Welcome back to this next episode from the Lessons from the Playroom podcast. We are going in a totally different direction today in our conversation, and I have with me a very special guest to talk about perspective. And, well, we’ll see where we’re going to go with this particular topic, but it is super relevant, super important, and one of the topics that we don’t actually talk about enough sometimes at all, and the significance of it in our work clinically, as supervisors, I would even just say as beings walking through the world.
So let me introduce our special guest. For those of you that are able to watch the video of this, you might recognize this lovely individual with me. For those of you that are listening, let me introduce you to Dr. Rachel Altvater. Let me tell you a little bit about Rachel. She is a licensed psychologist.
She’s a certified clinical trauma professional. She is a registered play therapist and supervisor. She’s done many things.
So hold on to your hats here as I share with you. She’s the owner of Creative Psychological Health Services. The co owner of North Star Creations.
She’s the past president of the Maryland DC Association for Play Therapy, editorial advisory board member for the International Journal of Play Therapy, and you’re also contributing author as well to the Journal advisory board member for Digital Play Therapy and Ascendant VR, clinical consultant, content creator for Cognitive Leap. I’m like on and on and on. You do so many amazing things.
And she has just published a book, which is really why I asked her to be a part of this conversation. I’m going to hold it up for those of you that can see. So her book is called Perspective.
And it’s perspective contemplating the complexities of our realities. So Rachel, thank you so very much for joining me in what I know is going to be a really thought provoking conversation. Thank you for having me.
My heart just feels so full and connected. So thank you all for joining us and thank you Lisa, for having me here and I’m just so glad we have time to chat. And I just want to say also, when you were mentioning the bio, I always get a little awkward about it, but I feel like to sparkle myself everywhere.
And so I also have my little unicorn mug ready. Grab your drinks, your nice comfort as you listen to our chat and join in. But it says on here, for those who can’t see, don’t let anyone doll your sparkle.
So we’re just going to start off with that. Yeah. And for those of you that also can’t see her backdrop right now, it’s like all of these well, we could call them circles, we could call them bubbles, we could call them whatever you want, but it’s just different colors just around her.
Talk about putting your personality on a backdrop. Rachel exactly. Sparkle it’s.
Sparkle, sparkle, sparkle. Yeah, it’s beautiful. So let’s talk about perspective.
Yes. So you just wrote and published an entire book on this topic, which is a super unique topic. And so I just want to start with why? Why did you choose to delve into this? Yeah, I have personal reasons and professional reasons.
I think what really sparked it intentionally, initially, was the professional reasons. So us as play therapists, we have a tendency to find themes, right. We learn within our work, within our training, to look for themes, thematic, material, symbolism, within what it is that we are helping our clients process and release.
So naturally my brain just finds patterns and themes. And I don’t know if that’s because it’s been a part of my training. I don’t know if that’s just because how my brain works, if it’s a little column A, little column B, I don’t know, probably that.
But I was noticing time and time and time again in my play therapy sessions, in my talk therapy sessions, the concept of perspective, that was the underlying theme with all of the work that I was providing and specifically regarding perspective, how people see the world. And I am deeply sensitive. I’m a highly sensitive individual.
I really connect with people in the space that they are. I’m a humanistic, psychologist. I really work towards helping people find their true selves, align with their true selves, and feel empowered to be their true selves.
So really leaning into each person’s unique perspective helped me gain greater insight into our intricacies as humans. Right. There’s a lot of similarities as humans and there’s a lot of differences as humans.
So I just started picking up on that and then it eventually got to this place where my brain was like, you need to write a book. Like, okay, why? That was a thought, I don’t know, but it was, so I went with it. I have this list in my phone called Brain Vomit.
Yes, it is actually called brain vomit. I have one my husband called Thought Spirals. So when he shares things with me, I’m like, hold on, wait, let me get the list.
And I have just like mile long list of his Thought spirals. I have mile long list of my brain vomit. And so I can go back to the actual entry.
I don’t know why, but it was on Valentine’s Day of 2021 and I started to write I wrote the title Perspective. I said, Write something reflective on the COVID It just was the thought that popped into my head. And then following that, every time I met with clients in sessions, I started to have this flood of thoughts and I just created a whole mush of what was in my brain and then I eventually organized it.
