Therapist Plus Dating Coach Equals Success for Anne

<cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>0:03</time> <p>Welcome to 90834, the weekly podcast that lets you see what it&#39;s like to actually go to therapy. I&#39;m Shannon Miller, a licensed clinical social worker currently in private practice, who has the privilege of sitting across from clients each and every day watching their therapeutic process unfold. We start each episode with the same question what took you to therapy? We&#39;re welcoming Anne to the podcast today. She&#39;s a 35-year-old woman living in the Washington DC area. She was born in Germany but says she grew up in the Seattle area. She started therapy in April 2020 when COVID started and she realized I need help. Let&#39;s kick things off with the traditional question of why do you start therapy? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>0:49</time> <p>So my aunt and uncle are psychologists. They&#39;ve grown up around people who are engaged in therapy, do therapy my entire life. My parents are a whole lot older and they met when they were my mom was 18 and my dad was 22, and they got married six months after they met back in the 70s. So they have no clue how dating works. And I have been dating off and on for pretty much my entire adult life, since I got to DC, using dating apps, meeting people in person, all of those things. And my parents have no clue how dating works. And so the first time that somebody suggested therapy to me was my mom, as part of a conversation around me, having gone through yet another bad online app dating date and the implication from my mom or what I heard right, because sometimes what they say is not what you hear is you&#39;re broken, you don&#39;t know how to date. Go get therapy. And I&#39;m someone who talks to my mom on a regular basis, we&#39;re very close and I said basically, mom, that&#39;s not fair and I disagree and I&#39;m hanging up now and because they still live back in Washington state. So I&#39;m in Washington DC and they&#39;re in Washington state, and I said you know, don&#39;t agree, goodbye. And I didn&#39;t talk to my mom for like two weeks, which for me was a big deal. No, can. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>2:25</time> <p>I stop you for a second and just ask like what was it about that? Like what was it that really set you off? I mean, you go from talking to her every week to like only silent treatment for two weeks. So what was sort of implied in that that? Just you&#39;re broken OK. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>2:43</time> <p>It was implied. You&#39;re doing this wrong. You don&#39;t know how to meet people. You&#39;re broken. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>2:50</time> <p>And who was she to tell you? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>2:52</time> <p>Yeah. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>2:52</time> <p>Right. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>2:53</time> <p>Yeah, mom, you met him in January, got engaged in March and we&#39;re married in June. Like you don&#39;t know what dating&#39;s like for those of us out here in our late 20s, maybe early 30s I don&#39;t remember exactly when that conversation was Mom, go away, I love you, but I can&#39;t hear this from you, right, right. So that was the first time that it was sort of suggested to me and I just shut down and said, nope, I&#39;m not broken, because honestly, I don&#39;t know what it was. Nobody&#39;s like I wasn&#39;t. It was just this disconnect, but it was sort of that&#39;s my first memory of somebody talking to me about, about therapy, in a serious way of like you should go try this. Mind you, my mom&#39;s done therapy but refuses to go back, so that&#39;s a whole nother conversation. Yeah yeah, but so how did I get to therapy? That was your original question. What brought me to starting To reach out for that help to work on myself? Essentially, it was COVID. March of 2020. I had been in a relationship with someone for a couple months. We were Really serious. It was going really well. He had lived abroad, spoke multiple languages, was interested in travel. We could talk about things. We did things together. We&#39;d even gone and looked at apartments because his lease was about to be up and we were steadily going from the are you gonna live in this Part by yourself? To our look, are we gonna live together? So it was moving, probably, in hindsight, way too fast. But then COVID hits and it&#39;s like well, your apartment or mine, and he was in DC and I was living in northern Virginia and I, you know, could work from wherever, packed up my stuff into a you know weekend bag I&#39;m thinking this isn&#39;t gonna be a big deal and just went over to his place. And that was the essentially the day of the world shutdown, where they said you&#39;re gonna start working from home and everybody started freaking out about COVID and it went really well for a few weeks. He was To give you an idea of what the living situation was like, because I think it paints an interesting story. It was probably about 650 700 square foot one bedroom apartment With no outside space. You could open the windows, which is nice, but two people in a one bedroom and a tiny fridge and Somebody tiny fridge sounds like a deal breaker right there. Oh well, it&#39;s funny because I just remembered that detail, but I remember like just having to Tetris everything into the fridge. He, his job, required him to be on site and so they essentially said work, stay at home. He had one call a week and he was somebody that really required structure in his life. He worked out on a regular basis, had had a routine, etc. And all of a sudden that routine was upended. For me I could work from wherever with my job, I just had my computer. My boss was remote anyway, so like didn&#39;t really matter, and I had a regular eight to five. I woke up in the morning, started my work on the couch, got on with my day and he had no thing to keep him on On track, and so he really struggled because of that lack of structure and routine and his ability to do all the things that kept him sane. I started therapy because, essentially, he stopped talking to me. He wouldn&#39;t, I&#39;d he would shut down, we wouldn&#39;t talk. Imagine being in a tiny space with somebody who retreated so far into themselves that they didn&#39;t, they didn&#39;t want to engage anymore. We would cook dinner together and that&#39;s about the only time we would have a semi-normal interaction, and that happened at probably week four or five. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>6:44</time> <p>How many weeks total had you dated at that point? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>6:48</time> <p>Probably about beginning of January and we&#39;re talking that we&#39;re sitting at the beginning of April by that point, maybe middle of April. So it was really hard. I&#39;ll give you one of the worst examples. He would play video games online with his friends, as Guys are want to do with discord and they&#39;re talking and they&#39;re playing video games. I he&#39;d shut down the video and when he played video games, it was entirely no normal tone of voice. He was funny, he was interacting. He would shut off the video game and I would walk into the room from having been in the bedroom watching something on my iPad and it was like you know those, those levers on the wall where they like grab it and like shut the power off to the whole building. Yeah, it was that much of an energy loss. As soon as he saw me, just massive personality flip, energy, flip everything. And I was crushed and I&#39;m going what did I do to do this? Yeah, so that was, that was the world that I was living in. And then, all of a sudden, on like a Saturday, he&#39;s like I want you to go home tomorrow and I hadn&#39;t been on my own the entirety of COVID. We went, if we went out to go get beer. If we went out to go Downstairs to pick up a package, we were together, everything. And he&#39;s like I want you to go home tomorrow. And I&#39;m again crushed because, like, I had essentially a goryphobia or something not to whatever but I Just didn&#39;t know what to do. So the next day we packed up my stuff, took me home and I think I signed up for at that point, one of the online platforms when you could get 30 minute sessions. I did that like as soon as I got home, because I was like, because I basically got into my apartment after he dropped me off and I just started falling. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>8:34</time> <p>Yeah, of course. Yeah, oh, Boy. So you signed up for one of what I like to call like the big box therapy places. How&#39;d that go? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>8:46</time> <p>It was interesting Because the first person that they assigned me to did not align with any of my Real like things that I was looking for. Right, I&#39;m not religious. They gave me somebody religious. They allow you to check all these boxes and go through and I&#39;m like this travel is important to me, these are my values, and it was basically like this person is in your geographical area, here you go and I&#39;m going. I&#39;m sure this person is a wonderful counselor, therapist. None of this aligns and I need someone that aligns with what I&#39;m looking for. So I said nope, I didn&#39;t even meet with the person. I just read their bio and I was like, nope, please give me a new one, cause it said it was 24 hours to assign you someone new and I&#39;m going. I want to get like, if I have to do this, I want to get through so I can actually find the person. So I just had to reject one and Heidi was my number two, after the first one that really missed, and I&#39;ve been seeing her and move from one of the big platforms to a second one as she transitioned and now here. So I&#39;ve been following her from platform to platform over the past few years. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>9:53</time> <p>And we&#39;re thrilled that you came with her to opacity. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>9:56</time> <p>Yeah. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>9:57</time> <p>It&#39;s been working pretty well. Yeah, that&#39;s awesome, all right. So you start working with Heidi and what starts coming out is like okay, this is what&#39;s really going on Like. So, basically, talk to us about what was underneath the waterline of the iceberg. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>10:14</time> <p>I really struggle asking for what I need and speaking up for myself, which is really funny because I am incredibly outspoken, direct and demanding in the work environment, almost sometimes to a fault. But in my personal life I can be incredibly accommodating and I bend over backward and I allow behavior or allowed behavior past tense here. That wasn&#39;t okay. Nothing that I&#39;d say that endangered myself, let&#39;s be very clear. But from an emotional health communication standpoint, I was in relationships with people where I mean I had one ex-boyfriend of mine that I can&#39;t remember actually sitting and having a meaningful conversation with. I don&#39;t remember what we talked about. He was so afraid to talk about the future and I was so afraid to even bring it up or ask that we dated for 18 months and at the end of it. I was like well no idea what happened in that relationship. So a lot of what I worked on with Heidi and have worked on with Heidi over time has been around relationships and speaking up for myself and understanding