In 2019 I was making more money than I ever have in my life. Tr*mp, unsurprisingly, was terrible for mental health and therefore was good for business.
I said yes to everyone who called even if I barely had room for them. I counseled through my lunch break a couple of times a week. I stretched my hours. I squeezed old clients in when they called to come back. I tried to make room for new clients who’d been referred by their friends.
I went on vacation at the start of 2020 and came back to clients in big crisis (note: all details will be obscured! because confidentiality!) and it felt like vacation was not worth it.
(Here is a thing about therapists and vacation: If you take one you have to assign back up therapists for your most fragile clients and you have to go over their coping plans before you go and yes, you worry but try not to because it is, after all, vacation and only by taking a break can you keep up the pace. But you over schedule the week before to top everyone up and you over schedule the weeks you get back to make up for leaving and sometimes, frankly, vacation doesn’t seem worth it.)
So that was January 2020 and in February our oldest had a chest cold that he just couldn’t get rid of, I remember the second to last time we ate at a restaurant (at the beginning of March) that he was coughing so hard that we left dinner worried.
In March our youngest was on an overnight school trip and I started to feel anxious about her getting home. On Sunday we ate out at an Indian restaurant (a buffet! imagine!) and talked about how we needed to take our youngest there because the food was very good and she’d be annoyed we went without her.
I talked about covid before it was covid in my sessions with clients. I remember making the decision to go remote before we were told we had to. I remember feeling lucky that I’d paid for continuing ed in telehealth a year or so back (at the time I determined that it wasn’t a fit for me — oh the irony)! I had a better idea of what it might look like than my colleagues did and I was sharing what I could on our local therapist FB group. I already had a camera for my computer, I already had paperwork I could send out.
And so I did. Saturday would be the last day in my office and I figured, what, two weeks? We all thought that. I did an intake on that last day and we agreed that in-person would be better so we’d circle back in two weeks.
I never did end up seeing them again.
I thought about what was happening in Italy. I thought about the flu pandemic in 1918. I thought about the YA book I’d just read about yellow fever. I remember we sat Maddi down and talked about how it might look — that there would likely be supply chain issues, that it might feel scary. That we’d muddle through.
So Saturday was my last day in-office (Brett and Maddi were already told they’d be home for work and school respectively) and then Sunday the governor announced the curfew and that all non-essential businesses would be closing. I remember Brett and I were walking across a parking lot to cut through to our running route and I said, “Wow, it’s really happening. This is real.”
I felt determined. Scared and determined. We would do this thing.
I thought it would be worse. I also thought it would be better. Mostly I thought it would be different.
We were living in an apartment building and we decided we wouldn’t be riding the elevators anymore. I was afraid that our vents would put us in danger. We talked about what we would do if our building was put on quarantine — how would we walk the dogs? There was a medical clinic on the first floor of our building and that scared Brett.
I made masks out of bandanas. I went scouring the internet for other masks, too. I was obsessed with preparation and so I was always ahead of the curve. I felt an obligation to this because I was helping clients make decisions and I wanted to share what info I had, the varying opinions, hold space for them to come to their own conclusions.
When the two weeks was up — the two weeks to flatten the curve — some therapists started opening their offices back up because they were desperate. Not all of them were prepared to go online and so they’d just been sitting without income. I felt concerned about this and went looking for info.
Our professional organization was USELESS (I stopped being a member after covid — I am still mad about how little they did for us).
Our licensing board had no idea because it was a public health issue; they had no answers.
I started doing research about it myself and put together a training course. I got our local counseling organization to sponsor it because I’m not a CEU provider (and it costs money and takes time to become one). I said I wanted it to be free so that people would actually access it.
I footnoted the hell out of it — I didn’t give opinions, just info. I pulled out statements from official organizations like the Air Condition Contractors of America to talk about air filtration. I linked to the WHO and to the CDC and to our state info. I said, “This is what they say. These are the things to consider. Here is a reasonable thing to have folks sign. Here’s how to talk to your liability insurance. Here’s what to ask.”
I was proud of that course but also angry. Why was I the one doing it???
At the same time my clients were going off the rails. Not all of them, mind you! Again, no details, but some clients just came apart and I watched them tear at their loved ones, take risks that scared me, become more and more extreme in their views.
I heard about local conflicts from various perspectives — clients talking about each other and each other’s views without knowing that they were talking about each other. (Every town is a small town, ultimately.) I heard all sides; I could see all sides.
I saw how when people get scared, they get mean. I saw how when people are afraid for themselves they will throw each other under the bus. They will switch out their values, tie themselves into knots, give up what’s meaningful to drop into the relief of denial.
I watched friendships, relationships, whole communities fall apart. I watched people betray each other.
It was like this. Person A and Person B were part of group X. Group X made a rule that participants in Group X would abide by certain safety standards. Person A would talk about the relief at feeling safe in Group X because of standards. Meanwhile Person B would tell me how they were violating safety standards.
It’s the terror, right? It’s the way people scramble to cope. Person B needed Group X but also could not/would not abide by the standards. That would happen but I also got to see how Person B would twist themselves up to explain it.
“But it’s ME,” they’d say. “My reasons are more important. Other people should definitely abide by the safety rules but I need to break them.”
That was what I kept hearing, “But it’s ME. MY needs are an exception.”
It became so exhausting to try to figure out how to grow people through this. Like, how do we support the individual and also do our part to keep the community safe? Or is it our job to keep the community safe? And what to do about Person A who doesn’t know about Person B? What about when Person A and Person B start fighting about the standards? What about when they start tearing each other (the community) apart? What if I agree with Person A but also my agreement has no place in the therapeutic relationship? Where do I put my fear and anger? (Consultation is the answer — and my peer consultation group is the ONLY THING that got me through those years.)
I paid rent on my (unused) office for 18 months before I finally realized I wasn’t going back. Medicaid announced they would no longer pay the full amount for telehealth, knocking off $17 an hour for no reason except greed.
That’s when I seriously thought about what it would men to return to in-person.
I was jealous of the therapists who didn’t care or didn’t belief it was unsafe. I wanted to be back in person but I also didn’t want to get sick (or get my loved ones sick or Brett’s parents or my dad who was battling leukemia even though they were going to restaurants or hanging with friends — even then)!
My consultation group talked to a lawyer who said we could make whatever rules we wanted for our offices. We could tell people no shirts, no shoes, no service. And we could also say you have to wear a mask. You have to be vaccinated (although that seemed beside the point by that time). You could say, “Don’t come in even if you have a tickle in your throat!”
I was way more cautious than most of my clients (in part because of clients like Person B who I knew would come into my office sick, who I knew wouldn’t wear a mask because they TOLD me how they were ignoring people’s rules). I’d picture all the tears in therapy and the droplets hanging in the air after they left. I pictured my air cleaner humming too loud for us to hear each other. I pictured having to ask people to sign the forms my liability insurance recommended and arguing with them because it espoused science they didn’t believe in.
Plus I was exhausted. I’d been working more than full time since tr*mp came into office. I won’t even go into the rest of it (how poorly my child was faring during this time, the terrible things that happened that trampled over her mental health and how I’d sit with clients on video and try not to think about her crying in the other room).
I let go of my medicaid clients, a painful but necessary choice. I needed to cut my hours and medicaid had cut my pay so for the first time I dropped down in a more typical schedule.
But still.
And that’s when we started to think seriously about moving.