But that’s really how it started. It was this is something I’m noticing in my work, in the playroom, again, in my talk therapy sessions, all ages from four, I think at the time, all the way to maybe 71 72. And this was a common thing that all humans were grappling with their perspective.
So, yeah, that was the professional reason. The personal reason is I have had a huge shift in my perspective over the years. I was definitely privileged to be raised with rose colored glasses and was shielded from a lot of the harsh realities of a lot of people, even those closest to me.
And while that served as a really beneficial protective factor, and I am grateful for that, and again, I know I am privileged in that I had a lot of resentment and anger when I started to recognize that the way I saw the world was not absolute reality. And my husband is my polar opposite. We actually even have tattoos, those who can see.
I have a plus sign, he has a minus sign. It’s kind of like a little battery. We keep each other going and we need the opposing forces to really manifest the life that I think is most beneficial for us.
And it was hard for him to point some things out in my life that were against what I thought that challenged that, and he hung on and he was persistent and helped me shift my perspective. So those are the two biggest reasons why. And it just also was my brain like, let’s do this.
Okay, let’s do this. So I want to jump in with thank you for sharing that, by the way. I know for me, I always love to learn and hear about the whys behind things.
It helps me connect more and understand the person’s perspective right, of what I’m reading and the conversation that’s happening. What is perspective? What is it? Yeah. How we see the world, how we see our ourselves, how we see others, how we see the world.
And I’m going to ask some of these basic questions in here and we’ll get into application and how is perspective formed? Why is my perspective different than your perspective? And why is it different than your hubby’s? And why are there so many perspectives? Rachel, I got all the answers for so actually, the whole first section of the book is called Origins, and it goes through how we all come to see the world, how we develop and just how we become who we are. So I talk about our psychological development and for those of you who are in the field of psychology and play therapy, you know a lot of this, it’s really what we’ve learned in our developmental classes, in our theories classes. How do we form as human beings and we form around our environment.
We form first through our senses. So how we take in the world through our senses and then how other people teach us about the world. And when I say the world, I am also fitting ourself and others into that too.
That’s kind of the overarching word that I’m going to use. But it really encapsulates all. But that’s how we start to make sense of things.
So we form within the context of our culture, we form within the context of our immediate family, our extended family, our community. And so depending on where we grew up, depending on how we grew up and how other people are teaching us about self and others really ultimately forms the basis of our understanding. And a lot of that so far is the nurture aspect, right? There’s also the nature aspect.
So the first section also talks about neurological underpinnings, how our brains form and how our brains differ. And so of course it’s ever evolving. I did make a note that where we are right now in our understanding of brain science is advanced and it’s only going to continue to advance.
So things are going to continue to develop and change and our understanding will as well. But I talk more about how our brain actually starts to form and I highlight if people are forming their sense of self and others within a traumatic environment or within a regulated and safe environment. I talk about attachment.
Again, all of these different concepts that we are most likely well familiar with, but that all of it shapes how we see the world. So would you make the statement that our perspective creates our reality? Oh, yes, absolutely. And would you say that reality? So here’s an existential question.
I’m so excited. I can’t wait. Hold on to your seats, grab your drinks.
And so would you say that reality is truth? Absolute truth? I don’t know. That’s just the question. No, because I think this is part of to me, this right here is why I wanted to have this conversation.
We get locked into our reality. Yes. And then getting locked into our reality keeps us from knowing other.
That’s been my experience and it keeps us sometimes from even being able to be helpful to someone else or helpful to our clients because there’s no room for another perspective. Our perspective. Is it truth? Is our reality truth our truth? Yes.
Absolute truth? No. And so the difference is we view reality from our lens. It is our reality that is the way we go about the world that’s valid, and another person could have a completely different experience, and their reality is just as valid, even if it’s opposing and that’s hard to sit with.
It is. The back of the book has a quote that I love that fits this perfectly. Underneath this reality in which we live and have our being, another, altogether different reality lies concealed.
Yeah. Because this is a topic that is deeply meaningful for me, that I’ve explored myself, what I have found. So tell me if you agree with this or not, but what I have found is that the idea of even questioning our current reality is inherently scary.
Yes. Because in order to question it, I have to be willing to let go of my identity, because my reality is who I know myself to be in that moment. It’s how I know myself within the world in that moment.
