CIIS Public Programs Podcast

TRANSCRIPT

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[Cheerful theme music begins] 

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. 

Being a healer today often means navigating complexities and challenges. Healers of all modalities can feel sidelined, underfunded, or delegitimized within a Western capitalist framework. In this episode, licensed psychologist and CIIS faculty Elizabeth Markle talks with somatic psychotherapist, author, and podcaster Laura Mae Northrup about her latest book, Radical Healership, in which Laura offers an authentic, spiritually grounded approach to finding a true path to working in a healing profession.  

This episode was recorded during a live online event on March 2nd, 2022. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 

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Elizabeth Markle: Thank you so much for being here, Laura.  

Laura Northrup: Thank you, hi everybody! 

Elizabeth: Hey everybody. So, Laura, this book, what a tour force. And thank you for taking on the big questions about creating a healing practice within capitalism and oppression, and its many forms. And I want to just invite you to share about who you are and how this book came to be.  

Laura: Yeah. I'm a psychotherapist, and how the book came to be. I mean, I think obviously. So, I'm a psychotherapist in private practice. I had to figure out how I was going to build my own practice. So, anybody who reads the book will know, there's a lot of stories in it about just my own process in becoming a person who's a healing practitioner amidst capitalism. And then the other thing, I'll say about how this book came to be is that sometimes there are things in life where you kind of keep getting called to something, and this is definitely one of those things. I didn't set out to write this book, but I had already done a lot of work around the topics in it. And then a publisher reached out to me and asked me if I'd be interested in writing it. And I had had a different book in mind that I was thinking about working on, but I was like, okay, like you're getting kind of called to do this thing. And then I really sat with it and it's something that I just feel really passionate about. I'm very anti-capitalist, and I'm really pro-healing. And I think it's a really complicated thing to be a healing practitioner within a system where we have to charge for our services. We have to build businesses. We have to interact with capitalism, and capitalism is very harmful. So. 

Elizabeth: Well, there we go.  

Laura: That's the book. 

Elizabeth: There's the book. You know, as I read through, I captured quotes that really struck me. And so, a couple things I want to do is to share that with you. You wrote early on, you wrote, “It's a tricky thing to despise capitalism and want to run a successful practice. You may question what it means to offer healing, while operating in an economic system that deeply wounds humanity.” And I thought you really hit the nail on the head there. And I wonder if you can just say more about how you see this.  

Laura: Yeah, well and maybe, I'll sort of speak to it really specifically because I'm sure there's lots of people in the audience who are maybe already healing practitioners of some kind or thinking about becoming one. And there's all these really kind of I'll say, okay, let me back up a little bit. Everybody, I think who's existing in our capitalist system has some kind of way that we're navigating that; internally, emotionally, spiritually, financially. We have all kinds of ways that we navigate capitalism out of because we are forced in certain ways to navigate it. And then for people, with some more level of privilege, they might have a little bit more choice in how they're navigating it. But we're all navigating this very harmful and exploitative system.  

And I think when it comes to healing practitioners oftentimes, the way that we find ourselves trying to cope with it, ends up being that we are negotiating away our own needs in the process. So, and I think it can go, you know, this can go in either direction. Practitioners can charge loads and loads of money and be very focused on amassing wealth, but I actually do think in the end that is negotiating away your own needs. And maybe we'll talk more about that later. But also, a huge issue is people who become healing practitioners, really feeling not allowed to charge enough money.  

Because if you're a giving person, if you're a person who cares about healing, then you're going to charge less money as some kind of way, where you're negotiating away your own needs in order to sort of solve capitalism a little bit. And one of the big things I talk about in the book, you know, I support people to have a sliding scale. I support people to think really critically about being able to give away some services, or, or do some form of volunteer work. But I'm also all about, like, you gotta survive. And you're actually playing an incredibly important role in this world. And so, charging enough to survive as a healing practitioner is not a consensual choice in capitalism. That is just something that you have to do in order to sustain in this work and if you don't, you burn out, I mean, it can just be really taxing on you because you're giving something without, like, meeting your needs.  

Elizabeth: Yeah, you know, I teach in the Community Mental Health Program, where all of our students come in with a mission to change the world and particularly to change the mental health system. And so, they're being prepared to work in public and nonprofit mental health contexts. And many of them come in saying, I want to make a difference in the world. And yet I also have to provide for myself and potentially for my family and for my future and I don't see how these two go together. There's a real set of ethical quandary coming into the field that I'm looking forward to getting into. But if we could back up, just a step, you wrote about what it means to be a healer, and you said something like it's not a job or a career, it's a path. And I'm wondering if you can just walk us through how you see that path.  

Laura: Yeah. I mean, I think that it's just, you know, like obviously you want to leave work and like not be sort of still psychically, and, you know, emotionally, spiritually, somatically, all in whatever you were doing at work all day because we all need a break. But if you become a healing practitioner, you are your own instrument. And that means that you are, you are taking care of yourself in a way that is not like you leave your job and then you go do something that's, that is not congruent with your job. Like, we do so much around really having to take care of ourselves, you know, especially I talk a lot about if you're working in a form that’s psychological, you are having to, like take very, very good care of your psyche because you use yourself. This isn't like you show up to work and you use something else to do the- your craft. It's all you. And so yeah, I think that's why it's really a path. And I also talk a lot about, you know, in different contexts about how, and talk about it in the book too, about how healing practitioners can harm the people that we work with. And that happens by us not doing enough of our own personal work and I think that's also part of really understanding that this is a path, you know, when you're a healing practitioner, especially somebody who's working in a spiritual or a psychological realm, you really commit to doing your own healing work. Beyond what you would do if you were just like, if you were not using this to [Elizabeth: Right.] support people.  

