24. My First Therapist

An essay on the power of psychological safety, FEAR Camp Lesson #3 and my new work being covered in the New York Times

Kate Speer

Oct 20, 2023

I keep tearing up trying to write the caption to this image so instead of something witty, I will just say one massive thank you to Ellen Barry and Sarah Blesener for this honor.

Hello Beautiful Human,

We made it through the week and before I share all sorts of things here, I want us to pause together.

I want us to take one moment out of our busy days to carve out a refuge within ourselves.

And Yes. This might sound insanely ‘woo woo’, but I mean it.

I want us to pause and take one massive deep breath.

Just. Like. That.

And now, with a second breath, I want you to accept yourself as you are in this precise moment with the understanding that it is absolutely okay to be — to feel and exist —exactly as you are.

Incredible.

Thank you for doing that with me.

I’ve been trying to do that more – to pause and carve out a little sanctuary of psychological safety where I can breathe intentionally amidst the melee of full days and gut-wrenching news alerts. These tiny pauses offer me a much-needed respite as I weather the heartbreak of this world. They also offer me a much-needed reminder that I am still breathing – that even as tragedy rains down all around me – I still have this gift of a life and even if I can’t solve all the heartbreak, I still get to do some good with it. I still get to do some good with my life.

This was a truly surreal week. I woke up on Monday morning to learn that I was featured in The New York Times for the work that I am doing with Harvard. It was definitely not how I planned to share that I will be building out public mental health campaigns and scaling evidence-based science dissemination on social media with Harvard but holy heck, what an honor.

The scope of my work with Harvard is still being finalized, which is why I didn't tell you — I didn’t want to jinx it until a contract is signed. Regardless, I am so excited to finally use the skillset I have honed over the last ten years to do some good and scale mental health care access, advocacy, and policy reform. I have known for a very long time that social media holds tremendous power in connecting with individuals struggling with mental illness, particularly serious mental illness, and to be doing this work with Harvard feels like a dream come true.

It's just as I shared last week – it finally feels like I am doing EXACTLY what I am supposed to be doing and there aren’t enough good words to honor the gratitude I feel living that reality.

Since my original plan to share my experiences with Harvard was squandered by the New York Times, I went ahead and recorded a podcast for you this week with my incredible friend

Rachel Havekost

, a fellow creator from the Harvard creator cohort about our time at Harvard. The episode — which will drop this afternoon at 3pm EST — shares details about this next chapter of mine and also explores many powerful insights from Rachel as she shares her story and experiences with hardship, relationships, and an eating disorder.

This podcast episode is a testament to psychological safety — that little hideaway we carved out for ourselves together with that intentional breathing exercise at the beginning of this piece — and the power of finding spaces and people that offer it. I fervently believe psychological safety is one of the most important factors in recovery and though many definitions are thrown around, my favorite definition is “felt permission for candor.” I mean — how good is that?!

Psychological Safety can also be defined as a space, person, or group that upholds the shared belief that it’s okay to take risks, express ideas and concerns, speak up with questions, and admit mistakes — all without fear of negative consequences. That definition helped me realize that I never felt consistent psychological safety at the Dogist, but at Harvard, shockingly, I did. The first morning at the summit, I actually felt it so acutely that I burst into tears while introducing myself. I share more about that whole situation in the podcast, but this week, I also wrote about it in my essay. In this piece, part of my ongoing Maura + Me series, I share my first experience with psychological safety in a medical setting and the human being who taught me of its deep importance, Atlas, a therapist I worked with for 8 years.

Before this week’s piece, a few things:

THIS SUNDAY at 2 pm EST will be our second solidarity salon. The Solidarity Salon is an hour-long storytelling hour devoted to healing out loud and is offered for paid subscribers. The Salon is a place to cultivate psychological safety and hold unequivocal space for each other as we are seen in our raw truths. For the first fifteen minutes, we will write our stories in silence together and for the remainder of the hour, we will read our stories aloud. This is not about having a polished piece. Rather, it is about sharing your honest truth. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber and would like to join, we’d love to have you!