Right. And so if I’m going to question it, not question it, but open up possibility for a different perspective, or maybe it wasn’t quite that way, or maybe there’s other variables, or maybe other people see it differently and maybe theirs is just as valid as mine, or like whatever this is, right. That I have to be willing to sit with a disturbance inside of me.
Yes. And the word disturbance, that was a really great choice, that word, because I’m thinking nervous system dysregulation. All of us as humans want to stay safe, right? Our nervous system activates for self preservation.
So when we are placed in any unfamiliar experience, internally or externally, our nervous system inevitably is going to be activated because there is potential danger. This is why a lot of times, especially in our work, but this is human nature, people want to change, but they stay stagnant because the anxiety of the familiar is more comfortable than the anxiety of the unknown, even if the current level of anxiety is debilitating. So exactly as you’re saying, when we start to venture into unknown terrain again, internally or externally, our immediate reaction as a human being is to reject it, to push it away.
This is also why, when innovative methods are introduced into human nature, into our field, there is immediate pushback because there’s unfamiliarity. So we’re not going to venture into this dangerous space because it’s too dangerous. I might lose my life.
Even if that isn’t necessarily the case with the circumstance, our nervous system doesn’t differentiate. It’s not like hey, Bright, hold up. Let’s have a conversation real quick.
Are we good? Is this like a real threat? Is this a perceived threat? Like what’s actually going on here? Nervous system doesn’t care. It acts before your brain even registers what’s going on. So when we’re trying to adjust ourselves, it’s a very similar response.
Now, I don’t know all of the intricacies neurobiologically. However, I do know nervous system and how that impacts our perspective and our way of moving about the world and about change. So I think that’s another layer to consider with.
I’m going to broaden my perspective, but there’s this danger. Maybe I need to stay where I am. Totally.
And I think if our listeners can just really appreciate that, I like to think of it as the highest priority from a neurobiological perspective, inside of us is safety. And safety doesn’t always mean growth. I think that’s important, right? Safety can mean growth, but safety can also mean stay comfortable because it’s really safe.
So let’s take this now. Now that we’ve defined perspective and we’re like, okay, what we’re really talking about is our own individual realities of our life. And there’s many and not one is right or wrong.
Everyone’s is unique and valid for their experience. Why do we need to be talking about this as play therapists? Goodness, my brain just went so many different places, like a little web. I mean, it’s extremely relevant in our work, in not only understanding our clients, but in helping our clients understand their world, in helping caregivers understand differing perspectives.
Something that I talk about in the book, too, is a child’s perspective. Let me phrase this differently because I like to have us reflect inward. Let’s think about being a child for a second, right, and think about what it was like for us growing up and even trying to connect that to how we see the world now, right? How we relate to other people, how we relate to ourselves, how we move about the world.
But I also want to say when we think about that, we’re thinking about that from our current perspective. We aren’t thinking about that as if we were that child again. And so I think a lot of times, even when we are trying to relate to our child clients or to our children, it’s challenging for us to truly understand their perspective.
We can lean in as much as we can, and even then, we’re not going to always understand the intricacies of everyone’s perspective because only we are going to understand our perspective. And even that is complex. We can get into more of those details.
I won’t venture too far away from the question quite yet. We’ll get there. I’ll put a little cap in it for now.
But it’s so important for us to really see a child’s world through their lens and not through our perspective. And we can’t help but see things through our perspective, right? So that’s the challenge here. But it’s kind of like, goodness, I’ve heard so many times, what do you have to worry about? You just have schoolwork, you just have insert whatever invalidating statement is said.
And whether that’s intentional or unintentional, it’s invalidating regardless. And I have to deal with bills and I have this and I have that. Yes, that’s valid too.
So I think really understanding something that’s big for a child is valid and important to be nurtured and validated and supported and providing guidance in whatever way, shape or form that makes sense for the work that we provide and for that client in particular. So I will say that but also understanding ourselves as clinicians, it’s so important for us to reflect inward. We learn about the world from how other people tell us.
Like I mentioned, we learn about ourselves through how other people tell us. How many times hold on to your seats and grab your drinks again. How many times have we absorbed other people’s projections and then taken that as fact about ourselves? Totally.
And then moved about the world in a way that we thought we were a certain way? Because someone told us that whether through verbal interactions or just through nonverbal interactions, whatever it may be, how we were treated, and we are convinced that that is who we are, when in reality, that’s somebody else’s stuff. Yeah. Can I share a story on? Yes, please.
