Vision

Vision

Have you given up on dreaming big in this season of unpredictability and global chaos?

Wondering how you can recapture your joy for life?

Join us on a journey of building Vision!

I don’t know about you, but I feel as if the last few years have been an exercise in wandering – it has been so difficult to set goals, make plans or set expectations when at any moment, things can be upended.  All of us dealt with the complete upheaval of life that COVID brought in 2020; many of us witnessed propaganda, viewpoints and behaviors from loved ones during global and cultural crisis that we would never have expected; thanks to ongoing supply shortages and the long-overdue revolution of a workforce tired of being exploited – gone are the days when you can order an item or step into a store and assume that it will be available at whim.  Inflation is rapidly changing our financial expectations.  Anyone who has traveled recently knows that we do well to hold travel plans loosely.  Justin and Andrea took a vacation/scouting trip last summer where not.one.single.planned task or event went as intended.  Not one.  Coming home early was definitely discussed but it got to a point where it was downright comical how predictable it became that whatever we planned would fall through or be delayed in an endless variety of ways.  Experiences like this have made it very difficult for many of us to generate motivation for specific goals or plans.  I have said many times out loud that without a vision, the people perish.

What happens when we have no feasible vision for the future; when our days are a series of unfortunate dynamics – both globally and domestically?  We become focused on the negative, the unpredictability, the instability, the worries of what’s next?.  Problem is, the science of neurology tells us that we move toward what we ruminate on.  I find that we so often focus on what is not as we would like or what we don’t want in our lives: I need to stop doing [insert dysfunction here].  The problem is, this thing we don’t want is the mental ‘vision’ before us and though we are running from it, we somehow find ourselves entangled in it.  That’s because we must decide what behavior or thought we want to replace it with.  What need is that dysfunction trying to meet?  How can we meet that need in a healthier way?  Time and time again, in my own life and in the lives of clients, success is finally achieved when we stop worrying about the thing we don’t want and focus on it’s desirable replacement instead!  So, for example – instead of saying, why bother making plans – it will all fall apart anyway, we ask ourselves, what character quality do I want to cultivate in myself? and focus on the steps required to do so.

It is this understanding of the importance of focusing our brains on what we value that inspired me to launch a vision-boarding quest as we close out the year.  The reality is, life is not settling back into ‘predictability’ anytime soon.  The overdue bills from corporate greed and environmental abuse are coming due.  War is brewing in a world that no longer has the luxury of dissociating from conflict in other hemispheres.  Now, more than ever, we must develop the ability to focus our minds on possibility and values if we are to avoid throwing our hands up in defeat.  I want to facilitate a fun-filled process of identifying what matters to each of us in this season and create together, a visual representation to which we can refer, throughout the next year.

Vision boards have been used for all sorts of goals: professional accomplishments, material possessions, travel wishes, physical milestones, etc.  For the past several years, I have used vision boards to illustrate a value or concept that I believe God is emphasizing in my life at that time.  As we take this journey together, you decide how you want to use the process.  Is there a physical activity you want to train for? A goal you want to reach for at work? A place you want to visit?  A value or characteristic you want to cultivate in your life?  I will encourage you to distill the desires of your heart down to what is stable – what endures despite the unpredictability of our world.

Each week in November, I will post prompting questions on Facebook and Instagram, to help you tune in to where your heart is now and what matters most to you moving into the new year.  I will offer general prompts as well as additional questions that invite a faith perspective to the process if that is of interest to you. Use these prompts to journal and reflect, building a vision that is authentic to you but durable in the face of uncertainty.  These posts will show up in our stories as well as timeline on both platforms.  On Instagram, I’ll create a Vision highlight for our stories so that this can be used anytime in the future.

In early December, I may host vision-boarding events, online or in person, (depending on interest), where we will make our boards together.

For Those Who Want to Become a Therapist:

 

We are starting a new blog post series focused on those who would like to pursue becoming a therapist. The plan is to breakdown important questions to not only ask your future graduate school, but to ask yourself.

