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Welcome to "Lessons from the Couch", where we invite you to pull up a seat and join Corina and Mariana—two marriage and family therapists based in Illinois—on a journey through therapy, life, and everything in between. In each episode, we have honest and engaging conversations with therapists and non-therapists alike, exploring their unique experiences in and around therapy. Whether it's the story of a therapist navigating early career challenges or a non-therapist sharing how therapy changed their life, our goal is to show just how accessible and transformative these conversations can be.
We also dive into the diverse career paths and personal journeys within the field of mental health, from seasoned professionals to those just starting out (like Corina and Mariana, who are at opposite timelines of their own therapy careers).
If you're curious about therapy, mental health, or simply enjoy meaningful conversations, "Lessons from the Couch" is for you. Get ready to think, reflect, and discover new perspectives one conversation at a time.
Follow Lessons from the Couch on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts to listen to new episodes.
Co-Hosted by Corina Teofilo Mattson and Mariana Reyes Daza. Show art by Jae Avilez. Music by Brandon Acosta.
If you're interested in therapy services, either in person or via telehealth, and reside in Illinois, visit www.liveoakchicago.com to learn more.
My practice lately is really just allowing and noticing what's coming up in my body and listening. Let's say we're talking about the recent election, are feeling that screaming inside or that silencing. What does it mean if we just lean in and trust the messaging there? As we know, we can't fix this. We cannot fix what's happening.
Jordan:We cannot make it go away. And so what does it mean to not do what we are being led to do, which again is just cutting off from our experiences and actually lean into it with curiosity and compassion versus fear and avoidance.
Corina:Hi. My name is Corina Teofilo Mattson.
Mariana:I'm Mariana Reyes Daza.
Corina:And we are the new co hosts for a new podcast called Lessons from the Couch. Throughout this podcast, you're gonna find us having intimate, deep conversations. We'll be talking to therapists and probably some non therapists, and we're gonna bring you into the therapy room with us.
Mariana:I was in my Monday day off headspace, and so I was just chilling on my couch like, la la la. And then Jordan calls me, FaceTime, and I'm like, why is Jordan FaceTiming me on my day off?
Jordan:You probably panicked because I'm your supervisor, and you're like, what is going on?
Mariana:I was like, oh my god. I know I haven't written my notes for Saturday. I'm gonna do it, Jordan.
Corina:We're grateful for you joining in our experimentational journey.
Jordan:I'm excited about this.
Mariana:It's good to have you here. Today is 01/27/2025. Locating us in the current time, we are one week into Donald Trump's second presidency. We have had more involvement of ICE beginning to send people through deportation back to their home countries, and so that has been ever present alongside just the reality of the difficulty of what this presidency means for anybody that is not a straight, cis white man. So always just looking out to what's going to happen and locating us so that you all have context when you're hearing this of where our headspace was at as we recorded this.
Mariana:Today here with us, we have Jordan Dunmead, who is one of our fellow psychotherapists at Live Oak and my personal my personal my individual supervisor. We're so excited to have you here, Jordan.
Jordan:Thank you for having me. I was so excited when you guys reached out. I'm excited to see where the conversation takes us. I know things like this can be more structured, but it's fun to have it be organic, not know where it's going.
Mariana:What are some things that you would like people to know about who you are and what you bring to the table today, Jordan?
Jordan:As Mariana said, my name is Jordan Dunmead. I use both she and they pronouns, and I am a psychotherapist and clinical supervisor and trainer and a mentor within that at Live Oak Chicago. I have been at Live Oak since 2016, so it will be nine years this year, which is is wild. And I came into Live Oak through the fellowship program, which is the program Mariana is in right now. So it's fun to have a full circle moment there.
Jordan:And, also, Corina used to be my supervisor, one of them, in graduate school at the Family Institute at Northwestern in 2015, probably, maybe 2016. Some other things. So my practice, I do consider myself to be a trauma therapist. And so I work predominantly with folks that are sexually, gender, and relationally expansive at the intersection of sexual trauma survival as well as, like, family of origin kind of related concerns, issues, historical or present. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, which we're all MFTs in this space.