I’m a twin. I have a twin brother. And growing up, I was told, Lisa, you’re the social one.
Stephen, you’re the smart one. And I believe just right. I’m Lisa, the social person, and I’m not smart like my brother.
He’s the smart one. So I’m going to basically delegate all my smartness away to my brother. And what it did growing up was it created this I’m not good enough inside of me because I moved through the world comparing myself to Stephen, but then squashing the part of me that wanted to be smart.
But I’m not supposed to be smart, I’m just supposed to stay social. Right. And I really attempted to develop an identity around being social, and I just kept squashing and squashing and squashing this part of me that was intelligent, whatever that meant, until in high school, we had an experience where he moved away.
So my parents were divorced and he chose to go live with my dad for a bit of time, and we were finally separate from each other, which allowed us now this space to figure out who we actually were. And it turned out that he was the social one and I was the one that was actually more academically focused. And it wasn’t until I said, no, wait a second, who am I really? Not? These beliefs of whatever that I gave myself permission to actually own, well, dang it, I have some smarts in me and I am intelligent, but it was probably a ten year period of me walking through the world literally just ingesting that I was supposed to be social.
And my nature, Rachel, is I’m actually an introvert. I’m not an extrovert by nature. And so it was like a total disconnect for myself internally, just because I ingested that perspective and created a story about who I was supposed to be.
So just an example of what you were talking about until I finally separated and gave myself permission to be like, no, dang it. Wow. I want to be smart.
I want to be smart, too, dang it. I am smart. How many people don’t have the opportunity, or either it doesn’t present itself, or they don’t allow themselves to have the opportunity because they don’t think they’re worthy of that opportunity to truly explore who they are and then to align with that and even as professionals, as clinicians.
So many times I see in my supervisory sessions impostor syndrome. That’s a common thing here for all of us humans and just within the field, but really, really questioning oneself, feeling extremely inadequate, and living that truth, but then trying to present a certain way. Right.
So then there’s this incongruence of who I truly am, what other people have told me that I am, and then how I’m presenting myself to the world. Yeah. Can we then expand that out to I see this a lot, that there is a right way to be a play therapist? Yes, there’s a right way to be a play therapist.
A good play therapist does this, doesn’t do this. A good play therapist, their practice looks like this, whatever it may be. And I see a lot of clinicians walking around the world, holding on to the perspective of the field, like, ingesting that larger perspective of the field, rather than, well, who am I as a play therapist? And what’s my truth in that? And what’s my reality of who I am? So I see that a lot.
I imagine you do as well. Oh, absolutely. You know what I’m thinking, and this is not to knock our programs by any means.
I’m going to preface it with that. And I’m just stating fact from what I’ve seen and what I’ve experienced. Right.
My reality might not be everyone’s reality who’s watching. I know that. And something that’s a shared experience is, this is what you learn in school.
This is what you do. I remember graduating with my master’s from a university that was primarily CBT, and I had my first supervisor out of my master’s. I was in my doctoral program at the time and hadn’t started learning a lot about other theories.
So when my supervisor said, what is your theoretical framework? Well, obviously it’s CBT, because that’s what’s supposed to be from what I learned within my particular program. And then she asked, how do you conceptualize this client? I was like, oh, I don’t even know what that means. I do now.
Right. Like, trying to make sense of your client within the context of your theory. But I didn’t really understand what that meant.
So then I’m starting to operate within the field. I’m providing these services, and I’m like, I don’t even know. That was not in alignment with me then.
I didn’t realize until I went more through my doctoral program and learned more overarching theories. And then I said, I am humanistic through and through. That 100% aligns with me.
And I think that’s another thing, too, is we learn something. This goes back to the origins, right? We learn something. This is the way we’re supposed to be.
This is what my supervisor is saying. This is what my professor is saying. And I’m not to knock guidance, right? Of course.
It’s so important for us to use that guidance to really help shape us into the professionals and the personal aspects of our lives, too, that we are, and find that which aligns with you. And so that’s something I’ve really noticed with a lot of the supervision that I provide and with my practice and working with students, I’m going to provide you with some guidance, and I want you to establish your own clinical identity, and I want to provide some support with this is maybe how to write a note. And I want you to start to establish what aligns with you.
Yeah. As we’re talking about this, I want to bring back something you said earlier, because I think the repetition of it is so helpful in the conversation that there’s also wisdom to the reality that we have at any given point, even if the reality is an ingested reality, because there’s a reason why we needed that reality. Right.
