Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hi and welcome to beyond the Chair, the Therapist Companion. I'm your host, Sonja Anderson Hale. And welcome back. Just a quick disclaimer here. This is for education purposes only. Stay within your legal and ethical guidelines. And this is not meant to be a replacement for supervision. It's a space to hear different insights and potentially see things from a different perspective. So if you're ready to get on, I am too.
[00:00:26] Today I decided that we should talk about why.
[00:00:29] Like, why are we therapists?
[00:00:33] What is, what is that deep rooted reason that we became a therapist? Because I think it's important to understand the why. And I think sometimes we don't take that time to even step back and remember what got us into this field. If we've been in here for a long time, or those that have just been coming up into this field, you might not stop and take a second to think like, what got me to this place? What brought me here? What education did that give me? So first and foremost, I think it's wackadoodle crazy that we ask or that teachers ask students, what got you into the counseling field? What is the reason that you're here? And I think it's crazy because there are very dynamic reasons why we get into social work or therapy or counseling, psychiatry, what have you.
[00:01:24] And so to ask that question, I feel like it kind of forces us into let me give the cookie cutter reason. Because if I give you the actual real nitty, gritty, dirty reason, and that's assuming that there's only one, then it just might be too much for this class, or it might be too heavy for everyone around me, or it just might be exposing myself too much.
[00:01:49] And I don't even necessarily think that it has to be that moving or that bad of a reason, but it still is very deeply personal.
[00:01:58] And so today I am going to encourage you to think about what are some of the reasons that you got into this field.
[00:02:05] Or to put it a little differently, what is your why or whys?
[00:02:11] For myself, I have many reasons why I got into this field.
[00:02:16] And I know that over the course of time a lot of these reasons will be disclosed because they're future episode ideas that I have. So I can't tell you all of my whys, nor do I think you would want to sit and listen to it in a boom, boom, boom. This is the reasons why, especially because there's quite a lot of context that would be missing if I did that. But I did think that I would tell you.
[00:02:40] I think it's like a reflective thing that happened where I looked back on my life when I was a child and thought, oh, you know what? I might have always been a little therapist. And I just didn't really have the skills or the knowledge of what it was that I was doing. So I figured I would tell you that story today.
[00:03:02] So I grew up Catholic, and I went to Catholic school, and we were separated by boys and girls, like, right after kindergarten. We had to be separated from the boys, and they always got to have all the cool, fun stuff. I was a very sporty kid, so it really bummed me out that the girls had to stay up on this, like, berm area and just watch all the boys play. And I distinctly remember that there were trees on our side and the boys had no trees. And we're in the middle of Arizona and it's just, like, super hot. So I remember. I remember being jealous that they got to be out playing. But I also was like, man, you probably need some trees. And I was in, like, first grade thinking stuff, first and second grade. But anyway, there wasn't a lot of division other than that we all kind of grew up together and we knew each other and we got along.
[00:03:52] And I don't know if I had always had this little kind heart or if the kind heart kind of grew from my upbringing and through Catholic school and stuff, but I know that when I left Catholic school in third grade and I went to a new school, I was welcomed by these kids.
[00:04:12] And then I saw quite a bit of division between them. And I distinctly remember there was a time when some of the popular girls had decided that they didn't want, like, a whole group of people in this play, and they deliberately left them out. And they made it very known that they had left them out, but then that I could join because I was new and I was like the newer cool girl or whatever. I'm putting that in quotes. And. And it just really rubbed me wrong. I was like, this is dirty. I don't like it at all. I don't. I'm not like a leave people out type of person. I really want to let people in. I'm very engaging. I don't think we should be mean.
[00:04:51] And so I befriended some people that had been put down by the popular girls. And I didn't stop to think, why are they being mean? Like, they've obviously known these kids for a while, and I'm just coming into this situation.
[00:05:09] So one of these girls specifically I'm thinking about that I befriended, who would probably be one of. She is the first person that I made friendship with that was not a good person for me to be friends with. Like, very toxic situation. And because I had this little bleeding heart that wanted to help people, that wanted to let people in and, and not be exclusionary, I would allow things that I shouldn't have allowed or, you know, dismiss treatment that was happening because she had a hard life or she had a hard upbringing. So what more could I have expected?
