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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.
I think if shame was a an effective tool for progress, we would all be out of a job. I mean, we wouldn't need therapists.
Corina:Hi. My name is Corina Teofilo Mattson.
Mariana:I'm Mariana Reyes Daza.
Corina:And we are the new cohosts 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:Today is November 1, 2024. We are recording this podcast on this day, but to our listeners in the future, you will probably be listening in January of 2025. There will be changes from now till then in terms of the country we're living in and just in general changes personally and at a broader scale, so we just wanted to name that. And I'm Mariana. My pronouns are she/her. I am a marriage and family therapist in the process of completing my hours towards licensure. I am also a theater maker, which is partly what brought me into this podcast, the excitement to have awesome conversations and also lean into my creative side with producer responsibilities and that more back end stuff in the podcast. When it comes to who I am, I am Latinx, Colombian, specifically. I am in my twenties, and I am coming to you all from my bedroom in Illinois where I currently live.
Corina:I'm Corina. My pronouns are she, her, hers. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist in the state of Illinois. I also run a therapy organization called Live Oak, and I, finding that I am a podcast host as of this moment. The thing that I am really, excited about today is the idea of the podcast being a place that gives room for cool, juicy conversations.
Corina:I feel like, Misty, you and I in particular, have so many really incredible conversations, and I've been realizing that not everybody experiences that. And I've learned actually a lot about communicating well through you. I also hope to normalize the idea of getting it wrong or or more more precisely learning something and then doing it differently or changing course or shape shifting.
Misty Major:My name is Misty Major. I use sheher pronouns. I am the former clinical director of Live Oak. I had worked at Live Oak for 6 years. I was director 3 years. Yeah. 3 years. I recently left Live Oak, as of December of 2023. I started my private practice Journey Within, LLC, January of 2024. So that's what I've been up to in doing.
Misty Major:I moved to Fort Worth, Texas. I lived in Chicago for 12 years, and then my husband and I decided to move. It's been surprisingly good. I was unsure, how I would like it because I really love Chicago very, very much, and I do find a different energy and solace here that I don't think I found in Chicago.
Corina:What does being a therapist mean to you? I would love to hear your thoughts on that as of today.
Misty Major:I think being a therapist is a mirror. I mean, I think our existence as humans is a mirror. I think that being a therapist is a particular skill around, I think, mirroring and modeling. And granted, like, therapists aren't, like, the ultimate, you know, of these things. Right?
Misty Major:And I think that therapists can be healing in those areas in ways that, like, not everybody had the access to, or we all didn't have the access to, to know what it means to be a mirror and a model in relationship with one another.
Corina:That really resonates with me, the idea of therapist as mirror. When I think about my earliest therapist self, I really think I believed that therapy was a person would come in and there'd be a problem, and we would fix it. And and it turns out that that is not exactly it. You know? I also believed that therapy was a journey from dysregulation to regulation or from challenge to ease.
Corina:And one of the things that I've learned is that, healing the journey of healing does not look like ease per se. I wouldn't say that. I would say my experience of the journey of healing is, like, understanding the unease of my own particular body mind body mind, being in relationship with it. I feel like you in particular, Misty, have taught me to to, like, get connected to my particular body's tendencies around dysregulation. I wonder what is the difference between what you thought therapy was and what you what you see it as being today?
Misty Major:I thought therapy was gonna come out on the other side, not feeling the way that I came in with. Like, your name, like, that's not particularly true. I think now it is like, how can I trust myself with the lack of ease that I experience in my body? And that that that unease didn't need to be pathologized or criticized or politicized. It just exists in the body as a human.
Misty Major:As a Black woman, my thoughts and feelings are often pathologized and politicized and and what it means for the larger society and that meaning a threat and that being taught to essentially be afraid of myself in my micro and macro context. And I think therapy in my own personal therapy and also doing therapy, I think has taught me that being afraid of myself doesn't actually do anything for me. It doesn't it doesn't and it actually doesn't do anything for the larger context either for everybody to be afraid of themselves. I think trying to get people to stay afraid doesn't do what we think it does. I don't know what we think it's supposed to do.
