Things You Learn in Therapy
Things You Learn in Therapy
Ep166: When High Achievement Hides Emotional Burnout
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Success can be a brilliant strategy and a brutal one. When you’re wired for performance, you can push through pain, outwork exhaustion, and even “do therapy” like it’s another assignment. But what happens when the grind starts costing you sleep, intimacy, health, and the ability to feel anything at all?
We sit down with Dr. Akua K. Boateng to unpack the high achiever mindset and the emotional blind spots it can create. We talk about harmony instead of balance, why harmony has no metric, and how surrendering the constant striving can bring you back to a grounded center that’s already there. We also explore how ambition can operate as a defense or even a trauma response, making slowing down feel like a threat rather than relief.
From a therapist’s perspective, we get practical: why high performers can excel at CBT homework while still avoiding emotional discovery, how to work collaboratively without getting dazzled by proficiency, and when it helps to name the neuroscience in real time (amygdala activation, chronic limbic override, prefrontal cortex coming back online). We also zoom in on body-based signals like insomnia, high blood pressure, fatigue, forgetfulness, and volatility as early “micro-fractures” worth investigating before everything collapses.
If you’re a high performing professional, caregiver, athlete, or leader who’s quietly cracking, this conversation offers language and strategies for emotional wellness without losing your edge. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with the biggest “that’s me” moment you heard.
This podcast is meant to be a resource for the general public, as well as fellow therapists/psychologists. It is NOT meant to replace the meaningful work of individual or family therapy. Please seek professional help in your area if you are struggling. #breakthestigma #makewordsmatter #thingsyoulearnintherapy #thingsyoulearnintherapypodcast
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health concerns, please contact 988 or seek a treatment provider in your area.
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Feel free to share your thoughts at www.makewordsmatterforgood.com or email me at Beth@makewordsmatterforgood.com
www.bethtrammell.com
Welcome And Guest Preview
SPEAKER_02Hello, listener, welcome back. I'm your host, Dr. Buster Mount, and I am glad you're here today. This is Things You Learn Therapy, and I am so grateful to get the privilege, really, to just come and share with you and really spend time with and share space with such amazing people. And my guest today is one of those folks who is back to talk with us again today. And I'm just thrilled. I can't wait for y'all to hear about her wisdom. As you know, I am a psychologist and professor of psychology at Indiana University East, where I am mostly training graduate students, but also undergrad students in psychology. I love teaching, I love training, I love speaking. I just got back from a conference actually in early childhood and just love connecting with folks. And in this space, I also love talking and sharing with other brilliant therapists and psychologists. And my guest today, Dr. Akia Blatten, is here to uh share about high achieving folks and all that goes in with uh that emotional wellness finding and being aware of blind spots. And um I kind of shared earlier that I am a little bit, I have to say, like I don't get too nervous about too many of these episodes. But this episode is, it does have me just a little bit like, oh, this one might touch pretty close to home. So I'm I'm nervous, but very excited about this conversation. And so thank you for saying yes to being here, um, Dr. Akua Boaten, for um saying yes. And so can you introduce yourself and tell us something fun that is either about you or going on with you?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yes. Well, thank you for having me, uh, Beth. I think it's always um such sweet communion, you know, when we talk, you know, it feels like there's no like lead up. We just jump right in. Yeah. Yes. I love that. Like an old friend, like, hey, yes, talk to me, like what's going on, you know? Yes. Um, so it's really great to kind of be back with you and then also your community. Um, yeah, I am excited about a lot of things. I am excited to currently be in the sun. Thank God. Seriously. Yeah, I am excited about just the possibility of the work that I'm doing. I feel it deeply that, you know, there are folks that are in need of a safe space, uh, are in need of language and model and intervention. And uh I feel like I've stumbled on some good things, and that always makes me feel excited. I have been able to get to the beach a few more times uh this year, and that gets me excited too. Like when we're starting out the year near water, I feel like this is gonna be good. Yeah, and just really finding my way towards um harmony, not balance, not the right strategy, but just this harmonious center that I am not striving for, but yielding to, um, surrendering to. So that's what that's me, that's where I am, and yeah, it feels good.
