​Looking to the New Year with Opportunities

I am always amazed how fast the time goes between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I love seeing a Christmas tree in the house with all the different lights. I am the one who hesitates to take the Christmas tree down until the very last day. There have been times I have been tempted to keep it up until the end of January. Those are the times I think that maybe the neighbors would wonder when, if ever, I had planned to take it down. As I sit here on January 11, 2017, I have to admit that I took the tree down on New Year’s Day. This year I resisted and decided to look at it as an opportunity to explore the emotions that might be underneath the resistance. The opportunity allowed me to discover and work through emotions that I had been feeling but not quite identified. What I had been feeling was a longing to hold on to a memory of Christmas past, when parents were still alive, and the childlike excitement of Christmas morning was still there. I think I discovered that keeping the Christmas tree up symbolized not letting go. What I experienced was, the same thing I ask of my clients. I ask them to sometimes sit with their emotions and try to figure out what might be at the root of the avoidance of them. I often frame it to them that they have an opportunity to change versus seeing it through a negative lens.

As I reflect on this group and the New Year, I think about new opportunities. I think about opportunities to help our clients discover things about themselves, just as I did. With that discovery, brings opportunity to change. I also think about the opportunities that we as a group have to educate and provide resources for our clients, who may be experiencing the loss of a child due to an abortion decision. Some of those clients will come to us with trauma symptoms, and we have to be prepared to not only assess for that, but to provide high quality evidenced based practice.

I also think of the opportunity that this group has this year in educating other therapists through trainings and workshops. We as a group can begin to look at providing CEU’s for therapists that need them to fulfill licensure requirements. I believe the more we educate other therapists as to how to do a proper assessment for trauma symptoms due to an abortion decision, the more likely clients will receive both the validation and mental health services they deserve. It is unfortunate that too often therapists see this issue also as a political or religious issues versus a mental health issue. Some therapists think that just asking about a previous abortion decision, would somehow send the message that they had an agenda, versus just being compassionate in asking. Many of these therapists choose to keep the question off their intake form and never do ask. I can’t tell you how many men and women who have come into my office and said, “Thank You” for asking. Often these clients had been to many different therapists for years.

I am excited about the opportunity we have as a group in 2017. Sometimes the work seems hard, and it can feel overwhelming. What I do know is that there are millions of clients who have experienced some form of trauma from an abortion decision, and deserve every minute of our hard work. The work that we do can help them receive the services they deserve. Even if we only train ten therapists this year, imagine the number of clients who can be helped. This opportunity is a blessing.