Elizabeth: Right. You said it so well, you said, “as a healer, you're signing up for a lifetime of exploring everything you do not like about yourself and learning to love it or at minimum accept it.” [Laura: Yep.] Tell us more. I'm with you, by the way, but I can't wait to hear more.  

Laura: Yeah, I mean, I think just like, well and I'll speak to this as. So, the book is really oriented towards all different kinds of healing practitioners, and obviously also as a psychotherapist, I'm very interested in psychological work, but I think this also applies even to people who are like acupuncturists or somebody who might not be solely focused on something psychological, and they do more sort of physical or energetic work. But yeah, like, there's just - there's so much healing work that we have to do in ourselves in order to be able to show up and witness some of what we are exposed to. And this is hard work. I mean, it's really hard work, you know, on a great day, somebody is coming to you and they're working on being empowered, or they're doing a wellness care that's like about preventive care, you know. They're doing, but on a hard day, you're sitting with people who they are sometimes facing some of the most painful things they're going to face in their lives, and because of that, you need to be able to face that in yourself [Elizabeth: Mhm.] in order to be able to face it with other people. And so that, I think that's yeah what I’ll say on that.  

Elizabeth: Yeah, you know, it's early spring and so all of my students are applying for practicum. [Laura: Yeah.] The first time they will ever be the therapist in the room. We joke that there's this moment often where people sit with someone for the first time and they think God, they should really talk to somebody. Right. Like they really need a therapist, and it takes a moment to get that. That's me. [Laura: Yeah.] And in that chair and we joke about how whatever you can't be with will show up in that first client you sit with and so I'm always saying are you in therapy? Like this would be a really good time to be in therapy doing your own work. You, you talk about emotions really eloquently, and you talk about them having lives of their own and that they have needs of their own. And I wonder if in this context you can talk a little bit about that. 

Laura: Oh, yeah. I love talking about this. I love talking about how feelings have a whole life. Yeah, because there's so many ways that we talk about emotions. Like it's this thing that's like a nuisance or something that I want to get away from. And even if we're a person who really embraces feelings, I feel like it can still be kind of hard to like embrace them all the way and bring them into kind of the full picture. Yeah, like if you have a feeling, that feeling wants to be felt and it wants to be expressed. And I talk in the book about, you know, I really believe that feelings need to be felt, expressed, and then witnessed. And by witnessed, I mean sort of integrated back in. And a lot of people have a lot of confusion between the difference between feeling an emotion and expressing an emotion.  

And the example I always use for people is everyone knows what anxiety feels like, you know. It feels like something like, oh gosh, I can't relax. It’s, this is really intense. But expressing anxiety is often things like crying, sighing, shaking, you know, it's an embodied, getting it out experience. And yeah, so that's what I mean when I say emotions have a life and I think what happens when we don't want to feel emotions and we put them somewhere else or we somehow get them away maybe with a substance, or some, some type of dissociation is that they always want to come back. They're like, hey, I'm here. I have a life and you have to hang out with me. So, I think there's a lot of freedom actually in just like being with every, not yeah, but yeah, every emotion basically and I also think they resolve faster.  

Elizabeth: For the record.  

Laura: For the record. I’m like, for the record, everybody having feelings is good. [both laugh]  

Elizabeth: Well, let's talk then about this path to being or becoming a healer. You so eloquently talk about the why, right? Why we want to be a healer. I'm gonna help. I'm going to make a difference. And then our shadow why and I wonder if you could say more about that.  

Laura: Yeah, so, and I'll also say the way that this book is written is that I'm pretty, pretty darn vulnerable and it and I'm trying to kind of be just like alongside you in the book. I don't want to be in a position where I'm kind of like I have all the answers, and this is how you do it. I have some examples of maybe how I did it. But yeah, so the why. This is an earlier chapter in the book where I'm like, yeah, why are you doing this work? You gotta get really in touch with why that's going to guide you through your career. And then the next chapter. I'm like, okay, let's talk about the less, you know, kind of altruistic reasons why you're doing the work.  

Yeah, and you know, there can be many of them, and I think it's really important because this is an arena where we can potentially harm the people we work with. And, and again, there might be jobs where you don't have to look at the shadow reasons that you want to do the job. Nobody is going to be harmed by you, you know, doing a job for some kind of self-serving reason. But when you’re healing practitioner, you know, things like I'm doing this work because I want to be revered. Okay. Well, now you have something that you're sort of expecting out of the people who you're working with and that might be clinically inappropriate. And I think it varies, you know, based on what you're doing. But certainly, if you're working with someone else's feelings in any kind of relational context, being, requiring them to like you or being unwilling to be disliked by them presents a whole set of issues.  

I think a really common thing for a lot of practitioners is, you know, there's kind of this idea that, like, if you're a therapist, you're a really together person. I think. Yeah, everybody's laughing. But if you for some people, I think there can be kind of a like, I'm sane, or I am okay. I'm good enough and especially if you've been made to feel that you are not okay. Maybe you grew up in an environment or maybe in the experiences you've had. And in the society that we live in that people have made you feel like you're not a good enough person or you're not okay or you're not sane. And I put that in air quotes just because of the complexity of a term like that. That there could be all these reasons why we want to be a healing practitioner and things that we will kind of want to get out of it.  