Misty Major:It doesn't do what it I think what we think it does except serve some version of false regulation in someone else.
Corina:Yes. Misty, I'm thinking about when you and I first met each other. You were a student, and I was a very, very new supervisor. And at that time, I still was and I didn't know this, but whereas you're describing your socialization into Black womanhood, in my socialization into white womanhood, I was still so oriented outside of myself. So I was looking for the data outside of myself to tell me if I was okay, actually.
Corina:So I was looking, for example, in your group supervision, I was looking at the data of the group's faces, words, maybe, not even anything, like, really especially specific to tell me if I was on track. And it was that was 10 ish years ago. It was I was starting to understand that that wasn't serving me, but it wasn't all, like, verbal conscious. I was starting to understand, for example, if I don't have relationships with people, the data isn't very helpful because I don't know how to interpret it. But I was deeply socialized into the idea that the data was outside of myself.
Corina:So it's just really interesting to for you to talk about being afraid of yourself, whereas my my orientation was, okay. Make sure everybody else likes you, and then maybe you're okay sort of vibe. And I've learned that very much in relationship with you specifically, I've learned I'm very at risk of abandoning myself whenever I'm orienting that way, when I'm looking outside for the for the path ahead. I'm actually glad that you
Misty Major:said that because then I realized in this moment, it's like, well, if I, at that time, if I was afraid of myself and you were looking to me to know if you were okay, then I couldn't do that. So then then it looks like, well, well, I don't know if I'm okay because I can't tell if she's okay. And I'm like, well, I'm not. But I'm also afraid to, like you know, this kind of circuitous thing that I think white supremacy really sets us up for is this sort of, like, I have to look outside of myself to know that I'm okay. And I naturally, I think, have had been a person since a kid.
Misty Major:I always looked inward first. And when people would try to force me outward, I was, like, very resistant to that. And people were also very confused and did not like that about me, which was fine. It just but then it turned me inward in the way that I was like, well, if I am this way or do this or am myself or am this, then I might not get connection. I might not.
Misty Major:I'm at risk of sounding threatening the white folks. I'm at risk of sounding too confident, and that makes people uncomfortable, or I perceive myself as arrogant if I'm confident, or I'm too, confident or independent, you know, for men, or I'm too confident for, like, fem folks or Afib folks. I'm too you know, it's the 2, the t o o 2, the too much, the too this, the too that. And I think I see that in my clients all the time. It's it's the I'm too this and I'm too that, and what if I'm too much and I'm and it's like, I don't even know what too much is anymore in regards to, like, dysregulation.
Corina:As we're talking about our socialization to each other and then the power systems that we live within, whiteness having the power that it has, my orientation outward, looking to you and the group to tell me if I'm fine, and you feeling the way that you were feeling at the time, what I risked at the time was seeing you as the indicator that things aren't fine and seeing that as the problem rather than, let's say, my orientation outside of myself to figure out if I'm fine. And so as you just zoomed back into what it is to be a therapist, that learning journey since starting supervision in particular, but even since before that beginning to be a therapist, has helped me in the work with my clients and maybe most especially in relationship to the white women that I work with to interrupt the habit of looking outside of ourselves for our wellness. I would say so many times when I'm sitting with white women, which is often, I am saying to them, what is happening inside of you? And for for so many people, it's so uncomfortable, but I will say that that's one of the biggest changes is that's what I'm doing all the time with people, is going inwards, stopping, pausing, breathing together, feeling into our bodies.
Corina:And then when it's hard, I'm able to say, I get it. That makes sense that it's hard. That I'm not saying what the fuck is wrong with you for not being able to go inside your body. I'm like, we were taught not to, so that is not on you. But I'm gonna help you understand the consequences of not going inward on the humans in your life.
Misty Major:I think I appreciate the language of, like, there is consequence of not having an interest in yourself. I think even when I think about us as therapists, sometimes we do that with our clients, especially if you're newer. I think what I remember as an intern and what and having supervised interns is that we tend to arm interns and new therapists with so many skills. And they ask for them, which makes sense because it's I want to feel competent. I want to feel like I'm doing something.
