my goatee did not make me a better therapist...
...my mesearch does
At a pickleball tournament this weekend my partner told me he was going on a first date with a mental health professional.
I jokingly respond that he should ask her about her “mesearch.”
He paused for a moment and stood still, “Her what?” he replied.
“Mesearch, you know the reason why everyone becomes a therapist. So they can have the tools to fix what ails them.”
Mesearch is a behind the scenes joke in the therapeutic world. It simply refers to the personal reasons that compel us to become therapists.
It could be something as simple as wanting to help others.
Or something more complex like trying to solve the riddle of our families, puzzling out a trauma we’ve experienced, or understanding our own actions and reactions.
Every therapist is a mesearcher. It’s just part of our DNA. And, we have jobs for one reason: you’re a mesearcher as well.
22 years ago, I was a goatee-wearing, hhhmmm mumbling, stare thoughtfully at the wall, vomiting all the research I know kind of therapist.
I had tons of hypothetical experience playing therapist in classrooms and at internships. I was a neophyte pretending to be a seasoned veteran. In my mind I’d been doing this for 15 years. In reality, I was in supervision 2 to 3 times a week, listening to recordings of my sessions, being asked over and over again, “why’d you do that?”
There was a lot of navel gazing in those early years, but not a lot of mesearch. I wasn’t ready to do the work. I knew the stuff, the formulas, the tools, the research. I didn’t know me, my motivations, my values, my why.
Mesearch requires two things: opportunity and availability. In those early years of trying to look like a therapist there was plenty of opportunity. I just wasn’t available.
I’m the kind of person who always imagines themselves ten years down the road. When I start something new, I want to be a practiced veteran. I can be impatient with myself, knowing what to do but not necessarily how to do it yet, and at the same believing I “should” have perfected it by now.
It’s probably why I have an efficient and effective speech at the beginning of my intakes, and I grow impatient when people won’t put in the effort to change.
The difference between that new therapist and who I am now is I know that about myself and I can (most of the time) put it aside to let you do your work and me do mine.
That’s the goal of mesearch. To understand what’s yours and what’s mine. To draw the lines between my work and your work so that we can have a healthy relationship and allow that to create the kind of change you’re looking for rather than the change I want you to enact.
Look at any therapist’s list of specialties or what they write in their bio and you’ll get a sense of their mesearch, both finished and unfinished (if you’re curious here’s my most recent bio).
Last week’s post? That was a public journey into one story that makes me tick. This week, I’m explaining the theory behind sharing it. Mainly because that kind of work can be exhausting and scary.
The work is worth it. But, it’s work nonetheless.
Connecting with that story helps me understand its influence and be honest about my focus on curiosity and creativity in therapy. That story helps me realize why I encourage experimentation and giving ourselves a break when things don’t go our way. It influences my ability to be compassionate with clients when others don’t understand us or our efforts at change aren’t met with great fanfare.
Mesearch reveals our motivations. Understanding motivations allows me to be me while at the same time allowing you to be you. It’s a start toward a healthy relationship and meaningful attachments.
It’s not always positive though. Sure, there are benefits to exploring the stories that make us who we are. There’s also pain in there. There’s struggle and helplessness, and hopelessness. There’s a sense it will never be resolved, even as I let go of aspects that have tormented me throughout the years.
Stories like that are never one offs either. That 26-year-old story influences other stories since that moment, and there are stories that went into my interpretation of that moment. None of us can do all that work at one time. But, we can do some of that work, one story at a time. And, as others arise we can get curious about connections.
In the last ten days, I’ve felt those other stories creep into my consciousness. There’s the one about quitting college and almost joining the army at 19, during the first Gulf War. There’s another about writing a 300-page dissertation on the emotion of fear. There’s the memory of being in Boy Scouts and being asked why I cross my legs like a girl.
I’m sure others will surface as this process continues. It all goes in the container of mesearch, of searching for me amidst the stories I tell and the stories I’ve lived.
I’ll write about each of them when the time is right, until then I’ll let you speculate.
In the meantime, what are the stories, pulling at you like a riptide, living under the surface of the calm waters you’re projecting to the world, calling out for further exploration?