And I'll add you know, it's okay to receive from the work that we do. I'm not saying like you just got to be out there not, like, wanting or needing anything. It's more like um, I'm really encouraging people to really understand the wounds that they bring to the work and not to be like, get rid of them. But so that you can look at them and just engage with them because we're all human beings and we definitely all have them. And I talk about mine in the book. I go first.  

Elizabeth: Yeah, I mean, good luck amputating those parts of ourselves. [Laura: Yeah] But when they're in the light, anyway, we have a chance. I'm going to read another quote. I love these. You write, none of the people you work with -that is your clients - are going to love you enough to repair the ways you may not have been loved enough in other relationships. And that is a disservice to the healing if you are unconsciously making this request.  

Laura: Yeah, so I talk a lot about love and healing in the book. And yeah, there's so many things we do all the time that we’re like, okay, if I get this sort of situation set up like this, I'm going to be loved enough. I'm going to be healed, you know, so we're doing that all the time, with all kinds of things. But yeah, there's there is no- I mean, and I think part of why that's true that, no, none of the people you work with are going to like love you enough for that to heal you is because that is something that we heal in ourselves. Ultimately. Certainly, you know, does it feel great when you're good at your job? Like does it feel great when people are like really thankful, and have really gotten a lot from working with you? Yes, it feels amazing. Is it okay to let that in? Like 100%. You know, it's, I think it's a, it's a complicated path to walk to like really receive the positive affirmations from other people. And to embrace them and be proud. And also, to not get sort of trapped in the sort of egoic use of other people.  

Elizabeth: Or to fall over and die when they are mad at you. And tell you, you've done it wrong.  

Laura: Yeah, that too. And for people who are, you know, working in a context whereas in a psychological context, they might need to be mad at you. That might be actually part of their, their whole process. But really, in any context, you want, the people you work with to be able to give you real feedback. It helps you become a better practitioner. It helps you help them better. Yeah, and that, that is a whole process to be a person that can receive feedback and can let people know that you're open to it.  

Elizabeth: Mhm, mhm. I think sometimes we have this sort of sanitized impression that we're going to have all of our needs met and all of our development complete before we’re a therapist. And I think you speak so candidly to like, that's probably not how it goes.  

Laura: Nope. That's not how it goes. [laughs] I'm like become a therapist when you're 80 then because it’s going to take you a long time. [Elizabeth: Yeah.] I mean yeah you basically said it. I don't. I don't think that- I mean it's so complicated because. We have to, I think what we have to be able to do by the time we step into the room to be specifically a therapist, is that we need to know how to contain our own material. [Elizabeth: Mhm.] So, you might have a lot of things that you haven't worked through, but building up the capacity to know. Hey, I'm actually going to protect other people from that and not bring that into the room. That in itself is a whole skill set. And I think that probably extends into other kinds of work beyond psychological work. Just, just like knowing where the line has like, really understanding something about boundaries.  

Elizabeth: Yeah, the capacity to keep your attention out on another being. [Laura: Yeah.] Or topic, even when things are arising within you as they will.  

Laura: Yes. Yeah.  

Elizabeth: Okay. Well, then, let's talk about the challenges of having a successful and ethical practice. You wrote, most businesses fail because of emotional and spiritual blocks. And I wonder if you can just unpack that a little.  

Laura: Yeah, I mean, it's so vulnerable. Like it's really actually quite vulnerable to run your own practice. And it means, I mean, okay. Like where people start out generally with any, any work that they do if you're running your own private practice is that you maybe started that out with some people who you got from maybe you worked in a clinic site of some kind and some, some people kind of came with you. So maybe you have a few people you're working with at first. But for most of us, you know, we start private practices, and we don't actually have that many people coming and working with us. And there's just so much like so many emotions that can come up and there can be a lot of like tolerating shame early on. And, you know, even if you’re like, say, somebody who is a really seasoned practitioner, but you've never worked in your own business. It can be really hard to be like, well, when I worked at this clinic site, I was, you know, I was awesome. People loved me. And now I'm in the situation where I don't have any clients, you know, like I'm not kind of getting that positive feedback. Yeah.  

And so, we have to do things like ask for help. We have to do things like, have somebody else look at our website and tell us how it looks. We have to do things like if we don't have any people contacting us, we might have to reach out and network and all these different tasks and a lots of our own emotional stuff comes up. So, asking for help, reaching out to people, even building a website is so emotional for people. It's like, it's really, it's a declaration of the work that you do and the offerings that you have. And so, a lot of times, you know, I think when people really struggle to the point where they feel that they are failing. A lot of times, it's because there's an emotional- there's something emotional that needs to get worked through to get to the point where you ask for help. Or where you- yeah, I mean, I would say a lot of it is asking for some help or learning something new.  

And I also say in the book, you know, people will frame it like, oh, well, you know, like a classic is like, well, you know, the Bay Area is a really competitive market and it's like, yeah, I mean. There's also a lot of people here who like seek out healing services, let's just say. So, there's easy ways for us to kind of say like, oh like, I just had bad financial management skills. But then the question is and what happened to asking for help? And that's where I kind of go to in the book as the like, underlying emotional stuff that actually ends up playing out. Which then if you don't look at, it can really make your work suffer.  