 

Now, as a precursor to this post, I want to direct your attention to a post our director, Andrea, has written about what it takes education wise to become a therapist, as well as how to maximize your own therapy experience. She states in “Maximizing Therapy”,

 

By the time a new therapist graduates from their masters program, they have spent more than 600 hours in graduate level classrooms taking courses dedicated to the art of helping people with life problems.  They have sweated almost 2000 hours on homework and completed 1000 hours of supervised internship.  All at a price tag of over $35,000 (minimum).  Upon graduation, they must work under supervision for at least two years, complete an additional 1500 hours of client service and pass a national competency exam.  When you show up in a therapist’s office, or log on to their teletherapy platform, you are meeting with a highly trained clinician who is there to help you reach your mental, emotional, and relational health goals.

 

Whew. The journey to licensure is no joke, but is highly rewarding to those who believe being a therapist is part of their calling. Let’s dive in to a few questions to ask yourself as you decide whether this journey is right for you.

 

Why do you want to be a therapist?

This will be a common question on graduate school applications. Take some time as you are researching different schools to explore what is driving you. 

Every individual enters into the master’s program for a different reason, many times because of their own stories. Responding from a place of healing and wanting the same for others can be powerful.

Alfred Adler was a psychotherapist in the 1900’s. (You’ll learn about him in grad school.) He commented on the nature of therapists who have struggled through different aspects of life and the power that comes from having done your own work. Now it was written in 1928, but there is much truth to what he says.

There must be experience [for the therapists] as well. A real appreciation for human nature, in the face of our inadequate education today, will be gained by only one class of human beings. These are the contrite sinners, either those who have been in the whirlpool of psychic life, entangled in all its mistakes and errors, and saved themselves out of it, or those who have been close to it and felt its current touching them….The best knower of the human soul will be the one who has lived through passions himself. (pg. 13)

 

Are you open to doing your own work?

One of the best mirrors to your own unhealed areas in life will be your clients. This is why it is so vital that you have explored your own story before sitting with someone else. Your clients are not there to save you, fix you, or help you figure out your stuff. You are there for them. As our supervisor, Larry Shyers, loves reminding us, “It is never ever, ever, ever, ever about you”.

I highly encourage you to continue therapy throughout graduate school. Implement the things you are learning, allow yourself to go on the adventure. Having an openness to growth and knowing that you are selecting a profession that will constantly challenge you is a necessity. 

If not, then when something comes up in session that reveals an area of wounding in you, it is so much easier to stick your head in the sand and push it down. When this happens, we can cause harm. The session inadvertently becomes about us and our own avoidance, thus taking the focus off the individuals coming to us for help.

At the end of the day, you are pursing a profession that has a profound impact on people’s lives. You may be the first person they share their deepest, darkest moments with. You may be the only support they have at this time. Please don’t take that for granted. Realize the impact you have on people’s lives and walk through your own story. Pursue your own healing. 

At the same time, you also have to realize that you cannot save your clients or rescue them from their problems (as much as we wish we could). There will be nights this rocks you to the core. There will be days you wish you could pull them out, especially when they are not a number or a “session” to you.

Continuing to walk through your own story helps you remain present and humble, no matter who may walk through your door. It also creates an environment of authenticity in the room that can be felt (even through telehealth).

Join us next week as we continue to explore important considerations and aspects of learning how to be a therapist.

Therapy 101

So you’ve decided you would like to begin therapy.

Typically, that should be the hardest part. Letting someone in, especially someone that you don’t know, to share your story in hopes of a better life is hard enough.

Unfortunately, “overwhelmed” is a pretty accurate description to how most people feel when they try to find a therapist. If you take a second and type in “therapist in (city)”, you will find hundreds, if not thousands of options.

So, how do you narrow down the field? Let’s say that you spoke to a friend and they gave you a referral, or you found someone on Therapy Den or Psychology Today. How do you know if they are a good fit for you? Below are two good criteria to look at and what Phenix does to meet those criteria.

 

 

The Therapist’s Bio

Depending on why you would like to attend therapy or what you have gone through in life, certain therapists will be more qualified to assist you. The bio on the website will tell you quite a bit about who they are and how they operate (hopefully). If one stands out to you, write down questions so you can hear more about their training and experience. 

At Phenix, each therapist took the time to write a detailed bio about our background, training, areas of focus, and how we view therapy. This way, you have a good idea of what to expect before even meeting one of us.

