Therapize me (or how Anita Hill inspired a new career)

This week, the Anita Hill story came roaring back once again, reminding me of the roots of profound change in my own professional life. Recent public discussions on fairness and inclusivity have once again ventured into the dark spaces we dread looking at. Yet, as I shuffled through all the digital bits and pieces I’ve collected on my computer over the past year, sorting my therapy tools so I could find them in an instant, I saw it all there. The search for ways to help people cope with the personal consequences of major and minor injustices, catastrophic events, and all kinds of suffering. I started thinking about the trajectory of my own professional life, what I’ve learned, and who inspires me.

My aspiration to become a psychotherapist began around the time I watched Anita Hill testifying on Capitol Hill, speaking openly about her own sexual harassment at of all places, the United States’ Education Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In her calm intelligence, her understated way, with her devoted parents behind her, I saw a role model. To me, Ms. Hill spoke the truth about the perverse forms of bullying and senseless inequalities many people face at work. I admired her courage and relentless belief that her testimony mattered. I hoped to help people face their own truths and tell their stories, and became a therapist.

If nothing else, therapy is about taking the fragments of our experience, some ordinary and some extraordinary, looking at them in awe, and rearranging them into something beautiful. Significantly, for the client it is about being witnessed on this incredible journey by an appreciative and respectful other. When someone serves as our witness, we learn to bear witness to our own suffering and that of others. In watching Ms. Hill in the fall of 1991, I felt that in some small way, I was such a witness for her.

We are often thrust into difficult circumstances unwillingly. Anita Hill proves that grace exists in all of us. Like her, when embattled we aspire to turn our faces toward virtue, act with decency in resolving our difficulties, and find some sort of justice, even if ours is only experienced internally, in private, or with a select few instead of publicily. If nothing else, Anita Hill was and has been gracious, for years.

So what kind of therapist have I become while Anita Hill quietly built a life for herself after the public hearings? In a field characterized by so many treatment theories and practices, that speaks the language of pathology better than the voice of resilience and optimistic generosity, several core truths about how to help people cope and change stick out in my mind.

Body and mind-spirit both rule.

Everyone strikes a unique and delicate balance between the demands of their physiology (having a brain and body) and the way we conceive of the intangibles of the world around us (mind, heart, and spirit). In therapy, all of these elements matter but not always in the same measure. Much of the work of adulthood is figuring out how to manage ourselves, and this is a full time job.

Values drive our behavior.

In the end, behavior is simply our values in action. The client’s values, not mine, provide the drive that makes an episode of therapy successful. It is important to understand a person’s deeply held values to help them plot a new trajectory and sustain them through the tough business of change. Many ordinary people today feel that their core values are under assault, and yet few speak of it. When they do, it is clear their thoughts and feelings have been bottled up for a long time and ripened into something far more complex. It takes courage to look, to stand alone with your own self, and accept the uncertainty of not knowing a path out. It takes guts to tell the stories that no one wants to hear, and no small measure of faith in something greater than ourselves to seek help.

If not values, then habits.

Habits are the anchors of life, especially when we are not thinking. When the sea is roiling, a good anchor sure comes in handy. It is a good thing to cling to familiar ways in the midst of great turmoil. But sometimes we forget to raise anchor and set sail to new horizons when the weather is fair. And sometimes we forget that other people are in the same boat with us, ready to sing and row as Gauguin suggests. We can even create a crew, and be the one to lead them in song. No matter what, moving forward means dropping habits that no longer serve us and making way with the help of others.

So thank you, Anita Hill, for staying on message for 25 years. I’m still here, too.

Learn more about therapy, career transitions, and making your life more beautiful no matter what cards you are dealt at www.pwakefieldadvisory.com. If you missed the meaning of Anita Hill, watch Anita: Speaking Truth to Power Amazon Prime.