Sincerely, Your 2020 Therapist.

I recently saw an article that said, “A therapist is a friend you pay for.” It blew my mind. I’d like to share that a therapist is a trained professional with licensure that takes years of education and experience to attain. A therapist is trained to be completely unbiased and non-judgmental while actively listening to clients. A common misconception is that we give advice. Therapists should not and do not provide advice, but rather use strategies to help clients make decisions themselves by digging deep into their own minds and finding answers to things that might have been too difficult or uncomfortable to uncover prior. We help you heal.

2020 has been a year for the books for therapists. Telehealth and virtual sessions became the new norm. That meant missing out on traditional facets to building rapport with new clients, lack of non-verbal cues and gestures that help us to analyze feelings and reactions to certain topics, the ability for clients to turn off their video or microphones when feeling uncomfortable rather than sitting with challenging emotions, and a major decline in appropriate and effective services for our children and teens.

As a therapist, clients should not know your political views or what you ate for dinner last night. They do not need to know how many siblings you have or what your favorite color is. Unless it benefits the treatment of the client, there is no need to disclose information about yourself. This year, therapists had no bounds between work and personal life. Our clients were there — in our home offices, our kitchens, and our living rooms. There was no drive home to listen to music and decompress. There was no heading to local shops, gyms, or restaurants to clear your mind with loved ones. There were no vacations or getaways.

All the while, our mental health crisis in America soared to new heights.

The human brain was not made to encompass hundreds of thousands of opinions and observations at lightning speed in the palm of our hand, on a multitude of platforms, while being quarantined to our homes and experiencing a pandemic amidst a heated presidential election. Our children, teens, and young adults, without fully developed executive functions in the prefrontal cortex, have been excessively exposed to violent videos and games, growing hate towards stereotyped groups of individuals, sexually explicit videos shedding a positive light on drug use, tobacco products, and alcohol targeting a younger and younger clientele, and they have been exposed to the ugliness of cyberbullying. Before the brain is even fully developed, our children and teens have formulated opinions on a plethora of topics (and each other) based on the technology in their hands and television screens.

I am stating this one more time for the people in the back: We have a mental health crisis in America.

Suicide rates are soaring. Children and teens are experiencing self-harm, eating disorders, and suicidal thoughts at a rapid rate because of social media. Domestic violence is soaring. Our foster system is imploding. We are laying off crucial employees serving our child protective services and cutting funding to programs that are necessary for the betterment of the next generation. Children have missed out on crucial developmental milestones and critical years of education due to COVID-19. They are becoming fearful to socialize through any other means than a computer screen. Our social-emotional learning opportunities are at an all-time low. Big pharm is killing our mental health system by overdiagnosing and misdiagnosing ADHD and ODD in children far too young and handing out medication as if it were candy while we have states suffering from a drug crisis. I’ve witnessed medical professionals prescribe a multitude of unnecessary prescription drugs to a seven-year-old with a family history of addiction and severe mental illness without recommending therapy to coincide with the prescription. Counter to this, the legalization of marijuana is leading individuals to the misconception that it is a cure-all for mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression, but scientifically-based can also trigger more severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia and be detrimental to those with a genetic predisposition to addiction. Ethics and science have gone out of the window and financial gain has taken over our field.

As a therapist, I’m exhausted, fearful, and burnt out. I’m tired of watching the world fail our children, our teens, and one another over the opinions of politics and money going into the wrong pockets. Mental health professionals have largely been silenced unless they fall into the pits of the media’s opinions. Our apparent mental health system is backward in ways that I could not put into words beyond this right now, and I have witnessed it first-hand. The way we treat one another is not and never was in the hands of our politicians — it was in YOUR hands. It was in OUR hands. How we treat each other day in and day out — how we treat our neighbors, our coworkers, our classmates, our friends, and family members was and still is in YOUR hands. As a therapist and a doctoral student in developmental psychology I hope the world recognizes that one way or another, we have little eyes watching us every day. They’re soaking in our words and behaviors like sponges. The way we treat each other and what we expose them to now is what will determine the way they treat one another ten years from now. And by teaching children that we should only have one opinion, we are failing them.

In my work as a therapist and educator,

I have listened to frustration towards republicans.

I have listened to anger towards democrats.

I have been asked to help repair torn families.

I have witness children in crisis.

I have sat with abused children.

I have sat with underprivileged children.

I have sat with children who were taken from their parents the night before and moved to a foster placement that morning.

I have sat with a wife who lost her husband and her grieving child.

I have sat with children who have witnessed a violent crime.

I have sat with children who have been involved in sex trafficking.

I have sat with drug users, alcoholics, and perpetrators of domestic violence.

I have sat with the opposing side to each of those.

I have sat with varying religions.

I have sat with illegal immigrants.

I have sat with the child of a police officer fearful of what his friends would say about his dad when he went back to school and immediately after, sat with a child of color with a fear of police officers.

I have sat with medical professionals experiencing the COVID crisis.

I have sat with those experiencing job loss.

I have sat with teachers and other counselors.

I have sat with LGBTQI children and teens.

I have sat with trauma.

I have sat with veterans.

I have sat with parents.

I’ve advocated for your child and attended IEP and 504 meetings.

I have sat with every single one of these individuals, completely unbiased to their stories, to their backgrounds, and to their beliefs, and I have treated each client as a human being — with the same amount of compassion, empathy, and respect.

I have held onto every individual’s story after simply listening and helping my clients heal.

I am not one to boast, but to make my point clear, I have to state that I have actively, day-in-and-day-out been the definition of social change. I have worked tirelessly for the children and families I have served, largely underpaid, and even unpaid at times.

As a human being, I am supported by a small business, and I pay out of pocket for my own education. I have completed eleven years of higher education in my field and never once assumed someone else should pick up the bill for a decision I made to better my own future. I have experienced immense grief and struggles, too. I will be the first one to donate to your cause on Facebook when I come across it whether I know you personally or not, and because of my level of empathy for other human beings, I could probably go as far as to say that I could find a psychological and childhood-based defense for a serial killer’s actions while simultaneously supporting the victim’s family.

And despite my life’s work to actively better the lives of others, I have recently been scrutinized for supporting my lifelong favorite college football team because they stormed the field, which was considered a large social gathering, after winning against a number one team this weekend, because they have ties to our Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and because they support ideals of the Catholic religion.

Social change is not about which college football team you are cheering for on Saturday night. It is about actively making a change whether it is as small-scale as spending time with your own child or making a large-scale change in your community.

I write this because I want people to know that we are not meant to fry the larger fish. Those fish are out of our control. The more energy we put into those fish, the less energy we have for what we can control. We can control ourselves and the way we shape our children.

Stop trying to control one another’s opinions and start actively listening to one another. Take that energy and give it to the next generation. Remove yourself from the computer screen, television, and phone. Put the energy you have for social change and go work with the underprivileged populations or spend time with your family.

At the end of the day, the government will not be the one by your side when you hit rock bottom. If I have learned anything in my work, it is that no one is guaranteed tomorrow. Don’t let your last conversation with your family and friends be a politically heated debate over a football team storming the field after a big win or the religion in which the school supports. Don’t leave your children with a world like this.

Do better for our kids. Do better for each other.

Sincerely,

Your 2020 Therapist.