Worth, Service & Identity: Finding our way in the work of helping others

For a long time, every time I thought about leaving the field of mental health I spiraled into an identity crisis. I had worked so hard to get where I was: private practice, my own business, my own hours and - as a single mom - the freedom to be with my kids as much as I needed. 

I started my masters degree in psychology during the hellacious exit from an abusive marriage when my sons were just one and four. Everyone around me was stunned that I’d take on this endeavor with as much as I had happening but the truth is it sustained me. It kept me in motion toward freedom and independence. But that wasn’t all. 

Rebuilding and Identity Development

My education and my plan to become a psychologist also got in on the absolute ground level of the rebuilding of my life. It was a vulnerable time for my sense of identity. I needed to rebuild a home for us, after designing, building and abandoning my dream home on a pristine Vermont mountainside. I needed to rebuild my capacity to work and earn substantially after staying at home with my children since becoming a mom. 

But more than anything, I needed to rebuild my sense of worth, after years of being told I was broken, unlovable and worthless. After being told repeatedly that I brought nothing and no value to the table. After almost a decade of living with the assertion that everything that ever went wrong - including the abuse itself - was my fault, I broke. 

I didn’t break down, I broke free. 

As an aside, if you’re not familiar with why women don’t “just leave”, that’s another whole essay but there’s usually a long list of reasons, almost always including that abusers are never abusive all of the time. If they were, we would just leave. For a long time I believed, maladaptively, that  it would change. I believed that the dreams and goals we’d planned together, as we achieved them, would make everything better. They didn’t. Two beautiful homes built, two beautiful children born and all the grace I could muster never made it any better. 

I didn’t know when I finally left my marriage (for the second and final time) that this last piece - the drive to prove my worth - was the most ferocious of all my reasons to get another degree. I really didn’t know then how shattered I was because I could not afford to witness my own whole picture. I just didn’t look. I simply had to keep going and so following a complex, challenging and high-stakes plan suited me perfectly. 

This would be a better story if at some point in time I lifted my head, looked to the horizon and had an epiphany about how I was chasing something simply to fill this cavernous worth-wound. If I could tell you, triumphantly, that I cleared that all up and carried on into a mental health career for my own autonomous and righteous reasons. 

But that didn’t happen. Head down, hyper focused, I crafted a fulfillment-formula and a 5 year plan to fast-track through my education, supervision and licensure as a Psychologist. I’d get into the evaluation business, I said. It’ll be heavily reliable and profitable, I said. I knew that A+B could = C and I’d be financially well off and stable as a single head of household, all while making the world a better place. Sounds good, right?

I didn’t know then that I would recoil from my own choice, that I’d have to radically modify the path to tolerate it, that the path itself would disappear into the woods and I’d have to keep going anyway or perish, soul-sick where I stood. But that is, in fact, where the story goes, though it went slowly and not without joy and treasure harvested along the way. 

Identity In Action & Complications with the Plan

By the time I’d finished graduate school at Goddard College my boys were a bit older. Their father had remarried, keeping the family home. I fought him only as hard as I had to, and adapted to a life of change, moving seven times in 5 years. I finally landed in a house of my own, a practice of my own and a sense of having ‘arrived’ (mostly) where I intended to be. 

My original plan of being a psychologist and focusing on evaluations (which are strictly non-relational but very profitable) lost its spark. I realized that plan was motivated by financial stability. It also required a specific license and 4,000 hours of supervised practice in the field. I carried on, setting up a private practice, registering with my state as a Psychotherapist, paying privately for my required clinical supervision and learning all the policies and hurdles to bill insurance through another clinician. It was complicated but I figured out how to get paid well while pursuing the next steps. 

I continued following that fulfillment-formula, that path toward licensure and achievement. Slowly, I became concerned, then upset, then rather horrified by how the path changed. The path, which led deeper into a career in medicalized mental health, regulation and insurance billing, got shadowy fast. 

There are a litany of reasons that today, we face a mass exodus of therapists from the field of mental health. This, too, is another whole essay, but one of the reasons for this tragedy - this vast reduction in support amidst a time of skyrocketing need - is that making a living billing insurance is 100%, irrefutably unsafe for practitioners. Of course we never talk about that with our clients. It is viewed as unethical to ask those we serve to consider how our work to help them might harm us. It is by no means their fault, but here’s the dark truth: it can and does harm us to opt into the rules we must play by to help them.  

