Transcript
Intro: Hello and welcome to A Bunch Of Therapists with me, Michaela McCarthy. And me, Dipti Solanki. We’ll be bringing you stories and insights from inside the therapy room.
Michaela McCarthy: So who’s our guest coming on today?
Dipti Solanki: Today we have Xena, Xena James. Xena is a newly qualified therapist and she’s also a social worker. And her story is really centred around Covid and her decision to go into therapy and her experiences around that.
Michaela McCarthy: From my experience having the training school, because we only set up our training school in January 2020, and we were inundated with a lot of people coming onto our courses because they wanted to retrain and they thought as they were working from home some people lost jobs, made redundant and so they decided to train.
Dipti Solanki: Yeah, such an interesting, strange time for so many people. I think we all saw the headlines and we saw what the news was telling us, but I don’t think there’s been enough space to hear individual stories. So I’m really looking forward to hearing what Xena’s experience was.
Michaela McCarthy: Yeah, definitely. So, hi, welcome Xena.
Xena James: Good morning.
Michaela McCarthy: And welcome to our podcast. Thank you for coming on. So tell us, you know, a little bit about you and why you first went into therapy as a person.
Xena James: I was in a really difficult position when I was going into therapy. It’s interesting, I started off having, I’m not sure if you’ve heard of the Employee Assistance Program.
Michaela McCarthy: Yep, EAP.
Xena James: So, quick course
Michaela McCarthy: Yeah.
Xena James: And working, I was working as a social worker and I was burning out. I was in the midst of COVID on the front line. Loads of people are in lockdown and I’m out visiting families. I also felt quite sceptical about what was happening, and that internal conflict, whilst working with families and being aware of having to watch the news every day, et cetera, it just wasn’t for me. So having to, feeling like I was forced to do something that wasn’t connecting with my inner self led to a lot of conflict and difficulty. So yeah, I called the employee assistance programme, just wondering if this was a me problem rather than an outside problem. And yeah, it was helpful in terms of just having a moment to slow down in a way.
Michaela McCarthy: Usually, as a social worker, it’s very front-facing. And then I know with therapists, they went online, but if you’re seeing families, how did that work?
Xena James: How did it work seeing families during COVID? So for some families, you would be going into the home, others, you would have video calls. I’m someone who likes to be outside. So again, internal conflict, I wanna be outside, but I’m aware that there’s a virus flowing around.
Michaela McCarthy: Okay, so then you went to EAP to get some support or make sense of what was going on. And I get it, the news was everywhere. I mean, that’s all they had was the news.
Xena James: So Employee Assistance Programme went through to an NHS service for adults, well no, for young adults, that was between the ages of 16 and 25, connected with a great woman, who I will always remember, and had 12 sessions, two different blocks with her, continued to university.
Dipti Solanki: Is that your first experience of therapy then?
Xena James: Yeah.
Dipti Solanki: Okay.
Xena James: Okay. It’s interesting because when part of, I think it’s really important to kind of think about the whole journey leading up to therapy. Part of my training as a social worker helped me to understand parts of myself.
Michaela McCarthy: Say more about that. understand parts of myself.
Dipti Solanki: So in a long story short, when I was in school things were quite tricky. Adolescence is a difficult time for a lot of individuals and the way that I was raised was to always work hard. You know, education is important. Sit down, finish your work. Even if you’re finding it difficult, just keep going. We need to survive. We need to do well. So continue, continue, continue in education, in that system. With teachers that I connected really well with, but others that I didn’t. and I was made to feel like a difficulty. That difficult narrative was something that I had from even younger. In nursery I was named a sparky, you know, they took my shoes off, things like that. But I just think that I’ve always just had energy, you know. So going into social work where I was recognising that children were being abused, you know, and not in a physical chastisement, which was something where I was recognising that children were being abused, you know, and not in a physical chastisement, which was something that I was quite familiar with, in a sense of baby P had come out and I just saw the body map of him. And I was shocked.