Misty Major:And I think from a therapist perspective, I wanna feel like I'm helping. I I want to see all my clients' face, on their reactions, in their language that I'm being helpful so that I know that I can be a good therapist, that I know that I'm skillful. So if I just can come at them with all of these interventions, then I'll know. Right? But then that's what's tough is that every client is so different in that there are clients who want to be skill forward.
Misty Major:There are clients who are more process oriented. There are clients who are some version of both. There are some clients who are avoidant. There are some clients who are this and that. Then when we come with all of our interventions, and then we don't get the response, and we don't we didn't change their lives from session 1.
Misty Major:How did I do? And sometimes it also mirrors, like, being in a a romantic relationship where sometimes you want everything to be new and exciting and novel at the beginning. And then when the mundane and content days happen where nothing exciting happens, everybody's day was just fine, and we make dinner. We watch TV together, and and we chat here and there, and we go to bed. It's like, oh my gosh.
Misty Major:Is that enough? Oh, my client didn't have a life changing thought today. Was that enough? Was I a good therapist today? To your point, Corina, even as therapists, we look outside of our bodies for clarity about how we're doing as therapists.
Corina:Absolutely. And I don't think this is exclusive to white womanhood, but I will say that this journey that we are talking about today of understanding how harmful it has been to be socialized into and then in the practice of orienting myself outward. This journey of understanding that has certainly dramatically changed the way I do therapy, but it's also dramatically changed the way I life along with people, and that relates to intimate partners. It relates to closest friends. It relates to colleagues, family members, etcetera.
Corina:I'm married to a man. And I can look back and see that with my spouse, I was regularly looking for him to give me verbal visual indicators that things were fine rather than asking, how are we? How are you? How am I? I was looking at things like our sex life.
Corina:Yes. The interactions we had, but, actually, I was looking for, like, indicators that are not gonna get at it to let me know that we were okay and not to let me know how we actually were. And so the journey that we're talking about has led me to wanna know the truth, I think, is the reality. So just like you're describing about being a new therapist, though, I to me, the worst thing was being a new therapist. Not because I didn't like being a therapist, because it meant tolerating that I was very unskillful at this thing that feels so important.
Corina:And I knew that my future self would have skills I needed at that time, and I hated it. I hated being new. And then it turns out that, of course, being new was fine, meaning that, like, I was still developing relationships. The relationship is often the most important thing. It isn't about the tools.
Corina:It isn't about the homework. Of course, it was all fine, and my more skillful self would live on the shoulders of that younger, less skillful self. I really resonate with the idea of looking outside of myself in all areas of my life as a therapist and otherwise for the data that I was okay when the reality was, of course, I wasn't okay. But but that was fine. That was fine to not be okay.
Misty Major:I don't know if I've ever met a therapist who didn't struggle with perfectionism to some degree. Yeah. I think we like talking about things in theory. We can go to our master's class, and we can talk about couples therapy or family therapy or trauma or these family systems and such, and we can think about these things in theory. What does this look like in practice?
Misty Major:And then they come up with the perfect vignettes of symptom presentation that nobody shows up as. It's like, what would you do with this person who's presenting like this? Then we would talk about all the interventions we learned that day. And then it's like, okay. But if we have a client later that day and that client is not showing up in, like, the vignette, what are we supposed to it's like when having to trust our newness will evolve is tough when you have been punished or penalized, criticized in your own personal history around making mistakes because the adults or community members around you cannot tolerate mistakes because of what they just cannot tolerate in life, and how much that translates when we start our therapy journey as therapists.
Corina:That resonates so much, Misty. I think that was something I didn't understand understand coming into the field was how much we all come into the field working through our stuff.
Misty Major:Yeah. We wanna understand ourselves, and we didn't have access to or the ability or people didn't know how to help us understand ourselves. And so then we decided to be in a helping profession.