Jordan:That's cool. I love that. Just from a human, which also obviously comes into my therapist self standpoint. I am a white, queer, agender woman. I am a anti Zionist Jew, a polyamorous person, a disabled person, and I'm sure there are other things that I'm not thinking of, but those feel the most salient right now.
Jordan:And that's me.
Corina:Thank you so much, Jordan. For starters, would you be willing to tell us what you thought being a therapist was gonna be when you and I met in around, I think, 2014, actually, versus what you have found it to be now and how your intersecting identities inform that evolving understanding.
Jordan:At the beginning of my career, I felt like being a therapist was fixing. And what I've recognized ten, almost eleven years into seeing clients, it's more about being. Sometimes it's doing, but I think a lot of us put a lot of pressure on ourselves to, you know, use the right intervention, say the right thing. Clients come out of every session having this, like, mind blowing experience. And if that's not happening, I am not good at my job.
Jordan:Like, I am not skilled enough or aware enough of kind of what's going on in order to make change and fix. And so it's being, it's supporting, it's sitting with, it's leaning in, it's leaning out. But, yeah, it's definitely evolved over time. I imagine it will continue to. And I found in you know, this is a continuous arriving for me.
Jordan:I don't think there's a an endpoint in this journey, but my better understanding, a, the identities that I hold and what that means about how I move through the world, how others experience me, how I experience myself, how I experience others. I think befriending my identities and understanding that they all deeply impact each other has really helped me be a human as a therapist versus a robot. So I think that changed too. We're not vending machines, right, or, like, dispensing the cure, the fix. I just feel, like, much more kind of expansive in my understanding of self and then the ability to bring that personhood into the therapeutic space with my clients.
Corina:I really resonate with that. This is something I've only noticed in the past few years that my clinical work both leads and follows my own identity evolution. Like many, many of my clients are folks who were assigned female at birth who have come into an understanding of their own neurodiversity, many of whom may identify in queerness, may identify as being partnered to someone who is also neurodiverse in a way that's not quite the same as their particular brand of neurodiversity. And these were not things I was, like, marketing as, like, come to me for this thing, but rather there's something about my particular brand of ADHD that means I think the people who want to be close to me are people who have a relationship with tolerating this sort of, like, brain. And so I wonder when did you start to know that the work was more the being and sort of doing, but not the fixing.
Jordan:Yeah. I'm not sure about an exact moment, but I know the kind of embodied experience of it was my nervous system being calmer in the space. So my brain not being busy, I'm such an intellectualizer, which helps me with being a therapist and also gets me in a lot of stuck places as you can imagine. But I think being aware of when I'm stuck in my head, when I'm trying to come up with the next response, when I'm getting frustrated in certain ways because my brain isn't doing, again, like, the thing it's supposed to, quote, unquote. So I think it was a slow kind of build with this, but over time, feeling a sense of calm in my nervous system and understanding that me having the right thing in my head is preventing me from being present with this person, preventing me from being present with myself.
Jordan:And as we know as therapists, that's also clinical information. I think intellectualizing and getting stuck in our heads can be really, really distancing from ourselves, from relationships. So recognizing a calm nervous system, but then also an openness and curiosity for the organicity of, like, whatever comes out, like, being with the conversation versus being like, and what's the next question. I think more of an embodied experience versus, like, here was a moment.
Corina:As you say that I'm thinking about the things that we learned in school versus the things that we learned in the field. And I wonder, what do you remember about what you learned about relating to your body as student of marriage and family therapy versus what you found to be true about relating to your body in the field?
Jordan:It's so interesting, Corina, because I started my own personal therapy when I started grad school because none of us can expect to show up in the ways that feel good and the ways that, like, make sense unless we're doing our own work. I went to see, unknowingly, a sensory motor therapist, which for those of you who don't know is, like, a complete deep dive into you're feeling the sensation in your body. Let's follow it. What I recognized through that is that I had a huge mind body disconnect, which is something I still continue to work with today. But because of that, I recognize that even during grad school, in retrospect, given where I'm at now, I was so disconnected from what was going on.
