January 2025 Newsletter

I’m popping my head back up after taking some much needed time off, rest, and hibernation to say hello and connect. Hi! How are you?

TLDR: I had a surgery, learned to ask for help, deleted Instagram, and am opening up more room for ketamine assisted psychotherapy in 2025.

When I sit down to write to you, I usually have a conversation with myself about how much of my personal life I want to share. When I was in school to become a therapist, I was taught to share nothing unless it’s directly relevant to a client, and even then, to think twice. The longer I work with people, and the longer I’m a human, the more I realize that shared experience and shared humanity cultivates space for deeper connection. When my clients know that I am imperfectly human, my hope is that they feel more safe to be vulnerable and let themselves be human as well. When you know that someone can relate, you feel less alone.

I say all that to say that I want to share a bit about my experience over the last few weeks. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been recovering from a surgery I had about a month ago. I’m the kind of person who is always doing something, whether that’s working with clients, planning something for my business, projects around the house, or spending time with friends and family. It’s funny how it takes something serious for me to slow down and intentionally rest. I did so much preparation for the procedure in terms of caring for myself, meal prep, conversations with my partner; but when it came down to it, I wasn’t prepared for how hard it would actually be to recover. I wasn’t prepared to be in pain, and I wasn’t prepared to have to ask for help over and over again. I went into it feeling like it was something I just needed to get to the other side of, rather than allowing myself to actually feel all of the emotions attached to it. Sound familiar? Something I say to my clients often is to pause and let yourself experience your emotions. It turns out, I needed that advice as well.

The loss of independence for me was brutal - this was the first health-related challenge I've had to deal with, and I came face-to-face with the immense privilege I typically hold as an able-bodied person. The loss of that privilege was jarring to say the least.

I also bumped into a lot of guilt for asking for things, and for letting my partner take over 100% of everything around the house. Despite the fact that he gave me a literal bell to ring when I needed something, I struggled hard with asking for help.

Something that I say often is that I’m recovering from hyper-independence - this is a constant practice for me. I’m consistently unlearning and in recovery from needing to do everything myself to show that I don’t actually need others, I can do it all myself. I’ve realized over time how backwards my thinking was - doing everything myself is not a sign of strength, it’s martyrdom. It’s an excuse to resent others for not showing up for me, when I’m the one who told them not to in the first place. To say, “see? I knew I had to do it alone”, even though I’m the one who didn’t ask. Doing things alone instead of asking for support was an excuse to feel self-righteous and indignant, and ultimately, was a strategy to help myself feel safe even when people didn’t show up for me.  

Despite the fact that this pattern is still present for me at times, I’ve been doing some major unlearning of it and re-learning a different way. Over the past few years I’ve put a lot of effort into co-creating intentional community with folks who actually show up for and support each other. This past month while I’ve been healing, I’ve asked for meals to be delivered, I’ve invited friends to sit with me, and I even learned to ring the bell to summon my husband during the first few days when I needed help with everything (I mean everything).

Slowly but surely, I’ve started to find balance again. I’m taking walks, adding gentle movement back in, and am back to doing some things around the house. Being forced to slow down like this has helped me realize just how quickly I was moving before. During these weeks I’ve taken time off from seeing clients, I’ve napped, read (so so many) books, watched tv, and done puzzles. And that’s pretty much it. And would you believe me if I said I’m not bored? I hadn’t realized how much I needed a break until I was forced to take one. Although my body is still healing, I deeply appreciate the healing that’s taking place in my soul as I let myself truly slow down and take deep rest.

Along with my body and soul, another thing I’ve been working on is my social media addiction. I say addiction because it was feeling like a compulsive behavior I couldn’t let go of, that was causing me a lot of harm. I’d find myself sometimes just scrolling without even really seeing what I’m looking at. Know what I mean? Not only that, but I noticed myself feeling helpless. Social media is interesting because if your algorithm is geared towards current events, you’re likely witnessing suffering, division, and polarization, without being able to do much of anything about it. Sure, you can comment and share and be informed, but the question of whether I was actually helping by taking those actions is one I couldn’t find a solid answer to. In my own experience with this, witnessing current events without a direct path of action had me feeling helpless, hopeless, discouraged and resentful. I’d even go so far as to say that doom scrolling is a form of self-harm. And I felt it too - I’d open up Instagram seeking a distraction, and close it feeling worse about myself and the world than I did before. 

So I decided to take a break. I deleted both instagram and facebook from my phone, and Irish goodbye’d from social media (I guess it’s not a true Irish goodbye if I’m telling you?). It likely won’t be forever, but I realized I desperately needed to adjust my relationship with social media and with my phone in general. And wouldn't you know, it's actually working. The changes I’ve experienced have been profound; I’m noticing more spaciousness, more peace, more time for other things that interest me, and big improvement in my mood overall. The fomo was real at first, but after a week or so it started to fade. There’s part of me that feels guilty for not knowing everything that’s going on in the world, but another part of me that can actually breathe again. 

Am I worried about what the future holds? Do I care about people outside of my local community? 1000% absolutely. I’m not sure yet what the right balance is for me, but I do know that constantly being bombarded by news of suffering was wreaking havoc on my mental health, and I didn’t realize how much so until I removed it. I’ve realized that I can have compassion for the suffering of others without marinating in it, and I don’t think I was able to make that distinction before this.

In my work with therapists and space holders, I talk a lot about the practice of increasing capacity to witness. I believe that someone who holds space for others needs to develop their capacity to witness suffering and sit with it, so that the folks they hold aren’t alone. However, I’ve thought about this a lot in the context of what exactly I'm increasing my capacity for. Am I increasing my capacity to sit with the people I serve as they heal? To witness them brave the depths and emerge on the other side? What about my capacity to show up in my local community? Or my capacity to take meals to friends who need them, or call my parents? To me, developing capacity for these things feels a lot more tangible, and a much better place to put my energy, than scrolling through news posts designed to polarize. 

Like I said, I don’t know if this is forever, and I don’t know if it’s the “right” thing. Maybe I’m putting my head in the sand, but I do know for sure that I needed to take a step back and reorganize my priorities.

As I write this, I’m again pausing to check in with myself about what and how much I’m sharing. And, I feel like it’s okay for you to know my process, to see me be unsure, and to know that I’m just trying to figure out this human thing. 

If you’re still reading this, thanks for sticking with me! I’d (really) love to hear how all of this lands. Maybe you’ve had an opportunity to ask for help or lean on community (or are struggling with it), or are examining your relationship with social media. I’d love to hear about it and really do appreciate connecting with you. 

I’m getting ready to come back to work this week, and I want to invite you in. This time of rest has made it really clear to me that the work I want to deepen into is my work with psychedelics. I’m going to be opening up more spaces for ketamine assisted psychotherapy in 2025, and will no longer be accepting new clients for 1:1 therapy for the foreseeable future. Whew. I’m noticing that feels a bit scary to put out there, but it’s also what feels true for me in this moment.

I don’t want to leave you hanging though - if you are looking for psychotherapy, I have an amazing clinician who is now working with me and I’d love to introduce you! Janet Peña, LGPC, BCBA is a knowledgeable, kind and compassionate provider with over 20 years of experience in the mental health field. She offers psychotherapy, EMDR, and psychedelic integration at Mind Body Wellness and is currently accepting new clients. Learn more about her work here, or reach out to me to get on her schedule.

I hope you give yourself space to move slowly this winter where you can. I am sending you deep gratitude; thank you so much for being on this journey with me.