Elizabeth: Yeah, you know, I'm glad you started by naming the vulnerability of the whole enterprise of saying, this is who I am. This is what I offer. This is what I can, can help you with or can't help you with. And, and that there is the possibility of failure. [Laura: There is, there is. Yeah.] Right. And that we are not a culture that teaches people how to navigate failure, or shame, or even the process of saying I didn't get it right on my first try. Nor do we in graduate school teach people the business skills that they would need to do this. And so, we sort of send them out into the world and then what?  

Laura: Yeah, I know. There's so many, so many different kinds of programs, like herbalism programs, therapy programs, acupuncture programs, like massage programs at best have like a tiny, little three-hour thing on how to run a business and, and a lot of healing practitioners, just didn't really like vibe with it that easily, it'll be something that's kind of like, okay. I'm really good at sitting with other people. I've never built a website, or I have never made a budget. And it actually calls on you like, you could take a whole training program in how to run your own business. So it is, I think it is a shock for a lot of people like they got their training and then they're like, hold on. This is like a whole other level of stuff to do.  

Elizabeth: Yeah, and for some it's beyond not vibing. It's deeply aversive. [Laura: Yeah:] And it touches on this feeling around self-promotion, or self-aggrandizement, or branding, God forbid. That is really, really activating for many people.  

Laura: Yeah. And I talk about that in the book too like, you know, when you make your website, you're communicating with other people. You're communicating with the people you might work with. And if you have any communication issues [Elizabeth: Most of us do.] that’s going to come out. Like that's going to be part of the problem. You know, like I would say I'm an over communicator. My first website, I was like here's exactly how many steps to get to my office. And I was just like neurotically telling people everything they need to know. Which I adjusted but yeah, like so, our communication issues, self-worth issues, self -esteem, self-love. How we feel about meeting strangers. Even. Like, if you're an introverted person, or if you're a person who has a lot of social anxiety, you know, that can also be a whole thing and maybe once you have a really thriving practice you might not actually be meeting that many new people regularly. But early on, it's like so many new relationships and that alone can be like very emotionally taxing for people.  

Elizabeth: Yeah, I love that you said networking, otherwise known as engaging in community.  

Laura: Yeah, I have a bunch of things in the book where I'm like here's what marketing really is. Here's branding really is. And yeah networking, I mean that word is so, it has like a sliminess to it. And it's like it's just about being in community. It's about being in community, and community is where you give and receive like care in a mutual way.  

Elizabeth: Yeah. All right. Let's talk about another aspect of the setup for new therapists. Especially those, or new healers. Let's say, new healers. Especially those who are mission driven. On one hand, we have this sort of narrative that to be of service or to be good enough, especially in a sort of a liberal political climate is the only way to do that is to give and give and give and need nothing in return and to give until you are broken in some way. And then on the other side of the spectrum, I mean my Facebook feed is full of ads for like triple your, your rates. And charge, you know, like build your dream practice. And here's the yacht that you'll be able to own when you do this. And you know, this is the life you could be having. [Laura: Mhm.] What a double bind. Can you speak to, you know, how we hold this? 

Laura: Yeah, I think there's an invitation just to do some really deep spiritual work there. You know, when I was working on the book. I didn't, there's nothing in the book where I tell you how much money to charge or kind of like what to do in that regard. And part of that is because I don't know what you're living through. I do not know what you need around money. It also didn't say that because like inflation is wild like. Like, I have no idea how much you should charge wherever you live, you know, all these things. Right? So, but one of the other reasons that I don't give like a really prescriptive way of thinking through that stuff is because I actually think there's a lot of power and healing in each of us doing that for ourselves.  

So, really engaging with, what does it mean to earn money? What do I need money for? And what might I be doing with money that is more about soothing myself in a way that is perhaps making me charge more than I need. And these are questions I just I cannot answer for other people. This is a deep personal inquiry. And yeah, and I wish I could give an answer because I think this is actually something a lot of people really struggle with is like how much money do, I actually need? And in this, you know, capitalist system where it just kind of feels like you just have to make as much as possible and keep going and keep earning and earning, you know, it can feel. It can feel really tricky to find where that has- where that could actually stop for you and you'd be okay.  

And especially like in the United States where, you know, you could have an illness and be, suddenly be in lifelong debt because you didn't have good enough medical care. It's I mean, it's absurd. Like it really just kind of gets to the point where I can understand why people feel like I just have to charge as much money as I possibly can. Never have a sliding scale, work a ton. You know, but what I would also say in that is that there's more to life than making money. So, like and also in a sense we think about making that money like it might stop the suffering. But if you get an illness that then you know, you have a lot of debt from it. The money didn't actually necessarily stop you from having the illness. It could, it could. There is definitely stress-related illness.  

But basically, just like that part of the spiritual work in this is really embracing our own vulnerability. You know, the fact that eventually we all die that there are many parts of life that we actually can't control, and we live in a world where we are told that we can mostly control them with money. And that's just not simply the case. It's not simply the case. So, I want to like really support people who are under charging to charge enough to like reach a place where they can be comfortable. And anybody who is, you know, coming from inherited wealth, or very actively trying to amass wealth. I would just invite them to sort of explore why. And what is what that money is actually doing and what's it doing to you to make that the central focus of your life. And what does it do in your work as a healing practitioner?  