Jordan:In the classroom, we're learning theories. We're learning here are the rules about this. Here's exactly how to be in the field, which to me is so intellectualizing, which is a comfortable spot for me. But then the result of that was complete and total shut off, which was, like, reinforcing the issues I was already coming in with. So with that being said, thinking back versus now, what I'm able to do that is something I lean into often in my work is recognize my body as a tool in the space, that I'm feeling a certain sensation in my body, having a certain, like, emotional reaction to a thing, and that is information.
Jordan:So what does it mean if we, like, work with that, bring it into the space? And I don't think earlier on in my career, I was able to even tap into that because it felt dangerous because being in my body in general felt dangerous. And then I imagine my clients felt that. And then I'm reinforcing this idea that we're all just in intellectualizing and that's how we quote unquote figure this all out. So I feel like over time as I've been able to, like, let that go more and then continue to be in my own therapy.
Jordan:And my therapist keeps being like, look at you. You're recognizing what's happening in your body, and you're doing all this work. And I'm like, what are you talking about? But it is happening. It's a slow kind of burn over time.
Jordan:I get to show up with myself differently, which then in turn, I show up with my clients differently. But I think when we're able to be as integrated as possible, kind of mind body wise, we get to fully show up as ourselves, which is important.
Corina:That's making me think of something Sarah Blaszczak, a friend and colleague, said once about I'm gonna get this wrong, but the vibe that I took from what she said was the medicine becomes the poison. And this phrase reminds me of the trauma informed frame we try to have here at Live Oak, which is, like, the survival strategies we had, the things that we've done, the intellectualizer and myself and yourself, it seems, were, like, these beautiful, necessary, important ways of both keeping us safe and potentially even making us, hypothetically, skillful therapists in the field. And eventually, they became the barrier to bringing myself and other people to a new kind of arriving. And I really, really, relate. I went to grad school at a place called the University of Wisconsin Stout, a really small cohort program in Wisconsin.
Corina:And in general, I would say it was really wonderful, and then my professors were wonderful. And I even remember them giving some invitations into body at the time that I just don't think I did anything with. I think about the books that were recommended to me that I've bought along the way, but didn't read until years later. And a colleague, also friend Nancy Tartt, said that she thinks sometimes books call us and or information calls us, like, when we're ready to kind of engage with it. Again, this is what I took from what Nancy said.
Corina:I can't say it's exact words. But all of that to say that I think I experienced invitations out of my brain and into my body, but there was a really long time when I didn't even know what that would mean to stop prioritizing what was coming from up here and start investigating and being in relationship with what was happening down here. And at Live Oak, I think something we've learned together and, Jordan, you're one of a small cohort of people who's been here the longest since 2016. I think something we've learned together is that the only way we can invite our clients into investigating the stuff that's not working for them is by doing that same thing for ourself. And my sense is that as a community, we've been learning this thing that, like, when we're in our brains, we're only gonna get so far together.
Corina:And that if we stay up there, we're gonna keep hurting ourselves and each other in some of the same ways, and the only way to move past that is to try something new and different. I wonder, does that resonate?
Jordan:Absolutely. I think based on the evolution at Live Oak, I think we've all kind of in different iterations been through that rigidity of, like, this is the right thing. I'm gonna say the right thing. I'm gonna do the right thing. An issue comes up, and I'm either stuck in my head in defensive, right, or I'm stuck in my head in shame.
Jordan:And all of those things are cutting us off from our bodies. Let's start with capitalism. We are trained to cut off from our bodies in order to be a part of the machine and keep it going. Because if we are in touch with our bodies, which I feel like a kudos to everyone who has been able to do that in their lives and do it well. Love that for you.
Jordan:And I know for a lot of us too, COVID is what really caused us to slow down. And a lot of us had no choice but to be with our bodies, whether we were isolated or had a small pod or were terrified all the time, there is a kind of reckoning, I feel like, with the body that, like, had to happen. And I've noticed that with clients as well, like a shift there. But all of that being said, I think I noticed a huge corner being turned when we were able to kind of step back. We were virtual, which sucked for a lot of reasons, and there was enough distancing and kind of space for self for different parts of us to come forward, which has been incredible.