Corina:Exactly. Exactly. A lot of people will say become the person that you needed, and yes, yes. But what is that journey of becoming? I would say for most of us, that journey of becoming is while we are therapists, that we are healing ourselves, hopefully, alongside our clients and our colleagues.
Corina:At Live Oak, I think something I've really learned from our colleagues is that being a therapist is also a job, and we are all also coming in with our own histories of employment. And most of us, I would say I would say the vast majority, if not all, come in with some employment trauma related to the histories of our experiences in professional settings. So it's not even so simple as to say that we're bringing our family histories, which is its own complicated mess in itself. It's that we're bringing our entire employment histories and whatever messages we've gotten around perfectionism and, quote, unquote, performance in the professional space that come in to make it high stakes, how we're interacting in a relationship that maybe we already are quite skillful at, because most people come in to this work because they're pretty good in relationships. But the risk is that we kind of lose ourselves because we're so worried about performing for capitalism and for the professional scene based on the messages we've gotten before, that there's, like, a losing ourselves to find ourselves again thing that I think can happen for a lot of therapists.
Misty Major:Yeah. I think especially if you your introduction was in through nonprofit.
Corina:Uh-huh. Tell us about it, Misty. Tell us about it.
Misty Major:Oh, man. My 1st therapy job was in nonprofit. There was a red flag even in the interview. But because I was so green and desperate to get a job after graduation, I was like, I think it's fine. It was not fine at all.
Misty Major:I was the only Black person on my team. Very strange things happened. This particular organization, I think, had some beef with TFI, the Family Institute, for those who are not, familiar. I wasn't sure what that was about. I was told that, like, talking about countertransference was not appropriate.
Misty Major:I will never forget that one. And what it meant to be a new Black clinician who I was also struggling with my own mental health at the time, there being this facade of helping when we were just numbers. And and that, you know, nonprofit ends up being a numbers game at some point. And not just you, but also the people you serve become numbers. Medicaid billing is a scam.
Misty Major:Medicaid the paperwork Medicaid paperwork, I mean, is a scam. Nonprofits end up, I think, recreating trauma patterns for people in the way that they function with the expectation and the kind of subtle threats. If you don't do this, then you'll lose your job. If you don't meet your numbers, you'll lose your job. If you don't meet enough clients, you'll lose your job.
Misty Major:Everything became about losing your job or you'll get written up. And for me, my particular struggle was not being likable enough for them as a depressed Black woman at the time and not knowing what to do about that or with that or what I should have done different. Because anytime a Black person it's lunchtime and Black people just wanna, like, be alone, then it's a problem. Why aren't you eating with the team? Team always eats together at this time and la la la la la.
Misty Major:And it's just like, I need space. I present extroverted, but I'm actually pretty introverted, and I need space. I couldn't take the space because then I was being antisocial, and I wasn't clicking with the team. And and granted, I had my faux pas, and I had my mistakes that I made. Were they enough for me to be fired?
Misty Major:I don't believe so to this day. It really damaged my confidence as a therapist. I had my insecurities as a as a newbie, but I, like, knew pretty confidently that I was supposed to be doing this. Like, I knew pretty confidently that I would be good at it, whatever that means. I think I would be I was gonna be skilled, that I would do it well, that I would help people, that I would serve people.
Misty Major:I knew I was good at it. So when I went out fired, I didn't do therapy for a year because my confidence was broken, to be honest. And I really questioned, oh, maybe I'm not supposed to be doing this. And when I finally got my confidence back enough to reenter the fields, I was like, oh, no. Like, I can I can do this?
Misty Major:Like, I know I'm meant to do this. The internalization of mistakes and what we are taught that it means, but but who gets to make mistakes as well? And as a Black woman, I never feel like I can make a mistake. I know that I can make mistakes. I'm a person.
Misty Major:I will make mistakes. And there is a cost in belonging, it seems, when you make mistakes. There's a threat to belonging. There's a threat to connection when you make mistakes. That's what I had learned.
Misty Major:When I reentered the field, I was like, okay. I can't I can't fuck it up. I can't I can't fuck this up. And it took me a while to get out of that, and being like, no. I can, and I will.