what&#39;s a me thing and what&#39;s a them thing, right. This is a need for me and how, recognizing what I can ask for and should ask for, and standing up for myself, and that makes it sound perhaps more aggressive than the way that I actually do it, but it&#39;s more so. Hey, this is the way I like to be communicated with. This is what I&#39;m looking for, these are my priorities and do you? Can you meet that or not? And that&#39;s been something that has taken a lot of time, and I did a lot of dating during COVID, which was an adventure and a half, and learned a lot about myself through that process. But since starting therapy and working on looking for what, asking for what I need peace it&#39;s helped. So I&#39;ll give you an example. Since then, I&#39;ve gone through two. Since I started therapy, I was in one job until about August of 2021 and I&#39;m now in a second job. Since then, each one has dramatically increased my income and my position within the company. Level of responsibility, number of people reporting to me and the feedback from my colleagues once I got into therapy was so much more positive during my reviews. So therapy&#39;s not just helped me in my relationships, but also helped me to just be an easier person to work with as I work through my own stuff in therapy. It&#39;s had impacts on the way I interact with my family when I go home to see them at the holidays. I&#39;m no longer this prickly demanding sort of like stressed out human with my family. I figured out things that can really help me interact with them Board games amazing thing instead of sitting in front of the television when you go home at the holidays. Thank you, heidi, among other things. But like, essentially since starting therapy, my relationships with my family have improved, with my actual romantic relationships, and then also work environment has improved. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>13:27</time> <p>What was going on? That you could be outspoken at work but not at home? What did you learn was sort of driving that disconnect there. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>13:35</time> <p>So my mom is somebody who I love her dearly, but she doesn&#39;t set boundaries with anyone. You know, if there&#39;s something that they need, if there&#39;s something that they want, if there&#39;s somebody that needs help, my mom is always there and always giving and that works for her. And that was what I had modeled Give and don&#39;t ever say no and don&#39;t set boundaries and take on a lot of guilt. And I refused to do that and it took me a while to realize that that was the piece that I needed to figure out was setting those boundaries, the saying no, that doesn&#39;t work for me, and once I could figure out how to do that for me, the language with those that I set boundaries with is typically not this is a boundary of mine. I&#39;m not quite that clear cut because that just doesn&#39;t work for me, but it&#39;s the saying you know, if you&#39;re not going to be someone who speaks to me and treats me well, or if this is a thing that you&#39;re going to do in my romantic relationship, that&#39;s not going to work for me, right? Instead of just saying, well, it&#39;s totally fine if I only see him on Wednesdays and for dinner and Friday, saturday, sunday, and he never comes over to my place and he insults my cooking. And now I&#39;m going. Oh hell&#39;s no guys. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>15:01</time> <p>Yeah right. So just to pause for one second and I know this is probably going to date me but in the 80s, for those of us that were school kids, then there was this drug campaign that says just say no. Massive, massive failure. Why we didn&#39;t teach kids how to just say no right, because you don&#39;t want to be the dork that&#39;s over there like, no, I&#39;m not doing drugs. Yeah, so it failed. So I say that to say, did in your work with Heidi, did she teach you sort of the art of expressing your boundary without saying, okay, here&#39;s my boundary. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>15:38</time> <p>Is it weird if I&#39;d say it was a combination of Heidi and a dating coach that I went to? </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>15:44</time> <p>No, that&#39;s awesome to say that. Tell us more. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>15:47</time> <p>Heidi, at one point, when I was bemoaning my like upteenth you know hinge bumble, matchcom, online arranged date thing was like why don&#39;t you try a matchmaker? I was like what are you talking about? Are you kidding me? Initially, my response was the same one as when my mom told me to go to therapy. I was like nope, not for me. Just because I was like that sounds expensive, it sounds crazy, whatever. Except at one point I was like I&#39;m bored, it&#39;s January and I have nothing to do and I&#39;m just going to let this up. So one of the things with matchmakers is you can fill out a profile to go be part of their database. Okay, so I did that. I was like low stress, totally free, maybe they&#39;ll call you. They&#39;ve got somebody in their network that&#39;s looking for somebody that matches my profile, okay, fine. And then I reach out to this other, this dating coach, who is actually a matchmaker here in the DC area, and at that point she was running a dating boot camp. So imagine a group of about five to 10 women online. You meet for a couple hours every Tuesday night over Zoom and you&#39;re given advice about dating and you&#39;re hearing also other people&#39;s stories. So almost probably what I imagine a group therapy session is like, where you&#39;re both giving your own examples of how things are, going sideways and listening to theirs and going oh honey, why did you do that? And so what&#39;s