On my first day of school to become a therapist, they asked us our long- term goals.  Mine were clear-cut and very specific from the beginning: my plan was to open a private practice that focused on the mind and relationships but also on the body and physical fitness.  I felt that it was crazy that the connection between mind and body is so obvious, yet so frequently overlooked in our medical field.  Physical wellbeing has such a clear impact on mental wellness and it was something I was learning more and more about myself every day through my own experience seeing a therapist (Um I thought you said you were a hater?! But you’re a therapist who goes to therapy?? Stay with me here, I’ll explain).  I was downright shocked when my first professor nodded and responded with, “Ah, so a holistic approach?”

I have an embarrassing confession.  Despite being an educated, fairly decent-read, and successful adult over the age of thirty, I didn’t know the actual meaning of holistic. I had a general idea. It was that overarching term that hippies used to describe anything they did, right? They took a holistic approach to eating and meditating and loving and living and breathing—I hope you’re catching my very severe eye roll.  I didn’t know exactly, but I assumed it referred to something green and crunchy and whatever it was I wasn’t interested anyway.

“Um, NO LADY OF COURSE NOT! WHAT DO YOU THINK I AM?!” was the response in my mind.  Instead I sat in confused silence, and very quickly and quietly googled “holistic” on my laptop, trying to not appear stupid in a room full of psychology majors simply continuing their education.  I, on the other hand, had spent the last ten years studying and working in a completely separate field.  This career-(and life!) changing decision had felt rash and sudden but I felt so strongly about it; I was certain it was the right move.  Until this moment.

Holistic (adj.) – characterized by comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.

Holy. Shit. I wanted to open a Holistic Therapy Practice. I was in way over my head.

I was brought up in a strict conservative military family where if anything strayed from the norm, it “must be that California hippie bullshit”.  Talk therapy very definitely fell into that category. My brother’s problem behavior started earning him diagnoses as early as age four (he was six years younger than me, so I was 10) and my family was recommended for therapy for years following that.  I don’t know if my parents went early on, but I do know I certainly never attended a session and that they thought it was an absolutely ridiculous consideration to begin with. After all, feelings in general weren’t to be discussed, and discussing them with strangers sure as hell wasn’t going to fix anything in our minds. Had it been effective at the time they may have thought differently.

By the time he was first hospitalized for his conduct, I had already moved out to attend college. (Wanna talk about some seriously confused teen rebellion? I went to UCLA.) He was diagnosed with early-onset Bipolar Disorder I with rapid-cycling moods at the age of 12.  This was the final, and official diagnosis the doctors told us, and he’d been prescribed and treated inappropriately for the years prior for ADHD, only exacerbating his symptoms.  He and my parents began a new, heavy schedule of appointments with physicians, therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, and I only heard negative viewpoints (my brother’s and my parents’) about “incompetence” and inability to regulate his moods, find the proper medication, or even properly validate their concerns.  These incredibly educated and science-based doctors with far more knowledge and understanding of the human brain than I, became vilified in my mind as money-hungry pill-pushers.

My 17-year-old though process was, “If they knew what was wrong with him why were they screwing around instead of fixing him?!” It was the early 2000s and diagnosing children with Bipolar had been unheard of until only a few years prior.  A lot of the treatments were truly a crap shoot.  Doctors were diagnosing and then trying to treat with a hit or miss “whatever sticks” method, and nothing was sticking.  Ironically, at the time I was a pre-med psych major hoping to become a psychiatrist and follow a dream loosely based on my perception of Clarice Starling of “Silence of the Lambs”.  I decided that my attempt to rebel and adapt a different lifestyle was a failed effort—I did not fit into the LA scene (and a few other important reasons, but I digress) and I no longer wanted anything to do with the field of psychology.  I quickly changed majors and chose instead to pursue Hospitality Management after moving to Las Vegas.

Notice that I noted his doctors as science-based. That was important for me.  It was a frequent topic at home, the ability to prove something as real or false.  It made things simple and clear-cut—you can either prove something or not, end of conversation.  As you might guess, we were not religious.  You can’t prove faith, or God, or a higher being.  Proof was necessary in any discussion at home, from the validity of a conversation with a friend to ideologies and belief systems.