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,
Misty Major:consultation, and workshops.
Corina:We are committed
Mariana:to the practice of becoming a model beginning with ourselves. To access therapy, training, or consultation, please visit www.liveoakchicago.com.
Corina:You and I both entered into the field into their nonprofit context, and it's none of this is to say that for profits don't have their same dysfunction, but I really, really agree with you. And I see this as being, like, deeply embedded in our earlier conversation about whiteness and specifically white womanhood and that so many nonprofits are run by and many were even created by white women, not all. Many also had white men involved in their creation, but many of the supervisors in our particular field in nonprofits are or have been white women. And so to the degree that you were experiencing the sense that you couldn't mess up, my sense is it would it would have to do with the fact that your visual indicators of liking people, quote, unquote, liking people, like, through a white lens, whatever that looks like, meaning smiling, I don't know, something like that, would and I can say this because I know it in my own body, activate in white women around you this sense of their own failure. And then as a protection from that, it would be thrown back at you to say you're messing up.
Corina:And it's not to say you didn't mess up, but but, like, you were a newbie therapist, so of course. Right? Like, isn't that supposed to be the foundation? And then add this piece that you were speaking to about the paperwork in Medicaid billing, which is that Medicaid paperwork as enacted through nonprofits, saying to people who largely go into a field because of relational skills. We're gonna assume you have this entirely other set of skills and that you're going to be deeply, deeply skillful with it, which is, like, logistical, administrative skills that tend to be very hard for people with ADHD.
Corina:And I'm just gonna say my best guess is our field is overrepresented by ADHD, which is great. I it's, like, wonderful for therapists largely. But this this thing has nothing to do with your skillfulness as a therapist, and you have to not not only be good at it, be really, really good at it. And I would say that my relative skillfulness with seeing my time as, like, a chessboard or like as, like, Tetris board and being like, okay. So 15 minutes for a phone call with a client, which was billable in that context, that my relative skill with that was weaponized against other people.
Corina:So me and my white womanhood and my relative skill with this thing, again, you and I worked in different settings, but I'm sure the same thing was happening in both places. So that if you were having trouble, it wasn't like, oh, what's going on? How can we support you, and how can we be honest about how dysfunctional this system is? How nonprofits specifically are set up for failure within this Medicaid billing system because of the demands put on these systems. Can we instead of just being honest about that, it's, like, put on you as though you are the problem, you know, and that you should be able to resolve it.
Corina:And then, of course, those places treat Black folks and people of color as disposable and then just, you know, like, move on to the next one. And then also use folks of color who don't struggle in those system as, like, evidence and a mechanism for punishment of the others.
Misty Major:Yeah. Like, it can be done because this particular Black person or person of color can do it. So I think billing and paperwork, especially if you're billing insurance, it loses the relational context because I'm like, you don't actually care about this person. You wanna know if you should keep paying for this. That's all that you want to know.
Misty Major:And so when you're calling random clients in a nonprofit setting for a 15 minute billable phone call so you can meet your number and not get fired, then you lose you lose the relational context as a therapist because you're just like, I'm already burnt out, and I'm already tired. And I in this moment, I don't wanna call and talk to this client. I don't wanna do that, but I'm gonna call and ask them if they're okay. Like, I care so I can keep my job and keep my be able to keep my basic needs going. And I don't know if I'm helping them or not with this 15 minute billable
Corina:phone call. But I'm calling them because somebody canceled or because I happen to have time. Yeah. Depending upon how it's enacted, it pulls us away from our own humanness, our own sense of, like, natural flows in connection and communication. It, like, encourages us, as you said, to think of people as numbers, to think of people as our our indicators of our own success, which is, you know, pretty gross.
Corina:I'm wondering, Misty, how would you describe your practice today?
Misty Major:Like, let me look on my website. I don't know.
Corina:Maybe you can. You can.
Misty Major:I feel like my practice is just indicative of me. I just do things that I wanna do. My practice is really informal but boundaried, pretty chill and structured. It's loving and very much invite critical thinking. Love critical thinking.