Elizabeth: Yeah. Thank you for that. I think you know, you said so beautifully, you said justice is not trading someone else's suffering for your suffering, that is masochism. [Laura: Yeah.] and that the sort of the undercharging was part of the journey that you had.  

Laura: Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you know, and I think you said something earlier. I can't remember whether it was while we were live or before we were talking. But about yeah, this kind of dilemma of people feeling really wanting to make a change in the world and feeling really guilty about anything they have. And then feeling like, okay, I gotta give, I've got to give my healing services away. I can't have enough because other people do not have enough. And I think this is a dilemma that spawns out of a system that sort of like creates some kind of narrative where we actually think that like making ourselves suffer has like that we're responsible individually to solve. I think it's a very individualistic idea that we're individually responsible to solve suffering and we are not. That is something that we do with community. That is something that we do with a much larger level of holding and when we kind of get merged with this idea that we can solve some level of suffering through making ourselves suffer more. It's just, it’s not helpful. It's not actually solving anything. It's just creating more suffering.  

Elizabeth: Mmm. Yeah, so many of my students as they are Chinese work with populations that are suffering in profound overt ways, and they suddenly become very aware of their privilege just in being able to be in graduate school, or to pursue a healing path, and the guilt. And then the subtle ways that that guilt gets enacted around money, around time, and in the clinical relationship is so complex. 

Laura: It really is. And I mean with that specifically, you know, like I think yeah, there's many ways that people when you- when you're in a position where you feel guilty about something you have. Suddenly it's like, oh well, I'll go overtime, or I'll do this extra work. But again, you know, like I think this is the piece where when you do that work in yourself to sort of um- it's not actually in the context like that. It's not actually therapeutic to like degrade yourself or to give more than you actually can or in some ways even to not see. I think. Also, this is a thing with people who have wealth privilege and work sometimes with people who have less wealth privilege, or are living in poverty, can actually underestimate the strength of the people who they're working with. And that's a whole thing of kind of like, oh, I've got a, you know, save you and it's like, yeah, like this person doesn't need to be saved by you. Frankly. They need you to witness them and support them and maybe give them some resources, but you need to recognize their actual power. And I think that's a chronic issue where people don't understand that poor people are working very hard and are very resourceful and often very skilled at taking care of themselves.  

Elizabeth: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate you naming, and it feels like we're sort of walking into this conversation about boundaries. And how, as a healer the more power you have as a healer, the better your boundaries need to be. And I appreciated you naming what happens when you tell, say someone cutting your hair that you are a trauma therapist. I've had this experience as well. Where suddenly, you know, I'm captive. I'm not going anywhere for at least 20 minutes, and we are having a deep trauma history conversation. And what guidance do you have for all of us who are having that experience on a weekly basis?  

Laura: Yeah. So, I mean one thing is that I will like go to any hairstylist, any service provider, and I will like test the waters and not even tell them that I'm a therapist. Oftentimes when I'm in public I'm not like, “I'm a trauma therapist” because yeah, it's like, well, “let me tell you the worst thing that's ever happened to me and my little sister…” And you know, whatever, and I'm just like well I actually can't like listen to this. And also, you're cutting all my hair off. I do now have a lovely hair stylist. So, you know, I'm set in that realm and with good boundaries.  

Yeah, I think it's just like, we got to get really good at really kindly saying no. You know what I talk about in the book too like I know practitioners of all kinds- nurses, have this experience where they're like, [Elizabeth: Can you just look at this?] Yeah! You just sent me a real gross picture. Okay, like, and you want, it's 2 am. Yeah, and I think that with people we’re close to we definitely have to be able to talk about boundaries around that. You know, we only have so much capacity to give and to hold and so we have to say no sometimes. And then I think with people who we’re less close to yeah, we just have to find a way to say like, whoa. I'm actually overwhelmed hearing about this. I need to just take a pause on this conversation. And that is my advice is just, like, find a way to say no.  

Elizabeth: Yeah, it's tough. Something that I tell my students a lot is like, use your energy with your friends not to be their therapist, but to help them find their therapist. [Laura: Yeah.] Right. Like, use that time. If you got five minutes to give, help them get sustainable services. Not you, you sort of filling the gap. 

Laura: Yeah. Yep. So true.  

Elizabeth: Well, the other thing you say about boundaries is just because you start a conversation, doesn't mean you can't exit it. 

Laura: Yeah. Yeah, so I say this because, you know, I talk in the book about how marketing is a form of communication. And I do think sometimes, you know, if you're a person who really struggles to get out of conversations, or if you're a person who feels sort of easily overwhelmed, or if you have any kind of history around being violated or just sort of inundated with other people's material and not being able to make a boundary with it. You might end up not starting conversations because it's so uncomfortable for you to get out of it. And working with people and building and practice with people is getting into a lot of conversations. It's people who call you on the phone. It's sitting down with the person, and you know, it's starting the relationship. It's deciding if it's going to work. It might be networking with other practitioners. And it's, you know, I'm going to pivot here.  

I used to think therapists were so weird. Like I would be like these people have the most intense boundaries and they just make their boundaries all the time at weird times and, you know, they're not very generous. Like I totally had that. And I've heard other people say this about therapists. Now I get it. [Elizabeth: Mmm.] Now, I understand part of being a therapist is that you do really have to preserve your energy and you have to be able to exit a conversation and you know, obviously being able to do that with a lot of like charm and ease is lovely, but sometimes people just exit in a way that's like I'm not going to emotionally caretake you around wanting to leave this conversation. But yeah, I think if you're- if you resonate with that, that it's hard to leave a conversation. It's an essential skill to develop and I think it's just really important to interrogate how much that struggle is informing you not opening yourself up to like the world, to the people, to the people who are going to come work with you.  

