Therapists Should Have Personal Experience.

Even for those with the best of intentions and many years of academic study and training, many therapists, counselors, doctors, and psychiatrists are missing one very crucial element when it comes to treating mental health issues…

Personal experience.

Anxiety and depression can’t be truly understood through academic study and external observation.

If you’ve never been in that dark abyss yourself, you will never truly get what your client is going through.

Personally, I look back at the times in my life where I was genuinely suicidal… when I was dealing with debilitating anxiety and couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep… as essential training for the work I’m doing now.

Even if I had the perfect script for every client to tell them exactly what they needed to hear in any moment, if I was holding the hand of someone who was suicidal - having never been suicidal myself - then I think the words would just ring empty. They wouldn’t carry any weight.

It is only through personal experience that you can develop the full sympathy needed to connect with someone in a moment of pain.

The same way that I would never try to tell a woman how to cope with the pain of childbirth, I wouldn’t want someone who has never struggled with anxiety telling me how to handle it.

In hindsight, I’m grateful for the challenges I went through because they have given me the ability to show the necessary level of compassion and understanding to those who come to me feeling lost, hopeless, and stuck.

Those times have given me the wisdom to be able to say - from personal experience - that just because you can’t see how things will ever be good again, doesn’t mean they won’t. They give me the ability to hold space for someone who needs to just feel safe in a moment and the strength to push someone beyond what’s comfortable when they need to, because I’ve had to do the very same for myself.

Thanks for reading. It is my honor to be able to help you on your journey. And remember, I am always here. If and when you are ready to fully dive into this healing process, I’ll be here for you.