FEAR CAMP Lesson #3 is live at the bottom of the newsletter after this week’s piece.
The podcast episode with Rachel will drop this afternoon at 3pm EST. Once it is live, you will be able to listen to it here.

And now, this week’s piece…

24. My First Therapist

**Atlas’ office and the oak tree that now towers above it this past summer.**

Week over week, I learned what brought glimmers of joy to my being. I loved paint — of all kinds, but especially when I used my hands to slather the brightest of hues on a canvas. I thoroughly enjoyed baking but only when I did it for others — when it reminded me of my cookie fairy days in college when I’d give my friends an entire batch as thanks for a night on suicide watch. And above all, I adored dance — of every form and every genre. Whether it was pretending to be a Beyoncé backup dancer or botching ballet with gusto, dance filled me to the brim with a childish enthusiasm that I hadn’t connected with in decades.

I joyously shared these discoveries on my Saturday afternoon calls with Maura. I also shared them in therapy each week with Atlas, my therapist of eight years. He was overjoyed to finally hear some good news. He didn’t say it explicitly, of course, but in each breathy sigh and assured rock of his antique shaker rocker, I could feel the deep relief flood through his body.

I had seen Atlas since I was 16. He had run the diagnostic testing that gave me my first diagnosis. I remembered those first visits with crystalline clarity and as I watched his body finally settle into that exact same rocking chair that had sat on those many years ago,I was transported back to the first day I’d met him.

It was the spring of my sophomore year in high school and no one knew what to do with me. I cried all the time and everybody — my parents, teachers, friends, and family – were at their wit's end as they ran out of tolerance for my weeping outbursts. Twenty years ago, mental health simply wasn’t discussed and mental illness — well, it was taboo in every single way. To exist in a mind that felt things as deeply as I did and expressed them with equal honesty was unheard of and my symptoms disrupted almost every single element of my life and those that surrounded me.

Everything had gotten particularly bad during the lacrosse season. The tears that were previously occasional had become a near-constant fountain. A talented athlete, one of the top students in my class, a celebrated member of innumerable clubs, and a girl with a slew of friends, I was a puzzle to everyone. No one could make sense of why I could dominate on the field and in her studies and have a robust community and social life but also collapse without a moment's notice into hysterical sobs.

The situation came to a head when one of my weeping episodes interrupted the middle of a lacrosse game. I had just scored my fifth goal of the game and instead of celebrating, I collapsed in the middle of the field weeping hysterically. Everyone was horrified. I was horrified too but more than that, I was so deeply ashamed. My older sister, the captain of the team at the time, escorted me off the field supporting my full weight beneath her before laying me beside the bench where I writhed in sobs. It was a true scene – embarrassing, overwhelming, and wholly representative of how deeply I was suffering. That’s when my parents booked the appointment with Atlas.

My mom drove me to the first appointment. Cozied beside an adolescent oak tree in picturesque Thetford, Vermont, the office looked more like a house than a medical practice. I questioned being there – convinced my mom had gotten the address wrong but just as she began doubting herself, Atlas walked outside to greet us. Jet black hair, tanned skin, and a solid jaw, he was Greek through and through and as he walked toward us with assured steps, I felt an unexpected calm ripple through me. He possessed a striking lack of inhibition but there was no ego in his step either. He simply existed in his honest humanity with complete presence and peace in his being. Even though I’d barely met him, I marveled at how he moved through the world and as he stretched out his hand to shake mine, I remember thinking, wow. When I grow up, I want to be *that* myself.

The first day Atlas and I spent together was full of tests. What is wrong with this picture? Which word does not belong? How would you navigate this problem? Question after question, problem set after problem set, I fought to find the right answer. The test was grueling and all it did was remind me of how broken I felt – how the words jumped on the page, how ideas were always tangled on top of themselves, and how no matter how hard I tried, how much I wanted to be good and smart and like my brilliant family, I just wasn't.