Jordan:And I think the small cohort of us that have been here for as long as we have, I wonder I know I can speak for myself that, like, with my evolution, again, of, like, understanding my identities or understanding how my body shows up in a space or what have you. I've loved how there's, like, a parallel process with Live Oak around that. And I know for me, it's also with the evolution of Live Oak and my evolution, my lens widens little by little, so I'm seeing and experiencing different things. But I think all of us obviously went through a a wild time when things first hit in 2020. And I think Live Oak was able to shift in such a way where our bodies were able to be present because they had to be.
Corina:Yeah. It's interesting you say that right now, Jordan. I have to say in the last few weeks, especially, I've been thinking about where we were organizationally, where I was personally in 2020 specifically, and I was thinking about some of the most challenging moments for me as a part of this organization, but just, like, living in this broader culture. And I was thinking about 2020 and when George Floyd was murdered and the ways that our bodies individually and then interactingly were experiencing that time. It wasn't obvious to me in looking back at that time how much the initial Trump administration was a factor.
Corina:It wasn't obvious to me. Like, oh, we felt the way we felt partly because of four years of this person. But I noticed myself right now for a thousand reason thinking, oh my god. Can we survive that? But thinking in a more acute way, like, oh, I remember how my body felt after those four years and how hard it was on us as community members to continue to practice having a sense of groundedness in our bodies in spite of many, many people's bodies and lives feeling threatened.
Corina:It makes me think in this moment, I just don't know what four more years is gonna do to all of us as individuals and us as a community.
Jordan:Absolutely. I think my timeline is interesting because I graduated in 2016 when he was elected for the first time. But when he was elected, I became a therapist out in the world. That is how I learned to be a therapist out in the world. And then to your point, Corina, his presidency ends in 2020.
Jordan:COVID hits. Now another presidency. It is very difficult to think about that time. And us now, I think that time, what felt different texture wise a little bit was we didn't know what this was gonna look like. And I think that feeling is still here, and we know what a Trump presidency looks like.
Jordan:I think he has bolstered more now in very clear ways, which is different and has a following that getting larger, it feels like by the day, which is different. But at the end of the day, I think we again, I will speak for myself. That is so many years of cutting off from the body because it's not safe. And, like, as a white person, I have so much privilege in saying throughout my life, there have been times, obviously, where I have felt very unsafe in my body. And I think there is something about the ways that now being in contact with my body and also feeling that unsafety and knowing more unsafety is coming, a, it makes it hard as hell to be a therapist.
Jordan:Not only that and a human at the same time processing in pain and fear around it. And it's funny. I don't even remember where this question started because I am noticing it's like I am getting so disconnected from a place of protection of, like, what does it mean to be thinking deeply in this while also trying to care for yourself? I think that balance is kind of the goal right now of finding that. I guess my conclusion of that statement based on how my body is showing up is that was awful.
Jordan:It's going to continue to be awful. And, yeah, I don't even remember where we started, Corina.
Corina:Oh, listen. My ADHD, I'm sure, asked you many questions in a string. But what I'll say is I love that you brought it back like that, Jordan, because the thing I was noticing is how in looking back, it feels scary for a thousand different reasons to be coming into this new administration. But you looped us back to, like, what are the lessons that you've learned throughout the course of the time in the field? And then you did this beautiful thing of, like, catching yourself in the moment, which, again, I think reflects that evolution I've seen over time in you.
Corina:And, also, I relate to in myself in thinking that what's happening in the moment is relevant to the collective body, not just to my own body. So you're like, oh, I'm gonna come back here because, actually, we don't really know any of those things. We know and don't know. And when I think about my body, I think about at the beginning of today's meeting, after having read news about ice raids and having interacted with families and kids in Chicago who are terrified. I noticed myself coming into this meeting today just, like, feeling the grief and the heaviness.
Corina:Like, I could feel it in my stomach. And I think my younger therapist self would have really, like, shored myself up and, like, pushed that away and not thought about it. And my today therapist self understands that, like, it's all relevant because the same thing is happening, but in everybody's individualized version in everybody else's bodies in order to try to protect self from this moment.