As a disclaimer, certifications and official trainings are great, but don’t base a therapist’s competence on only that. Which leads me to the second criteria…

 

Have they done their own work?

You can only learn so much in a training that lasts 3 hours or from textbooks in graduate school. The metaphor I use with clients is this: if I was climbing Mt. Everest, I would ideally want someone who had climbed the mountain before, not just someone who read about how to do so in a textbook. I would like someone who had done their research on how to help various people climb the mountain, learned how to help heal different wounds and levels of frostbite, AND had already made the journey. 

By climbing it themselves, they know which pitfalls to look for and which parts will be deceptively slippery.

They also know where to look to see the most beautiful sunrises.

There is a level of competence and humility that only comes from doing your own work in therapy. Everyone needs someone to talk to and process things out with. Ideally, through the therapy process, you learn how to form authentic, intimate relationships so that those are the people you begin to do life with. At Phenix, each therapist has gone down their own journey of healing and has surrounded themselves with people to continue that process. Instead of feeling like any of us has “arrived”, there is an ability to hold the unknown and simply be with whoever walks through the door.

 

Free Consult

At Phenix, we have a consult time with each prospective client. This is a free 50 minute session where the potential client can ask questions and get to know the therapist before agreeing to embark on this journey together.

When I was searching for my own therapist years ago (before the graduate school adventure), I was wary due to already having had some negative therapeutic experiences. So when I was paired with a potential therapist, I finally asked questions that I had not known to ask before.    

While our director, Andrea, implemented the consult idea during covid, it has remained due to being incredibly beneficial for both us and potential clients. My favorite part about it is that it gives prospective clients a time to ask questions and make their own informed decisions, instead of feeling like they were instructed who to see or stuck with someone. 

So no matter where you go for therapy, I encourage you to look at the above two criteria. Take into account professional training for your specific situation, as well as the therapist’s ability to stay present during the time with you due to having done their own work.

Business Success

**This is the second in a two part series.  Click here to read the first post.***

Intelligence and knowledge are so common these days that we can’t trade on just those anymore.  Emotional intelligence, applied to corporate culture design is now the factor that sets you apart and is the key to longevity.  Yesterday, we defined business smarts as the usual trifecta: strategy, marketing and finance.  ‘Smarts’ gets you in the door.  Let us not minimize that.  However, you need emotional intelligence to work the room.  Here’s the cool thing: learning requires clarity and interest so organizations that focus on health automatically get smarter.  Whaat?!  Think about the airline in yesterday’s story.  Their company has the smarts but smarter does not automatically lead to healthier since we are typically relying on expertise rather than creativity and relationships.  It’s like a bank safe full of cash (smarts).  Organizational health is the combination to access the safe.

Organizational health is an integrated and intentional approach to the things we already know matter, but usually attend to in isolation: team building, strategic planning, productive meetings.  Reflect on my airline fiasco story from yesterday.  Can you fathom the losses leaking from the bottom line daily?  (Every member of our group ended up with a $500 flight credit.  A credit I have been loathe to use as I NEVER want to sit on one of their planes ever again).  Organizational health is ridiculously expensive to ignore!  More importantly, the physical, emotional and mental toll on you when you work in an unhealthy culture is far too high a price to pay for short term gains.

As a counselor dedicated to holistic health – this is the factor that drives my passion for helping businesses design a healthy culture.  Combine that with my 15 years in the corporate world in various positions of leadership, several years of higher education leadership plus seven years as a successful business owner and you have a uniquely qualified individual who understands both the business and psychological components of organizational culture.  The fact that healthy organizations are more likely to increase productivity and profit is a nice bonus that pays the bills for all of us 🙂

To learn more about organizational health – check out this great resource:

 

