This World Mental Health Day I wanted to focus on the globality of mental health. Globality in the sense that we are all experiencing emotions and challenges in life no matter where we are, what our background or state of life is.
That said, today, we could take a moment and think that we are all connected on one common base, whether we want it or not. Emotions.
And that common base applies to therapists as well. These professionals constantly process emotions. And mainly not theirs. So today it felt appropriate to give some space to them and their emotions. Just to thank them for all the work they have been doing.
For this purpose, I used my Instagram profile to ask any interested follower “If you could ask your therapist any question about themselves and their mental health being, what would you ask them?”.
Here is what I got;
So do you get hurt?
Do you feel pressured by an expectation to have everything figured out?
Do you feel pressure to be perfect?
Do you have a therapist? Who gets to hear your story?
How do you manage to absorb all the negative things/negativity and tough stories people tell you daily?
How are you able to process the stories of the people to avoid affecting your mood?
How do you manage not to be affected and involved in your patients' problems?
Is it challenging not to bring your patients’ troubles into your personal life?
Do you get angry and impolite towards people?
How do you spare time?
How frequently do people ask you how you feel in your personal life?
How frequently do you focus on others’ emotions more than yours in your personal life?
How did you deal with heartbreak and loss in your life?
Are there some sessions that help you as well?
How do you manage not to get triggered?
Do you struggle with big emotions as I do?
Do you apply all the advice that you provide me with in your personal life?
How much of this job is for money and how much for really helping people?
I cannot possibly answer on behalf of every therapist’s mind but truly believing in the power of connecting with people when sharing, I will try to give some answers explaining how things work in my mind.
So do you get hurt?
Yes, I get hurt. I am experiencing emotions the same way you do. The challenging ones and the exciting ones. All of them.
How frequently do people ask you how you feel in your personal life? How frequently do you focus on others’ emotions more than yours in your personal life?
My close friends ask me frequently. They will not stop until I tell them how I feel and I am extremely grateful to them. People who just know what I do for work usually tend to share more than ask me about my emotions. However, I must admit that sometimes that is partially my “fault” since I am more used to asking others about themselves than letting them ask about me. I have become much better at it by constantly noticing and reducing it because it always feels nicer to listen and share.
Do you feel pressured by an expectation to have everything figured out? Do you feel pressure to be perfect?
I used to at the beginning of my career. I was putting too much pressure on myself professionally and personally. Comments like “You as a psychologist you should know…” were not helping. Then I understood that this was counterproductive and unrealistic. I will not have everything figured out and that is okay. Because that makes me a human and clients come to work with someone who above all is a human. Because my friends want to have a friend and not a robot. Faking a persona that is not also experiencing emotions, losses and failures would only create distance and not a healthy one. This expectation arises now and then again in different areas of my life but I have learned how to volume it down since there are much better things to listen to.
Do you have a therapist? Who gets to hear your story?
Yes, I have a therapist and a supervisor. That means that in every clinical case I am having I am discussing it with my supervisor to make sure we are agreeing on the approach I can follow in their therapeutic journey. Therefore, my supervisor is the person I would discuss purely professional aspects of my work and the next steps in the therapeutic protocol of each client. On the other hand, I have my therapist, who is the person who hears my story and my struggles. This is the person supporting my healing and emotional processing of the things I am hearing at my work but also of the things I am experiencing in my personal life.
Do you get angry and impolite towards people?
Yes, I do. As I mentioned above I am experiencing all the emotions the same way everyone does. I have my limits and in my personal life when I receive comments I perceive as disrespectful I make sure to show my irritation. My aim is not to hurt the other person but to show them that this is not acceptable and it’s hurting me. Sometimes I struggle to express it because, in the short term, it is easier to suppress it. For example, I get angry when I believe I was treated unfairly and when I do not express it assertively at the moment it tends to get explosive later on with a potentially impolite expression. In these situations I usually try to process afterwards what happened, not beating myself about it and understanding which emotional need of mine was not being met. I am approaching the person I had interacted with and trying to communicate what happened to me, potentially setting a better ground of communication and boundaries.
How are you able to process the stories of the people to avoid affecting your mood? How do you manage not to be affected and involved in your patients' problems? How do you manage to absorb all the negative things/negativity and tough stories people tell you daily? How do you manage not to get triggered? Is it challenging not to bring your patients’ troubles into your personal life?
The simple answer here is that my mood is affected. There is no magic pill to make me stop experiencing emotions when I am listening to challenging stuff. At the beginning of my career, I used to spend a huge amount of emotional energy to avoid experiencing all the painful emotions I was exposed to, but this was not working at all. Because I was affected either way and on top of that I was also spending a tremendous amount of energy on an unrealistic goal which was not to feel. Later on through many hours of training and therapy, I realized that we cannot stop feeling so we may as well sit with these emotions and process them better until the point we will feel more comfortable around them. So yes, I absorb a lot of emotion through my work but instead of being afraid of it I am acknowledging it, I am checking where it comes from and then I am trying to take care of it, helping it calm down instead of suppressing it. That can mean going for a walk, talking to a friend, meeting my therapist, planning a fun activity or remembering what helped me the last time I was feeling like that. Year by year and session by session I became more aware of my triggers and learned how to release the emotions more efficiently, more quickly and more healthy.
As far as the involvement in my personal life, the simple answer here is once again, yes, it is challenging. It is not that I will carry the clients’ stories in my personal life because I have learned to accept that we can work on a lot of things in therapy but after that each client’s life it’s in their own hands. Therefore, disconnecting from their stories when we are out of the therapeutic room I believe gives them and me the responsibility of our therapy part. Theirs to work independently on their therapeutic goals and mine to keep me emotionally healthy to support them efficiently. However, what is indeed challenging is that it is possible that I will feel emotionally tired after a work day and therefore the emotional availability I will have afterwards for my close ones whether that is friends, family or partners will be reduced. That’s why I am always trying to have a specific amount of sessions per week and enough time to process my emotions and recharge physically and emotionally.
How do you spare time?
I try to keep a workday free of sessions just to process what was happening the other workdays, to have small vacation breaks and to keep my weekends off work. I also like to prioritize not only work-related tasks but also fun-related tasks. To do that I try delegating some tasks and deleting the ones I do not find important and urgent.
How did you deal with heartbreak and loss in your life?
Heartbreaks and Losses have been very difficult phases for me the same way they are for all of us. I had to give myself a lot of support externally and internally. I had to process them for a long time and sit with the discomfort they were giving me. Therapy helped me a lot to normalize it, identify patterns that were not helping me and slowly move on creating new patterns.
Are there some sessions that help you as well?
There are sessions where I make a connection, a realization or a thought about myself I hadn't done before so in that way they help sometimes because I get to know myself better. If that happens I note the thought down to make sure I will process it later on so that I will not take space in the client’s room and processing.
Do you apply all the advice that you provide me with in your personal life?
I try to, sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. I try to be compassionate about it the same way I advise you to be when something does not work out.
How much of this job is for money and how much for really helping people?
This job as any other job is a job people do to maintain themselves financially. That means it is not philanthropy and people must get paid. It is a service we are trained to provide and that does not have to be contradictory to helping people. The two things can and should go together for people to continue offering these services. As I said…
These professionals constantly process emotions. And mainly not theirs. So today it felt appropriate to give some space to them and their emotions. Just to thank them for all the work they have been doing.
Thank you for your amazing questions. I hope this sharing brought us closer and even more connected for this Global Mental Health Day of 2024!
Written by Alexandra Symeonidou, MSc.
What's next?
If you, your partner, a friend or a relative are facing psychological struggles, do not hesitate to contact me and start your own therapy journey.
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