What is therapy like with you?
Hi, I’m Liz. I’m a mental health therapist at Optimum Joy. I think there’s this perception that you’re like going to be under a microscope and there’s something scary and vulnerable about that. And it’s true, like this does take vulnerability. But I think the piece that I didn’t fully realize is you’re not doing it under a lens of the therapist agreeing with you or accepting you or like proving yourself. You get to do it like in a way that’s kind of a mirror that loves you. Like therapy is, yeah, like having somebody sit with you and like see you and offer a sense of acceptance and yeah, like a positive view.
And so it’s not something to be scared of that like somebody is going to like come up with a list of all of your flaws. It’s a place where you get to see yourself more accurately, but also more graciously. Like I remember coming away from my first experience doing counseling and being like, that was amazing to sit with someone and it’s not like an interview. You’re not coming up with the right answers. Like you’re sitting with somebody who is in agreement with you and wants to move in the same direction where you want to go. And you get to set the goals and you get to set the objectives and you get to like determine what growth looks like. And you have essentially like a cheerleader to do that with you.
What would you say to someone starting therapy for the first time?
If somebody’s coming to counseling for the first time, the word that comes to mind is courage. There’s so much stigma around going to counseling and what that means about like all of these negative thoughts of like “I’m unable to handle things,” but I see like somebody who’s taking a courageous step towards being introspective which can be really difficult. I think it’s such a primary block to build off of—to have like a lens towards yourself that is kind and gracious and attuned to real life and being able to build off of that.
But it’s a scary first step. Somebody told me recently that learning and growth kind of happens in a “J”—that when you start off you’re like “I’m gonna get better and better and better,” but often like what happens first is kind of like this dip where you’re like taking time to try something new and that feels hard and it feels unnatural and so there’s kind of this like “oh no what have I done.” But then in that moment like you get to start trending upwards. So yeah, I think like A) it’s courageous to do counseling for the first time and B) be patient with yourself and give yourself time that there might be a little bit of like “uh, this is hard what am I doing, like I don’t like how this feels.” And then from there, a lot of growth can like take up in that upward trend.
Which populations do you especially enjoy working with?
I enjoy working with all kinds of people. As a mom I have like this new tender softness towards young children, but my experience has always been with adolescents and teens primarily. So that’s a population that has always drawn me, but then also like coming off of that work, I think it’s really refreshing working with adults—people that have a little bit more like desire for growth.
Also couples. I love to like sit in the room and kind of be a neutral party to be able to offer feedback. Like sometimes I’m in a one-on-one conversation and I’m like, “I wish I had a neutral party to be like how is this coming across? Am I interpreting that correctly?” I enjoy getting to do that as well.
What brings you joy in your personal life?
In my free time I like to exercise to do CrossFit—which I roll my eyes when anyone says that they do CrossFit because there’s automatically this like intensity. And that was kind of how it began a decade ago, but as I’ve gotten a decade older and my life has shifted and I’ve become a mom, it’s no longer like trying to like max lifts; it’s just like trying to enjoy and appreciate the things that my body can do. I also just really like man, Chicago in the summer at night. Yeah, I think of like sitting in my backyard, light strung up, watching my kids chase fireflies on like a beautiful summer Chicago night. That’s like peak.
What do you find most rewarding about your work?
My favorite thing about being a therapist is being able to get the privilege to observe like a shift happening. And it can be a big thing, it can be a small thing, but specifically my favorite kind of shift is seeing someone who has a tendency towards like self-criticism and self-doubt shift to have grace towards themselves, to have forgiveness and acceptance towards themselves.
As a kid I’ve always been wired towards being very critical, and so as an adult the journey that I’ve been on, which has included counseling for myself, has been retraining those thoughts one tiny little step at a time just to have grace for myself, to have acceptance of myself, to love myself—which sounds very cliche, but it’s so important. And so yeah, I love to be in the room and to be able to witness those things happen—that like little step, that little shift that can yeah, take somebody down a completely different road.
What was your journey to the field of Social Work?
I remember being a little girl, like elementary school on the playground, and having a really heightened sensitivity towards hurt. I was drawn to the kid that was hurting, that was sensitive, and like really like felt that with them. I remember being the youngest in my family and when one of my older siblings would get in trouble I’d be advocating to my parents to like lighten their punishment because I didn’t want to see my siblings in pain or stress in any way.
That kind of grew and developed as I got older. In high school I was curious about maybe nursing or teaching or one of those helping professions, and then I started a mentoring program through my church as a high schooler and mentored a fifth grader. That really like started a shift of like what that one-on-one investment is—in a way where you can pause and stop and sit with someone who maybe doesn’t always feel super seen and really like intently sit with them and the difference that that made and the shifts that I saw in her life. And so that kind of got the wheels turning. So when I went to college, my first week on campus as an undecided major, I met a social work professor and that just kind of clicked as she was describing what social work is and what a social worker does. And yeah, it really spoke to me. So I took social work 101 just kind of to feel it out and I knew from that point on that that’s what I wanted to do.