Misty Major:It's such a connector for the connecting thing for me, critical thinking.
Corina:Do you mind saying more about that? I would love to hear.
Misty Major:Critical thinking, I'm when I say that, I mean the nuance as we all like to say. The nuance of the things. It's the and also's. You know, shout out to DBT, which my practice is very DBT centered. It's the and also and also and also and also and also.
Misty Major:It's the I'm I'm grieved by this thing, and I'm excited, and I feel guilty, and I feel shame, and I feel happy. I feel this. I feel that. I'm this and I'm that. It's it's not just I'm this Black woman who doesn't speak to people when I don't want to.
Misty Major:It's the I'm a Black woman who is actively depressed and in a new environment. And I want to be myself, but myself doesn't seem to be enough in this space. But it is enough, and, also, it's, like, not, but and, you know, it's all of it and not pathologizing any of it. I I think that's my favorite part is people being able to say hard things. And for me to say, that makes sense.
Misty Major:Get it. Or people being able to say, like, this is gonna sound terrible, or I'm gonna sound like an asshole, or I'm gonna sound like this. That makes sense. So as long as you know, as long as I know, it's like that can make sense if we can do something with it. There's no need to be like, oh, but, like, why?
Misty Major:But, like, why do you feel that way? Because I do. Because they do. I think being able to say hard things and to be met with care is a very particular skill. And especially if someone's saying something hard that also rubs up against something that's super hard for you, and you can meet it with skill or meet it with care or meet it with love.
Misty Major:It takes a lot of practice to, like, move into that. I've done a lot of that practice, not just in my clinical work, in my own personal life, but my well, I mean, Corinne and I can tell y'all some stories about how we have gotten there in our own relationship. My relationship with Live Oak as, it started off at Live Oak as a supervisor and then director, and I have stories about that. I think that I really do love genuinely love the journey of a thing as long as as I can see that both people are moving. And, like, I could be walking and you could be crawling, but we're both moving.
Misty Major:It doesn't really matter how we're moving as long as you're moving.
Corina:I experience you as wildly patient. Wildly patient, Misty. By that, I mean that you witness stuckness, and you'll witness it over and over and over. But something I experienced from you is that you witness it and the people you're in relationship with, but don't take responsibility for it, which I find to be remarkable, which probably has to do with my white lady socialization. I think about times we've done consultation about work that you're doing and how you'll just keep witnessing people and where they're at in the process and letting them be accountable to that reality, which feels so close to the way that you do internal work with people and yourself.
Corina:Would you be willing to describe how you think about your our all of our relationships with our parts, the things happening inside of us?
Misty Major:Yeah. I remember when I learned about IFS in grad school, I was like, that is the thing for me. I had always engaged in my internal world, but I just never had a name or language for it. I mean, I don't do IFS, like, traditionally or the way it was designed to be done. I just do it in a way that makes sense to me.
Corina:Yep. Hats off to Richard Schwartz for doing this thing. We do our own version.
Misty Major:You know, I appreciate you describing me that way as someone who's patient. I think I've had to become patient with myself because I didn't feel anyone else was. And the person who taught me that was my first therapist, Amy. Shout out to her. Love her down.
Misty Major:She was such a wonderful mirror and model for what I needed, and I learned a lot from her who who was also a white woman and why I was very skeptical about at first. She turned out to be one of my greatest teachers. What I have learned is that when I think about my parts, especially the child's parts, that if I wouldn't talk to a child the way that I talk to them, the why, what is what is unique about me that talking to them would make forward movement that would create progress? I think if shame was a an effective tool for progress, we would all be out of a job. I mean, we wouldn't need therapists.
Misty Major:We would all we can all just do it ourselves. That's not how it works. And the thing that I love about children is that children are also wonderful mirrors. Because they're so new to the world, they don't have all of the stuff that we as adults have, so they're just going to show you and tell you. And that was what our internal parts do is that they they show us and they tell us, and we just don't like it.
