00:00:00:00 - 00:00:10:23
T. Heath
Welcome back to the Therapist Confidential podcast, everyone. I'm your host, Travis Heath, and today I am flying solo to talk to you about feeling stuck
00:00:10:23 - 00:00:22:08
T. Heath
as a therapist. What happens when the room goes silent? What happens when we don't know where to go?
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T. Heath
I mean, I can remember back when that used to happen to me, you know, back in the day when I'd be speaking with someone and hopelessness would sort of take over the room. I'd start to feel almost incompetent. I had no idea where to go. And I think to myself, gosh, there's just nothing I can do to help this person.
00:00:43:18 - 00:00:57:03
T. Heath
I mean, I can remember those days. I can remember them because this happened yesterday. Even after 20 plus years of doing this work, I feel stuck a lot.
00:00:57:05 - 00:01:18:05
T. Heath
And there's some vulnerability, of course, in admitting that because I think we're we're supposed to there's some story about therapists that we're always supposed to know where to go or what to do next. And it's not just a story that we hold about ourselves, but it's a story that, you know, it's a dominant story that exists within the culture of mental health.
00:01:18:05 - 00:01:27:08
T. Heath
And I think the people that seek us out often think that we'll have those answers.
00:01:27:10 - 00:01:52:00
T. Heath
And of course, you do this for any amount of time and you realize you don't always have the answers, but there's still that pressure. You know, when it feels like things are floundering. Because of course, we do have more responsibility in the relationship, don't we? I mean, whatever therapy, counseling, healing, whatever this thing is that we're involved with, we have more responsibility in the relationship than just an average conversation at a coffee shop.
00:01:52:00 - 00:02:14:00
T. Heath
So in some senses, it makes sense that we would feel that pressure. But on the other hand, of course, we know we can't possibly have all of these answers. And the best therapy that I've observed over the years is the kind that's collaborative and the kind that's emergent. It sort of happens together in real time, and you're not exactly sure where it's going to go.
00:02:14:00 - 00:02:44:11
T. Heath
Now, of course, what I'm saying runs in stark contrast to, you know, the manual treatment movement, which, you know, I think I think there's some merit to those ideas. Right. Having protocols and those protocols can be replicated. It's really helpful for research, that can be useful to people in various different ways. I don't know that manual treatment always leads to, the depth of change or healing that people are hoping for.
00:02:44:11 - 00:03:14:07
T. Heath
But of course, maybe these more free flowing artistic ways of having therapeutic conversations don't always either. So maybe there's no perfect approach. But I do have the bias towards the idea that if you start to annualize this process, you lose it. And given that I hold that bias, what that means is that in any given therapeutic encounter, I'm not exactly sure where it's going to go.
00:03:14:09 - 00:03:44:20
T. Heath
Sometimes I think I'm sure like like one area in my own work where I believe I have cultivated some expertise over the years is in listening to stories, listening to individual stories, listening for cultural stories that are operating through the stories of individuals. And because I have concentrated so heavily over the years on listening to stories, I often understand the trajectories of those stories and where they're likely to go.
00:03:44:22 - 00:04:13:02
T. Heath
Here's the thing about stories, though they don't always go according to that trajectory. And earlier on in my work, when they didn't go according to that trajectory, it made me really nervous. It still makes me somewhat nervous when they don't go according to to the trajectory they quote unquote should go on. But now I have more excitement than I do anxiety when that happens.
00:04:13:02 - 00:04:30:21
T. Heath
But I also have the sense of not knowing where the hell we're going to end up and not knowing where the hell we're going to end up. Then I think to myself, Will we end up anywhere useful? And so for me, I find myself asking that question a lot, whether it's someone that I've been working with over an extended period of time.
00:04:31:02 - 00:04:56:09
T. Heath
I mean, in that sort of situation, it's often like, gosh, are we still doing anything useful? Even if it feels like, according to the client, because to me, the clients, the best judge of are we doing something that seems useful here? I mean, I can have some sense of that, but I think the client's the best judge. And so if it's someone I've been working with for a long period of time, I often feel like, are we doing anything here?
