Still Here: Therapy “Post Covid”

I don’t know about you but the last four years of my life have felt enormous! I have had the profound experience of sitting with courageous people as many elements of their daily lives, health, and future have been called into question by the pandemic. I joked early on about how the pandemic was making everyone “sit with their sh*t.” At first, like some, I was excited about the opportunities for growth that many of my clients were being given. The initial shut down created a collective pause and many clients found themselves with extra time to reflect. As the months wore on, I found myself also “sitting with my sh*t” and I began to feel the enormity of the situation. While media has boiled things into simplified terms, I have found myself stewing in the complexity of the human experience. The vastness between my clients’ lived experiences, even within our small beloved mountain town, has left me speechless. Literally. You can see it in how my blogs completely dropped off. In fact, most of my writing dropped off. As a therapist, there was little time to process. The demand has never been this high for therapy. In many ways, it is a beautiful thing.

I kept reeling over the fact that no other time in my decade of being a therapist have I been as “in it” with my clients as I had been in the first couple years of COVID. No other time have I been talking with a client about their stressful grocery shopping experience while remembering my own similar, if not identical experience, from the previous day. No other time have I listened, acknowledged and validated my clients’ emotions while sitting with the same ones for the same reason myself. What a unique time to be a therapist!

I’ve come to realize as I have had time and space to process my own experience that I have been given a unique vantage point. That while some may continue to follow the loud voice of media championing failure, finding villains, and simplifying lived experience, I might offer you an alternative. Perhaps take a day or two away from ALL media and call your friends and family and connect deeply with your own lived experience. Four days a week 8 hours a day, I am watching the slow and sometimes painful evolution of human beings. Despite what media may say, despite how humans have found themselves in categories like ignorant or informed, scientific or stupid, liberal or conservative, I have the sacred gift of watching humans evolve past those categories. I offer that we will evolve. Especially if we can set aside fear long enough to sit with loved ones who may hold different perspectives. Sit with the complexity. Be open to the ways in which you may have built your own media feedback loop that continues to reinforce itself.