The testing took two visits and on the second visit, the puzzles and riddles were set aside for the discussion portion where we simply talked. Do you like school? What is your favorite part? Are you close with your family? And then the question that broke me open in a way I had never experienced – what do you like about yourself? My forced composure evaporated into sobs and for the next hour and a half, I wept about how there was absolutely nothing that I liked about myself. In front of this mere stranger, I stripped myself bare and let him all the way in. I confessed that everything I did was to be liked – to be enough – to belong and be loved for just one second but that no matter how hard I tried or how much I worked at it, I was never good enough.

Everything spilled out – how I pooped my pants in kindergarten and was made fun of it ever since, the time kids on our bus had called me fat in the first grade, the day I had to read in front of the class and stuttered so much that I locked myself in the bathroom for the rest of the day, how they put me in a custodial closet to learn to read in third grade because I didn't belong anywhere, how I had been bullied and laughed at all of grade school for making absolutely no sense — how I was the broken family member — the one who hated reading, couldn't write for her life and would fail the multigenerational heroism of public service.

As my tears fell and I rocked back and forth cradling my knees on the couch, Atlas leaned in. Tipping his rocker forward, he met me with an earnest gaze never looking down or away, not even for a moment. Atlas looked my pain in the face and welcomed it. He honored it with the one panacea we have when it comes to shame — kind curiosity.

The psychological safety of that room, of that little house that was actually a medical practice – of Atlas, the first person I belonged with – changed my life. Little did I know how much Atlas would impact the future of my existence and how truly complicated our relationship would one day become. But that day, after two hours of talking, I finally felt seen and met the North Star of my recovery and survival – radical transparency — and even with all that came later, I will never be anything but grateful that Atlas gave me that.

FEAR Camp is my free program that educates you about anxiety and teaches you how to heal your own anxiety using exposure therapy. This program is a habit-stacking regimen based on the most up-to-date science. PLEASE NOTE: This program is not meant to replace or provide therapeutic intervention in any way and it is not safe to do if you are actively living in a state of crisis.

As we established last week, anxiety is a reaction to a perceived threat that can be broken down into two parts:

The physical response to that perceived threat
The thoughts we have in response to that physical response

Today, we are learning to identify the thoughts we have in response to the perceived threat.

Now, before I break it all down, let me say clearly that recognizing what is happening in our mind when we feel anxious takes a lot of time and practice. So, if this feels very abstract, that is totally normal. It took me years to get this fully.

AND

This concept being abstract doesn’t mean that we can’t handle it so let’s dive in…

When our body reacts to a perceived threat, we first feel all the physical sensations we identified last week — sweat, blurred vision, heart racing, legs giving out, IBS, panic attack, etc. As soon as we feel these uncomfortable sensations, we immediately think a whole slew of negative thoughts.

For me, as soon as the anxious physical sensations are pulsing through my body, my mind starts screaming YOU CAN’T HANDLE THIS, KATE! GET OUT KATE, GET OUT! GET OUT OF HERE! For a very long time, those thoughts were subconscious. I could not identify them and I certainly could not tolerate them. Now, thanks to exposure therapy, I can and this skill transforms my life daily.

So, just as with the physical sensations, identification is critical in being able to learn to tolerate them. Today, break down a list of all the cruel things your mind spews at you in times of anxiety in the comments below. Please remember that minds can be quite the bully in times of threat so know that what you share here is a distorted thought and not a fact. And though I know it’s not fun — I promise, it will be worth it when we finally learn to heal our anxiety together.

That’s it for FEAR Camp this week and stay tuned for next week when we dive into Anxiety and how you are already doing the work in Lesson #4.

24. My First Therapist

An essay on the power of psychological safety, FEAR Camp Lesson #3 and my new work being covered in the New York Times

Before this week’s piece, a few things:

24. My First Therapist

FEAR Camp Lesson #3 — Anxiety + The Mind.

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