As I was learning how fear-based, punitive and unpredictable medicalized & insurance-based mental health really is (and feeling the energetic similarity to an abusive relationship), I was loving the work with my therapy clients, and wanting to give them the very best I could. In the shadowy space of a regulated, patriarchally-informed healthcare system, my soul was being stirred and inspired to go deeper. 

The Inner Call to 'More'

And so began my own mysterious call to ‘more’ from within. At a time when I thought I was just arriving at The Destination I’d worked so hard for, I got the big cosmic memo that  - much to my chagrin - this space and plan I’d build for myself might be just a layover. I’d checked the boxes, I’d mapped the whole journey out from leaving my abusive marriage to what I thought was the end goal of a successful, profitable, respected career in mental health. Sure, I’d modified the plan along the way but I still felt I knew exactly where I was going. And this call from within to go deeper somehow, was challenging it all. Asking me to meet my clients - as they very much wanted - at a deeper and more authentically connected place. 

This call from within was elusive, and I didn’t know at the time what was really driving it. Today, reflectively, it's a lot clearer. Two powerful approaches have made me the soul-aligned practitioner that I am today: Internal Family Systems and Sacred Feminine Spirituality. I have integrated them into my own approach not just because they’re powerful but because they’ve both been pivotal in my own journey to living whole, healed and fulfilled. 

Internal Family Systems: a New Lens

Very early in my career I discovered and began training in a revolutionary kind of therapy called Internal Family Systems, or IFS. IFS captivated me from the very start, where I first learned about it, on unlikely terms, in a psychopharmacology training with Dr. Frank G. Anderson. Frank is a medical doctor and psychiatrist, but also a psychotherapist practicing IFS. He explained the relevance of understanding ourselves and each other as dynamic, as being made of a core Self, but also many ‘parts’. He shared that this multiplicity inside each of us was normal, but vastly misunderstood, and the root of so much struggle, both internally and in relationships of all kinds. 

I was fascinated as I listened to him speak about how, when we begin to separate from and work with our ‘parts’ in a respectful and curious way, that they can soften and reveal more to us about their roles and intentions. An example would be that an inner critic, which often presents as wildly mean-spirited, can be trying to protect us from re-experiencing something harmful. I learned as I listened that day that ‘all parts are welcome’ because whatever we’re doing that’s maladaptive has some kind of good intention, apparent or not. 

IFS is what we call a parts-based model for change but the cornerstone is what founder, Dick Schwartz calls the Self. Akin to the concept of soul, the Self in IFS is the core, undamaged, unbreakable and inherently good core that everyone has. IFS asserts that everyone has a Self, and that even those who commit egregious crimes - which they do from badly wounded, violated parts - still have this unshakable Self. 

IFS has been around for over 40 years now and is on the evidence-based registry of therapy modalities (meaning it’s rigorously researched and proven effective). I was lucky to find the model early and engage in intensive in-person training for my level 1 learning in Boston. Learning this very unique model as I was concretizing my own practice was transformational. IFS requires that we learn with our own life issues, experientially, which was very illuminating. It was so powerful for me, personally, that I adopted Internal Family Systems as the primary way I worked with clients, and it yielded incredible results. 

I also used IFS for my own growth & self-care. Living in Vermont in the age before covid, I didn’t have an IFS therapist available to me. There were far fewer of us then. But the steps I learned and practiced with my own clients were easy enough to apply. IFS offers a unique method of inner ‘journeying’ to meet and know parts of ourselves, developing inner relationship and trust so that our ‘parts’ can begin to trust our higher Self to lead. 

When we do IFS work, it can be a bit humbling. We begin to get a far broader understanding of how we’ve actually been operating and much of that tends to be new information. This was dualistic for me because it was clarifying, even inspiring of self-compassion but it also illuminated that my reasons for the path I’d chosen were not as straightforward as I’d been telling myself. 

Did I want to help people? Yes. Did I want to make a comfortable living? Yes. Did I want to prove to all the still-shattered parts of me that had never been enough that I was valuable, worthy and capable? That I could climb to the top of this socially-revered ladder and stake my flag on that mountain top of achievement? Also yes. 

The Right Journey in the Wrong Vehicle

I began to see, over time, that while my chosen career wasn’t entirely off base, I was on the right journey in the wrong vehicle. I loved the work of helping others know themselves differently and more deeply. It felt valuable to help people reorganize their trauma from Self-leadership. I loved that IFS enabled me to empower them to heal, rather than heal them myself. The deeper I went into the IFS model, the more it felt old and familiar in its ritual steps for unburdening, its reverence for the elements, its regard for a person’s “Self” as their soul or spirit. It all felt vaguely like home in a way I couldn’t name. But the more I loved these aspects of the model the more I felt I had to look over my shoulder because in regulated mental health, the soul gets scrubbed out. 