00:04:56:11 - 00:05:19:15
T. Heath
I like, are we still working? And there's this sense of unknown around that. And then of course, with folks that I'm just starting off with, it's often like, gosh, can I even help them? Are we moving in a direction that that is even going to be useful to them?
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T. Heath
So when I'm feeling stuck, one practice that has been helpful for me is naming that I'm feeling stuck.
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T. Heath
That often started internally.
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T. Heath
So just inside my own head, I'd acknowledge to myself, I'm feeling stuck. Now that might not seem like much, but boy, you know, I started doing work as a therapist in training when I was 22 years old. I'm 45 now, for those wondering. So I've been doing therapy for half my life, and early on I didn't want to acknowledge I was stuck to anyone, probably most especially myself, because I was afraid that if I acknowledged I was stuck, I would be judged as an incompetent therapist.
00:06:12:23 - 00:06:43:23
T. Heath
I mean, you know, there's this idea of quote unquote imposter syndrome, which I think that that can be a useful term. I also the way that it's unfolding and used so frequently, I'm skeptical of how the term is evolving. But but it's a term people know. Right. And I was afraid that if I acknowledged that, I felt stuck, that I'd be outed as an imposter.
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T. Heath
And if I was outed as an imposter, then, you know, I wouldn't be able to go on in the field right?
00:06:51:13 - 00:07:13:04
T. Heath
Because I was incompetent. I didn't know what I was doing. Now, of course, with some good supervision, with some wisdom that occurs over time, I started to realize like, oh, okay, it's inevitable. I'm going to feel stuck. And even though a lot of other people aren't saying they're feeling stuck, a lot of other therapists aren't acknowledging they're feeling stuck.
00:07:13:06 - 00:07:27:11
T. Heath
They're feeling stuck, too. I mean, that would start to be revealed in more private conversations or whatever. And it's like, okay, so I got to a point, and this literally took years where I could acknowledge to myself that I was feeling stuck.
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T. Heath
I think another evolution of that over time for me, was then saying that aloud with the person I'm working with.
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T. Heath
You know, just acknowledging that, gosh, I'm feeling stuck. And then sometimes raising a question with that too, I'm wondering if you're sometimes feeling stuck in this venture to. And what was interesting about that is like it creates a solidarity and stuckness. I know that sounds strange, but often when like I was acknowledging earlier in my sort of journey as a therapist, feeling stuck can be very lonely.
00:08:08:06 - 00:08:31:20
T. Heath
We can start to feel like we're the only one that stuck. So there was this interesting solidarity when the person I was in conversation with, when we're both acknowledge that we're feeling stuck around, whatever it is we're up against, and this solidarity sometimes actually takes us someplace interesting. There's I've noticed there's almost an exhale. Sometimes when we acknowledge that we're stuck.
00:08:31:22 - 00:08:53:13
T. Heath
Now, of course, acknowledging that we're stuck and even just feeling that we're stuck doesn't come without consequences. I mean, I think we all have those voices in our head that when we start to feel stuck that says, you know, we're not good enough, we don't know what we're doing. Other therapists are better than we are. And the thing about that is we all have that dialog.
00:08:53:15 - 00:09:21:03
T. Heath
And in fact, if a therapist didn't have any of that dialog, I think they might operate dangerously. I think that I think that dialog is useful in a number of different ways. It keeps us humble, it keeps us curious. And early on, when I would start to feel like I was doing some good work with people, I'd start to have this feeling of like, oh, I got this, I got this.
00:09:21:05 - 00:09:34:14
T. Heath
And the interesting thing was right about the time I'd start to have that feeling, then something would happen in my therapeutic practice that would remind me.
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T. Heath
Swiftly and harshly, that, oh, no, I don't got this right.
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T. Heath
This isn't simple. I'm not going to discover some sort of algorithm that's going to work every time.
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T. Heath
And that's scary because a part of me wanted that algorithm that would work every time. But there's also some adventure and some possibility and opportunity that exists in that adventure with someone.
00:10:09:20 - 00:10:36:23
T. Heath
But boy, it's tough when we feel stuck because self-doubt creeps in right? Maybe we feel like we're doing the same thing over and over again. Maybe we feel like we're sort of spinning out and we have no idea where to go. And so for me, what's become helpful is naming that stuckness. And sometimes that can create solidarity. And sometimes that opens up a direction.