Misty Major:But, also, they can cause some pain and havoc because of the their own ways of being and their own ways of having to, like, survive and show up. And we can understand that as painful, And it is painful. And that's that's, I think, the thing about raising kids, whether you are a biological parent or community member of children, that it's not that the kids can't learn accountability. They just have to do it in an age appropriate ways that make sense. So when we try to hold our parts accountable in adult ways that they can't grasp, nor have we thought about why they wouldn't even be open to it and that you be even have anything to do with that, then they're just gonna, like, keep doing what they're doing.
Misty Major:And what I had to slow down and learn was why would my part and a very specific one, my little adolescent part. Why would she be so willful? Why would she not wanna listen? Why would she want to, like, just do her? As adults, we end up, like, then recreating, like, the painful thing of invalidating that part of ourselves in hopes that they'll get in line.
Misty Major:But if we didn't get in line then, then why would we get in line now? Like, it doesn't we just it just doesn't compute at first. We all wanna be listened to. We all wanna be heard. We all wanna be seen.
Misty Major:When we don't listen or see ourselves and then to your point, Corina, look outward for people to see us and be like, that'll fix it. It's like when we can't keep avoiding ourselves and then get connection from that. We can't get connection from avoidance. And if we know that from other relationships, that that also applies to ourselves. We are our own relationship.
Misty Major:I'm, like, working with a client right now, talking about what it looks like to build community within your own self. What is it to, like, see your parts as part of your community? And part of that is building community agreements with yourself. So my community one of them is with my 16 year old park specifically. She has a lot to say, and she's just so brilliant.
Misty Major:She was always ahead of her time, and she could always see things that other people didn't see. And she just called a spade a spade. And if someone is doing something that she doesn't like or she's she's very protective of me or my other parts, she'll say things. Is it effective? Probably not.
Misty Major:So our agreement is you tell me the raw thing, and then I will translate the raw thing in real time in a way that maintains the connection to ourself, the connection to the other person, and the connection to the relationship, and nobody has to suffer. What do we think about that? And she's like, okay. As long as I can say something to somebody. I'll say it to me just say it to me.
Misty Major:Just say it to me.
Corina:I love that so much, Misty. You're over here teaching a master class. 2 things I'm gonna, like, say again just so the people get to hear it is if shame ever worked, we'd be out of a job. Yes, please. If get us out of a job, people.
Corina:Get us out of a job. We do not need this job. We can find other jobs. Shame is not effective.
Misty Major:And shame is still useful. And then that sounds weird because shame can be such a painful experience. But shame is just like, where in ourselves do we need more love right now? Because there's a part of us that just really needs a lot of love. And we'd see shame and we're just like, in which makes sense because it's again, it's a very painful experience.
Misty Major:And it can be it can be painful and frustrating, and we can move towards more love It's when a kiddo throws a tantrum, and that can be a lot. And it can still be a lot, and you can still show them love. We can still work through the pain of it with them. That doesn't mean we have to, like, abandon or isolate our part because they felt the thing that was hard.
Corina:That's right. And that resonates so much because even the shame of in me, the parts that go to shame are so little, and they are just doing the thing that they were convinced was gonna be effective based on the the people around us when I was little. And so just as you said, I love what you said about if that wouldn't work with adults, why would we think it would work with littles?
Misty Major:Yeah. Like, if we wouldn't talk to kids in real life like this, why would it work with our specific littles? Like, sometimes I think trauma makes it feel like we're so uniquely different that this pain point and suffering is only us, is only ours. And that's not true, and it feels so deeply true at the same time. And that also makes sense to, like, walk into the world as if it's true because what else are you supposed to do?
Corina:Totally. Misty, can I ask you before we finish? I would love to know what thing you're sitting with most after our conversation today. What's sticking out?
Misty Major:I think remembering who I'm talking to. If I'm talking to myself or about myself, I need to remember that I should talk to myself with so much care and love even when I'm giving myself feedback that I still deserve care and love. Even when I get off a call with the client and I'm like, I wonder how they took that. Did I was I weird? Was I awkward?
Misty Major:It's like, okay. What if you were? Then what? Are you gonna get an email then being like, sorry. We're not a good fit because you were awkward?
