Nothingness

When the process is doing nothing, I am not down for it.
When the process is to be patient, I am itching to take action.
When the process is being quiet, I want to scream.
When the process is rest, I become restless.

I don’t want to sit and do nothing! I want to fix it. I want to find the solution. I want to make the broken system flow seamlessly. I want to impart wisdom so others can stop doing incompetent annoying shit that makes my life harder. I want to create peace. I want to control it. I want ease.

Why then is it so freaking hard for me to be in the nothing? Isn’t that where the peace and ease come in? In the nothing?

I have sought freedom in all its forms my whole life. Freedom from responsibility being a big one. One that I didn’t even know I was systemically escaping within my self-destructive tendencies until I became a mother and could no longer escape. Until I experienced for the first time in my life an overwhelming sense of responsibility that literally never goes away. Even when my kid is safely with another responsible adult, having all of her needs met, I am still not free. She is on my mind all the time. Every decision I make I am acutely aware of the impact that it could potentially have on her. It’s insane.

This intense sense of responsibility doubled when I became a full-time therapist and only seemed to intensify the longer I worked with the same clients. Realizing the power to impact once again, this time on more lives than just one.
It was overwhelming. It dictated so many of my decisions… Go to work sick, or stay home and rest? Have my mom watch my sick kid, or stay home with her and nurse her back to health? Take a week long vacation, or just come in on those days for the clients that are really struggling? Always thinking about how long it had been since I had seen each client. Were they canceled last week due to a holiday? Was their kid sick and they had to cancel? I was always okay with their very valid reasons for not making it to a session but held little forgiveness and grace for myself when it was my needs that kept me from going to work.

This new space though is overwhelming in its own right. This place of freedom from the obligation of going to work. The longer that I am on this leave the more the system has unraveled and I am finding at its core this constant source of tension that causes my teeth to clench, my lungs to hold, and my shoulders to curl. My truth is I am not ready to return to that level of responsibility and I feel immensely guilty about it. I love being a therapist. I am good at it. I adore my clients and I think about them often, wondering how they are doing and hoping that they are coping well during their hiatus from therapy. Then I have to stop. I have to stop thinking about them. I have to refocus on my own mind. My own body. My own spirit. I have to remind myself that I am not responsible for their wellbeing. I am not responsible for their child. I am not responsible for their choices.

I am responsible for mine.

People talk a lot about mom guilt. It is one of the number one driving factors in postpartum disorders as well as burnout and chronic fatigue in women. Always feeling like you just aren’t doing enough. Always fearful you are going to epically fail your child. This is not talked about as often within therapist circles. Or maybe it is and I just haven’t been part of those circles. Or maybe it’s just me? Maybe I just care too fucking much. Or maybe it is actually all rooted in my own belief systems. My own moral code that I have unknowingly tattooed to the inside of every nerve ending in my body.

Do no harm.

Couple this with a belief of “I am responsible” and you are pretty much fucked. Doomed to burnout. To push yourself past every limit you could think of for the sake of others cuz god forbid you ever do or say anything that might create even mild discomfort in another’s life. For if you do and they then suffer in some way, it’s your fault. You are the cause of their suffering.

In case you didn’t know this belief system is complete bullshit. It in fact only creates YOUR OWN suffering. The burden of responsibility is on each person alone. Period. Yes our choices affect others but it is the other person’s choice to allow my choices to influence theirs.
Read that at many times as needed.
Here is the thing, I learned the hard way that love IS boundaries. I get to make the choice to protect my peace. I get to make the choice to put myself and my needs first. This NEVER takes away from another person. Ever. Not in its true form. If I remove myself from someone’s life because they are being harmful towards me, that loss is their choice. If they have chosen to continue to engage in the behaviors that are hurting me, especially if the impact of their choices has been clearly verbalized to them, then I get to make the choice for myself to create safety by removing them. This will obviously lead to a loss on their part to which people respond in all kinds of ways. Some people make changes, they take accountability, change their behaviors, and seek repair. Others will gaslight, attack, and attempt to destroy the power of your own choice. They will blame you for the suffering they are now experiencing due to your absence. That is not your responsibility. That is 100% THEIR choice.

This gets a little complicated in the role of therapist. Or at least I used to think so. A big part of this being due to my early years in the field as an associate clinical social worker (ASW) in jobs in which I had to work with children and parents that were being mandated to treatment. Many of them were not very happy about this and at times would take it out on the person that was there to help. I learned how to develop some thick skin in these years. Always trying to not take it personally (even though sometimes it was definitely a personal attack) but always having to take it. To any therapist reading this, what good does it do for your client if you tolerate their abuse or the abuse of their parents? What are you teaching them? What beliefs are you reinforcing or patterns are you repeating with the transference and countertransference? These become so important to examine for both yourself and your client. Oh also this applies to your own children as well, in case you weren’t aware yet!

If I am going to live my life within the system of ‘do no harm’ then I also need to live within the boundaries of ‘take no harm’. I am a human before I am a therapist or a mother. I never, under any circumstance, am obligated to take abuse from another person. I get to make the choice to remove them from my personal space, from my home/office, from my life if they are causing me harm. If I want my child and my clients to grow into fully self-sufficient adults that take good care of themselves and make good choices, then I HAVE to model that to them as well.

So where does my freedom of choice begin and end as a therapist? Where does it begin and end as a mother? How does MY choice of being both a mother and a therapist impact the limitations of this freedom of choice due to the responsibility that I am CHOOSING to take on in these roles? Does it even create limitations?

Here I sit, in the nothing, pondering these things. Still tangled in the web of beliefs that influence my decision making and elicit my stress response system. Creating contractions throughout my entire body.

Have you figured out why it’s so hard for me to be in the nothing yet?

What if I let go of all of the responsibility?
What if I actually allowed myself to be in complete nothingness?
Is that even possible?
Would I even like it?
Would it cause harm?

To my child, absolutely yes I do believe that it would cause harm.
She needs me. She needs me to be fully present and attuned to her, even when I am not physically with her. This will not be forever but if I want her to be capable of being fully attuned and present with herself as an adult then I need to teach her how. I need to show her what that feels like. Let me tell you it is NOT dissociation. It is NOT self-destruction. It is NOT martyrdom. It is NOT a sacrifice of her own wellness for the sake of others. It is NOT neglecting her own needs for the greater good.

It is love.
It is boundaries.
It is choice.

It is my choice.
It is your choice.
It is her choice.
It is my client’s choice.

I could be wrong about this though. The impact of harm. Maybe I can be in the nothing and it actually benefit my child. My loved ones. My clients. Maybe the nothingness is the very power and freedom I have been seeking along. Maybe that is why I fear it so much…

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