00:10:36:23 - 00:10:43:23
T. Heath
Oddly enough.
00:10:44:01 - 00:11:08:04
T. Heath
Something else I've noticed that can be helpful when I'm feeling stuck is remembering that a big part of my job is to serve as a witness. Now, you might disagree with me, therapist who's listening to this right now. I mean, because we have, what, hundreds of theoretical orientations and and maybe the way that you practice, you're like witnessing.
00:11:08:04 - 00:11:19:11
T. Heath
That's not a part of what I do, which is totally cool. But for me, I've noticed an important part of the work I do is to serve as a witness.
00:11:19:13 - 00:11:44:09
T. Heath
A witness to people's stories. A witness to people's, growth or change. I'm not in love with those terms, but for lack of a better way of saying it, those are two like, neoliberals for me. But, you know, growth, change, healing. I mean, I'm a witness to that process. I'm a witness to people's stories. And I think witnessing is a huge part of what we do, whether we name it or not.
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T. Heath
I think it is.
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T. Heath
There's a reason why people think things over and over in their heads, and then they come to us and they say them aloud, and there can sometimes almost be like a liberatory experience.
00:12:02:06 - 00:12:30:11
T. Heath
Because they're being witnessed by someone. And if we're able to do this effectively, they also can witness themselves in some way that's very different than just thinking something aloud. There can be a magic in speaking something. And so when I'm feeling stuck, reminding myself that I'm a witness to this and by the way, sometimes I'm a witness to stuckness.
00:12:30:13 - 00:12:54:22
T. Heath
And the person's probably felt stuck in their life and they could feel stuck for any number of reasons. Sometimes people feel stuck or trapped by stories that they can't break free from. And sometimes those stories aren't personal stories. They're more cultural stories that they're trapped by. But I can be a witness of the process as we go along.
00:12:54:23 - 00:13:14:02
T. Heath
Sometimes when I'm feeling stuck. You know, there's there might be specific reasons as to why, but this is a tricky one, because there aren't always reasons.
00:13:14:04 - 00:13:45:00
T. Heath
Sometimes I think we just feel stuck, but other times, maybe there's something that hasn't been spoken yet that will come to be spoken. And when that gets spoken, the stuckness begins to resolve itself. This is a hard one to acknowledge, but sometimes we might feel bored as therapists. I mean, this is like an awful thing to say that we're not supposed to say aloud, right?
00:13:45:02 - 00:14:04:01
T. Heath
We're never supposed to be bored. We're always supposed to be engaged. But that's not true. Sometimes we feel bored. Now, that doesn't always mean that it's because the client's story is boring, or the stories they're sharing are boring. I mean, this might be something that's going on with us and our own lives or whatever that's making us feel a sense of boredom.
00:14:04:03 - 00:14:11:17
T. Heath
But sometimes we feel stuck because we're not fully engaged.
00:14:11:19 - 00:14:29:12
T. Heath
And that's a hard one to acknowledge, right? Because, gosh, we want to say we're fully engaged for every second that we're in there with people and we're listening the entire time. But if we're being honest with ourselves, of course we're not. And of course, sometimes we are more connected to certain stories being shared and feel less connected to other stories.
00:14:29:14 - 00:14:49:05
T. Heath
And rather than worrying about the judgment of acknowledging that that that process occurs, we can be honest with ourselves and notice, okay, I'm feeling more disengaged or I'm almost feeling bored by what's transpiring. And then sometimes that can help along. A feeling of stuckness.
00:14:49:07 - 00:15:15:09
T. Heath
Now, of course, there's all kinds of other systemic pressures that exists. I mean, we have time limits and time limits in terms of the actual conversation. I mean, whether it's 50 minutes or an hour or whatever people are doing. I mean, it's a time limited conversation. Also, there are insurance quotas and things of that nature, right? Where it's like, well, you only get X number of sessions, so you have insurance demands.
00:15:15:11 - 00:15:46:00
T. Heath
And sometimes that creates a sense of pressure. And that sense of pressure sometimes can make us feel like we're not progressing fast enough and that we're stuck. And there's also just this idea of like productivity, Protestant work ethic. I mean, especially in the United States here that runs deep. And it's like, hey, this is a consumer service. Somebody's paying for this, and they want results, and damn it, they have to see objectively, concretely results.