So I went through the journey of doing different forms of work experience, nurseries, primary schools, assessment centres for parents and then went to university. So having an understanding of what life could look like from different angles was something that I’d slowly developed during the journey.
Michaela McCarthy: Well then going into therapy for you, how did you process you?
Xena James: It’s an ongoing journey. How did I process me? I processed me through conversation. I processed me through journalling. Inner child work, powerful. Processed me through… Conversation is the biggest thing, being listened to and just having that free space to speak.
Michaela McCarthy: And so for you, was it different for you to go into therapy compared to some of your peers? Because not everyone goes into therapy.
Xena James: I felt quite embarrassed actually. I felt like I’d failed in a way. I felt like the pressure of life had got me and I was either going to make it or I wasn’t. And having a space to speak and to feel, you know, Xena, this struggling is normal. Think about what’s happening, you know, we’re not machines.
Michaela McCarthy: It’s true. And so would you say you’ve, I mean, you know, I think I’ve been a therapist for a long time and I know that there’s still some taboo out there for therapy, but I see it as more as being brave to face your demons, to face yourself, to face your worries.
Xena James: There’s a really key point you said in terms of being ready to face yourself. And one of the things that I’ve found really interesting, enlightening, and what’s the word? Surprising maybe? Was that self-discovery, but also challenging yourself. You know, a really powerful question that my previous therapist said to me was, you know, Xena, but what are your needs? And I couldn’t answer her. I didn’t know how I was meeting my needs. All I knew, sorry, was how to meet other people’s needs.
So like you said, that self-discovery is powerful and building an understanding of where these things come from. I think it can bring a lot of comfort in ways to people to see, okay, so this way of thinking that I have that isn’t serving me, this is actually where it’s coming from. It’s coming from these conversations that I observed with my parents and it made sense at the time, but I can see it’s not serving me in this seat that I’m sat in.
Michaela McCarthy: Say more about that.
Xena James: I give thanks for the parents that I have. Strong on both sides. Yeah, and I think that that’s developed the strength that’s in me. And for me, one of the things that they always helped me to understand was number one, I give thanks that they, my parents are quite natural. Natural hair, natural living, eat healthy foods etc etc but I moved against that you know growing up in a Western society as a second generation my parents were both born here so I’m the next generation born here. I was following the media you know. So say more following the media. Following the media, you know.
Michaela McCarthy: So say more… following the media.
Xena James: Following the media, I had fake eyelashes, long straight hair. I used to pay £500 to invest in the hair that I was wearing. And there’s nothing wrong with that at all. But for me, I was doing it to feel beautiful. I didn’t feel beautiful in my natural self, you know, and I would actually feel nervous to leave the house without my weave and without… I never really wore that much makeup, but it was mostly the weave. I couldn’t leave with my Afro. No.
Michaela McCarthy: So it was about image for you?
Xena James: Image was a big thing, massive thing. And I think even with my generation, image is a big thing, massive thing. And I think even with my generation, image is a big thing. You know, there’s clients that I’ve worked with or working with at the moment and image is important to them. Perfectionism is real. And the media obviously doesn’t support that.
One of the phrases that I’m working through and really embracing is perfectly imperfect. We can’t be perfect. Trying to is gonna, the tension that it brings is too much.
Dipti Solanki: Xena, so that’s really something I can resonate with. And there’s another angle that I kind of wanna bring in here which you might be able to expand on. So growing up, we all grew up with these images of the media and it’s the biggest beauty industry, is the the biggest kind of grossing industry at the moment. But the images we saw in magazines, on television, on billboards was very much white faces, white fashion. And I used to read Just 17 as a teenager, right? And I’m a bit older than you anyway so you may not even know what that is.
Michaela McCarthy: Do you know what’s Just 17?
Xena James: I don’t. No, I’m sorry.
Michaela McCarthy: You’re too too old!
Dipti Solanki: I am too old, still. But the magazines, right? And then now we’ve got social media and everything and I realised at a point that my beauty standards that I was trying to
attain were not even something that I could because none of these pictures looked like me yet I was trying to attain those standards. So you mentioned, you know, about your hair. So talk to us a bit more about that. Did that come into it anywhere?