[00:05:51] And I think that that started a course for me of just what I would say. I liken it to befriending people with broken wings.
[00:06:02] And they're never, ever going to be able to have their wings reset by me because it's just not possible. Right? I'm a child. I don't have the education to be a therapist. And I'm trying to mend something that's not even my business to mend.
[00:06:17] And it took me so long to figure that out.
[00:06:21] And I had so much hurt from the friendships that I made, because when I would get stomped on, I wouldn't understand, like, why is this happening?
[00:06:30] All I wanted to do was be your friend. All I wanted to do was be kind. And to get such vitriol back was really difficult for me.
[00:06:38] But when I, when I started to get into psychology, I started recognizing, like, you know what? Maybe the whole time I was the problem.
[00:06:48] I was this person that was not putting up boundaries, and I was dismissing poor behaviors because I thought that that's what I should do, because that's what I thought a kind person would do. And now, and when looking back on lessons, I've learned so much, it's helped me so much because now the thought of being friends with clients is just like, absolutely not. Like, this is such a different dynamic. I'm a therapist because I don't have to be friends with people that have deep hurt. I can help the people that have deep hurt in ways that I could never have imagined when I was a child.
[00:07:24] So I, I, I'm gonna be straight, honest. I don't know how in the world I would have explained that in a classroom setting. I had really bad friends when I was growing up, so I became a therapist. Like, what? But I'll say that I think the biggest lesson that I learned from that situation was to have boundaries and was to understand that now, as I'm getting educated to become a therapist, I will have the tools that will help me help people in the way that I wanted to, but also allow me to have the distance that I need in, keep my sanity and keep my Safety and keep myself protected, because I, again, don't have to get into friendships that just don't serve me.
[00:08:08] And I say all this, and I do have a lot of friends, and I am very welcoming, But I also have friends that are very independent. I have friends who either they are very aligned with what you would be as a therapist and are incredibly smart people who have very analytic minds, or they are therapists.
[00:08:29] So I have kind of a grouping of people that I'm very close to, but none of them will hurt me in the ways that the kids hurt me when I was a kid. And that's so freeing and so nice, and it allows me the opportunity to help people in ways that I won't get hurt. I'm not invested in a way that you would be invested in a friendship. I'm invested in a way that a therapist is invested in their clients, and that is super freeing.
[00:08:59] This experience also taught me that kids have problems that they probably aren't sharing with everyone or maybe anyone.
[00:09:09] An added dynamic to my crappy friendships was a whole other situation.
[00:09:15] This situation got so bad that by the middle of fourth grade, I was not even realizing I was doing this, But I was just spending my lunchtime volunteering and asking the principal, like, what it was that I needed to do to help out at the school. You know, it took a really long time for me to recognize that that was a problem. I just kind of think I was being resourceful and trying to figure out how to stay away from my peers.
[00:09:41] Because at that point, I had had a friend who had been basically my bestie in third grade, and she got removed from the school in the middle of the school year. And it was really shocking and surprising. It was a whole group of people. It was like.
[00:09:59] It felt like at least 10 kids, maybe it was five. But there was quite a significant amount of kids in our classroom that got removed because they had decided to redraw the lines. And it was, like, literally in the middle of the class. It was just so weird. The lines for would the kids get sent to which school? It was super weird. I don't think it was very well thought out.
[00:10:21] But anyway, she was one of the people that ended up having to go.
[00:10:25] And then I ended up seeing her again in fourth grade because we all went to this new school.
[00:10:32] All the schools got together because we were all getting our main schools remodeled. So we were all at this abandoned high school. We were there for the year.
[00:10:43] So my former bestie, she comes up to me and were getting ready to play Soccer. It was like two schools against each other. It was just for fun. It was like PE or something.
[00:10:53] And I love soccer. I played soccer. I was on the soccer team from, like, seventh grade to sophomore year of high school.
[00:11:02] And it was my sport. Anyway, we play this game, and then at the end, she comes up to me and she's like, I was just trying to figure out if you're still a bitch, and you are.