00:15:46:03 - 00:16:13:05
T. Heath
Now, I don't actually believe that's true. Some of the best therapy that I've been a part of our witnessed isn't necessarily concrete all of the time. Some of it's abstract, some of it's artistic and beautiful. That's some of the best therapy I've witnessed anyways. But I do think there's this pressure often that we have to be productive and we can't escape the fact that, you know, people are paying for a service.
00:16:13:05 - 00:16:33:08
T. Heath
This is situated within a late capitalist structure and that can create. Sometimes almost almost like a maniacal chase of productivity and of concrete results.
00:16:33:10 - 00:16:52:18
T. Heath
Now, don't get me wrong, I absolutely think that we should be doing work together. We should be moving in a direction that's useful to the person we're serving. What I'm saying, though, is are sometimes, are we actually stuck or are we just not living up to certain kind of productivity quotas?
00:16:52:20 - 00:17:20:22
T. Heath
Certain protocols of what we should be accomplishing together. So I think that's worth examining too. Are we actually stuck or are we feeling stuck? And sometimes we're feeling stuck and we're actually stuck. And that's okay too. But I think there are a lot of these pressures sometimes that create a sense of stuckness when maybe if we got rid of some of those dominant ideas and stories and pressures, we can't get rid of them, of course, but we can become aware of them.
00:17:21:00 - 00:17:28:23
T. Heath
We can try and neutralize their influence. Then maybe we wouldn't feel quite has stuck.
00:17:29:01 - 00:17:32:10
T. Heath
Yeah, yeah.
00:17:32:12 - 00:17:55:22
T. Heath
Something I found really useful when feeling stuck sometimes is talking to someone else, talking to another therapist. Now, I guess I just, I shouldn't say just another therapist. I mean, it's got to be someone that I trust, right? And I trust their work and and so forth. But sometimes when we're feeling stuck, talking to someone else can be really helpful.
00:17:55:22 - 00:18:13:01
T. Heath
Now, of course, when we're first starting off, we have this baked in to the process. We have supervisors now, even when we have supervisors sometimes, you know, if we're I can think of times I was working at community mental health centers with some wonderful supervisors, but they were so overloaded. They were so busy that it was hard for them to be present.
00:18:13:01 - 00:18:32:17
T. Heath
So again, you have that systemic pressure that exists, right? And it's not that they were poor supervisors, it's that they were spread too thin. But at its best, when we're doing our formalized training, we have a method of conversation with another baked into the process.
00:18:32:19 - 00:18:57:03
T. Heath
Now, when we are licensed and we no longer require supervision, sometimes we can become a little isolated and it can be nice to have someone we really trust to talk to about the process.
00:18:57:05 - 00:19:28:11
T. Heath
Sometimes through conversation with someone else, or another way of doing this is I'll record my own sessions and listen to the audio of those sessions when I'm going for a walk or whatever, I'll notice things that I just can't notice while I'm actually in the conversation. And sometimes when I'm feeling stuck, I would say oftentimes when I'm feeling stuck, I'm more likely to listen to sessions where I'm feeling stuck.
00:19:28:12 - 00:19:48:18
T. Heath
And listening to them later on can be really helpful for me. I'll often identify, at the very least, some points where it feels like we're getting stuck, and then I can say things like, hey, it feels like we're kind of circling back to the same spot over and over again. Do you notice that? What's that like for you?
00:19:48:20 - 00:20:07:15
T. Heath
Right. So again, what we were talking about earlier, where you name it, but not now, not only naming it but pointing out specifically what's happening right where I'm noticing this happening. And sometimes I can do this in real time. But I've also noticed it's helpful to listen to my own sessions if this is something you don't do, especially with modern technology.
00:20:07:15 - 00:20:31:01
T. Heath
Of course, you have to take precautions for confidentiality and all those good things, but if you're listening to it and you're, you get some distance from it. Like when we're in the session, we don't have much distance. I mean, we're doing a lot of things simultaneously, aren't we, when we're in a session? I was talking to some of, our grad students about that earlier this week in class.