Into the therapeutic space?
Dipti Solanki: Into you finding your sense of self and, you know, figuring out you and this perfectionism.
Xena James: Definitely.
Michaela McCarthy: Where did you see this you know that you had to have your weave, you had to have your eyelashes, you had to have all this to be I don’t know perfect.
Xena James: So interesting, part of part of my introduction to weave was a guy that I was seeing at the time he posted a girl who had a weave and my insecure attachment style and internal world meant that I wanted to have that. I was also really drawn to American media, American shows, and that was the thing. And also, I was getting a lot of attention. So, as a teenager, 15 years old getting attention from guys that are 18, older, wasn’t good, but it was the reality. And if you’re kind of working through feeling insecure in yourself, asking for that external validation, it was feeding every point of me that needed to be filled. And I really loved it until I started to realise when I was taking it off, how do like, whoa, this feels really uncomfortable. Why am I feeling hesitant to leave the house? Because I don’t have the hair and then, I’m trying to think about, cause it was a journey…
Michaela McCarthy: So when did you stop? Wearing? Yeah, and then had thought, you know what? This is who I am this is my hair this is part of me.
Dipti Solanki: Was it that exploration in therapy that helped you do that?
Xena James: Yes I had a white woman who was middle class, maybe in her late 50s, and she was great and one of the things that I think, I’ve had different therapists, I’ve also had a black woman, I think there is a beauty in having a therapist who has a similar background to yourself, but there’s also a lot of power having someone who’s different. So in the therapeutic space, one of the things was she, I did talk about hair and I spoke about the fact that it felt that maybe I was being received in a ‘lesser than’ way because I wasn’t wearing the hair. So you get loads of attention when you’re wearing it, then you stop wearing it and you see the shift. What does that mean about me? And how am I seeing myself? So I’d spoken to my counselor about it and she wasn’t sure what I was talking about. And I told her a documentary to watch and we, as much as she couldn’t understand where I was coming from from that sense, because there was so much more happening, it didn’t end up being the biggest issue. She offered me a lot of space and yeah, I really felt like she cared about me. And I think at that stage in my life, there was a mother figure that she was offering me that I was seeking in a way. And then I realised, wow, Xena, you have tended to go for older women. No disrespect to my mum, but we had our own tricky relationship. So I think that there’s something behind that.
Dipti Solanki: And so you could see all these different aspects that you probably didn’t even know you wanted to talk about unfolding as the therapeutic process unravelled.
Xena James: So many things unfolding.
Michaela McCarthy: So how did you step from that into training as a therapist? Why did you decide to do that?
Xena James: Good question. So when I trained as a social worker, we had family therapists in the team and thankfully, you know, I give thanks, I was able to do my level one in systemic practice, so family therapy, and that opened up a whole new lens.
Michaela McCarthy: So can you just elaborate a little bit more on what structural family therapy is for the listeners and viewers they might not know.
Xena James: So structural family therapy explains that in all families in all systems there’s a structure. Generally you have the you’ve got subsystems, so you’ve got the parental subsystem the children subsystem. In families where you’ve got one parent, for example, the structure, you would have the parent, but maybe you have an auntie who’s on the same level as the parent and the children underneath.
When families can start to create challenges, when challenges can arise, sometimes it’s due to the structure being off. Children need structure. They need to feel safe. And if my parent isn’t providing that for me, maybe because they’re struggling with their mental health or because they’re in an abusive relationship or they are using substances and I step into the parental structure, that the parental position, sorry, what that might lead to is children not going to school because I’ve got things that I need to do in this parenting position. Or children becoming aggressive to their parent because I’m in the powerful position, you need to stay in your position. You can also, in the sibling subsystem, the girls may gravitate towards each other, boys may gravitate towards each other, ages gravitate, different systems are formed. So yeah, in terms of just like a, as a brief, you’ve got enmeshment. So if the parent and the child become enmeshed, when there isn’t a clear boundary, that’s something…
Michaela McCarthy: So quite codependent.
