Sometimes we don’t need fix-its and solutions

(No identifying information is used and any content about clients has been altered/combined with other client stories so as not to be recognizable for confidentiality purposes.)

I’m reminded today of the power of being-with. A client of mine is in a season of particular overwhelm in her parenting journey. In session I am often tempted – and often do - offer solutions and fix-its… Yet today, I resisted the temptation and just stayed-with. I stayed with her pain, her stuckness, her overwhelm, her hopelessness. Let me explain.

She is in a deeply overwhelming season of motherhood and I often try to offer solutions because it’s so hard to see her struggling and I want to help. Yet, in my attempt to help, I think I sometimes contribute to her feeling alone. With good intentions, we sometimes veer into solutions that often land in a finger-pointing, “try-harder” place.

So, though it was hard, I just stayed-with today. I named the shitty season and how hard and overwhelming it is and that today I just wanted to be with her in that place of overwhelm instead of trying to work to fix it, as that sometimes lands flat for her. I saw the relief in her face as tears came and she named this as deeply relieving. Even though we didn’t change or shift or magic anything away. We let the pain exist, we named what was, we made space for the heartache of this deeply overstimulating and overwhelming period of parenting - and in the world.

And I won’t pretend it was easy. I felt squirmy, I wanted to look away, I wanted to jump in with a magic wand. But I felt in my bones she needed me to join her more than she needed me to fix things for and in her. Sometimes it’s the last thing we want to do. Our therapy tools have a place and are necessary. But our best tool is our Self. Our attention. Our presence and our choice to be-with, to join, to sit and feel the heavy. This is true in the therapy room and outside it.

We often do this same thing with ourselves, too. We try to talk ourselves out of our own real feelings. We pretend we are doing better than we are, we distract, we override, we do anything we can to avoid just being WITH our difficult emotions. In difficult seasons of motherhood, we read the books, we listen to the podcasts, we do the thing, we try this and try that, but we really struggle to just acknowledge - that things are really really shitty right now. This is hard. I’m not sleeping and sure there are things to try, but mostly this just deeply and profoundly – SUCKS.

There is power in being with ourselves in those places. Not leaving ourselves alone.

I love this phrase. It is a phrase I learned from supervisors and one I often use with clients. How can we not leave ourselves alone in our own heartache, mama? How can we choose to just be WITH ourselves even when it’s the last thing we really want to do. But it might be the very thing we NEED.

How do we do this? Well, it can look many ways. It can be as simple as this:

——Hand on heart. Deep breath in. Long breath out. I hear you body. I see you, body. I will be with you with my own presence, offered to myself. I will just let this moment be hard. I won’t look away. I won’t pretend. I’ll give this feeling space before I keep looking for solutions. ——

Sometimes, it’s hard because it’s hard. No one is necessarily doing anything wrong… it’s just hard because it’s hard. And that idea can be relieving to all of us. It reminds us: I’m right on track… and this track I’m on sure sucks in this moment.

During the profound season of depression, anxiety and insomnia when my daughter was 10 months old, I went on daily walks with her outside, meandering, trying to feel human and as alive as I could, trying to enjoy a moment with her. I felt deeply out of sorts; never had I been in touch with such desperation, such not-me moments of dysregulation and overwhelm. I was getting to know a new part of myself and I was deeply, deeply desperate for something to change. But on these walks, during a season when I felt most alone and isolated, unable to communicate how profoundly traumatizing it was to lay awake all night (I slept 2-3 hours), unable to sleep, though my daughter slept through the night at this point… I would walk to a collection of trees, and touch them, one by one. I laid my hand on each of them gently and I felt profoundly witnessed by them. Seen. Known, somehow. I would thank them for seeing me, thank them for journeying with me. It felt spiritual – connected to God, yes, but also profoundly connected to the physicality and wisdom of these trees in front of me.

I had people in my life who offered with-me moments as well, but I think in this way I could experience a different witnessing of my pain as I acknowledged it myself, and I could feel that these wise beings outside somehow saw and cared about my suffering as well. They were unmoving. They were unshakable. They were there each and every day and I found solace in that. They were predictably WITH me. And it brings tears now to remember and feel that steadiness. That witness and holding space.

We all need this. And we need this from each other, not just our therapist or tree outside our window (is that just me? :)

I remember a moving phrase I learned in my training after grad school that has shaped how I see my work and some of the power therein. “We all need to be able to get our bad feelings TO someone.” AND feel that they can receive it. Something powerful happens when we share what we are feeling. And when we experience being received.

We feel less alone. And often the aloneness of an experience - even the most traumatic - is the most painful part of the whole thing. I come back to this with my clients over and over. Loneliness in the midst of pain, sorrow and trauma deeply, deeply impacts the experience and is often the part that people come back to again and again, haunted by the aloneness. And when we can get our feelings TO someone and feel their presence with us… well, that changes everything.

This is a powerful experience in childhood as well as in adulthood. Being taken in, not being alone with our scary, overwhelming feelings, but being able to have a WITH-you and held experience.

May it be so. I hope these words and this space offer a little hope in those lonely spaces, mama. A little less feeling of being alone.

I have touched that deep, dysregulated place, too, mama. And I see you. You’re doing great, mama.

Keep going.