Mariana:Live Oak Chicago is a primarily queer trauma informed therapy practice located on the North Side Of Chicago, offering both in person and virtual therapy consultation and workshops. We are committed to the practice of becoming a model of a community of diversely identified humans working together to transform the emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being of individuals, families, and communities beginning with ourselves. To access therapy, training, or consultation, please visit www.liveoakchicago.com.
Jordan:Folks will come to me in in a lot of moments to talk about the sexual violence piece of kind of how to work through that with folks in therapy. And this colleague came to me to talk about that intersecting with queerness. And part of the conversation there was this person kind of comes into the space in a very activated way every time, and, a, normalize that. Right? It's therapy, feeling a lot, preparing for a lot to even talk and show up in the space.
Jordan:And this colleague was telling me that it, in some ways, can derail the conversation to no fault of clients because there is the felt sense of need to reground. Let's pause. Let's reground. And my radical view on that, and I kind of extend this to all of us as well. I'm thinking about messages from the body.
Jordan:Corina, you were just talking about that. I am a therapist who, if someone is dissociating in the space, if someone is getting really activated, obviously, if we are, like, at this place in our window of capacity where it's like I can't even be here anymore. Right? We're gonna pause. We're gonna slow down and reground.
Jordan:And if in trusting and knowing my clients, I work with a lot of people pretty long term, so there is that relationship and trust that's built up. I trust their systems and I trust their processes. And so if a client comes in and is dissociating or, like, my colleague's client comes in and is very activated, I wanna just notice that with the clients and with myself, with all of us. Right? I wanna notice it and allow myself to listen to the messaging that we would perhaps be missing if we immediately paused everything and then derailed and silenced that part that is trying to communicate.
Jordan:And so coming back to what we were just talking about, my practice lately is really just allowing and noticing what's coming up in my body and listening. I think when we stop parts of ourselves that are, like, really difficult tendency understandably is to push those parts away, to ignore them, to avoid them, and to villainize them. And these are just parts of us that have been shaped by all of our life experiences, all of our traumas, all of our identities that we hold. And I find that if we silence them, they will get louder. And so what does it mean in the moment even if us, let's say we're talking about the recent election, are feeling that screaming inside or that silencing or what have you.
Jordan:What does it mean if we just lean in and trust the messaging there? So all of that being said, I'm doing my best to focus on that this time around and also just be with my clients in that because as we know, we can't fix this. We cannot fix what's happening. We cannot make it go away. And so what does it mean to not do what we are being led to do, which again is just cutting off from our experiences and actually lean into it with curiosity and compassion versus fear and avoidance in that way.
Corina:Jordan, as you said this, it reminded me in the orientation this year for our trainees, you said something that I say also. And so now I'm like, oh, I might have gotten that from you or we might have gotten this in community. Who knows? Who knows? And I can't remember your version of this, but I like to say to staff members, actually, specifically, because we all, I now understand, come in with our own respective employment trauma.
Corina:And I understand that I, as the boss and supervisor and colleague, I'm not inherently credible, meaning I am also indoctrinated into these same systems. I am sometimes gonna come from a place that's not clean. And so I say to people, and I heard you say something similar, I wanna encourage you not to feel pressured to trust me, to let your internal reactions be credible until a time tells you where they're not necessary anymore. And I hope that happens, but it may or may not happen, and I like to encourage you to just trust. If you're feeling hesitant, then follow your hesitance.
Corina:There's no expectation of vulnerability here that you have to meet in order to have credibility in this space. And I heard you say some very similar words, and I was like, oh.
Jordan:Literally, Corina. Corina, my words are don't trust me. Like, don't trust me. Period. And I I say that too to all of my clients in the first session of, yes.
Jordan:I am a therapist, and you don't know me. You don't know the type of work that I do. You don't know how I'm gonna show up in the space depending on identities that they hold versus identities that I hold and the power differentials that, a, from me just being a therapist in the space, but also potential power differentials in ways of identifying. There is no data for this person to hold that says this is a trustworthy person. Unfortunately, there are a lot of really harmful therapists out there.
Corina:For sure. There really are. It's not funny. It's absurd. It's absurd how many deeply harmful therapists there.