Let’s talk business

**This is the first of a two part series.  Link to the second post is at the bottom.**

After 30 minutes on the plane, we were all asked to get off as the mechanical problem identified needed further attention.  We were a band of 25 people from Orlando heading to a connecting flight in Newark that would take us to the other side of the world for a study abroad course.  This was not a great way to begin our adventure.  When the plane was still unfixed a couple of hours later, tensions rose.  We began to abandon hope that we would be able to continue on together.  However, as negotiations began to figure out how to get all of our members across the Atlantic, employees insisted that since our tickets had been booked as a group – they could not break up the reservation to split the group onto available flights.  This, despite the very real mathematical problem of ZERO flights heading into Greece with 25 open seats over the next several days.  The story is long and epic so I’ll offer the low-lights:

  • Due to employees’ inability to use common sense and creatively problem-solve, several flight opportunities passed before they finally realized they would have to split the group.  One half was put on a plane to a connecting city.  The other half was placed in a hotel for the night which turned out to have trouble with running water.  The staff at the hotel commented that they are forever housing ‘refugees’ from this airline.
  • When the second group boarded their plane the next morning, they again had to deplane when a mechanical problem was identified.  They eventually left on a different plane.
  • Both groups upon arrival in Frankfurt found that their reservation had not been properly transferred to the partner airline that was rescuing the flights and so they had no seats booked to our destination.  Thankfully, this new airline did have a different organizational culture and a few nail-biting hours later, managed to book seats for every person….except one who ended up having to wait alone in a foreign airport for a later flight.  It just so happened that she was the one student who had expressed a mortal fear of being separated from the group because on a trip she had taken in undergrad, a classmate was separated from the group and found murdered.  We begged and pleaded for someone else to be left behind but already taxed by their efforts to fix the ticketing problem, they explained that because the original airline had not broken up the group booking in their system – they were unable to switch out any individual tickets.

This particular airline has been in the news numerous times over the past few years for GROSS mis-steps resulting in severe consequences.  They are a perfect illustration of poor organizational health manifested in high turnover, low productivity (major fleet issues), politics which prevent employees from having the freedom to problem solve, confusion and low morale.  The employees we encountered were clearly unhappy and we could not blame them.  The public remains puzzled as to how these problems continue.  A closer look at the players reveal experts in all the usual concerns: marketing, finance and strategy.  Clearly, the problem is not smarts.  So what is it?

Organizational health.  I’m not talking bean bag chairs and napping rooms here.  It’s hard to describe; difficult to measure objectively, but you KNOW when it’s good (Southwest) and you KNOW when it’s bad (the airline we were on).  It’s a simple concept but it’s incredibly complex to implement.  Finance, Strategy and Marketing (smarts) are the what.  Organizational health is the how.  The way in which you implement and maintain budgetary management, goal setting, and telling the corporate story – that is organizational health.  That strays into emotional and awkward territory which is why it is typically skirted over in management schools (or spoken of largely in intellectual terms) and avoided by most managers/leaders.  Problem is, as organizational culture expert – Patrick Lencioni asserts: sustainable success is impossible without BOTH smarts AND health.  Business leaders may want to stay in their ‘smart’ comfort zone but guess what?

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Intrigued?  Interested in learning what this looks like and how it applies to you?  Stay tuned tomorrow for more…

Part Two

 

The toughest job

We parent as well as we were parented.  That can be a comforting or frightening statement…depending on our history.  I remember when I first gave birth, I was determined to do this thing “right”.  This is how I had been trained to approach everything for 20 years.  Certainly, this task – the most important one I’d ever tackle – demanded my best.   Then, to make things really interesting, my little one was diagnosed with a chronic illness for which there was no cure.

Looking back on my parenting path, I see a developmental journey:  Stage one was the thirst for knowledge.  I had been essentially an only child.  I had never babysat a child, never changed a diaper.  To say I was ‘green’ would have been an understatement.  But I was diligent and committed.  I knew that there was much from my history that I did not want to repeat so I read the books, listened to the radio shows and subscribed to the magazines.  Stage two was about behavior.  I was raised in a culture that valued presentation and good behavior and while I was determined not to use the same punishments, I was still invested in similar outcomes.  Except…this little girl was not at all interested in conforming as I had been.  She marched to the beat of her own drum.  Stage three was bedlam.  My well crafted systems were not working.  My home environment changed and my beloved was dancing at the edge of dangerous canyons.  I was completely undone.  Stage four found me in complete retreat.  I was forced to go back to the drawing board to figure out what my true parenting goals were and how I was going to accomplish them.  From a faith perspective, I began to realize that while it was easy to focus on my daughter as ‘the problem’, God’s spotlight was squarely on me…what was being unearthed within me by her refusal to fall in step with my beat?  Slowly, my focus changed as I entered stage five.  From behavior to relationship.  From nagging to introspection – an awareness of what each conflict was meant to teach me.  Not that I abdicated my responsibility as a parent.  I was still the authority but I streamlined those functions and attempted to spend more time on personal growth and pursuing intimate connection with her.  I am forever grateful that my final parenting stage (six) was an imperfect attempt at unconditional love.  I solidified my understanding of who she was as a person…what she was responsible for (which I was not) and what I was truly responsible for as her mom.  Unfortunately, I had just crested this summit when she disappeared.