SPEAKER_02I already just need to stop. I mean, I just from the first time that you came on, like that you just have such presence. And y'all listening, I hope you can just feel. I mean, you can just feel you, and the way you talk about things, I'm like, I am here for that. And talk to me about this idea of harmony, not balance.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So harmony really, um, there is no metric around harmony, it is an essence, a felt experience. It's very qualitative, it's very intuitive. No one can really track harmony, right? And I think that is really by design, um, that we all have our own felt sense of peace and good enoughness in the moment that we can everything in our being can kind of just relax. We've got it. It's enough. This feels just about right. It could be our relationship, it could be our inner sense of self, it could be where we are in work, it could be with our children, it could be with our friends, it could be where we are in this season or decade of our life. Like, yeah, it's about it's it's good. I'm good. Everything is not settled, it hasn't been fixed, but there is a kind of felt synergy and and kind of um flow state-ish experience of life that we can get to, and that's the harmony.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. When you said there is no metric around harmony, I mean, I have to tell you, I had this reaction in my body. I like feel that in my soul. This idea of there's no striving to achieve it. And what I love about what you said, and I want to, I want to bring it back because of how how important I think it is, is you said you're surrendering to this harmonious grounding or centraling. Um, and that suggests it's already in you.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Right. I mean, that's the part that I love about just this first two minutes of our conversation, which is that harmony already exists and it it's available to us through surrendering the striving.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, absolutely, that is my belief. I really do believe that we know that all disease, right, is created from this resistance, this striving, this kind of like out of the natural flow and state that we're trying to pull ourselves out of, pull ourselves back from, um, or into, right? And so there's this kind of center space that it's absence of disease disorder, it's absence of um to-dos. Yeah. That is um yeah, it's kind of a refuge, you know.
SPEAKER_02So I love that we're starting here because where we're going is to talk about this high achieving mindset. Yeah, which perhaps a listener or two might be like, wait a minute, how do those two things go together? Right? How do I surrender to this thing, this like essence of me while also having this high achieving, ambitious sort of mindset? And so, you know, how did you come to doing some of this work that you've been doing recently? And then we'll kind of step into like, why is that important or why does that matter? Let's start there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. I am like a self-professed high achiever. Raise the hand, me too. I'm just I know it. I know it's coming. And high achiever, high performer, kind of similar in that what that really means is I am driven and fueled by success, and I have fully committed to that strategy as a way of life. That pursuit of excellence, that pursuit of a goal is chief in my mind. Okay. And so I think I can recognize, and I have been able to recognize um some of these attributes in myself. And so it was really interesting when I became a therapist and started doing work with folks that we and someone might listening, might understand this, that we begin to attract type of clientele.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
The Performance Mindset And Costs
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And we we do that, and um, that's not by accident. I don't believe that. And so I started seeing folks that have this mentality that they're just really excellent. They've been able to buckle down in school and get really fancy degrees, or they've been able to do um really, really great work in the creative space, or they've been able to pierce through the pain of like physical demands to become a professional athlete, or they've been able to um ascend to be top of their class, top of their family, top of society, top of everything. And yet there is this really kind of shadowy thing that follows that I've been able to see is a through line throughout the clients that I have seen and see. And I believe it is a mindset. It is the mindset on a certain uh way of life that is believed to be uh necessary, a personality, it is perceived to be what is required of that person, what they are applauded for, and it's their ability to bypass their emotional experience in service of the goal.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Um, we gotta unpack that a little.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Talk to me a little bit about how you see that showing up for folks.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So what does that look like? That looks like, you know, um many of my clients, well, maybe it's helpful to tell some more lived experiences. How does that actually play out? Right. So for the professional, this is the person that um is top of their field again, and they may work long hours, they are really um able to do it. They have language that is like, I'm built for this, they are the doctor, they are the lawyer, they are the teacher, they are the eldest daughter, right? They are the executive that can take the long wear and tear of their professional life, but in their personal life, it can, their personal life can be sacrificed for that, right? So in the relationships, they might be the people person that's snapping at their kids. They might be the person that has a hard time with intimacy and vulnerability, they are the person that um can, you know, do their very, very best to stay for that 80-hour week, but sitting in a therapy session feels really, really difficult.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00They are quietly cracking at work, but they will never say so. Sure. They are chronically stressed, prone to burnout, wired to push through the pain. Emotional numbness becomes their kind of everyday experience. But it has effects.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So they either consciously or subconsciously accepted this emotional sacrifice in exchange for real or perceived success, right?