funny is we had to go through multiple different exercises with the dating coach to essentially say here are my seven to 10 things that I&#39;m looking for. And we got coaching around what does that list look like and what are the things that I&#39;m not going to accept? So one of the ones that was, if I&#39;m remembering correctly and I could pull up the list, but I&#39;m not going to worry about it right now but basically it was something like I want someone who&#39;s financially secure and emotionally available. That was the number one thing on the list of wants that we had to put down. And then it was things like I will not date a smoker, I will not date someone who, whatever, and essentially writing out our sort of things that we will not accept. And then the things that we were looking for and it was things we were looking for was not like I&#39;m looking for somebody who&#39;s six foot two and goes to the gym five days a week and has a job that makes over $200,000. That&#39;s not what the list of wants was about. It was about what are their values and what are the like. I want someone who travels. You know, for some people it was. I want someone who wants to raise a family or is a dog person or who knows what, and, weirdly for me, the thing that was different about the dating coach versus therapy was your therapist will sort of herd you toward a thing or a decision or a like aha moment. Versus the dating coach, you&#39;d be like this guy sent me a really weird text message and I don&#39;t know how to respond and she would, I kid you not, draft it for you, put it in the Zoom chat and then make you send it to him right there on the on the call Right, and so it was far more directed, like you will say and where, and do this versus a therapist who was sort of trying to get you there but looking for you to make your own way down that path. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>19:12</time> <p>So you found the way to make your way down the path, and it was to get a teacher. Yeah, because it&#39;s that way. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>19:20</time> <p>Throughout my time with Heidi. When I wanted to go look for a new job, I went and found a job search coach so that really worked for me. When I got a job and I was like I need help figuring out what I need to be doing about my retirement, my investments and everything else, I went to a financial advisor and when I was like, okay, online dating has been all over the place, let&#39;s fix this, I went to a dating coach. So part of it for me was okay, if I go to an expert to help me figure something out, it really makes a difference. Who else expert-wise is out there? Let me go find them, because each one of those opportunities and I recognize and privilege to my ability to do that right, but each one of those coaches or advisors has really made an impact in my life. Also, they&#39;ve all been women, which is really important to me as well Meeting that person with that similar experience that can guide me through my decision-making process or help me along the way. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>20:27</time> <p>So where are you at today with everything? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>20:30</time> <p>So, right at the tail end of my dating coaching journey, after having gone through, I was probably doing I&#39;d probably say three to five dates a week for three months, which is exhausting. Dating is a numbers game. At this stage in our lives, folks, if anyone tells you differently, they&#39;re really lying. But I met somebody in early May of 2022 and we&#39;re moving in together next month, so congratulations, thank you. So it was really important because both of us have spent a fair amount of time in therapy. We were pretty open about communicating our feelings, boundaries, things that are important to us. One of the things that his therapist suggested at one point was a relationship check-in every week and that sent me in a really nutty spiral because it was just an opportunity to sort of pick at each other. And then I took that sort of spiral to Heidi and she&#39;s like let me see if I can find you a framework. So it was this like weird sort of exchange of his therapist suggestion and my therapist&#39;s framework that finally worked. So we actually do relationship check-ins every week, put it down for 15, 20 minutes and answer a couple of questions and see how we&#39;re doing. And that&#39;s not something I&#39;ve ever done in a relationship and it&#39;s really powerful because it&#39;s not the. There&#39;s fewer things that become big things because we talk about them when they&#39;re still little. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>21:57</time> <p>So, to bring it all full circle, you started therapy because you had somebody that just completely internally retreated and you blamed yourself. But then in therapy you recognized I&#39;m not actually speaking up for myself To now dating somebody that essentially, in the beginning at least, requires you to speak up for at least 15 minutes a week about, specifically, the relationship. That&#39;s incredible. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>22:25</time> <p>Yeah, and he pushed for it and I was scared, but mostly because I was like I don&#39;t know what this is going to be like. I don&#39;t want this to be. I don&#39;t want this to be something that you know well. I&#39;m really upset that you didn&#39;t support me when I said this, and it&#39;s like that doesn&#39;t work for me, because in those scenarios I can oftentimes get emotionally flooded, right when my heart rate just spikes and I can&#39;t hear a thing. So having a couple of questions and I think one of them is what&#39;s something that we want to celebrate in our relationship, and then the follow up question is what&#39;s something that we need to work on to strengthen our relationship, and coming at it from that perspective allowed me to sort of get past that emotional flooding that I can&#39;t hear anything. Peace, because it&#39;s focused not so much on will. You said this and hurt my feelings, which is what happened the first times we, a couple of times we did our relationship check-in to. You know, one of the things that I want to focus on to strengthen our relationship is, you know, talking about our sex life more right and coming at it from that direction instead of the, instead of it being. We aren&#39;t having enough sex, it&#39;s. I want to focus on talking about this more together, and that&#39;s a whole lot easier way for me personally to come at it versus the use you statements right. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>23:57</time> <p>And so, just to sort of finish up, how do you now frame that original relationship where he retreated to himself? In the beginning you were saying, oh my goodness, what I do, what I do to cause him to act like this. How are you framing it now? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>24:13</time> <p>With a lot more empathy towards whom. Him and myself Myself, because I didn&#39;t have all the tools that. I have now. I thought it was a me thing and it was him thing. Right, looking back on it, I can see his entire structure and coping strategies and the things that he did to keep himself sane healthy sort of grounded. He didn&#39;t have those. He wasn&#39;t able to work out. He wasn&#39;t able to go outside. He was the kind of person during COVID that would go downstairs in his building to pick up the groceries, would come back in. All the groceries had to be wiped down and left by the front door for 24 hours and he changed his clothes and took a shower and that was a lot to be around. But that&#39;s what he thought he needed to do to cope. And for me, I&#39;m just like I sort of got indoctrinated into thinking that that was just okay and what we had to do to get through it. And, looking back at it, I&#39;m going. Covid March 2020 was a scary time, but that was a lot and that wasn&#39;t something that I was. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>25:20</time> <p>that I was not driving that particular bus yeah, you can really see the anxiety his anxiety being sort of the third person in the relationship that then altered the entire relationship Right. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>25:33</time> <p>And I and for me him shutting down, not communicating. I thought that was my fault. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>25:41</time> <p>And it wasn&#39;t. So. There&#39;s more empathy towards yourself as well, and boundaries around. I&#39;ll pick that up, but I&#39;m not picking that up. Yeah, I&#39;ll own this about myself, but I&#39;m not owning that. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>25:55</time> <p>Yeah, you know, I look back at myself and I&#39;m glad I. I mean, I cracked a tooth during COVID. In my sleep I was grinding my jaw because I was so stressed and I cracked a tooth. So going, going to get oral surgery in the middle of in May of 2020, during the middle of COVID was an adventure, Let me tell you. But like that is this, that is the stress that I took on Right, Thinking that there was something I could do to fix him, to fix the relationship, to make two people in a 650 square foot apartment, when one isn&#39;t communicating and one is desperate to communicate, work, just have a conversation. There wasn&#39;t anything that I was going to be able to do to fix him. I had to focus on me. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>26:42</time> <p>Well, but also the first relationship killer that there is is when one decides to be a fixer, because then it stops being a partnership and it becomes a little bit parentified, and then everything just plummets after that because it did not sort of a hierarchy. Congratulations on what seems to be coming full circle and getting what you wanted out of it, which is a loving, meaningful, Sounds to me like a relationship with somebody who&#39;s emotionally available, non-smoker, who&#39;s also financially secure. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>27:19</time> <p>Yeah, yeah, those pieces are important but, yeah, it&#39;s been a real learning process. My current relationship hasn&#39;t been easy, but the upside is I have the tools and the support and the commitment from him and myself to work on that. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>27:35</time> <p>Thank you so much for taking the time to share and the vulnerability to share and just letting us in on a little bit of what&#39;s been going on with you. I really appreciate it. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>27:47</time> <p>Happy to. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>27:48</time> <p>Thank you. If therapy&#39;s had a profound impact on your life and you&#39;d like to talk about it, we&#39;d love to hear from you. Email me at Shannon at 90834podcastcom. Hey, listener, I have a secret for you. Heidi, the therapist referenced in today&#39;s podcast is on staff here at Eprisity Expat Therapy. If you&#39;re not content with the relationship that you currently have with your therapist, or you&#39;re new to therapy, check out Eprisity Expat Therapy specifically, heidi. She has immediate availability and is licensed in Colorado, virginia and Wisconsin, meaning that if you&#39;re an ex-patriot, she can definitely see you. If you are currently located in any of those states, she can also see you. We also have other therapists on staff that have immediate availability as well. Check us out at EprisityExpatTherapycom. </p>