Misty Major:No. That's never happened. Never will going to happen. It just means that there's a possibility that you were awkward and then, like, that's it. I think for me, what I'm sitting with is, I think, trying to make meaning of things all the time.
Misty Major:That's been, like, my life's journey. Yes. Things mean things, and sometimes things just things are just what they are, and that I don't always need insight to name reality. Sometimes things are just what they are.
Corina:Yeah. Well, it's so funny because on the one hand, I hear you naming the importance of being like it's not always that deep. Not everything is is important. And one of the things I'm soaking up today in a new way is that it's all relevant. But by that, I mean, really specifically body sensations and, for sure, dysregulation, but that shows up for me largely in my body.
Corina:And when I say it's all relevant, what I mean is it deserves care. It deserves love so that the things that historically have felt urgent are so unimportant. Typically, it's like tasks, and it's a distraction from the thing that's making me wanna do the do the tasks as a distraction because the real thing is, like, what's happening? What's the sensation in my body that I really don't wanna feel, and so I'm gonna do this task as a way of disconnecting from that? So the thing that's standing out for me today is those sensations, those indicators of distress are relevant, important, and worth time, attention, thoughtfulness, love, care, sort of the same but different of what you're getting at.
Misty Major:Mhmm. And that for me, when I'm doing the opposite and I'm like, what did that mean? Or, like, why did I do this? And let me dig and find out the is it because of this? And when I find myself being like, I don't know right now.
Misty Major:I don't know. I don't know. Then I'm like, I can stop here then.
Corina:Yes. When you say those words, my body just calms and relaxes when I'm like, I don't know. When I move from trying to figure out to being like, actually, I have no idea. I can feel it now. My body relaxes, sits deeper into my chair.
Misty Major:I've learned that I can trust my body to know when it when I need to know and that not knowing in the moment, there's nothing urgent about it. I'm no less insightful and aware and kind and all of those things. I'm no less than that just because I don't know a thing. I can, like, not know and then just, like, move on with my day and be okay.
Corina:Mariana, I would love it if you don't mind. What are the things that are standing out most to you today?
Mariana:Well, I think the lens of being a new therapist is impacting a lot what I'm taking away because, initially, the first things that came to mind is how much I am carrying that desire for perfectionism in in coming into the world of therapy, so much so that, as a new therapist, I'm constantly cycling in between, like, maybe I shouldn't be a therapist. Maybe I should be. Maybe I shouldn't be a therapist. I suck at this. I'm great at this.
Mariana:And I'm really appreciating how much the conversation that you all have been having is reminding me that I can both be a good therapist and be right for this field and have moments that I need to continually be learning, and not take it to the extreme for myself. The extreme of, okay, now I feel uncertain, tying back to this I don't know, about whether this is right for me, and so I'm just going to freak out and and tell myself that I'm doing everything wrong, and that I am an imposter in this field. And I think it's a great reminder to see both of you who have more experience than me in this field, lean into the idea of learning continually about how you want to show up as a therapist and what you need coming from, like, where you started to where you are now. That idea of tuning into your body being an important reflection for our clients. Like, we can't be good therapists if we're not tuning into our own areas for learning and growth.
Corina:Let's see. This is so wonderful.
Misty Major:This was lovely. Thank you guys for having me on.
Corina:We will do a swap, and I will help you with your billing. You just text me when you want
Misty Major:me to do that. Girl, I'm not doing it. It's because I just was blank.
Corina:I'm not just
Misty Major:not gonna be a penny. I'm just not gonna do it.
Corina:I'm not doing it. We're gonna do this together. We got this.
Misty Major:Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it.
Mariana:Next time on lessons from the couch:
Jeff Levy:I think that I didn't even consider there was an option to not go right into school. I remember I did take a year off between undergraduate and graduate school, and that was extremely controversial with my family and my father in particular, who was like, you'll never go back. If you take a year off, you'll never go back. And now I'm I wish everyone would see that there's space. I strive to be mindful of there being time and space, and there isn't a need to rush into or wash rush out of or rush through anything.