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes, because when we think about success, it's really our kind of ultimate emotional actualization, right? When we think about things as a kid, oh, I wanted to be a fireman, oh, I want to be this. It's the perceived lived experience of that person that we're trying, we're online with as a kid.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's not necessarily the like, yeah, it's the cool stuff they get to do, but it's maybe the freedom that they have to do cool things, or it could be they seem so like powerful, and like power, power feels really helpful. You know, those are the things that we're really uh striving towards, right?
SPEAKER_02So we have these folks who are they're wired for performance. They're wired for performance, they're wired for performance, and in some ways, I'm just curious, what is it that might be a reason that they would amidst the quiet cracking network, the chronic stress, the burnout? How does this person see the path, or do they see a path toward even better version of themselves?
When Therapy Becomes Another Performance
SPEAKER_00Hmm. Well, I think this is where really where the I was finding the gap, right? In the therapeutic models, because um, this is also the person that can do really well in therapy. Yeah, they're like the best client. Yeah, right. And so they're the ones that are gonna undertake and become the like Pilates champions, they're the ones that are gonna be in the CrossFit and like win happen into awards, right? Um, and so they can do really well, they can journal every week, they can perform because they're wired for performance, they can perform health, yeah. And so oftentimes in the therapeutic spaces, the gap is that we may not see the performance, or we may see their ambition not necessarily as a symptom, right? And so they can really fly under the radar, yeah. And also often, depending on the therapist, we can be pretty impressed with that. Sure. Right? We're so impressed with that we don't question it.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Well, it's interesting, and I don't know if you would go this far. I'm curious if you would. Is their performance, you know, isn't a symptom, but like could a therapist interpret it when seen through this lens as a form of resistance?
SPEAKER_00Say more about that. How are you thinking about resistance in this situation?
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm just thinking, you know, clients come in with various types of resistance to the therapy process. And sometimes it's yeah, you know, blatant resistance to I don't want to answer that question, but then sometimes it's this subconscious resistance to the therapy process, which does involve less performance, messier, you know, the word we were talking about earlier in the work is excavating and excavating slowly and the process takes time. And so I think about some of these folks that are wired for performance, they know the thing to say and do, they're good at a lot of things.
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02And I think resistance, I don't want to make resistance sound like a bad thing here, but I just wonder if their performance or their like doing everything right is a subtle form of like, and again, I don't know that it's intentional, but even just subconscious. Yeah, I'm gonna do this the way I do everything else. Whereas sometimes therapy feels like I don't know exactly how to do this, but I know we have to uncover some things and we have to sit with some things and we have to be uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I don't know. As I ramble about that, what's what comes to mind for you then?
SPEAKER_00So I uh resistance potentially also I I hear defense, possibly. I'm probably my training, but yeah, absolutely. Uh this is a defense, it is a defensive strategy, very largely unconscious, yeah, because it it's working.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
Ambition As Defense And Trauma Response
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah. So defenses be become trip problematic when they're not working, but it's working really well, right? Um, some might, depending on the situation, it see it as a trauma response, right? So the ambition can be a trauma response, right? And that's really the population that I'm working with that my drive is really uh wrapped up in my childhood narratives and and kind of adaptive strategies. Um, but in the work, slowing down is a threat.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00Unraveling is a potential threat to this survival mechanism. Um, and so absolutely there's resistance to that. We're trying to kill their life ref, right? And so that needs to be done delicately, even if the exterior feels really tough. Like I deal with a lot of pain, I deal with a lot of issue. And so it may seem as though I can like tough it through vulnerability, but no, there might be even a deeper sense of sensitivity and tenderness around vulnerability and slowing down and listening to the self and preferring emotional discovery. That is really it is shaped within their alarm system in their limbic in their limbic experience, quite literally.
SPEAKER_02Yes. I mean, I know when you said wired for performance, that wasn't figurative language.
SPEAKER_00No, there's neuroscience here, like it's a real thing.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah. I mean, I think you keep talking about kind of this gap, and I I think about the level of well, in my mind, I'm thinking two things, and maybe you will share or correct me altogether, but the level of trust and the therapeutic relationship required um working with this particular population, but also the nuance of seeing uh them slightly differently than some other subset populations, right? And so I'm curious if those things resonate with you in terms of working with this population, but then also are there other gaps that you're seeing or differences perhaps around working with this particular population, also?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um, you know, I think one of those is possibly a gap I I had in my own early practice, right? That um really feeling like certain models would be helpful for folks, like a CBT model can be performed really well. That's right. Um I can do my homework. I can I can do these are the folks that will do the they will do it, they will actually find podcasts for you. That's right. Give you referrals to specialties that you didn't know about. They will find neuroscience and tell you about it that you didn't know, right? So it's hilarious. You know, and also this is also a population that is really educated, yes, and so some of the things that feel really important and simplistic around our work may not really resonate. Yeah, and so being able to have a mixture of that with some immediacy, with some disclosure mixed in becomes really helpful. So I might actually describe the neuroscience of something, right? Like the fourth wall of therapy that we may not often do. Like I'm doing what am I doing? I'm not gonna say what I'm doing typically, right? But in with with clients in this population, I might do that.
