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Tag: therapy

Career Confessions from a Small Town Girl in the Big City: Part 2

This article was originally published at Tishomingo County News, see it linked here.

The job situation wasn’t looking good only a few months after graduating college in the summer of 2006. I was a tadpole in an ocean called Houston, Texas and the anxiety attacks supported that analogy. I tried another office temp job. I was ok for a couple of days and then quit that job too. I witnessed a girl get fired. I got in my head about it and couldn’t let the fear go that I would be next. Never mind that the fear was unfounded. Anxiety doesn’t work that way. It’s not logical. It was all unwarranted fear. None of this was a good look for me nor a good track record for trying to find and keep a job. Not to mention the temp agency wasn’t going to work with me again. How was I supposed to explain what I was going through? From the outside looking in, I looked like a mess and who wants to hire a mess? I was an unreliable employee, and I couldn’t blame them for thinking that way. 

Back then one of my favorite channels to watch was the Food Network Channel. I love to cook! I don’t remember the name of the show, but it highlighted this new up and coming food preparation franchise called Super Suppers. I was intrigued. It was founded in Texas and one was opening not far from my apartment. I was beginning to shift gears. Since I was having trouble in an office setting type job, I thought if I could get a job working with my hands, I could distract my brain. I met the Assistant Manager for an interview and was offered a job a few days later. It was a job for minimum wage, $5.15/hour. 

A quick pause here because it’s important to note this job and the minimum wage offer. I was a college graduate and making minimum wage. 

Now back to the story…something else was shifting, although I couldn’t possibly have known it back then. I had begun attending a church in Northwest Houston and found a woman who had her counseling certificate. She was offering her services free of charge to members of the church, and I began seeing her to talk through the anxiety I was experiencing. I was already incredibly nervous to begin yet another job for obvious reasons and on top of that I had created a realistic fear within myself that I wouldn’t be able to handle it…much like a self-fulfilling prophesy. Combine those together and ladies and gentlemen we have an almost perfect storm. But guess what? The storm dissipated before it had a chance to fully form.

On my first day at Super Suppers, we were tasked with cleaning the store to get ready for opening day. I spent several hours with rags, paper towels, and cleansing agents on my hands and knees scrubbing all the things. The following days consisted of prepping recipes in the kitchen and at the differing workstations. I enjoyed all of it! My hunch was correct, by keeping my hands busy, I was able to distract my mind. One day turned into a week and that turned into working at Super Suppers for 6 whole months. 

Several things happened at Super Suppers that helped get my feet back underneath me. First, I was learning to work with and through the anxiety.  Next, I was beginning to create a community. I was seeing the church counselor who was giving me an outlet to speak fears out loud. Sometimes fears can be incredibly scary when left unspoken. Letting them out with a trusted person dilutes them. I was beginning to build self-esteem again. I was beginning to have more steps forward than backward. I also met Jen who began working part time at Super Suppers. We became fast friends. She shared her challenges with anxiety and that she was working through some things too. She showed me that normal, regular people struggle and that it’s ok. Context is everything and hindsight too. If I could go back and tell my younger self anything it would be, “slow down, life isn’t a race. Sometimes the journey takes much longer than we wanted or anticipated. Sometimes we have to try different things until we find the right things. Sometimes we have to make baby steps when we want to take leaps. Everything will work out and be ok.” The key was to keep pressing forward and to keep shining a light in the dark corner that my big life change had caused. Jen, my counselor and Super Suppers were all shining lights in that darkness. 

The story isn’t finished yet. There’s more ground to cover from dog walking, to working nonprofit, fitness instructing and Corporate America. So, what happens next? Stay tuned and I’ll unfold the story in part 3 of this career series from a small-town girl in the big city.

Mental Health Awareness – Therapy

Therapy

May is Mental Health Awareness month. This post will come with discomfort, however, I believe it is for the greater good and thus I want to lean into the discomfort and share my journey with therapy.

The journey with therapy started for me in college. A visit here and there to the on-campus college therapist was grounding for me. At the time, my mom had cancer and being away from home for this first time was hard. I had tough life questions and the therapist on campus helped me zoom out and then zoom in to the questions and thus have a more balanced decision. How many times are we so focused on a question or situation that we can’t zoom out from it to gain a better perspective? For me, it’s often. 😊 A therapist can help with that!

The larger part to my therapy journey is my mom. She was sick much of my childhood. I was one of her caretakers while growing up and her primary caretaker from the ages of 15 – 18 (until I went off to college). Needless to say, I grew up fast! I was nominated as “Most Dependable” my senior year of high school. While it was an honor to receive that nomination, it was earned in my private home life because I’d learned the ultimate dependability by being my mom’s caretaker.

There are a lot of positives that come from learning responsibility at a young age and it can also be very confusing. Caretaking an adult is hard for an adult let alone a child doing so. At the age of 25, my mom passed away. She was 55. I don’t think anyone is prepared to lose a parent. Losing my mom unearthed some “life stuff” I needed to address. I sought out therapy to talk through my mom’s death. There was a lot of processing I needed to do. Sometimes we are so close to a situation that we can’t see the full picture. A therapist can help with that.

I have learned through therapy that my mother’s sickness shaped me, both good and bad. The good is easier to hold some days than the bad. It’s easy to become fixated on one or the other. The point of therapy is to help you hold all aspects about yourself and if at first you can’t hold it by yourself, your therapist is there to hold it until you are able to do so on your own. This is where advocacy comes into play for me and why diversity and inclusion mean so much at my core. My therapist has been my advocate in so many ways. Giving words to situations when I had none. She gave me a voice when I didn’t have one. And she has been there to hold my hand in all the hard things that I’ve been through. I can honestly say I would not be here right now if it weren’t for the gift of therapy. It has been lifechanging. I have learned lifechanging skills in therapy from navigating difficult family relationships, to work challenges, to having compassion for myself. And having compassion for yourself is key to having compassion for others. Looking in the mirror, in my opinion, can be the biggest adversary you face. I know it has been for me. I can certainly stand in my own way. Therapy can help you get out of your own way!

Therapy is hard, not going to lie. I don’t always like my therapist, lol. But therapy has given me a centeredness, a truth, a groundedness that is priceless. Maybe I would have gotten to this place on my own, but even if I had, it would taken me so much longer. And don’t we deserve to get to a better place as fast as we can?

A wise friend told me once that “our work on ourselves is a lifetime and one day”, meaning we are always inching toward being better versions of ourselves. I also came across another quote that resonated with me greatly, “the more we can understand our own thoughts, feelings and emotions; the more we can understand someone else’s”. This.Is.So.True. The better you can see yourself, the better you can see others. There’s certainly more I could write about, but I will pause here. I hope this helps you seek a therapist if you’ve been thinking about it. And if you’ve never thought about it, I hope this helps you see a different side to therapy. I think we could all use a good therapist in our lives. Life is hard enough and we deserve to be better people, for ourselves and each other.