Then one day, I read something that described IFS as a ‘psycho-spiritual’ model of therapy and the light went on. There were parts of me inside, familiar but long lost, that came alive and rejoiced at this understanding. At the marrying of these words: psyche and spirit. This alchemy was what I’d been longing for more of in my work, but also what felt disallowed. 

Meanwhile, the bones and shadows of clinical practice became an increasingly ill fit. I loved my work but the burnout was intense. I was seeing 30+ clients a week before covid began, many of them sexual trauma survivors since I’d become known for that in my community. I finished my 4,000 hours of supervised practice but my licensing exam process was shut down indefinitely because of covid. I had insurance-based trouble, twice. Once I had an insurance giant ‘claw back’ over $6k of services they’d already paid out to me because the client had a second policy I didn’t know about. Another time, my billing group underwent an insurance audit that took another $10K from the three of us for policy changes we didn’t know about. 

All this paired with the restrictive ethics of clinical mental health, the upending of Covid and a 2+ year newer relationship with a wonderful-yet-avoidant and irresponsible man… and I was toast. I was burned out, emotionally raw, exhausted and soul-sick. 

That inner call to more was still beating her drum, louder than ever but without any more clarity. More? All I could think of is how I needed less of what was ailing me. I began thinking about leaving mental health all together and seeking a totally unrelated job. 

Maybe I could make a living with my art. Maybe I could go back to selling vintage clothing as I’d done with wild success when I stayed home. Maybe I could go into business coaching and just help others do what I didn’t want to do myself anymore…

But none of that felt right. Something within me still wanted to help others in a different way and for other reasons, neither of which I understood yet. Every time I considered leaving service-based work altogether I felt lost but I also could not keep doing what I was doing. Badly in need of relief and time to regroup, I took what I thought was a sabbatical from my practice. 

Un Unexpected Detour

At the same time I learned of a Sacred Feminine circle that was taking off in Massachusetts. I found an offering to attend an in-person Temple gathering, a ceremony, and I was compelled. In my younger life, from 17 to about 23, I studied ancient and earth-based spirituality, but in the pre-internet era it was hard to connect with like minded others so I set it aside. Suddenly, 25+ years later, here it was again. And it was calling. 

As a somewhat introverted person, signing up to drive 3 hours out of state and step into an unknown experience like this with 30 women I’d never met before… was a stretch. But I knew immediately that I had to do it. I knew immediately this was calling me. So I went, I stepped in and in this sacred space I found so much of what I’d been missing. Goddess-based, ceremonial, nature-revering connection with the earth, a safe sense of belonging with other women, connection, realness, a stripping away of all the noise and nonsense of the world. 

After this experience I immediately began training with a seasoned Priestess (also a psychotherapist) to learn more about the approaches I experienced and to facilitate ceremonies for women in my own community. It felt like ‘home’ in a way that went far deeper than my earlier life studies. I learned about a concept called ‘remembrance’, a familiarity with ideas or connections we experienced in earlier lifetimes. I learned about blood lineage vs. soul lineage. I relished in the centering of the soul, and of the idea that “our essence IS our purpose” - that we are each here bearing gifts to the whole of humanity. 

There are countless concepts from Sacred Feminine practice that resonate with my deepest truth, but most mind-bending for me is the overlap I’ve discovered between this and Internal Family Systems. It’s stunning, particularly since the latter was developed by a man (albeit from listening to women). 

This was a watershed season in my life, my formal education in Sacred arts. I was immersed in an intensive program learning to hold Temple and other ceremonies. I then went on to a year-long initiatory Priestess training, learning about 13 unique Goddess archetypes, living in harmony with them and the lunar cycles, all manner of ritual practices and ideas for ongoing depth and expansion work. 

Re-mapping the Journey

Meanwhile, my sabbatical could not go on indefinitely. I had to return to the outside world of working and earning. I resumed private practice for a short time, exclusively via private pay, insulating myself against more insurance-based risk. But as I returned to my past way of working, I simply could not squeeze back into that box. The burnout came raging back faster and fiercer than ever. I simply did not have the capacity to hold intensive, direct trauma-content all day like I once did. I began to accept - with much help from parts-work and sacred feminine study - that this simply was not who I am. It never had been. 

