6. What we talk about when we talk about therapy.
It’s a strange thing to arrive at a place you’ve been trying to get to.
This week, somewhere around Tuesday, I had the very weird sensation of realizing that, about three years after deciding “I’m going to become a therapist,” that I actually was one. This dawned on me as a client sat in the chair opposite me, a look of expectation on her face as she looked around the room: so THIS is therapy, she seemed to be thinking. I, too, looked around for the expert, suddenly feeling like a child in an oversized suit and Groucho Marx glasses, legs dangling over the chair. What do I do? I thought to myself, followed by, what even IS therapy? and I tried to rack my brain for something useful to say from my decades of life on the other side of the couch, my time counseling as an undergrad social worker, coaching, teaching, tarot, anything. I managed to listen, to ask about my client’s goals for treatment, to discuss confidentiality and its limits, to listen some more. But I still couldn’t shake the feeling: what am I actually supposed to be doing? I know therapy works, I know it has changed my life, but what IS IT? What is the magic where the transformation happens?
On Friday, I led my Grief and Healing therapy group, now in its fifth week, through a discussion of how our identities change in the wake of death and loss. I did and said very little through that hour, after setting the theme. Each participant shared deeply, beautifully, insightfully about their journeys, each supporting the other in turn. And it felt amazing, powerful. And then it dawned on me: this is it. This is therapy. Of course! Obviously. The magic is not in what the therapist does. The work happens in what the client does within the container, the sacred space. The client is doing the work. The therapist is bearing witness, pointing out the scenery. The sacred duty of the therapist is to build the container, protect the client, keep the space clean and clear, so the client can simply feel their feelings.
As Heather Havrilesky says (about writing but it holds true for therapy, too):
It’s so easy to feel, like, invisible and small in a life today, and it’s so important to remind people that they already have a whole world of sensation and joy inside them that they just have to access by allowing reality to be what it is.
It’s also so easy to feel that we have to do something, to perform. But literally just being with- the person, the feeling, the discomfort, the pain- that’s where the healing happens. Allowing reality to be what it is. Being, allowing. Bearing witness.
In the spirit of this simple, obvious epiphany, I’m sharing some therapy tidbits at the end of this newsletter. Likewise, in the spirit of healing, I’m keeping it brief, because I haven’t been feeling well. All week I’ve had some kind of deep malaise, coupled with a mild cold. Yesterday the malaise turned into ennui, and I attempted to cure it by watching almost a whole season of Indian Matchmaking on Netflix, which mostly worked. But also the Eagles are playing in the Super Bowl tonight, and, though I hate football, I love Philadelphia more. 💚 So, today, for the first time in my life, I gotta focus up and get ready for the game.
The vibe in this city is absolutely bananas right now. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s spiritual. Walking to work from the subway on Friday (homemade taco dip in hand for the Eagles-themed office potluck) I saw exactly zero people that were not at least wearing green, if not in full Eagles gear. People are ecstatic. The consensus in our beleaguered city seems to be: we need this. City Council this week was a pep rally; at roll call at jury duty this week people responded “Go Birds” instead of “present.” The streets in Center City will be closed to traffic starting at half-time. Schools are on a 2 hour delay tomorrow. When we win, there’s going to be a parade, and the whole city is going to shut down.
So I’m letting the football wash over me and enjoying the sense of community and, yes, the brotherly love. The data show that earlier in the season, when the Eagles defeated the Vikings and again when they defeated the Cowboys, there were no overnight incidents: no murders, no shootings. In a city that averaged 6.2 shootings per day (1.3 of them fatal) in 2022, this is remarkable. I understand that peace in our streets and our homes will not flow from the NFL. But we gotta take our wins where we can find them. Be safe out there and GO BIRDS! 💚🦅
Home + The World is an occasional newsletter from Jodi Rhoden featuring personal essay, recipes, links and recommendations exploring the ways we become exiled: through trauma, addiction, oppression, grief, loss, and family estrangement; and the ways we create belonging: through food and cooking, through community care and recovery and harm reduction, through therapy and witchcraft and making art and telling stories and taking pictures and houseplants and unconditional love and nervous system co-regulation and cake. I’ve included a paid subscription option, but for now, there will be no paywalled content. The paid subscription option is a tip jar. Thank you for being here and thank you for being you.