00:20:31:03 - 00:20:47:11
T. Heath
You know, that just how much bandwidth it requires to be present in a therapy room, you know, gosh, it asks a lot of us.
00:20:47:13 - 00:21:11:00
T. Heath
So we don't always notice that why we're feeling stuck or even that we're feeling stuck. Maybe sometimes we have a like an embodied sense of it somewhere that we're feeling stuck. And when we go back and we listen to our own session, sometimes we notice where we're feeling stuck, and then we can come back and name that.
00:21:11:02 - 00:21:39:03
T. Heath
Some other options to consider when we're feeling stuck. Maybe we're feeling stuck because what we're doing is just sitting across from one another, talking. By the way, that can be lovely. I mean, I've had some of the most meaningful conversations of my life doing that right in therapy and out of therapy. But sometimes we might need something else.
00:21:39:03 - 00:22:08:08
T. Heath
Maybe we need to move. Maybe we need to get outside of the office. Maybe we need to play, have something kinesthetic right where the body gets connected to the mind, and then the mind and the body get connected to the soul. I'm not smart enough to tell you how all that happens. All I know is that sometimes when the body starts moving, the mind, the heart and the soul start moving.
00:22:08:10 - 00:22:28:07
T. Heath
So I think that sometimes we have to look at the very medium in which we're doing this, and maybe there are ways we can shift that up. Introducing music into the process is something that I've found to be very useful. For example.
00:22:28:09 - 00:22:47:17
T. Heath
I mean, even if we're just still sitting there and introducing music, it literally brings a new rhythm into the flow of the therapeutic process.
00:22:47:19 - 00:23:19:23
T. Heath
I'll propose something. This is a working hypothesis. It's not fully fleshed out at all. And like any hypothesis or idea philosophy about something, it probably doesn't hold true all the time with everyone, right? But it's a pattern I'm starting to notice at least in my own my own work, which is that sometimes it really feels like the work begins when we no longer know what to do.
00:23:20:01 - 00:23:35:08
T. Heath
Another way of saying that is being stuck is a good sign, because it means we're about to get to some really important work. Now. Again, I think the scary part of that is we don't always know where to go or what to do with that.
00:23:35:10 - 00:23:50:23
T. Heath
And that's where for me, looking at therapy as an adventure. And I truly do experience therapy as an adventure becomes really useful.
00:23:51:00 - 00:24:18:03
T. Heath
Most of you listening to this probably know that I've been influenced substantially by narrative therapy. You know, the work of David Epstein and Michael White. Of course, was formative for me. I was fortunate enough to be apprenticed by David Epstein and learn more in six months with him than I did in eight years of graduate education. And that's not hyperbolic.
00:24:18:03 - 00:24:47:23
T. Heath
I mean that sincerely. And I don't think that's I'm not bashing my formalized education. Some of that, I think, is just the method I was in an apprenticing model with, with David. And so I think some of that was just the model. Some of that was he's he's a wonderful teacher of course. And then, you know, you contrast that to the model in graduate school, which for me wasn't all that useful as like you did all this didactic stuff where you learned off PowerPoint slides and the like, and you did all that, and then you were in the room.
00:24:47:23 - 00:25:11:07
T. Heath
And at least for me, maybe this was a me issue. I had a hard time translating, you know, the philosophical and the theoretical into the actual practice. And David's apprenticeship model helped me do that and relatively short order. But, you know, David and Michael talked about this concept of double listening.
00:25:11:09 - 00:25:36:05
T. Heath
Some of you may have heard of it. Some of you may not have. So I'll tell you a little bit about it. And I'm bringing this up just because I found double listening to be really, really useful when I'm feeling stuck. And even before I had heard the term, I noticed myself trying to do something similar. Of course, once I learned of the actual practice, had helped clarify some things and it helped smooth out some rough edges for me in the practice.
00:25:36:05 - 00:25:44:14
T. Heath
But essentially double listening is we're listening to two stories at once.
00:25:44:16 - 00:26:16:18
T. Heath
One story we're listening to. I mean, narrative therapy historically might call this the problem story. The problem saturated story. You know, the up against story is language we've been using more recently, right. But there is this often when people are coming to see us, there are these stories of difficulty, of trauma. And these stories, quite understandably, become huge in people's lives.