There was a reason I needed to believe that I was a social one. There was wisdom in that, in whatever that was for me as a child at that time. Right.
There’s wisdom for you in believing whatever you believed and having your perspective as you did. That was perfect at that time for some clinicians. There’s wisdom in holding the story that we have at any given moment.
I don’t know if you would say this. I would just say at some point, we have to question at some point, is there a possibility for more curiosity of is this the perspective that I want to hold? Is this the perspective I want to have about myself or about my clients or about whatever it may be? Was that something that you would agree with? Absolutely. Side note, just like to name it, I have an alarm that went off.
I got a little sidetracked for a second. I had some little sparkle noises. But no, absolutely.
It goes back to self preservation as well, right. That we are existing within the space that we’re existing with at that time to support us in the way that we need at that time. And yes, absolutely.
Being willing to transform is so imperative for ourselves and for others. There was another thought that I had. It slipped my mind.
So if you wouldn’t mind maybe re-asking the end of that question, and it might spark the other thought. Yeah, so that’s funny. I’m like, oh, really, Rachel? You want me to go back to what I was just sharing? It’s hilarious, everyone.
The gist of what I was saying is that at any given point, I think it’s important that we keep reiterating that there’s wisdom to perspective and any given point, no matter what that perspective is. And so there’s wisdom to our reality and to our story. And there’s a reason why we have the perspective that we have at that time.
And maybe it’s a protective mechanism, maybe it’s whatever a social like, whatever it may be. Right? But at some point, or does there come a point when we are asked to look at our perspective and to get curious about is this the perspective I want to hold about myself? Is this the perspective I want to have about my clients? Is this the perspective that feels most congruent for who I am? Yeah, that was somewhere in that direction. No, that was lovely.
It came back. I always joke with the people that I talk with and it’s also kind of true. I have popcorn thoughts.
So a lot of times when something is asked or shared, I just think of all these different things. And sometimes the popcorn pops a little too far away. We have regathered the popcorn in the bowl.
We are here. Yeah, all the curiosities. Exactly.
Yeah. And this actually is a beautiful transformation back to the actual book. Section two kind of really aligns with this.
And section two is reflecting inward. And it starts with philosophical ponderings. And I love that you have mentioned a couple of different times in our conversation so far about the why, because us as humans ask why.
How many times have you been in a room with a child? Why? How many times does adult say because I said so? No, that’s not going to really help expand the curiosity and the understanding that shuts it down. And I recognize it can be a little aggravating for some. But this why piece really drives us as humans and pushes us forward.
So reflecting why within ourselves, how come I am who I am? How did I come to be who I am? Does this align with who I want to be and who I truly am? How can I tell? Right? And so then after the philosophical ponderings, it moves into how I view myself and how I view other people and really starting to delve deeper into these questions. And so I think that being able to get to a place to just ask yourself, who am I really? And how do I want to continue to transform into the best version of myself? Whether that is shedding some of the beliefs that I have absorbed throughout my life, that I have been told, that I’ve been convinced about myself, whether it is amplifying aspects of myself that genuinely do align, it’s going to vary person to person. Yeah, I’m thinking about the relevance of this as a play therapist.
If I am a play therapist and I have a client that I’m working with and I’m not clear on why I believe what I believe about whatever it is I put myself in. A higher probability of whatever that message was that I was told that I ingested, I now have a higher probability of turning around and then regurgitating that message towards my clients. Yes.
Because I haven’t stopped to go, wait a second. Is that something that feels congruent for me? How do I make meaning of that? How do I want to help my clients get curious about that or not? How I can hear that come up and I’m just reflecting on different supervision sessions? Or whatnot is a supervisor that can get caught in right or wrong? No, it was not okay that the kid did that, like hard line in the sand not okay. Right? Or it’s not okay that the parent said that to the kid, but it’s a very rigid good, bad, right, wrong.
Divorce is bad, marriage is good, whatever the belief system is, because they’re filtering whatever’s happening through their reality, their perspective. Right. Their ingested beliefs.
But with that rigidity, we can’t connect to our client and then we can’t help them get curious about, well, how do they feel about the fact that their parents are getting divorced? Because maybe this kid actually is freaking grateful. Seriously. Or how do I support this parent in becoming curious about what their perspective was that drove them to say or do whatever they did? But I’m just hearing and seeing this.