Elizabeth: Mhm. Like if you imagine that any engagement with another human might suck you dry, [Laura: Yeah.] you're naturally going to constrict and the idea of even creating a website or marketing yourself would be unconsciously so threatening.  

Laura: It would be, you know, another thing I'll also say is that this work is very, very hard and you have to be in community. Like we don't, we can't do this work alone. We can't go in and be like, I'm talking to people who are, you know, sick, or dying, or struggling, or grieving or, you know, survivors of trauma. Like whatever the work that you do is, you need to be able to be embedded in community that takes care of you. You need to be able to experience joy. Like there's so much that you actually need to be able to do this work. And if you can't make the boundaries with people in your life because you're getting overwhelmed and you isolate, that also burns you out. And it burns you out, and yeah that thing about like being your therapist for your friends, like you need to have your friends to be the people who you're like having a great time with.  

Elizabeth: Yeah, yeah. You know, throughout this book, you offer really tangible guidance around the nuts and bolts of building a practice. And you also speak to the spiritual aspect. You speak about a prayer, and intention, and easement, even a cosmic pizza order and if you want to share about that, please do. But my real question is around how do you really support people in holding both? That there are technical skills involved in building a website and that there's a spiritual aspect of that.  

Laura: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think I support people by explaining my thoughts on it. But, but yeah, and I could do that a little bit now. Yeah, like I think there is a spiritual process of sort of coming into relationship with our purpose. What we deem that to be. And you know, people engage with sense of purpose in in a lot of different spiritual traditions in different ways. But- so, I like to talk about these things in the- in a spiritual way, that's not also specific to specific like, religion, or spiritualities. So that it's applicable for anyone.  

But yeah, so, the process of coming into your purpose and then actually having a hope or a prayer for the people who you're going to work with or for the world, that's also a website. Like so- this is where I'm like it gets technical- you know, I think that that is deep, spiritual work to actually just sit in presence with what matters to me. What do I want to do with this life that I have? And how do I want to engage in this world? And then okay, it's one thing to sit, you know, in your living room and pull tarot cards and kind of feel into that. And then yeah, there are all these technical aspects. And you know, one thing I'll say is if you're a person who's really deeply into the spiritual aspect and you're just like totally wanting to reject the technical aspect, like, build it into a spiritual like- build a whole ritual around making your website, make it somewhere that's meaningful to you. You know, do- you can do spiritual ritual work around it. And then if you're a person who's really struggling to connect with the spiritual, which I think a lot of people do and they're kind of like, wait a minute, how is a website spiritual? I have a whole chapter on that, you can read that. Like there's, there's info on exactly- there's a cosmic pizza order. Yeah. I mean, I think to people who are kind of like little- that's- I don't need that spiritual part. Yeah, I just want to invite people to open their minds up to the possibility that there's actually something there that can be really helpful in guiding.  

You know, I think that for myself, like earlier on in my career, the work I was doing was so hard. It was just like- I'm working with sexual trauma. It's really, really difficult work and dropping into a sense of something much larger than myself and something so much longer than this tiny life I'm living just like time, was such an essential part of being able to feel a much larger level of holding. That like, it's not just me in the room being inundated with awful stories. It's me in a long lineage of practitioners, it's me in a community of practitioners. It's me on Earth. Earth is holding us. I mean, there's just you know, like- I also just think like spirituality is- can help prevent burnout. So, I encourage people to like open their mind to it. And I think there's a way to be very spiritual without being religious and I say that because I know a lot of people have religious trauma and I heavily criticize forced religion in the book.  

Elizabeth: Thank you for that. Okay. So, here's a pivot. [Laura: Okay.] Let's talk about class [Laura: Yeah.] and healing. You wrote that early in your work you were perpetuating your own class wounding by re-constellating it at every turn. And if we forgive the clinical psychobabble, a little bit. Can you talk about how that happens and what it means?  

Laura: Yeah, I mean, basically, I, you know, I grew up in poverty. I was undercharging. I was not like, I was overworking. I was even overworking in my actual, in the clinical relationship. Like I just grew up in an environment that was like, you work really hard. The experience of being a person who is working class or poor is being a person who is told, you are responsible for the labor of this world. You work harder. I mean, you go to work at a job, and I started working at 16 and I was like, oh, I work harder than my boss. I work harder than everybody who's worked here longer like, that's the trajectory you come in, you do the hardest job at first. And if you're lucky you get another job and you get to work a little less hard.  

And so, the way that I engaged with clinical work is that I was like, coming in and working so hard, but actually, what ends up happening in that kind of dynamic is that I'm actually, it’s first of all, it's codependent. But second of all, I'm robbing my clients of the experience of actually showing up to take responsibility for their own lives because I'm taking too much of it in the clinical relationship. And I know that might sound kind of complicated and it's very nuanced but, and I think it's even kind of just an energetic thing at times. But so that was an actual issue in and that was like I'm burned out at the end of the day. I gave so much, and I gave more than I even needed to. And it's not helpful that I'm doing this as well. So, you know, I talk about a lot of things I did wrong in the book.  