Jordan:Right? Of, like, how did this even happen? And I think we could get into the reasons as to why. And at the end of the day, so many of my clients, and maybe it's the same for you both, a, come in traumatized because that's what they're coming in to see me about, but, b, come in with medical trauma, come in with provider trauma, come in with mental health service trauma. I don't want to be part of that in the ways that I have control over.
Jordan:Let me be clear. I'm not a doctor. I do not wear a white coat. And, proverbially, just because I have a white coat doesn't mean I'm good at what I do or I know what I'm talking about, which this is my own medical trauma coming up. And also it's true.
Jordan:I love how you soften that, Corina, but I literally say do not trust me. Let me earn it. Right? Let me earn it.
Corina:Yes. Exactly. And I like to say, and if I don't, that that makes sense. Then you should trust yourself first and foremost over any bids from us.
Jordan:Absolutely. And that's the work. Mariana, as my supervisee and as someone who in some iteration heard me say, don't trust me.
Jordan:I'm curious if that impacted how you felt entering into the space or how you felt knowing this was going to be a power differential relationship and that we would be working together for a year.
Mariana:One layer of this is I already admired you before you were my supervisor.
Jordan:Every time I hear that, I'm like, I am taking it in. I am taking it in. I promise I'm taking it
Mariana:Take it in. And the reason specifically is you gave a guest lecture when I was a graduate student. Mhmm. And you didn't know who I was probably at that point.
Mariana:I was just a face among the crowd. But your lecture stuck with me in the fact that, like, a lot of the lessons that you're sharing with us today, I think, already came through for me from that moment that made me think like, oh, regardless of where I end up working, I want to reconnect with Jordan in some form or another. And so I think I came into Live Oak already having had little seeds of that lesson of what you're saying of it's important to, like, trust yourself. And through that, you can see if you are ready to be vulnerable with the people around you, maybe, is kind of what you're getting at. And I do think that meant that it wasn't a completely blank slate when I came to knowing you.
Mariana:And at the same time, I think over the weeks and months, something that has made me feel more able to slowly gain trust in our space has also been the reciprocity of feeling like you are starting to trust me as well. And not just because there's a power differential and you're my supervisor, that there's an expectation that I will learn to trust you and that's it. But actually understanding that the more vulnerable you've been with me, I have felt more comfortable doing the same. And I think that that is something that I always preach in all relationships regardless of what power differentials exist that, like, I have been able to lean on you because in the ways that it is possible, I have felt you lean on me as well.
Jordan:Absolutely. First of all, that's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. I I don't know what I thought you were gonna say, but I'm taking that in. I think something that you're speaking to that's really important, two things.
Jordan:One, I'm hearing you say that you had data going into our relationship. Not all of the data, but you did have data to be like, with these things that I've seen, I do trust that. Or I do think, like, at some point I could lean into that more, which I love. Right? You didn't come into the space with that blank slate being like, here we are, and I'm gonna pour everything out.
Jordan:The other thing I appreciate about what you shared is it speaks to my approach in general, which is being a relational therapist. I think folks in the field tend to throw that term around. I'm a relational therapist. And as a person who identifies as one, I'm always curious what that means to other folks. And to your point, Mariana, I think for me being a relational therapist is a recognition of the power differential.
Jordan:And with that recognition, the ability to humanize within it and address it as much as possible. There are parts of myself that I, from my own boundaries, ethical boundaries, what have you, would not bring into the space. Specifically with clients, I think boundaries are a bit different, still there, but a bit different in supervision. But that ability to form authentic relationship, like, I am a human in my wholeness, in the space with you as a human in your wholeness. And I want to form a relationship that then fosters a safe enough space for vulnerability, like what you're talking about or for the leaning in, the leaning on.
Jordan:And what I've noticed, again, with my clients, most of them, I've been working with them between two and eight years now, which is so special, and a lot of trust is built up in that. And even with clients I've been working with for upwards of seven, eight years, there's still moments where things will come out that they now trust me with. And I honor that. It's a huge privilege to be privy to that. But kind of rewinding back that absolutely stems into, a, my work as a trainer to just, like, really leaning into, like, transparency, bring my self in, but also then with supervision.
