Most of the time, when strangers ask and it’s not for the government or a potential client, I just say I’m a therapist. It’s simple, people know what it is, and after all, when I name my certification, it has “Therapy” right there in the name.
In fact, picking up the second certification from the Somatic Therapy Center, where my beloved former trainers teach, was driven in part by my desire to call myself something that would be legible in casual conversation. (Hardly anyone knows what a “Rubenfeld Synergist” is, though I still am one.) There were other reasons too, but that one was bigger than I sometimes let on.
If the conversation proceeds any further (or doesn’t get sidetracked by what I usually say second, which is “and a writer”), I am always quick to point out that what I do is a kind of body/mind healing modality in which I’m certified, and that it operates outside of the mental health care framework.
In this one way, what I do is more akin to Rolfing, or Alexander Technique, or Feldenkrais Method (the last two were influences on Rubenfeld Synergy originally), in the sense that it might be characterized more as bodywork, though it addresses emotions and client stories as well.
But the larger and seemingly more important point is that while what I do is a kind of therapy, I am Not A Psychotherapist. For arcane legal reasons, it is very important to make that clear from time to time. I sometimes say that “I am not a licensed clinical anything,” which is to say not that I’m a person who studied along the psychology path or social work and am not yet licensed. It means that I’m not licensed, I’m not trying to be licensed, and I’m not a clinician.
Still, most of the time when strangers ask, I say I’m a therapist.
But not a psychotherapist
An interesting (read: bad) thing has happened, however, in the 12 years between when I first made this post clarifying that I am not and will not call myself a psychotherapist, and now. Namely, as a pandemic raged and demand for therapy reached an all-time high, a whole lot of people started offering it online (especially through services like BetterHelp), and the constraints on those therapists’ qualifications has been…let’s say less than stellar.
In the same period, a whole lot of mis- and disinformation has proliferated online, including a lot of really questionable health advice. And now we’re…well, where we are with that. Which is awful. But it also means that a lot of people don’t trust licensed therapists to begin with, nor anyone else involved in “Western medicine.” This opens a lot of space for quackery, and for unqualified and/or opportunistic people to make a lot of money doing questionable things to vulnerable people.
It also puts me in danger of falling into that particular pot when people look at what I do and how it is described. It’s a tricky balance: on one extreme, I could strain for mainstream therapeutic legitimacy of some kind and be seen as someone practicing therapy without a license. On the other, I could adopt the language and aesthetic of the typical “alternative healer” and be seen as a woo-woo white-light person waving crystals at people. The reality is that neither of those things is right, but then the work I do has always trod a line between those things, ever since Ilana Rubenfeld found a way to get bodily symptoms and emotional distress in the same room.
I don’t think about it most of the time, because I’m able to help those I help and am clear with them about what I can and cannot do. But from time to time, I have to zoom out and clarify my position again.
Yet people come and see me, all the time
In a small way, mistrust of traditional therapists has sometimes benefitted me in the past, and helped me attract the clients I can best help. This has especially been the case for kinky, ENM, queer, or gender-nonconforming people who wanted help feeling more at home in themselves but weren’t ready to share those aspects of themselves with a medical professional. I’ve also found that I can be helpful to people who are very brainy and rational, and can’t figure out why their extremely good thinking bits can’t get them out of the emotional or relational problems they’re having.
Over time, some folks have found that they also want to work with a licensed therapist or a prescriber, and the work we do together is complementary with more conventional interventions. Tellingly, though, folks who do that still don’t tend to leave my care.
Which is an interesting point and actually backs up the idea: indeed, I am not a psychotherapist. I’m something else, and that something else also helps, in different ways.
And that’s the thing I sometimes have to remind myself of, and indeed what comes up for me often in both my therapy life and in my writing life. The idea that I have something specific, something that is Mine, to offer, and that a great deal of evidence shows that some people want that and benefit from it.
And gosh darnit, people like me
Because every now and again, the question of the nature of my work comes around again on the guitar. Nothing like what happened more than a decade ago, when I misspoke in my blog and didn’t realize I was making an implication that inadvertently broke one of our standards of practice! But in moving to Canada, I’ve come up against the question of how to begin my practice up here, and in the space of a week I’ve seen several bits of commentary about so-called therapists taking advantage of vulnerable people.
It’s like: I know it isn’t about me, but it touches near, and I feel I once again must stand on whatever soapbox I possess and loudly declare What I Am Not, What I Do Not Have, and What I May Not Do. This is, to put it mildly, an annoying way to define my profession and somewhat disheartening.
It feels rather like saying Ah yes, I am a skilled carpenter — but not a general contractor! So don’t hire me for general contracting work! Or Yes, I am in fact a teacher but I don’t have a PhD, so whatever you do, don’t call me a professor! It undermines the very real work that a good carpenter does, or that a teacher does, to measure it by what it isn’t. I want to keep coming back to what it is: Who I Am, What Training I Have, What I Do, How I Help.
And not keep feeling like I have to start all over again just to keep doing what I already do well
This relates powerfully to the challenge that came up in my own most recent therapy session, where we did some EMDR on my ancient stuckness about writing and publishing a novel. Afterward, my therapist said to me, “God, I wish you had had a different experience in your upbringing than you had. We’d have six novels from you by now!”
It’s heartbreaking, to be sure. Because basically, anything that interested me when I was young wasn’t encouraged or supported, and even years after I was out of the house and finishing my creative writing graduate degree, my family had such a hold on me that I was once again convinced to give law school a go.
Law school. Me. Can you imagine? Because nothing I did that I actually liked could possibly be successful. How deeply, how thoroughly I internalized that.
The EMDR was meant to be about my writing, and my fairly extreme rejection sensitivity about it. But as the session developed, I recognized that it permeates anything I do in the world where I might be judged and found wanting. It has so many knock-on effects: I don’t try as hard as I might to be successful in things that matter to me; I don’t put myself out there too much; I don’t throw myself into any endeavor aside from projects with a clear end date, like directing plays or running larps; I have a really hard time finishing things that I start, because finishing them would mean I’d have to start showing them to people.
And so of course I also internalized that because I do a type of healing that’s outside the mainstream, I am somehow Not Real, and what I, specifically and in my whole self, have to offer is not worth anything in the Real World. What’s important is not what I know and what I bring, but that I’m Not A Licensed Psychotherapist.
And you know what? That’s some bullshit.
Now you tell me: who are you, what are you proud of when you can manage it?
Honestly I didn’t intend, when I started this essay, to end up in a place where I’m doing affirmations. (I said I wasn’t a woo-woo white-light crystal healer, dammit!) But now that I’m here, I’m wondering how useful this particular bugaboo of mine might be for others. So here we go.
Hi. I’m Kamela, I’m a Somatic Therapist and a fiction writer. The way I work in both of these areas is a bit unconventional, but that’s okay. It’s very me, it’s what I know, what I can offer, what I’m good at and what brings me satisfaction and joy.
What ways have you been told, or shown, that who you are or what you have to offer isn’t “right” somehow? That really, you “should” be doing this or that other thing, or doing what you’re doing differently, or going back to school because you’re not good enough, or locking your artwork or novel or singing voice away because you’d never “make it” in the “real world”?
How does continuing to heed those ancient voices serve you? How does it serve others, who don’t actually want what’s best for you, don’t see you clearly, or maybe barely think of you at all?
What have you done lately that scared you, but also filled you with fierce joy?
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