Yeah. But then, you know, in undercharging I was re-constellating my class wounding and just I was like people would come to me and say. Here's why I need a low fee, you know? And like a classic thing is people come to you and say I need a low fee because I have student loan debt and I would be like, oh, okay. I guess I should lower your fee. It's like, girl. Do you know how much student loan debt you have? No, don't lower the fee for somebody’s student loan debt. It was just, I mean and it's embarrassing to admit this. But like yeah, I just wasn't I was just like, nope. You just kind of keep, you know, you got it. You gotta make sure people have access to therapy no matter what. And yeah, so it was a big process for me to be like, wait. I don't have to keep doing this. [Elizabeth: Hmm.] and it's not helpful to anyone. It's certainly not helpful to me.  

And the other thing that I mean, this is like a thing that's, you know, sometimes we get motivated by other people's needs when we struggle with our own. But just, I was definitely realizing I'm going to burn out. And the people I work with clinically who are depending on me, who I'm you know making these very deep relationships with their depending on me to actually want to keep doing my job. If I don't charge enough, I'm not going to want to keep doing my job. And I'm going to, I mean I had moments in my career where I was like I'm so burned out. I was like, what do I do? And it's like Laura, just charge enough money. Like, go on a vacation, like, just take care of yourself. And actually, the people you work with will then really benefit from the fact that I'm not gonna like six months into their therapy be like, I just can't handle this anymore and leave. So that's yeah. And I think, you know, I speak in the book about my own personal process with that. But I think you can re-constellate your class wounding, no matter what class experience you have because, you know, like I know that a lot of people think that if you grow up with a lot of wealth access that you don't have any class wounding, but you do. So, it's also possible to re-constellate that.  

Elizabeth: Yeah. This is one of my favorite quotes in the book. You said, in the land of capitalism it's easy to feel that productivity is what makes you a good person. And that while workaholism could seem like it's only about making money, which it could be for some, more often is it about aggrandizing the self through accomplishments, important commitments, being needed, and generally appearing hyper competent. It is in a sense, a defense against shame. First of all, you know, nailed! As anybody in my life will tell me. But what I love then is you said the antidote to shame is love and acceptance. So anyway, I just read a lot of your own book at you. Talk to me about workaholism and capitalism and finding our value in productivity or not. And apologies if this is free therapy for me here, speaking of boundaries. 

Laura: [Laughs] You're like -okay, so boundaries, boundaries and now here's the test. Here's the test. [Elizabeth laughs] Yeah. This is like a thing that I mean again, like, you know, living in capitalism. Like, I'm never going to have a comfortable relationship to capitalism. I'm never going to suddenly be like, well, it's chill now. It's like it's always going to be something that's toxic and complicated that I'm like working myself out with and I think that's probably the case for most people. Yeah, so in this situation, you know, productivity. Like I'm not going to sit here and say that I have healed myself around productivity. It's just, this is the air that we breathe. It's like if you're productive, you're a good person and if you chill like a lot or you don't do much, you're a bad person. This is, this is the narrative. I think it's a class narrative for me, but I think people from a lot of class backgrounds experience it. You know, I'm like even just taking 15 minutes to meditate and get curious about the process of not doing is so powerful. I did a week-long meditation retreat, like, maybe two months ago, and it was the first time I had done like a whole week meditation retreat. And yeah, like I just was like, wow, the layers of like shame. Of like I'm not doing anything right now. So, I'm just existing. Is that okay? [Elizabeth: Yeah.] Like and so many of us are like internally like no it's not okay. It's not okay to just exist and it's like yeah, I mean I could just say- so I could talk about this forever just like this question. Why do we think we're bad for just being? Why do we come into the world and we're like, I have to earn my right to exist here? I mean I think it's probably Christian supremacy that, you know, and white supremacy that fuel, a lot of that, but it's not good. That's kind of a toxic energy to have thinking about yourself and we all are, you know, myself included thinking about ourselves like that. It's complicated.  

Elizabeth: That was deep. It goes deep. Have you done the thing where you're on a meditation retreat and you're doing nothing but you're working really hard inside to make yourself better, so I could be better at doing things? 

Laura: [Laughs] Yeah, you know, it's so funny because I talked about that with meditation and I talked about, you know, there's a section where I kind of talk about the way that like different kinds of healing are co-opted in order to like make us better at capitalism. And I think I maybe I don't know if- there was a lot that got cut out of the book. But so, I don't know if it's in there, but I’m forgetting- just about how a lot of healing and a lot of assessing, whether someone's okay or not is about if they can work. About, and if you can work, then you're okay. And if you can't work all of a sudden, that's a pathology, and I'm here to say it's not.  

Elizabeth: Amen. Okay before we wrap up on class, you write to your readers, [Laura: Hmm.] work out your class issues, work them out, because class issues are love issues. [Laura: Yeah.] Those are provocative words and I want to hear more. 

Laura: Well, so I think I'm like everybody just read the book. But because I do, I got really kind of into this. It's nuanced and I think there's a really complex line here. So, I in no way want to imply that just loving yourself is going to be enough. We live in capitalism, like, we need, people need money. They need money to survive. And I don't, you know, I just like, really want to be very clear about that. That having access to money helps people have access to services that they need. And that can improve someone's mental health, emotional health, spiritual health. So, I just want to say that. And, you know, one of the things I write about in the book is once I did get access to those things and I was like, cool. I'm solid. I make a living, I'm okay. Right? Like I'm going to be okay. I was like, wait, hold on. I still don't love myself. I thought that having enough money. I mean, this is a total classic narrative of not having enough. I really thought having enough money was going to make it be like, okay, like, okay check and now I'm fine and I love myself and I didn't. I like kind of just was like, no- this is how the middle class feels like us. Like they don't- they have enough, and they don't love themselves.  