[00:11:14] And then ran away. And I was like, what?
[00:11:19] Okay, it was good to see you, too.
[00:11:24] And so not so long after that, someone else, a completely different person, had decided to write my name on the sidewalk at school.
[00:11:40] She wrote, sonia is a stupid in really big red letters.
[00:11:48] And I was like, damn, dude. Like, I can't escape this. Like, my friends aren't nice to me, and then strangers aren't nice to me. Like, this basically ghosts that. I don't even know who this was. There's no way for me to know.
[00:12:06] I did find out years later who did it, which is why I know that it wasn't the same girl. But anyway, I.
[00:12:14] I just became distanced, I guess.
[00:12:20] Distanced from my peers and kind of aware, you know, like, I have such a big heart and don't know why this is happening, so I guess I'll just back off. And, like I say, it got to the point where I was just volunteering my time at lunch hour to go around and clean. That's what I was doing. I was helping the principal clean the school.
[00:12:46] And I remember walking into the bathroom at some point in time, and one of my friends, who actually was a legit friend, she. But we were never, like. I don't know, we kind of wrote. We were kind of in different groupings for whatever reason. And so we didn't get to hang out as much as we should have. But anyway, a person that actually was my really good friend, she was in the bathroom brushing her braces, and I was like, hey, yeah, so I'm here to clean up whatever. And she's like, oh, somebody, like, wrote some nasty stuff about somebody on the wall. And it was. It was somebody else's name completely. It's not anybody that I knew. And, like, she's a dumpster belongs in the dumpster or something like that. And they had, like, deliberately moved a dumpster over to point two, I think.
[00:13:32] Then I kind of realized I'm not the only person that's getting bullied. I'm not the only person that's getting hurt. And I remember working really hard to scrub that girl's name off of the wall because I didn't want her to feel what I felt when I saw my name written on the sidewalk.
[00:13:52] So all of this taught me that kids are probably suffering quite a bit, and they're probably things that are happening that are really cruel and unfair. And, you know, it. It could be happening at home, or it could be happening at the school, or it could be happening in social circles.
[00:14:13] And I think one of the most valuable things there is that we might feel like it's trivial. And I do think that adults sometimes will say, like, this seems like it's a big deal right now, but it's not always going to be a big deal, or you're not always going to be dealing with these people or whatever. But at the same time, like, how valuable would it have been for me, myself, to be able to go and talk to an adult and say, you know, not my parents, Because I didn't talk to my parents about it, because I wasn't allowed to say the word.
[00:14:41] So I'm not even allowed to tell you what's going on because I'm not allowed to say this word. And then years, years and years later, I did talk about it with my parents, and they were like, what in the world?
[00:14:51] Like, you definitely could have told. Like, oh, yeah, I guess I didn't really think that through, or maybe I just didn't want it to be as bad as it was. You know, I have no idea. But I'm saying that, like, had I had somebody that was a trusted adult that's not a family member, that is a therapist that really wants to understand what's going on with me, how valuable that could have been if they were curious and they cared and they were able to build rapport with me and get me to open up about everything that was going on, and I truly don't know that it wouldn't have taken a while. I think it would have taken quite a while for me to be able to feel comfortable, because I also was at a point where I felt like I had to hide this. It's embarrassing, it's sad.
[00:15:34] And I think that there's a lot of value in that, and that's why I'm sharing this story as well, because it's really important to understand that no matter who it is that's sitting across from you, they have a story to tell. That's what we're here for, right? We're here to listen to the stories. We're here to understand the stories. We're here to see why is it still stuck. What is it that's bothering you? How do we help you feel like you can be autonomous in the situation?
[00:15:58] What's the best solution? And obviously all these answers are within your client. And so that keeps things fresh and new because the answers aren't here laying with me.