00:26:16:20 - 00:26:26:20
T. Heath
And what do they often produce? Hopelessness. And when we feel hopeless, that often leads to us feeling stuck.
00:26:26:22 - 00:26:51:09
T. Heath
So we're listening to that up against story, that problem story, which I think we should be listening to that right. We should be honoring that and listening to that. I mean, these stories are often very important to people, and they're very vulnerable to share, and we owe it to people to really hear those stories.
00:26:51:11 - 00:26:59:12
T. Heath
What's interesting about the concept of double listening, though, is as we're listening to this story and honoring the story.
00:26:59:14 - 00:27:16:16
T. Heath
We're also looking for signs of resistance. Meaning by resistance, I don't mean like a classical sort of psychoanalytic interpretation of resistance. What I mean is ways in which people are resisting those problem are up against stories.
00:27:16:18 - 00:27:50:16
T. Heath
We're also looking for people's values and how they tell the story. Their hopes, their intentions, ways in which they're living alongside the problem, ways in which they're moving through the problem. And this can be hard because problem stories up against stories can, by their very nature, be very thick and take over the process. But if we listen very carefully, we'll hear ways in which they're resisting the problem story.
00:27:50:16 - 00:27:57:11
T. Heath
I'll give you a quick example of this.
00:27:57:13 - 00:28:18:23
T. Heath
A client I had been working with for, I don't know, a month or something. This was several years ago. And, you know, at that time I was living and practicing in Colorado, and there's a real nice concert venue there called Red rocks. Many of you have probably heard of it. If you haven't heard of it's an outdoor venue, literally.
00:28:18:23 - 00:28:38:18
T. Heath
It's made out of Red Rock, you know, kind of a world famous venue. And, and this client had gone to a concert. I don't even remember who the artists were. But she had a shirt on from, you know, the band, and it looked like a new shirt. You know, you can tell it's kind of, you know, there's no cracks in it.
00:28:38:18 - 00:28:58:23
T. Heath
It looks bright, you know, she looked sort of just proud wearing it. And so instantly my attention was drawn to it. Now, this is against the backdrop of our first couple, three sessions of her telling me how depression really had her in a stranglehold. Right? She couldn't leave the house. And, you know, there was a lot of hopelessness.
00:28:58:23 - 00:29:05:20
T. Heath
And to be honest, this idea of feeling stuck, I was feeling quite stuck. You know.
00:29:05:22 - 00:29:27:14
T. Heath
But then she shows up and she's wearing this new shirt, and it's one of these things that's hard to put words to exactly. But something just felt a little different in her being. And I see this shirt. So I ask her about the shirt and she goes, oh yeah, you know, like I went to this concert and she starts telling me about it and how wonderful it was.
00:29:27:14 - 00:29:50:08
T. Heath
And so forth, and. We have a nice five minute conversation about this and that. This is the first time I see her eyes light up right. So again, put this into the frame of double listing. Now a lot of people would say, oh, that's just small talk. You're just making small talk about the shirt. And yeah, maybe it could be read that way.
00:29:50:10 - 00:30:09:04
T. Heath
But small talk is often big talk as I see it. If we really pay attention to that, we learn really important things about people and their stories. And so anyway, she's telling me this amazing time she had and she was with people and that was something she was struggling to do, was feel connected at all to people.
00:30:09:05 - 00:30:28:21
T. Heath
And so this was a sign of resistance against the problem story. And then, of course, a narrative therapy. We might call this the counter story. Right? Which doesn't mean that the the dominant story of depression that she had been talking about does not exist. We're not minimizing that. But what we're noticing is there's also a counter story emerging.
00:30:28:23 - 00:30:54:14
T. Heath
And this was an example of how depression wasn't present. And by the way, this was our whole session. Then we ended up talking about like, wow, how is it that you went from feeling like you didn't want to leave your bedroom to you're at this concert with your friends, and it was a wonderful time, and now you have this t shirt on that just pops, and you can see your excitement in talking about it.
00:30:54:16 - 00:31:13:21
T. Heath
And this was an entire session that came from quote unquote, small talk, right? Which was actually big talk. Now, going into that session, I remember how I felt going into that session. I felt pretty hopeless. And I was like, I don't know, I feel like she's just talking about her depression the whole time, which, by the way, that can be useful for people sometimes.
