I will truly go home some days and just need to be silent. Not because I can’t talk feelings with people in my personal life, but because sometimes I will notice needing just a little gap to re-orient how i’m showing up at home (as a counselor vs. a friend who happens to be counselor). 

I think it gets all the more interesting when its time for me feel my own big feelings/emotions. I’ve found more recently that while I’m learning how to be better at having a little bit of a separation in my reactions in the clinic as opposed to my everyday life – feeling big feelings remains quite a challenge for me to navigate. Emotionality is not hard for me to manage in the way that I don’t know to regulate or “snap out of it”, so to speak. Its hard because I’m primed to intellectualize every single feeling, seeing why its coming up, what has led me to that specific feeling, and how to proceed. You’re probably thinking “isn’t that a good thing that people go to therapy to work on?” well, yes. However, it makes it hard to be just a human who feels in a humane way. Especially when it comes to being upset at someone or something someone said because I have trained myself to have unconditional positive regard, to be nonjudgemental and endlessly empathic. Trying to be “mad” at someone and feeling rational for it is so difficult when I can usually understand why things unraveled or played out the way that they did. Not only do I intellectualize my own feelings, but of others in my life. Often I find that I will put my feelings aside to be there for others. Not to sound cliché nor victimizing because truthfully I don’t even notice it. But a lovely friend of mine pointed it out to me recently and it really struck me. Creating a safe space for others to come explore their feelings and thoughts in a way that is centered around them, has inadvertently led me to take on that role in every other avenue of life. Again, I hope this doesn’t come across as victimizing or that I am somehow implying that the individuals in my life haven’t made space for me. That is not the case. Its more so the inner-workings of my mind, for which I have very recently had to face in the name of making meaningful change. 

It’s all a work in progress and as am I. These recent discoveries I have made about myself have pushed me to take a step back and observe the patterns in my life that are no longer serving me. And while I’m the process of starting my own personal therapeutic journey, I know a lot of the change has to come from within. Boundaries (big buzzword, I know) need to be drawn by me and none other than myself. Carl Jung once said “who looks outside dreams, who looks inside awakes”. In light of recent personal and professional transitions I have made in my life, I’m entering this new phase of life with looking in with an open mind and clear intentions for myself and those around me. I have a village that I am ever-so-grateful for and they have been such a big support system. I also have myself. I will confidently say that I have made living in my mind and head not a bad place to be, but the intentionality with how I choose to preserve that lies in my ability to communicate. Communication, while not my degree (lol), is my whole world. And working on keeping my personal communication as good as my professional is no easy feat. But I believe in myself and as with any goal or point of development – it starts with the awareness and purposefulness with which I proceed.

This was very long-winded and tangential. That said, I honestly probably didn’t even scratch the surface. So consider this me soft-launching that I may come out with a part II down the line with updates, new findings, and perhaps even growth I’ve made since posting this. Writing this has reminded me of the passion that the PIB started with. I think school and work have had to be my priority for the past several years, but now it’s finally time for me to pour into my hobbies and interests again. I have genuinely missed this space so much and I’ll look forward to writing more on here. Let this be your reminder that the pursuit of perfection is the enemy of progress. So chose progress over perfectionism, because at least progress comes with the inspiration to grow where as perfectionism comes with stagnation!

With love, 

Danyah