SPEAKER_02That's right.
SPEAKER_00Right. I might really talk about the process a bit more and liken it. I find myself likening it to their work quite a bit. And so we're really working as collaborators in moments. We are working as, depending on the the the dynamic, we're working as like high-level strategists together.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_00Right. That I might actually break down what a chronic chronic limbic override is. I might talk about the amygdala, I might. Draw that back in moments when I see it being activated in session. But then specifically with coaching clients, where we're not doing the deep dive of that, I might do that as or offer that as something to munch on. Right. And so yeah, that might be something that you go and research for the next week. And let's collaborate on like, how do you see that showing up in your work here? And then how do we drop back into the tenderness piece of this? Um, so it's a balance of bringing them into the education of it while also being the recipient of it. So it's really delicate, but also important. And I see that to be possibly a gap in some folks. There's a reason why they chose you. And some of it is because of what they perceive that you are.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And it's okay to maybe give that a little bit to them.
SPEAKER_02I love this, and I wrote down being like a humble expert that you know you have to have a certain level of humility because there are going to be areas where they might be more expert than you as the therapist.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Right. And I think there are some therapists who that might not go well. I guess I'll just say it that way. Um, but then also, I mean, I think when you work with high achieving, high performing, highly successful clients, I think you also have to be, you I mean, you have to know stuff. I mean, you have to be an expert. You know, they're not coming just to, you know, corner therapist person, right? I mean, you just have to have and and to your point, I mean, I think there is, I often tell my graduate students this that therapy is so much about who you are and who you are, who you are as a therapist and who you are as a person, because it's hard to like put on a whole different personality when you step into the therapy room. And so there are obviously polished versions that you present, and there are certain aspects of the professional life, but people feel you, people just kind of get a sense of you, and they do. I I actually think that's why you're so successful in this work, because I think you do this just just it's just who you are, queer. It's just who you are.
SPEAKER_00And that I think thank you for saying that. I think it that's important. Yeah. It's important because to be able to be in the in in the work that you're doing sometimes, you know, uh to be able to pierce through all of the proficiency to see the lack and pain is really difficult unless you have seen it quite a bit, you've experienced it yourself because it's really compelling. It's really compelling. And the there is a perception that there actually nothing actually will work, or it's just as a therapist, you can feel stalled out because I have clin clients that work 80 hours a week and that's not actually that's not a joke.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
Doing Less To Create Space
SPEAKER_00Um yeah. And so they are actually telling you, I cannot do that journaling thing because I've got a bill how many hours in the next, I've got court in 48 hours. I've got, I've got, you know, it literally, there's no space. It the perception is there is no space for intervention. And so potentially a gap would be this person's not ready for therapy, quote unquote. This person is not a good candidate, there's just no space. I don't know what to do with that. And yet they've come to you not to perform through or to um derail therapy in in some ways they do, but um to to be able to see see past the I don't have space to yes, you do, I think takes some work. I've had to learn how to do that. I am still learning how to do that. Um, how do I ask someone that has a great deal on their plate to do more? And how I do that is I ask them to do less.
SPEAKER_02And how do you convince them to do that when their brain is wired for performance?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, absolutely. That's the struggle. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So on the coaching side, it is to make a really good case for it. Yeah. Uh-huh. So you need to have a really good case for it. Lots of research, lots of, you know, um proficiency in being able to say why it's a good idea.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then on the other side, sometimes people don't, they won't know that until they break, and then they'll come to me and that makes sense. That's fine too. And then on the the therapy side, it's like a long game. It's the long game of like, there's these small fractures everywhere that I keep seeing, right? Like it feels like you can hold the weight, and I believe you, and I believe that you're trying and you're doing a really good job. You're even an expert at it, um, above average. And yet, I don't know, but I think I see some fractures. Would it be worth it to investigate them? Absolutely. I don't want this whole thing to like collapse on me, right? And so let's investigate some of the fractures that brought you to me, because I think you know. Yeah, so there's work in being able to do this long game of excavation of being able to see them as an using externalization often to like see it as a problem that we can look at before we kind of turn that into an experience that you have lived through and are stuck in.