Like the more we are rigid in our story or the more we don’t question, we lose opportunity for connection. That’s what it feels like. Oh, absolutely.
Yeah. I wholeheartedly agree. And I also am thinking about the therapist’s own projection that they might not really be aware that they are placing on to the child.
Because again, we are operating from our perspective. So if we are convinced by our position, our position is the right one, and then we have more absolute thinking as a result, right. This black or white thinking, we’re operating from our perspective, and that’s hindering the client’s perspective.
If we lean in and we are entering into their space from a place of curiosity and questioning I don’t mean necessarily direct questioning, although if that aligns with your theoretical framework, maybe some direct questioning, we’re not going to really fully understand where that child is and what their needs are. And so many times, even seasoned play therapists, I have these moments, okay, let’s normalize the experience. I sit there and I think, oh my gosh, am I doing enough? What do I need to do to make sure that this client is reaching their therapeutic goals? Right? And how can I try to insert whatever, I don’t know, to help the child feel better or to reduce symptoms or to help ease parents’ anxieties and that sometimes pushes further and further away from the true objective, which is what does the child need? Yes, we are going to establish goals from the outward appearances, right.
From other people’s perspectives. We need to decrease the frequency of behavioral intensity or emotional intensity. For who? Yeah.
Oh, what a great question. For who? All right. For therapists that are listening right now, and they’re like, okay, I want to get curious about my perspective.
Good. Right. So whether they actually said these questions out loud or was just their inner dialogue, what are examples of kinds of questions? Let’s start first with perspective of the self, and then I’m going to ask you about perspective of somebody else.
So if I want to get curious about I know we’re going to the next section. If we’re wanting to get curious about perspective of the self, what are some questions? I love that you asked that question because at the end of every chapter, there are five self reflection questions. So chapter five is Advancing Awareness of Self, and there are five questions that I’m going to read to you to answer your question.
But this is great because there are thought provoking questions at the end of every section to really help you solidify what the information means to you. So the first question, how intimately do I see, know, and understand my true self? The second question is the knowledge that I have about myself based on fact or perception. If perception, whose three? In what ways have I been sculpted by others? And these take some pretty in depth.
You could do multiple therapy sessions just right. I’m like you could do sand trays. You could write poetry.
You could do a whole thing just on. You know what I mean? Yeah, I love it. I just got chills.
I love this. The fourth question what messages did I receive in my life to support or challenge my sense of identity, worth, value, and capability? How do these messages continue to influence me today? And then the fifth question, am I who I am because I authentically align with this version of me? If not, what needs to be adjusted? Big questions. Yeah, deep questions.
Okay, so let’s keep going. So you’re my client, Rachel, and I’m having some perspectives about I’m, and I’m pretty rigid in my thinking about your behaviors or about, I don’t know, something about you. And all of a sudden, why am I thinking this way about Rachel? So what are the questions now that can help me in a relational context? Well, would you look at that? The next chapter expanding awareness of others.
We got some questions. I will preface it, though, with of course, this is going to vary depending on how you’re implementing your therapy and if you’re engaging in some talk therapy. If it’s just nonverbal, it’s going to be adjusted.
But these are the ultimate underlying questions that would be helpful to ask or to be curious about. How do I tend to view others? Because oftentimes what I’ve learned, what I’ve experienced, is we are going to be another relational experience that probably emerges throughout this person’s life. Right? If there’s something that’s happening in a certain context, it’s likely to repeat in other contexts.
So if we’re able to take a step back and really recognize what is my overall sense of viewing other people, then it starts to help us take a step back from blaming individual people or saying I’m this way because you make me feel this way. I don’t know, I’m just giving an example. But I tend to feel this way in relationships.
So just being able to reflect overall, how do I tend to view others? What is my overall mindset and worldview pertaining to others? Second question how do others tend to view me? Because not only is it how we look outwardly, but how other people treat us then ultimately is going to influence the way that we are responding to others. There’s the common saying, treat people how you want to be treated. So inevitably we are going to mirror or reciprocate some of the interactions that we’re receiving.
So that all plays a role in this too. The third question in what way do my foundational relationships influence my current relationships? So I started to touch base on this a little bit with the first question, at least in my explanation. But how does our attachment style impact the way that we’re attaching to other people, even our clients? Everyone exactly.