To produce a solution and buy myself some time, I did something I’d once found unthinkable. I sidelined entrepreneurship and applied for a job as a crisis clinician working for a large non-profit agency. The pay was pale compared to private practice, the requirements (like 2am emergency room for evaluations) were steep and it was a real commitment to work within and abide by others’ rules. Not my strong suit. 

But, it would pay my bills, allow me major scheduling flexibility and weave in some long-coveted rarities like health insurance, retirement and PTO. It was also work-from-home, “firehouse” work. I could be at home doing whatever I wanted until I was needed. I applied in two counties, was offered both positions and held out hard for the one in a much quieter county and person-centered agency. This was over two years ago now, a decision I made only because I had to, but nonetheless, one of the best ever. Reflecting on this still surprises me. 

In my first year of the job I was concurrently in my first full year of Priestess training with a seasoned mentor in California and a circle of incredible women across the globe. It was a relief to utilize my education and make it work for me in a clinical role that didn’t burn me out. It was a joy to deepen my more mystic, soulful education in the Sacred Feminine. And I was touched with wonder to find that in crisis work, which is largely about being with people and helping them move through the dark, much of what I learned on the Priestess path was relevant. 

I was holding safe and solution-based space for people in crisis at my agency job. I was holding sacred and transformational space for women in my Temple gatherings. And as if by design, I was bringing Internal Family Systems, or “parts” work, into both. I finally felt some coherence and got ahead of the burnout, but I still longed to continue in a practice of my own, but a practice of a different kind. 

From Private Practice to Sacred Practice

The truth is that working in mental health carries with it a lot of fear-based indoctrination. It’s a very difficult field to remain well in as a professional. Some people do very well with regulations, policies, linear organization and rules. I am grateful for those people because we need the systems that we’ve put in place to keep working, but I am not one of them. 

I am of a different ilk and it’s taken me 46 years to accept this. I am a disruptor. I am a wide-aperture thinker. I am a believer in the mystery and an agent of change on evolving terms. Also, I am a lover of the deep, and a believer in collective healing through individual fulfillment. I’ve spent many years and dollars to be credentialed to help people be okay again as a therapist. That was important, and I don’t regret it, but that was not the assignment. 

My assignment is helping women go beyond the baseline in their lives to deeper, richer, more soul-stirring fulfillment. I have learned from my own experience and many others’ that when we don’t pursue this, it comes calling for us eventually. So many women who showed up in my private practice weren’t really seeking trauma treatment or problem-solving…they were looking for help answering this inner call to ‘more’. 

But that isn’t the work of therapy. Therapy is what we reach for when something’s wrong, when we’re struggling, when what we’re experiencing is interrupting life, work or relationships. And when we’re struggling to that degree, that’s when therapy IS the right fit. But sadly, when life isn’t really ‘interrupted’ by our unmet need or lack of fulfillment, we tend to carry on and backburner the work. 

We live in a culture that offers very little to that which is not on fire. I’m on a mission to change that because women deserve better AND because the world needs the best of what each of us contains. I believe in collective healing through individual fulfillment, and it’s in my joy to support that journey. 

A Diverse Answer to 'The Call'

I used to think that my identity was wrapped up in being a therapist and that in order to get relief from my burnout and lack of fulfillment, I needed to abandon that way of being and start over. The truth is that I evolved through being a therapist into something that lay waiting beyond. I’m still a therapist at heart - you can’t extract the insight and skills from one’s way of being. I was lucky to train in a model of therapy that translates (and is, widely) into other kinds of work. 

Today I work in emergency mental health but my private practice work is centered around the kind of help I most believe in, and which is a more authentic out-picturing of who I am as a person. I do not at all regret my career as a therapist, and I’m not certain I’ll never go back to it. What I know for sure is that it was an important, strengthening season of my life that left me clearer, stronger and more fulfilled than it found me, even if it was not the achievement I always imagined it would be. 

The journey of re-calibrating through this transition, to find my way and make peace with landing at a destination I hadn’t planned… it was very much a path unseen. The ultimate skill I have mastered - the art of inner relationship - is both the reason I could not stay my own course, and the light that guided my way out. I discovered that my sense of worth didn’t come from a degree, a license and a polished practice that the world understood. My worth was in there all along, waiting for me to love what was in the way so that I could see and feel it. 

When an identity crisis comes along with letting something go, we often need to re-work our thinking. Too often we think about letting go as equating to loss. But letting go does not have to mean abandoning, or loss at all. Sometimes when we truly surrender, what we have released doesn't go anywhere at all. Sometimes in the fertile void, with the nourishment of our presence and trust, it transforms, integrates and becomes something to build on.