Behind the scenes as a provider

I have been thinking a lot about the extractive parts of being a healthcare provider within our current healthcare system, who envisions something way different and works towards that within myself as I’m able and outside of myself as I’m able- as I prepare to take a personal leave from my practice which adds a number of additional demands to my work, alongside the collective suffering that has heightened greatly in the last few months for my caseload, and my colleague’s caseloads. I’ve recently come across many things in my work that I have never before, so I am on many learning curves at once as I race to a finish line I’ve never come across, one where I have 3 months of rest from making a living on the other end while I ride a major transition I am moving through within my personal life. Some extractive themes of my work stay the same, the greatest is the anger and grief I experience witnessing other providers causing harm related to their unhealed wounds and ego-driven care. 

I am grateful for the opportunity of leave, fearful of what will arise in my absence as I trust my intuition and body on how to guide my life and practice (and scared of what it means to not earn and be productive). And my body needs relief from the vicarious trauma that is innate in this work, no matter how many breaks I am able to take, how many healers I am able to pull in, how many baths I take, boundaries I draw, meditation and yoga I do. I am giving care alongside my own healing which in my practice and ethics is non-negotiable within the work with the intention of mitigating the amount my “stuff” impacts my client. I am doing all of this and holding my own trauma as well. And because I cannot separate my human-ness from this work, my inner critic is badgering me along the way telling me my rest is not earned, I’m not doing enough, something is wrong with me. It operates on a scale of insidiousness, some I name and create space from and some continues to live in my subconscious and I continue to do my lifelong work to heal. 

My body is bone tired, this rest is long overdue. And, as a creative, which I had an ADHD coach - Sam Dylan finch is really fantastic- point me out to be a couple of years ago and it has taken me some time to accept as an identity, I find that my spurts of inspiration can come in such unexpected moments. Though I am quite desperate for deep rest, this season of massive transformation both personally and professionally is also prompting a flow of creation. 

Something that I think about a lot in my work is power and nuance. For power: how is it given to me, how do I earn it, and how do I use it ethically? How do I continue to name its existence and the ways it has moved to me, through me, and from me for myself and for others in a way that is appropriate, not hyper-vigilant, and does not cause harm? How do I cultivate and nourish it within my client’s process so that they can find themselves moving toward an ongoing reclamation of their internal force? 

For nuance: how do I continue to get quite wide and see what is here and not here and how many truths can be possible at once? How do I continue to open to the reality that multiple things are true at once and that can create as much chaos as it can liberation once the truth of what is *really* here is witnessed, how do I nurture that witnessing for my clients, and how do I continue to turn towards the process of recognizing that it is never really this or that, but a turning of our attention to how we guide ourselves through, how do we speak to ourselves along the way, and who do we call in to support our process. We are all in a process of becoming and ever-changing moments. How do I continue to highlight what I know to be true while holding that context matters, change process matters, safety and justice matter, and that nuance is alongside at every turn? How do I hold the nuance of my process alongside my clients and prioritize their journey and healing?

As a person who has needed a great deal of healing (not sure how to conceptualize or understand what that means, but feel fairly confident in owning it from my lived experience) and has been able to access it, I have had many many many healing professionals. Some have caused massive, blatant, yet unchecked harm. Some have been both supportive and healing alongside causing harm. Depending on where I was in my journey I had varying access to self-protection without too much mess to unravel. I was able to see the both / and of the second category more clearly once I learned that in true healing relationship we must de-pedestal our healers. We must make them human (unless they are our pets :), and we must honor that there will be things that they are not able to see, know, or understand about us and our stories. That they are also living a very human life, they don’t have superpowers, they are not all-knowing, and they will cause harm, and hopefully will work to see the potential for insidious harm, work to mitigate it, and strive toward repair when needed. Unfortunately what I’ve seen a lot in my clients and my own healing process is ego-driven care where power and vulnerability are exploited, where there is no space for nuance because ego-driven care clings to the dominant mold of “knower” and “sick/vulnerable one” and perpetuates a lie of linear healing, perfectionism, and performing which creates an overwhelming amount of harm. 

In my own process, where I have had access in lots of ways and been denied it in other ways, I have learned to trust my body. Once I was well-fed, my body was able to show me more of my story, and through that healing, I was able to access nuance within my body. When does it feel more at peace, when does it feel more chaotic, and once I was able to get some space from the chaos I could see more clearly the external and internal things causing that and move away from those things causing more disruption and less knowing and trust. 

I see this as a key to eating disorder recovery. I often talk about it in my sessions, that the eating disorder has provided some scaffolding for safety and coping- we reach a point of dissonance (a space where the chaos is overtaking the peace) and if we are able we start moving towards different scaffolding. I often ask my clients to consider that the problem may be outside of themselves, because most of us have similar narratives to my inner critic described above, that it’s us. That we are the problem. But when we look at the external factors, could be large like systems of oppression or small like a job, friend, or partner that are perpetuating chaos and moving us away from where we feel more peace. 

I don’t have any summarizing thoughts for this post that has taken me and us many different places, but my intention was around offering some transparency, sharing some of my process which may be of service to you, and allowing for my creative expression to move through me as I decompress. 

To use a line dear mentors of mine gently repeated with me often, “take what works for you and leave the rest.”