Right. Exactly. And how our clients Rachel, that is a play therapy workshop right there.
How the therapist attachment style influences their work in the playroom. And I want to just make a quick comment here because I want to come back to the imposter syndrome. I know this is a normal experience, so I just want to name it and normalize it for everyone listening if a client quote doesn’t like us, one, we just might not be the right match for them.
But two, this might be a reenactment of another relational experience. But if we absorb that and then we feel bad about ourselves and our abilities as a result, we are missing the golden opportunity here to help our client work through these relational patterns that continue to play out. This is a safe space for them to do that, but when we take that personally, it’s harder for us to connect to that for them.
Right. It becomes more about us. Which right there is that sweet spot because if I’m taking it personally, it’s touching in on my perspective of myself.
So somewhere along the way I took on the belief that I deserve to be rejected or I’m not good enough or I’m not worthy or whatever it is. So that when that does happen, it lands right. It goes in pretty deep versus like, oh, this is interesting.
I’m participating in a dance right now and I can stay a little bit more curious and objective about it. Totally. Absolutely.
So that’s why it’s important for us to start with reflecting inward within ourselves because then it becomes a little bit more easy for us to view others. I am a recovering people pleaser. And this is something goodness.
I would become so bent out of shape if someone didn’t like me or if I felt that I upset someone. We are not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. One of my favorite quotes that I wrote in the book, too, I refer to it all the time in therapy, we can be the ripest, juiciest peach.
There is still going to be somebody who hates peaches, does not always like the sparkle. Exactly. It’s too much for some people.
That bowl of popcorn. People are like, I don’t like popcorn. I don’t want that popcorn.
Absolutely. And I think that that’s hard for a lot of people, especially helping professionals to really digest talking about popcorn. But for us to really be able to recognize it is okay.
So I can go on and on, but I’ll come back to the questions because fourth question, what information have I learned that has actually deviated from its original source? And then the fifth question, how can I more accurately see others for who they are? So good. Rachel, so you just read some of the questions from the book. Let’s just jump in here.
For individuals that want to go and get this book, please go get this book. Everyone keep going on this conversation. Where can they grab this book? Amazon.
And you didn’t mention this, but I want to say this, someone special here in this conversation wrote the foreword and it is absolutely fantastic. It was from goodness. I know.
It was from a magazine. Science of psychotherapy. Yeah, Science of Psychotherapy magazine.
I read it and thought, oh, my gosh, this is so aligned, and it’s all about how growth requires friction. Well, and I can tell you that the prompt that was given to me was, would I write something that would help people and their perspective of navigating? COVID I did that. But I brought in some of the physics into that.
And yeah, thank you for asking for that to be a contribution to the thank you for being a part. Your sparkles are just deeply appreciated. And I always like to say, and I referenced this at the very end of the book, but we never know how far our ripples expand in this world.
And it’s so important for us to just put ripples out there, whatever that may be, in whatever way, shape or form. And the ripples that you create in this world, I’m specifically talking to you, Lisa, but this also is for everyone. So you is going to be a universal you.
And I’m talking to your heart too directly. Lisa far, expand your consciousness. You will never fully know how far the ripples that you create in this world are going to benefit other people.
And the more aligned we are with ourself, I think the further they’re going to expand in the direction that they need to go. I am breathing that in, Rachel. Thank you.
My heart needs to hear that from time to time, so thank you for reflecting that back to me. So as we find a wrap up place, is there like a final thought or a final message for our listeners on this topic that you want to offer? My heart and mind immediately went to align with yourself, trust yourself. I think a lot of times this comes up in my work.
People don’t trust themselves because going against some of the things that we’ve been told by people that we value deeply, value their opinion and their guidance, it might conflict, and that creates this tension internally. So trust yourself. Really reflect on who you are, align with who you are, and go about the world in a way that is right for you, and then we can model that to our clients.
Absolutely. So, listeners, get curious about your perspective, your perspective of yourself, your perspective of others. Open your perspective up to the knowing that everyone’s story is valid and that no one’s story is right or wrong.
It’s truly their perspective based on their life experiences and the stories that they have needed to create for whatever they’re up to. That’s all I say. We’re all up to something, right? For whatever they’re up to on this journey.
So until next time, everyone, deep breaths. Take care of yourselves. You’re so dang important.
