Notes from the Couch: As a new year approaches...
I was shredding old notes this week, and found the following entry dated March 14, 2016: “The therapy office can be the loneliest and alternately the most companionable place in the world. Such intimacy and secrets shared, then silence. They stick to me like ectoplasm.”
I read these words as if they were someone else’s, and it dawned on me that I can’t really recollect feeling this way. Months after scribbling this note, practice growth enabled me to hire our first associate, and shortly thereafter, a second. Our practice is now a bustling and lively home to ten (eight clinical, three administrative), and between our steady swirl of energies coming and going and my children’s busy lives, I feel like I haven’t been alone in years, if I ever was. Reading this note brought back to mind another lifetime, and flooded me with gratitude for the precious community we have built, which at times has felt like pushing a boulder up a mountain using the weight of my body, but more often than not, feels like unearthing a beautiful diamond that had always intended to be discovered from a clump of mud.
There have been moments over the years when I have questioned myself due to the demands of this work. It is work that is virtually impossible to explain when others ask the well-intentioned question, ‘how is work?’ Yet, thanks to the community at LIFT, there is a group of people who very much understand, and with whom no explanation is ever needed, as my formerly individual experience is now a shared reality, and that boulder made 50% lighter.
I am sure that self-reflection will preclude the close of 2019 for us all. While it is difficult to judge progress during a week or a month’s time, the span of a year reveals the results of our hard work and efforts yielded. I am stunned by the collective progress we have made as a group during this year: the addition of three new multidisciplinary clinical team members and a marketing manager, a successful run of child and adolescent DBT IOPs, the launch of a new eating disorder client support group, partnerships with corporations and schools for wellness initiatives, in-home intensive coaching programs, the launch of a psychoeducational webinar series, a contract to present to the Connecticut Women’s Consortium in 2020, a collaboration with the state public school curriculum design team on eating disorder-informed, body-positive adaptations to the mandatory high school level health curriculum, and so much more!
Our intentions have been set for 2020, with goals of continuing to provide a safe, comfortable, supportive, and secure person-development space for our clinicians and clients to flourish, sustaining and holding our therapists and clients alike through growth, professional evolution and maturity. We also look forward to continuing to expand our reach as a community resource for psychoeducation, support services, and professional development. We thank you for being along on this journey with us. It is an honor to play a part in your unfolding stories, and we are grateful for the privilege of counting you as members of our community.
In these three final weeks before the New Year, we ask you to share with us your dreams for 2020, so we may encourage and plan, right along with you. Wishing you a joyful holiday season, full of peace, perspective, and hope.
Warmly,
Mary Dobson, LMFT, CEDS