I chose to become a therapist after finally pursuing my own therapy.  THAT is a whole different long story, punctuated with a lot of internal push back, as you might imagine.  But after years of off-and-on attempts and withdrawals, it was working.  I was proof of its success, and I couldn’t deny that.  It was clear-cut. And despite my decade of doubt in the field of psychology in general, therapy became the exception to my hatred and I wanted to be able to share that success with others. There was no medication involved, so I felt it was a safe approach without becoming one of the doctors my family, my brother, and therefore I, hated.

Therapy in its nature, regardless of the approach, is one of the hardest practices to study or prove effective.  It relies heavily on the ability for two unique individuals to find an incredibly trusting connection before even approaching the issues which are being confronted. From there, different theories, techniques, and interventions can be applied, all of which ARE able to be studied and proven effective.  But without the initial connection between therapist and client, no work can be accomplished whatsoever.  Because every therapist has their own unique personality and approach, it’s not realistic to think they can effectively help every client.  Instead, it falls upon the client to find the right fit for them, which as you can imagine can create a lot of negative feedback about the field when a client meets one or several therapists that they aren’t able to click with.

I had found the right person, purely by accident after several failed attempts, and I was seeing results.  I was being forced to question everything I knew and believed in–and didn’t believe in!  Everything I had been so strongly against: an unprovable method in the mental health field, the ability to simply talk through problems with a stranger, things that I had always believed was just as believable as the Easter bunny and the boogie man were suddenly helping me in massive ways.  And then, to add insult to injury, this therapist that I loved, who I felt so strongly understood me, who had already impacted me so severely that I had quit my job to literally follow in her footsteps and become a therapist myself, started recommending things like meditation and yoga for my anxiety and depression.  MEDITATION?! AND YOGA?????? Aside from holistic, there were of course some other taboo hippie terms in my mind:  Mindfulness, meditation, yoga, plant-based, healing, etc., etc.  Not a shot in hell. This was going too far.  I simply nodded but internally knew I wasn’t going to take her advice.

Meanwhile, I was already in my new classes at school studying to become a therapist.  I was pushing my limits weekly with new information, new types of people, new studies, and though I was loving it it was certainly a challenge.  And you know what studies started showing up in our discussions regularly? Studies on the science behind breathing and mood regulation.  Studies showing that the practice of controlled breathing and periods of practiced non-judgmental thought were the most effective ways to control and calm the brain in moments of intense anxiety, anger, and sadness.  In not so many words, practicing meditation and mindfulness is not just some peace and love theory, but is based very heavily in science.

So I gave in.

My belief system was no longer serving me.  Everything I wanted to hate and disprove I literally couldn’t anymore. Clearly, so much of my thought process growing up was wrong, and that’s a hard thing to admit. But ya know what’s harder? Allowing yourself to remain a stubborn and ignorant asshole solely based on the personal biases you were raised with. And that’s not to say that my family was wrong in any way, they have been growing right alongside with me.  They were just living with the belief system that they were brought up in also. I’d had a bad experience with the field of psychology, and even with the state of California in my mind, but I couldn’t keep holding that grudge.

It’s three years later, and I’m nearing graduation and actually starting to look at locations for my private practice.  I still have an initial gag reaction to a lot of –what I now term “unconventional” rather than “hippie bullshit” –methods that my field embraces.  But despite my instinctual response, I want to try them! I’m so much more eager and interested to hear about a lot of Eastern Medicinal practices (you guys, Reiki is so nuts I need to write a whole different post about my experience with it), I’m absolutely fascinated by EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy…. Literally processing trauma by moving your eyes!), and my initial “holistic” idea has expanded to include an interest in nutrition and massage and any other ways that the body and brain can be connected.

Overcoming an entire belief system, especially one that you were raised with, is really hard. Believe me, I get it.  There were so many times that I felt a literally “fighting mad” reaction when my beliefs were challenged, without even knowing why! Our families and our histories are important to us, of course we want to uphold their truths.  But—and I’m going into some hippie realms here guys—growth is uncomfortable.  Questioning where those reactions come from and if they’re still relevant is important to us all, as individuals and as a society.  Do you share my initial belief systems regarding the mental health system? Therapy? Or even something completely unrelated? I’d love to hear some of your initial gag-reflex words in the comments below!!

XOXO – Lindsey