[00:16:09] I will tell you that I don't think that the answer to this solution was for me to bury my head in the sand and then donate my free time to the school. I don't think that that was wise at all. And I kind of think it's a little strange that my principal didn't turn around and tell my parents because he was close with them. Like, you know, something's going on with Sonia. Like, she's not participating with her peers, she's avoiding them, and she's spending her lunch hour rather than playing sports, which she loves to do, or going and hanging out with people, she's cleaning the bathrooms. Like, that's weird. I wasn't doing that because I was a brown noser and he truly did know that I wasn't trying to get bonus points or be cool in his eyes. My parents already know you. Like, any benefit I'm going to get is going to come from that. And in reality, I'm probably not going to get benefited at all because you could just turn around and tell my parents anytime I mess up.
[00:17:04] So it just kind of feels a little bit more like you have your hand on the dial. Any point in time I get in trouble, you got my parents on speed dial. I have to not act up, you know? So I guess maybe that's why I didn't get in fights because.
[00:17:19] Yeah.
[00:17:20] Anyway, processing through this right now, see how helpful it would have been for me to have a therapist to talk to about this and just be like, I don't, you know, obviously they're not going to tell you you should punch someone. But, you know, if I had been talking about that and been like, this might be the solution, maybe they could have been like, is it, Is that really the solution? But I. I'll be honest, I don't know what exactly was the solution. And I don't know because I don't have those answers. It's a long time ago. I don't know what would have been right for me then. I know what's right for me now. I know what I would encourage my kid to do. I know what I encouraged my stepdaughter to do when she was getting bullied.
[00:17:59] I think that it's really important for us to all understand that kids are still being bullied, and they are being bullied in ways that are very clever. And so I think we go back to that saying of sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. It's like the most un helpful saying possibly ever, because I think that sticks and stones can break my bones, but at least I'll heal from those.
[00:18:25] Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always stay.
[00:18:31] One thing that has become abundantly clear to me over the years is that children, specifically girls, can be incredibly cruel to one another.
[00:18:40] And often it's not because they're evil.
[00:18:43] It's because they're learning boundaries, autonomy and power. And they're terrible at it.
[00:18:48] They push, they exclude, they experiment with social dominance. And sometimes that experimentation leaves real wounds. This is happening to some of your clients, and even if you only work with adults, they may not be naming it.
[00:19:03] They may not even realize how much their shame or people pleasing or boundary confusion traces back to moments like this.
[00:19:10] My hope in sharing just one of the reasons that I became a therapist is that it helps you conceptualize your clients a little differently.
[00:19:18] Not just as the adult in front of you, but as a person with a story, with a history, with things that could be echoing from years prior into today. And considering how has that helped shape the person that they are now and how do you help them move forward?
[00:19:39] And now a little self reflection experience for you.
[00:19:43] I am now encouraging you to take some time today, tomorrow, or even this weekend to sit, think, and if you feel up to it, to journal about some of the reasons why you became a therapist.
[00:20:00] What drew your heart to this field?
[00:20:03] What lessons did you learn from those experiences?
[00:20:08] Or when looking back and thinking about it, what have you learned along the way?
[00:20:14] And finally, how does this help you to better understand your own clients?
[00:20:20] If you want to, and in no way do you have to, you are more than welcome to share your insights at the podcast's Instagram, at the Therapist Companion.
[00:20:32] And yeah, just share whatever it is that you feel like you want to. And if you don't want to, that's fine too.
[00:20:38] Thank you so much for coming and hanging out and listening to some of my stories and insights. I really appreciate it. I know that we have planned to talk about Evil Influencer, the Jody Hildebrandt story, and I'm not entirely sure if I'm going to be able to line up times with my friend to work together to collab on this, but it is still gonna happen, still gonna have the episode.
[00:21:06] So fingers crossed. We can make it, but if we can't, it's whatever. I am going to post up questions soon on the Instagram. Once again, it is the therapist companion. There's no apostrophe because you can't put an apostrophe, but that's what it is, the therapist's companion. It'll be in the show notes. Anyway, so I am going to post up questions there.
[00:21:29] And yeah, thank you so much for coming and hanging out. You guys are awesome. Thanks. Have a great day.
[00:21:36] And now some bloopers, should you care to listen to them.
[00:21:41] And now a little self reflection Ex the experience.
[00:21:47] A self reflection experience for you.
[00:21:50] I'm encouraging you.
[00:21:54] Thank you for.
[00:21:56] I forgot what I was going to tell you.