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Rosewater Tea Cakes for Valentine’s
Today, in addition to making the taco dip for the Super Bowl (it was a real banger at the office party) I’m baking some rosewater tea cakes for Valentine’s. Based on Edna Lewis’ recipe in her exquisite book with Scott Peacock The Gift of Southern Cooking, tea cakes are essentially soft vanilla sugar cookies. I like to add aromatics like dried rosemary or lavender flowers to the recipe; today I’m adding rosewater with flecks of hibiscus flower for color (the hibiscus didn’t turn the cookies pink like I intended; next time I will use rose petals or skip it, though the hibiscus does lend a light tartness which is nice). Now that I have developed sensitivities to both gluten and dairy (milk but not yet butter, thank the gods), I’ve adapted the recipe further, using clabbered coconut milk as an extremely rich buttermilk substitute: just whisk the juice of one lemon into each cup of coconut milk and let curdle. This recipe made about 12 dozen small tea cakes.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Cream:
1 stick butter, softened
2 cups sugar
Add and combine, one at a time:
2 eggs
1/2 c. buttermilk or clabbered coconut milk
1 teaspoon rosewater
zest of 1 lemon
In a separate bowl, sift:
1 cup coconut flour
3 cups all-purpose gluten free flour
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
Fold dry ingredients into wet and combine.
Fold in:
1 tablespoon dried rose petals or hibiscus flowers
Roll and cut out (or scoop, drop, and flatten, this recipe is forgiving) the dough. I made these into 1.5 inch rounds, and they came out like snappy and toothsome little biscuity wafers. You can scoop them bigger and thicker, too, like a sugar cookie. Bake until edges and bottoms are golden brown (6-8 minutes). For the icing, I made a rosewater royal icing: about 2 cups of powdered sugar, 1 teaspoon rosewater, and one egg white, whipped and piped. Happy Valentine’s!
The World
Three things about therapy:
The most common number of talk-therapy sessions that people attend in their lifetime is one. That very first meeting with a mental-health practitioner is usually focused on asking the patient introductory questions, not on providing substantial support, and it can fail to keep them coming back for subsequent meetings. Contributing to that lack of sustained engagement is the pervasive idea that years-long, weekly therapy is the only way to receive adequate mental-health treatment, which can be a daunting prospect for many. But some therapists and patients are challenging that idea and making the case for short-term therapy, a practice that can last anywhere from a single session to dozens over the course of a few months, and that tends to focus on immediate solutions to situational crises. They believe that treating short-term therapy, in addition to long-term care, as a viable option could actually help more people access the help they’re seeking.
This Nedra Nuggets Newsletter:
This class on Mental Health First Aid, which I took last week and was amazing!
Mental Health First Aid is a course that teaches you how to identify, understand and respond to signs of mental illnesses and substance use disorders. The training gives you the skills you need to reach out and provide initial help and support to someone who may be developing a mental health or substance use problem or experiencing a crisis.
Anyone can take this class and become empowered about how to respond when people in your community experience mental health challenges.
A Tarot Card:
The Ten of Cups
The card I pulled this morning is called “The Lord of Perfected Success” and it represents the culmination of a journey of the heart: a happy, healthy home and family, secure and loving friendships and relationships. The Ten of Cups speaks to love and connection, security and stability, joy, contentment, gratitude and satisfaction. This bodes well for the week to come: maybe the malaise will fully lift, the ennui will finally dissipate, the Eagles will win and there will be peace in the city.
Here’s to hope.
⚔️❤️ Jodi