Why High-Achieving Therapists Develop Coping Behaviors: How the Primal Question Changed My Life

Now, don't stop the podcast because you're probably thinking, well, as a mental health therapist, why would I listen to this? Why would I listen to her story about how, you know, it helped her quit drinking alcohol? Well, because it really, I think, this is my opinion, I think that as mental health therapists, we all have this propensity.

You know, the job we have is very high stress.

And we all have this propensity to possibly become addicted to something, right? And It could be something benign, right, like doom-scrolling or whatever.

But either way, we live in a high-pressure, high-stress profession, where every day we are inundated with stories and truths and and really upsetting, scary, sometimes very graphic, upsetting things.

And we all have a very high empathy muscle.

You know, I know my empathy muscle is pretty strong.

And I've had to work hard to allow it time to rest.

And so I know that partially why I became dependent on alcohol was because I was trying to, well, I was trying to numb the pain, the pain that I heard, the pain that I was experiencing.

And a lot of people will ask me, well, were you an alcoholic? Would you say that you were an alcoholic? And I would say, I don't know.

is what I would say to that.

I know that I had a problem.

I never went to work drunk.

I didn't drink during the day.

I didn't do things like that.

But I do know that on a Thursday, on a Friday, on a Saturday, and sometimes even on a Sunday midday, I I would drink alcohol.

And if you know the facts about alcohol, you know that that probably is not, well, not probably, that isn't good for the body and mind.

And again, this is not a podcast today to tell me to stop drinking.

That is absolutely not what this is.

But this is a podcast today where I want to be vulnerable to about what I've been through as a mental health therapist so you, too, can know that there's space on the other side for all the hard stuff.

And I think, you know, Kathy and I talk so much.

We've made our share of mistakes.

And you have to make mistakes in order to learn.

I think the thing we want for all of our listeners is to help you maybe, to show you, to maybe show you some of the things that we didn't see.

and that we can see now.