SPEAKER_02You know, I'm wondering too, if again, this gap of how we typically see therapy, how we typically see kind of this work, I and I know I have practiced this way, and so I'm curious if you're seeing this as another one of those areas. Not all therapy has to be weekly 60 minutes therapy. I began to have this question about okay, so you can't meet because you've got court next week, you can't meet this week or next week. Can the slow work still happen outside of this weekly 8 to 12 sessions, blah, blah, blah, blah, model, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Sometimes it's intensive, sometimes it's a few hours on the weekend. It could be um, you know, yes, we can, there are a lot, lots of ways to do it. Um, but to pierce through the preferential treatment of the grind, there needs to be a moment where you choose the emotional experience over the grind. So what I would say in that situation is yes, we can do an intensive vote at the weekend, we can do 45, we can do a 30-minute session, we can do all of those things. However, I'm gonna I'm going to really gently affirm that we need to do something. Right. And so, um, yes, you have court in a few days. And so I'd love to talk for you, talk to you for 30 minutes as you're eating.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_00Or um, I think what would be helpful is as you are, you know, preparing your brief or as you are going through charts or as you're doing this, that we change the environment. Like something's got to give. The existing structure cannot remain intact. Yeah. Right. And so what I'd love for you to do is I want you to change the environment of where you're doing your notes. I want you to go and sit on the patio, and I want you to choose a playlist, and I want you to take some water, and I want you to do it that way. And we're going to talk about what it felt like when you did it that way. Right. Or we may say, um, you've got a long day, you're not going to get out of court till probably 7 p.m. You can't really do therapy. So we're going to meet at eight on your drive home. And we're just going to talk about what the experience was like today. Period. And so it really begins to weave in. That's what the emotional wisp uh uh emotional wellness in the mist of ambition looks like. It be akins this kind of integration, weaving through, breaking down the preferential treatment of the grind or ambition to infuse this idea of self.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00To take away the strategy of self-abandonment in order to meet a goal. Like I really want you to begin thinking about yourself as you're doing this thing. And that can historically not necessarily feel like progress in therapy for some therapists, right? Yeah. But they're not actually doing the journaling thing, right? Like, no, they're not. And they actually might still believe that doing it this way is the best way. But we certainly are experimenting with other ways. And most importantly, we're bringing back this level of emotional actualization as a potential part of the goal. We're bringing online this prefrontal cortex. We are giving the amygdala a slight break. Right. And I feel like life in this portion, this top middle portion of your brain is so compelling that we don't have to evangelize why the change needs to happen. The proof is in the pudding. Right. Like I just, man, I I I slept so well after we talked on the phone. Like it was so late, but I'm like, why did I sleep? Think about that.
Emotional Blind Spots And Body Signals
SPEAKER_02And I love this idea that you shared about like we are not going to continue to abandon self. I wonder too about this idea of emotional blind spots.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That, you know, it seems logical that it would naturally kind of follow along this, you know, when they have to sort of put aside emotions to achieve this goal, or you know, lots of goals along over time, it doesn't mean that emoting stops. Emoting is always happening. It's just that we have learned to sort of suppress them or reorient them or whatever that looks like. And so, you know, how does that sort of show up for folks like this?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So that's why I kind of um felt it really important. I think I've always worked in a holistic way, but you know, starting from the medicine side and then moving to the psychology side, um, I can't help but think about that the the body, mind-body connection. And so in a holistic way typically helps with that. We start looking at things that might be slipping. We may not call them emotional blind spots, but we might say there are things that are not going so well. Like, wow, you're really, your your health is declining a bit, or yeah, your doctor is saying that your, you know, cholesterol numbers, your high, you've got high blood pressure now. Wow, like what let's talk about that a little bit. Or yeah, insomnia, right? And and you're having body aches, right? So let's talk about how the body is breaking down and showing you signs of that, those micro fractures. And let's investigate what that could potentially be. What is this body showing us, right? You know, other ways of being able to manage that, uh obviously through the performance strategies of like control and overfunctioning and perfectionism, which is bound to have lots of mistakes and fractures and issues. And so talk to me about the four things that you forgot last week that your colleague was like, What's going on? Um, or the ways that you had no idea that it was your child or your mom's birthday, completely lost it, not even tracking. There are things that are slipping, and these are connected to emotional blind spots, right? The inability to unguard the challenges with identifying how you're feeling, what emotions are coming up, the ways that you your body can't rest at night. It's just kind of churning and churning and churning. Um, the fatigue, the hollowness, the zombiness is what I talk about sometimes. You feel hollow, like when you had a bunch of caffeine and you haven't slept, you know, that's like zombie. Right. So these are blind spots, right? The you know, emotional lability, you're all over the place, you're volatile, you're kind of yelling at cars driving past you. You're, you know, like hey, you're breaking down a bit, you know. Um hopefully that was your question, but really it's connected to this soul-ish experience of being that kid early in life that felt like you could solve the dysfunction.