And yeah, so you know, one of the things I just talked about is like how we are constantly trying to use money to solve emotional and spiritual issues. I think people who undercharge in order to be good and not need too much you’re, you know, that's where you're, you're rejecting something that you need, money, in order to solve an issue of not feeling good enough. And I also think, obviously this one's a little more clear, that people try to amass wealth in order to make themselves feel better.  

So ultimately, you know, when it comes down to, like making enough to have access like a reasonable access to resources. I'm like no questions asked, do it. That is everybody deserves to have housing, food, medical care. Like there's no question of that. And also, this is not just about money. It's about love. It's about whether or not you love yourself. It's about whether or not you have a loving community. It's I mean, truly. And capitalism wants us to hate ourselves and I think a lot of us are doing a great job at that, at hating ourselves. So that's where that comes from. Just that I think it's a really, really important piece of building a sustainable practice. And being able to do this work for a lifetime is finding, finding that path of interacting with ourselves and with- in a loving in a loving way.  

Elizabeth: Thank you. You know, towards the end of the book you speak about really embracing the political nature of healing and that even if somebody's coming to you for something that seems like management of diabetes, or want to make their marriage better. That it is at heart political. And in fact, you say it's an act of resistance that the, that the end goal of healing is not to make us better able to function within a capitalist system but to liberate us from that system. And you know, the image that comes up is about Tylenol, right? It’s like, are we medicine or are we Tylenol? Are we at times anesthetizing people to the pain of an unjust world? And how do we hold the ethics of providing needed care and pain relief without washing over the realities?  

Laura: Yeah. That's a good question. And, you know, one thing I would say is like, it's okay to check out. It's okay sometimes, it's okay. Like I mean when you’re a healing practitioner, you got to heal like you gotta heal to do your work but also the people who come to you, they get to choose. They get to choose if they want to start moderating substance use or choose sobriety, they get to choose if they want to exit the abusive relationship or not. They get to choose if they want to go on a special diet to manage their diabetes. And, and the most- like spiritually grounded thing I can say is like, I don't want to judge anybody for how they make that choice.  

Yeah, and I think it's, we can't hold ourselves to a perfection where we're always like rigorously kind of going at the like, no, no, no, never check out. It's like I'm going to say, I say this in my clinical work, you know, people are like working so hard and I'm just like, it's okay to chill. It's okay to watch TV, it's okay to just like relax sometimes. And so yeah, I mean that's kind of the thought I have about that, you know, and there's like two sides to every story. Like I do think that the question itself is very important to engage with because like while somebody can choose to sort of just like soothe or Band-Aid things, you know, part of what we can also offer them, like one way that I would hold that is if that's what you choose it's, you know, it is something you can choose and I'm right here for you if you want to come into more presence.  

Elizabeth: Yeah. Okay. So, as I read through your book, there was this common refrain that I started to become very familiar with that was something like at the end of a paragraph, you'd say, and if you find yourself falling into XY&Z trap, as discussed above, cultivating love for yourself, or that part of you is the first step towards breaking that pattern. [Laura: Mhm.] Tell us more about this. And from that perspective, what is love and why is it so key to addressing everything you raised in this book? 

Laura: You're like final question, what is love? [Elizabeth: No biggie.] Well, yeah, I mean love, or at least like at minimum, some acceptance. I think that's important because it just like- you gotta if you're just sitting there hating yourself and rejecting yourself or a part of yourself. It's not like going to be in the room. You're not gonna be able to have a conversation that's like generous and kind. And I mean, just the way that how you might deal with another person. I would say I would deal with parts of myself. Like, if there's a person that you don't like, and you're just mean to that person tell them that you hate them. Tell them they can't come around. But that person is for some reason very intricately connected to you because it is you, you know, like we just have to kind of sit down. Okay, like what, what's going on with this part of me? And I think that it's just like some generosity. Some love, some acceptance is an important part of that. And I think you know, when it comes to being a healing practitioner, are you going to hate the people you work with?  

Like when they come in and they're like, you know, if you're like I hate that I look at social media six hours a day, which I know during the pandemic a lot of people have really, really struggled with that. If you're like, I hate that in myself and then somebody comes to you and they're like this is what I'm doing, are you going to be like, well, I hate that about you. So, you know, or if you've worked on it yourself, you can be like yeah, it's hard to love this but like this too we have to kind of, you know, embrace or explore or be present to. And there was another part of the question. Oh, yeah. What is love? Oh my gosh, [Elizabeth: You could just call time.] It’s like a feeling in your heart. That's just, I don't know what it is. This is like one of the great mysteries. I feel like I can't answer that question. The question itself is like I said earlier about that other question, you know, the question itself is like the beautiful inquiry that we have to like hang on to.  

Elizabeth: Mmm. The mystery we get to live into. 

Laura: Exactly. Yeah.  

Elizabeth: Thank you so much. It's been a joy talking with you. I’ve appreciated our truth about the hard things. And our laughter about it as well. 

Laura: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.  

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. 
 
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