Listen to Christina’s Client Story:
When Christina, a world traveler and well-versed personal development enthusiast, began working with me, she felt “like a victim” of her emotions and moods, and doubted whether she could experience lasting happiness. In her search for understanding and relief, she tried therapists but had grown tired of the traditional approaches she encountered.
“I had kind of given up on therapists years before. Every time I had a therapist, there was a lot of work to fit my story into their model. I didn’t really feel heard. I often feel like every model somebody has set up, I don’t quite fit into.”
Christina immediately felt excited when our first session together began on a fresh note: “The very first thing you said to me after introducing yourself was, ‘Where do you want to start? What’s alive in you now?’ and that was very impactful for me, to be met right in the moment.”
“Rather than trying to figure out what’s wrong with me, which has been my framework for my whole life; what’s wrong with me and how do I go about fixing it; there was automatically an assumption that nothing is inherently wrong with me. So much of the work has been about unlearning that… By the end of our conversations, I always feel more connected to myself.”
“In the first four and a half years of working together, I felt like my mind got blown open all the time. I had a completely new way of seeing things. When you go from having a ‘what’s wrong with me’ problem-focus to a ‘how to be satisfied and find desire’ focus…there’s going to be a lot of surprises along the way.”
Christina started working with me in 2018 and returns periodically for a few months at a time. I remember the day that I got a sudden insight so strongly in our session, and I blurted it out right then and there: “You know, we’re spending a lot of time trying to fix or understand something that is wrong… What if there’s nothing wrong? What if you were able to really just be who you are in any moment, no matter what, and let that be good?”
Obviously I don’t just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind every time, but in this case I’m glad I did. The timing was right, there was deep resonance in the moment, and it forever changed the course of our work together, and honestly, of my work in general. It was a turning point for me, and it marked the period where I stopped encouraging clients to focus on their hurt or dis-satisfaction or doubt, and started pointing them toward better feeling perspectives and unconditional well-being. I began to see my role differently, and most of my clients were happy for the change.
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