00:31:13:21 - 00:31:29:17
T. Heath
I won't say it's not. Sometimes it's just nice to get that shit out, you know, and have someone to listen. But what I'm trying to say is I didn't feel like I had a lot of direction. It felt kind of aimless to me. I didn't know that I was being of much service to her. And here, I don't know, maybe our third, fourth, fifth session.
00:31:29:17 - 00:31:48:11
T. Heath
Something like that. She's wearing a shirt. I strike up a conversation about the shirt, and now we have a direction. Now, before that session, I mean, I couldn't have planned that, you know. Yes, I was trying to engage in this process of double listening where I'm hearing the problem story. And I'm also looking for signs of counter stories.
00:31:48:11 - 00:32:19:17
T. Heath
Right. Signs of resistance, hope, ways they're moving through the problem. Right? I was trying to do that. It just didn't feel like I was having much luck. And then this small moment of the shirt help things pivot. And by the way, you can do this with folks even when they just are coming to therapy, when someone's saying, you know, they're feeling sort of so beaten down by life in general, and they come to your office or, or your digital office, even in the modern world.
00:32:19:17 - 00:32:30:12
T. Heath
Right? I mean, that's a huge step. So already there's a counter story that's emerging just by their very presence. Right?
00:32:30:14 - 00:32:59:03
T. Heath
So I found double listening to be really helpful when I'm feeling stuck. And also I found the idea of small talk. What gets called small talk sometimes opens up something very big, if we're willing to entertain it, if we're willing to see this as more than just small talk, to invite to avoid the important stuff.
00:32:59:05 - 00:33:25:17
T. Heath
Now you've listened to this podcast, it's just a reminder that there's no manual treatment that's going to help you through stuckness all the time. There are some times that we're going to feel like we're failing, or that we're not good enough, or that we're not cut out for this work. And yeah, that can definitely happen early on in our journeys as therapists, but it can happen 20 plus years later, too.
00:33:25:19 - 00:33:41:21
T. Heath
And to be honest with you, the moment that I stop feeling that, I think is the moment that I become dangerous and probably need to consider retiring to be honest.
00:33:41:23 - 00:34:11:04
T. Heath
Feeling stuck reminds me to be humble. It reminds me of my limitations in my own humanity. Now I have a responsibility to do something with that feeling of stuckness. I can't just throw my hands up in the air as a therapist and be like, well, I'm stuck. I guess we're done, right? So I don't mean to minimize this responsibility that we have in the role of therapist, because we absolutely do have it, but we can embrace it as part of the process.
00:34:11:06 - 00:34:34:12
T. Heath
We can interrogated by listening to our own sessions. We can employ things like double listening. We can name it. None of this that I'm talking about today will solve this. Feel like it won't, but it can help us interact with that feeling of stuckness in a way that might be useful. The trick is that we never know when it might be useful.
00:34:34:14 - 00:34:54:09
T. Heath
You know, like, I can't predict when someone's going to wear the shirt from the concert. I mean, of course not everyone does that, but those moments, they exist. They're around us all the time as therapists if we just pay attention to them and I don't know when they're going to surface. So I think sometimes it takes patience to patience, grace, compassion.
00:34:54:11 - 00:35:02:10
T. Heath
We often afford those to the people were serving. We'd do well to afford those same things to ourselves.
00:35:02:11 - 00:35:09:01
T. Heath
All right, everyone, thanks for listening today. It's been awesome talking with you.
00:35:09:03 - 00:35:29:02
T. Heath
You can send us your comments. You can send me your comments via email if you want. You can if you watch this on YouTube or listen to it on YouTube, you can put comments and on YouTube please. If you're enjoying the show, like it? Give it five stars. All the different things on all the different platforms. To be honest, that doesn't feel great asking for that stuff.
00:35:29:08 - 00:35:51:08
T. Heath
It's not my favorite thing to do, but I'm I'm asking because that's how the algorithms work. So if you're finding some value in this show, write a review, give us a rating. And what that will do is it'll help other people join our community and find access to the same content. All right, everyone, until next time.