Maybe you recognize yourself somewhere in these stages.  It’s helpful sometimes to know that you’re on a developmental journey, that this will get better.  This isn’t a researched and validated developmental theory but hopefully, it is still helpful in reassuring you that this is normal – whatever your “this” is.  That there is a progression here.  Don’t get me wrong.  It didn’t play out in the linear way I’ve presented here.  It was more like a circuitous roller-coaster ride that cycled in and out of the stages in no particular order. Once again, if that is how you’re feeling, you’re not alone.

I have a passion for coming along-side parents on their journey.  I’m not a “drop your kid off and I’ll fix them” therapist.  In my view, it begins and ends with parents – if for no other reason than we have the ultimate responsibility and authority to respond to whatever is happening with the child.  We are the leaders in this equation.  Our children give us an opportunity to grow as people in a way no other interaction can and I love helping my clients harness the occasion.  As parents flourish, children naturally improve.  This only happens however when parents feel safe.  Safe to vent, cry, blame, speak the truth of what they are actually thinking and feeling without judgment.  The last thing we need is someone to make us feel like a failure.  What is needed is empathy, encouragement and hope.  A place where our ugly is held and our pain is validated.  Where root causes are unearthed and processed so that we move in a different direction.  That is what I do with my clients so if you’re looking for a coworker on this – the toughest job of all; give us a call.  The rewards in stage six are well worth the journey!

The great adventure!

Last week, we discussed expressive therapy.  This week, I wanted to discuss a related modality – adventure therapy!  This form of therapy is also active and experiential and utilizes a similar focus on process.  Clients engage in fun activities like ropes courses, rock climbing, kayaking, etc., in the presence of the therapist.  In expressive therapy, I explained that the product was not the center – the process is.  Similarly, with adventure therapy – the activity itself is not the center which means that the possibilities are endless.  What matters is that therapist and client choose an activity that offers some challenge, either physically or psychologically, to be overcome.  It is in facing this challenge and working through it together that transformation happens.  Your therapist is able to observe the way in which you approach the activity and offer encouragement along the way.  They take note of what emerges verbally and non-verbally.  After the activity, therapist and client discuss  the process to identify both the conscious and unconscious meanings.  The goal is to transfer the lessons learned during the activity into the life challenges faced.  It is one thing to discuss solutions and new perspectives.  It is another level entirely to actually apply new perspectives to novel challenges – providing an experiential testing ground.  There is an undeniable power in such tangible evidence..making it far more likely that you will actually apply what has been learned.

Like expressive therapy – adventure therapy bypasses the typical defenses we have in place for traditional verbal communication.  Participating in a novel activity opens us up in ways conversation alone cannot.  Though the research on neurological effects is sparse, it is reasonable to deduce that this form of therapy also utilizes unique areas of the brain, leading to results not achieved when sitting in a chair.  We have already proven that exposure to nature has profound healing effects on depression, anxiety and ADHD.  With most of these sessions happening outside, we have a double benefit.  Certainly, it is also interesting to consider how the physical activity of adventure therapy may bring healing to physiologically stored trauma.  In the end though, I once again emphasize the relationship between client and therapist as the safe container within which this work must occur if it is to be effective!  We’re excited to be looking at ways we can incorporate adventure therapy in the practice here at Phenix.  We believe these modalities, combined with the relational foundation of our therapeutic approach offer a powerful combination for healing and transformation.