This guest post is offered by our associate therapist Madison Parikka, AMFT, who received her MA in counseling psychology from The Wright Institute in Berkeley, California. She shares, “I see therapy as a coming together, an exploration, and a place to look inward – to see and be seen.” In this beautiful post, she shares her own love letter to therapy.
There’s a saying in the therapy world, that you can only go as far with your clients as you have gone with yourself. The ongoing pursuit of growth and evolvement and clarity and becoming is in many ways the beginning, middle, and end of everything that therapy is. I am a therapist, and I am in, and have been, in therapy for quite some time. I love therapy, and it is both a special kind of magic and also wildly draining to be regularly giving and receiving therapy- often many formats of therapy, as provider and receiver- group, family, couples, and individual. And in many ways, the act of providing therapy is just as deeply personal as receiving therapy. It’s a uniquely challenging job, and it is inevitable that pieces of my own experience that are tender and unhealed might be touched on in the process of sitting with others in their complex experiences.
Folks often come to therapy with the assumption that their therapist has reached the pinnacle of enlightenment, high functionality, and internal growth. I hate to shatter that illusion, but therapists are actually just people, and frankly, I believe that the experience of receiving therapy is richer with a therapist who is grounded in how deeply human they are. Therapy is the experience of evolving and continued becoming, and also, perhaps more importantly, it’s a stripping back, slowing down, and coming home to yourself. To both be moving upwards, towards the sun, and also down, deepening your roots and connection with the soil. These dual tasks are amplified, strengthened, and challenged when you find yourself guiding and supporting others while being guided and supported in these same tasks.
I’ve never asked my therapist about her own journey in therapy, but I sense that she has a depth of understanding that can only come from having done, and perhaps continuing to do, her own work. I often find myself musing about the beauty of being a piece of this mycelium network of sorts- to be able to grow and deepen, and give and receive, from and to my own therapist, from and to my friends and mentors, from and to my clients, and within my relationship with myself. I have the honor of receiving therapy not just from my own therapist, but from everyone who has poured into her wisdom, and everyone who came before those teachers too.
I hope to never take for granted the gift it is to have folks choose to show up with me as their full, vulnerable, messy selves in the therapy room. I hope that my experience as a full, vulnerable, and messy human deepens our journey together, as client and clinician, and as fellow members of the network of wisdom and healing and being that we get to inhabit. May we all find what we are looking for, and pass along our support and guidance to the next generation of clients, clinicians, healers, mentors, friends, and humans.
Interested in being in community with me as a client or clinician? Drop me a line, I’d love to meet you!
Madison Parikka, AMFT
https://www.mjparikkatherapy.com/