Jordan:So I'm glad you have felt that, and I'm grateful for the trust that you have allowed me.
Corina:Mariana, I wonder what, if anything, is sticking out to you today?
Mariana:Well, actually, I feel inclined to share a little bit about my experiences. You all were chatting that I think relates to a lot of the topics, and it's that I'm coming in today with a lot on my mind. And that meant that I found myself at moments zoning out of our conversation in ways that maybe I haven't felt otherwise. The moments where you all started to pinpoint the fact that, like, it's valuable to take information from our body and that sometimes it's okay to just sit with that dissociation. Those were the moments where I found myself returning to our conversation, being validated in the fact that it was okay that I was zoning out because there's a lot on my mind.
Mariana:So if anything, I would leave that as, like, the take home message, at least for me, that, like, even as I was in the space, I found myself dissociating and returning, and it was because you all invited me to just accept that.
Jordan:I think there's the invitation and then there's the permission of, like, we can invite that all that we want. And I hear parts of you then gave yourself permission to just be, whether it was coming back, whether it was staying in that space. And I get it. I really appreciate that, and your system is taking care of itself how it needs, which is beautiful.
Corina:I said this at the supervisor's meeting last week, but it's absurd to expect ourselves to function in these times. And that has been true for many people for a long time, but it is still true now. So I just offer that as a reminder to all of us that it's absurd, and yet we keep trying anyways, you know, that we keep trying to be in our bodies and in community, and it's an absurd expectation.
Jordan:It is. I agree. And I think moving through this time is going to be messy and painful and traumatizing. And I hope for folks that do have the ability and the privilege to lean into community, to lean into, I've really wanted to learn this craft or take this class or reach back out to this person I haven't talked to in a while, take that bath, what have you, doing it. And I think in doing that, we are doing the thing that is fighting against this from a self perspective, which is, like, I'm going to keep myself around in the ways that feel safe enough when nothing feels safe right now.
Jordan:And to me, that's an act of bravery on all of our parts to varying degrees, and our clients are doing the same thing at the same time. My thing this past week even has just been clients coming in in despair and me being like, yes. That is a correct response to what's going on. Yeah. I cried with a client about it.
Jordan:We all need to be human in that way. And the hope is that there will be an a beginning to this. There will be an end to this, and we will remain as whole as possible amidst that. And maybe that is the only goal right now.
Corina:Thank you so much, Jordan. Can you believe it's been eleven years that we've known each other? Eleven ish years, something like that? No. I can't either.
Jordan:Mariana was asking me, like, is there anything you can think of specifically that might be interesting to talk about? And I was like, Corina and I have known each other for over a decade. We should talk about that a little. It's such a privilege, Corina. And, like, you've always been a person and a therapist that I've looked up to.
Jordan:And to be able to be in such close proximity to you and your evolution and having that long term relationship is so meaningful. I don't have a ton of people in my life, pre college specifically, that have that experience of knowing me through many iterations, and I'm just grateful you are one of those people that's been there on purpose or not.
Corina:Thank you, Jordan. It's funny. Today, I'm gonna try to learn from you. I'm still in a journey with trying to learn how to receive feedback in vivo. It's like I can only do it after the fact, so I'm working and taking your teaching right now.
Corina:But I feel deeply grateful you have been in community with me, as you said, through so many of my own personal transitions and evolutions of self in a lot of messiness and a lot of mistake making and a lot of learning. And I think some of that's, like, the juiciness of what we've gotten to do together, but it means a lot to me that you've been part of witnessing and also interacting with that reality. Thank you. Thank you, Mariana.
Jordan:Mariana's the best.
Mariana:So grateful for both of you.
Mariana:Thank you. Thank you.
Corina:Have a great day.
Mariana:Enjoy. Bye. Bye. Next time on lessons from the couch.
Chaaze:It's really for me a lot about power or agency and seeing around the world how many cultures it's a universal thing as well where people either relinquish or their power is stripped from them. And when we don't have that, I find is when we get stuck. For me, somehow it always comes back to a loss or lack or stripping of one's power to self agency. And so my work revolves around trying to get folks to help them to reclaim that and to do it in a intentional or conscious way.