SPEAKER_02And that was your way of surviving.
SPEAKER_00And that was your way of surviving. If I can just control everything, if I I don't know how to down regulate. I don't even know what that means. Yeah, I don't know a life where I can downregulate. That's a threat. Yes. When I downregulated, when I got vulnerable, when I got tender, when I got soft, I was harmed.
The Language That Gets Through
SPEAKER_02I mean, and even some of these words you're using soft, tender, slow, I mean, even the language that you're using, even just in this episode, you know, I'm like just listening to the way that you're describing these things and how nuanced even your language is in describing these things, it matters so much. And I think there are different populations where this is definitely true and truer, where the way in which we describe what we what we see takes real intentionality.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_02And I think sometimes in training, and I think even for me, it's like you know, when we talk about interpretation from therapists, there's so much nuance. Because you said I might not call them emotional blind spots. No, right, exactly, right? And so I think knowing where I have to be technical and describing what's really happening, versus if I become in this lane where this is, you know, I hate the word kind of trigger words, but like certain people have like automatic responses to certain terms or language that become a minefield. And when you're working with a highly educated, high-performing population, you have to be really aware. Like it's just such an art form of this work. I really think that's true.
SPEAKER_00I I believe that too. I do. I what you're saying is very true. And I had to learn that. Most of the approach to our modern therapy, I should say, current modern therapy, is something that someone in this space would spit out. Yep. We want to understand the soft parts, we want to be tender, we want to have a safe space and safety, and like all of these things are very therapy words, therapy-based words, ways of describing the underbelly, which feels like a pretty big threat, and there's a rigidity around protection of that space. A lot of defensiveness and guardedness around that. To be honest, again, we've got to make a good case for why this is important.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because right now, I don't really see why. Both working pretty well.
SPEAKER_02Right. All the things you're saying, you know, that's for somebody else, not for me.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And also as practitioners, we could say the same thing. Maybe it's for someone else, not you. You're too guarded, you're too defensive, like you, like you don't have time. You that there's just so many barriers, and you're not right, quote unquote, for therapy. Um, or you're not right, quote unquote, for or ready for yeah, emotional discovery or expansion or something like that. But that may not be true. And so someone that again is not really impressed with how you're surviving, right? Or the awards or shininess around that can actually say, I don't think you are. I don't think you're winning. And let me tell you why. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's not what you feel when everything is gone.
SPEAKER_02Uh when we start to see things slipping and these tiny fractures. I mean, I just love the way you're sort of describing. I can imagine how those words become so real.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I hope so. I think folks have said that it is helpful, which is the guiding light for me. Yeah. But again, I'm still like a student of this. I'm still doing a lot of research on it and yeah, want to do a better job at being able to balance both and kind of hold both worlds.
Resources And Closing Thanks
SPEAKER_02So oh my. I I mean, I could just sit here and listen to you talk. I mean, I just could go on and on and tell folks how they can find you, reach out to you, work with you, learn about the things you're doing because you're doing you're doing cool stuff.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Um, I am at Dr. Akwea K. Boaten on all socials, I believe. Dr.Aquequia KWatin.com is my website. I am launching and kind of revamping my consulting firm, and I'm excited about that. That's coming this year, and uh announcements about how you can work with me in that way, um, including coaching programs, online community, a bunch of cool stuff is on the way.
SPEAKER_02You, I mean, you already have cool stuff, but I'm excited about what you have coming too. Thank you. Amazing, amazing. Thank you for being here. Listener, thank you for um tuning in. I know you got so many great nuggets for today. I know I did. And um, until next time, stay safe, stay well. Ciao.
