It’s somehow been five years this month since I started Rebel Therapy, my therapeutic practice supporting queers, creatives and non-conformists of all backgrounds towards healing, recovery and better mental health. Half a decade and literally thousands of client sessions later, here’s five of the things that have stuck with me most so far…

It’s hard as fuck, mate

Therapy can be tough, tough work, no matter which side of the room or screen you’re on. This past five years has taught me an infinite amount about vicarious trauma and burnout, and the absolute necessity of self-care, clinical supervision, reflection and rest in that process. I’m lucky enough to still have the same clinical supervisor I’ve been with ever since I first started my therapeutic training, so she knows me and my historical patterns of trying to control the uncontrollable through over-work, and she knows when to call me on my bullshit. And although I’d like to think I’m getting better at recognising when I’m heading towards or past the point of exhaustion and overwhelm, having that external source of observation and accountability is massively helpful.

In the early days of the pandemic, especially — in a context of all my other income disappearing overnight and clients being in a moment of understandably heightened moment of anxiety, uncertainty, stress and fear — I took on a way higher workload than was wise, not anticipating how much more knackering online work would be, or how much of a toll living in lockdown would take. There’s no way I could have known those things beforehand, but learning them — with some tough love from my supervisor along the way — has helped me be more thoughtful about balancing my workload now, including the ratio of online to offline work I want now that face-to-face sessions are viable for some clients again.

Recalibrating my tendency towards hyper-empathy has also been hugely important (but definitely still a work-in-progress), so much so that I’ll be sharing more about that in the near future. Learning the symptoms of vicarious trauma — for me, memory lapses, feeling numb and nightmares are my clues that material from client sessions might be impacting me more than I realise — has helped me feel more able to recognise the ways my resilience fluctuates, and to reassess my workload accordingly on an ongoing basis.

But. And. If it doesn’t sound like the mushiest of bollocks, another thing that feels important to acknowledge is: all the things that make being a therapist absolutely solid sometimes are also things I’m grateful for. Because the clients go through all this shit too, and their process can be much more intense than mine. So recognising and honouring the impact the process can have on me just makes me all the more impressed and humbled by the absolute tenacity, commitment, strength and dedication of my clients. Therapy can be such hard work, but I get to see that hard work translate into transformation every day, and that is an incredible thing.

“It’s not your fault, but it’s your responsibility”

A coursemate on my therapeutic diploma taught me this phrase, which he’d learnt while in an addiction recovery programme in prison. And it’s stuck with me ever since. Both personally and while working with clients, separating fault and responsibility has been a useful and empowering framework for sorting through our (often massive, messy, deep and complicated) feelings about things that aren’t or haven’t been our fault and exploring what we want to do about it.

Sometimes, it takes everything we’ve got to recognise and explore the things that haven’t been our fault. Things that have happened to us, ways we’ve been treated by other people or the world, the insidious, near-invisible but nevertheless absolutely poisonous conditioning and messages we might have received: all of these can leave us wounded, bruised and scarred. Acknowledging and grieving those wounds can take real courage and strength. We might be understandably sad or hurt or pissed off or exhausted by that alone. But healing our wounds is our own work, and no-one else can do it for us. You can and probably will want and need help along that way. I’m not saying you have to do this shit alone. This is more about grappling with what level of responsibility and power you might have to tend to your historic wounds, and to create change around any ongoing patterns or dynamic that — through no fault of yours — may still be continuing to hurt you now. And if that sounds like a scary, intimidating thing to even contemplate, please stick with me, because…

Saying the unsayable makes things shift

Another phrase from addiction recovery circles that came up repeatedly during my therapeutic training was the maxim ‘nothing changes until it changes,’ which I believe originates from AA. The idea being that our everyday decisions are the ones that have a cumulative impact in shaping our lives. And that if we want change, we have to create it. Which can be an empowering thought, or a daunting one. For people who feel like they’re hanging on by their fingertips, concepts like claiming responsibility and making changes might be way beyond their resources or resilience in that moment. But. And. Really significant change can start with just naming a thing. Saying what happened. How you felt. What it left you with. The parts of it that replay on the insides of your eyelids when you’re awake in the middle of the night or disassociating on the bus. Just that. Just, like it isn’t massive. Trust me, it is. And trust me, I see it over and over again: saying something, externalising it, letting a safe, trusted person hold and examine it with you. That can shift things. And sometimes that shift is seismic and sometimes it’s so tiny and soft it’s almost invisible, in the moment anyway. Things change in almost-invisible millimetres and then sometimes all at once. I know these things have become cliches, and it’d be totally understandable if you read the end of this sentence and want to tell me to get lost, but adages like ‘trust the process’ and ‘healing isn’t linear,’ they’re cliches because they’re true.

You don’t hate yourself, you hate capitalism

Indulge me in a bit of facetiousness (I realise we can and might sometimes hate ourselves for many reasons, including but perhaps not limited to capitalism), but: I truly believe that recognising and grieving the harms done to us by capitalism can be an important and necessary gateway towards increased self-acceptance, self-understanding and self-compassion.

Like: what if you’re not lazy, or stupid, or worthless, or not good enough, or any of those evil things capitalism wants us to believe about ourselves? What if you’ve been brought up in a fucked-up, corrupt and damaging system which exalts production and productivity, hoarding of wealth, and abuses of power, and which is fuelled and perpetuated through and by other systemic injustices like racism, misogyny, ableism, ageism, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia and every other belief and operating system which classifies and declassifies people’s worth in hierarchical terms? Seems understandable you might have a legacy of bullshit to unpick, unlearn and navigate through, right? That’s not your fault — and it’s totally valid to grieve and resent the injustice of it — but it is your responsibility (here she goes with that again). And claiming responsibility and agency over that process — whatever that means to you — can be liberating, and empowering, and can help all the other parts of this journey feel that bit more within reach.

I’ve had a few clients who’ve joked that my linking things they bring to sessions to capitalist contexts and structures is like the equivalent of Rebel Therapy bingo, but if I’m going to be reliable for anything, let it be this: I’m not going to let you blame yourself for bullshit that isn’t yours. Time and time again, I’ve seen that giving some (gentle) challenge around this in sessions can be useful in supporting clients to develop their skills of recognising and challenging harmful capitalist conditioning, and to claim their own path in resisting, unlearning and counterbalancing some of that in order to cultivate more rest, self-acceptance, and self-compassion.

Healing is possible and it’s happening all the time

Gross. Cringe. Fuck off. But it’s true, and I can’t deny it: this is the one that keeps me at it, the one that keeps me humble and grateful and a million other mushy adjectives, the one that makes me feel privileged and honoured to get to do this work. Because I see it: every session, every day.

People clawing their way to recovery and healing in the aftermath of some of the darkest and most fucked-up shit that humans can do to each other. People surviving, even if it’s a close call. People learning and processing and grieving, forgiving themselves, stopping hating themselves. People making tiny, near-invisible changes in the way they speak about things. People making massive, tangible changes in their relationships, work and lives.

Every day, I get this incredible kaleidoscope perspective of all the ways humans can heal. How they can be kind and smart and funny and creative and brilliant. I get to go with them on some of that journey. I get to see their faces, tone of voice or body language shift and soften. I get to share in the tears and grief and anger, but also the wild joy and pride. On days when the state of the world feels like too much to bear, doing this sort of one-to-one work is the tonic I need to remind me: healing is possible and it’s happening all the time.