Xena James: Codependent, exactly.
Michaela McCarthy: Where one ends, the other begins, it’s merged.
Xena James: Exactly, so an example might be a child who’s struggling to go to school because they want to stay home and care for their parent. My mum’s depressed, I need to be there with her and make sure she’s okay enmeshment. I then continued in social work, was in a school-based social work role, using NVR in my work, you know, having sessions with parents.
Michaela McCarthy: NVR, can you let the viewers and listeners know what that is?
Xena James: Yeah, so non-violent resistance in terms of communication and parenting. And then I was given the opportunity to start in a charity and have my master’s funded. I was going to go into family therapy, but I didn’t have a level two and I needed that to to get onto the level four. So went to open evenings, ended up at UEL, saw integrative counselling and coaching, and I did the interview and I got it. And then the door opened and I was like, whoa, there’s all of this stuff, Xena, that you thought you knew.
Michaela McCarthy: And you’ve really got to do therapy now.
Xena James: Right. Really do.
Michaela McCarthy: You’ve really got to work on yourself.
Xena James: Yeah. Social work and counselling, different but similar. But like you said, the inner work that I’ve done and continue to do on the course has been, let’s call it phenomenal, you know. I’ve cried in training based on what has come up, sorry. And that’s where the inner child work, I think is so powerful.
Dipti Solanki: Talk to us about what inner child work is.
Xena James: Let me try and do it as best I can. So in my experience of inner child work, there’s a lot of going into the self. So you know, eyes are closed, you are now kind of going into a point of visualising experiences that you might not have realized were there. Inner child work, one of the practices that I found really helpful was going back in time. So you go through different stages, go back to maybe, let’s say I’m starting at 28, go to 26, go to 25, go to 20, 17, and short stops in each space, then you land at the time that you feel most comfortable with.
Michaela McCarthy: What was your time?
Xena James: My time was 12. I thought that was a safe space to be in a whole room with my peers. And you have that child version of yourself in the environment that you would remember and then you connect with them. You know, I’m gonna reach out, is she open to me giving her a hug? How does she respond? I’m gonna communicate with her. And I was surprised at what I found, really surprised.
Michaela McCarthy: Can I just interject, so were you the adult self talking to your 12 year old?
Xena James: Yeah.
Michaela McCarthy: Okay, so what was it like talking to your 12 year old self or being with her?
Xena James: It was surprising. It was really sad, actually. It was really sad. She didn’t understand really what the circumstance was for her at that time. But as the adult version, I could see it, but she didn’t. You know, she felt left out. She didn’t remember the last time she had a hug. When I asked if she wanted a hug, she was a bit like, why are you asking me if I want a hug?
Michaela McCarthy: A bit defensive.
Xena James: And it made a lot of sense to me why Xena post 12 was the way that she was. Yeah, so it was it was interesting. And then I’d done an exercise of writing to different age versions of myself. And that was really powerful and beautiful. And yeah, still kind of working with the teenage version of myself. Got a lot of love for her. And… There are so many aspects of her that I don’t want to run away from because that was in some ways the most vibrant and fearless time for me. And then…
Michaela McCarthy: Well, because otherwise you’re running away from yourself.
Xena James: Right.
Dipti Solanki: I think what may also be really interesting, there’s going to be a lot of people listening to this who know they will have had experiences in childhood, things they’re kind of pushing to the back. And this may have piqued their interest or it may be making some people go, ‘Oh my goodness, like I know that’s sitting there. What would you say to those people about inner child work?
Xena James: Be brave. Be brave. As you’ve mentioned, are you going to run from yourself or face yourself and nurture yourself? I think a lot of individuals have an inner child that just wants a hug, you know?
Michaela McCarthy: And it’s about learning how to reparent yourself, right? And I think therapy, if you find the right therapist, they can work with you on that.
Xena James: Definitely. I’d also encourage them to take time, you know, don’t go rushing in. Allow yourself to move through the process and be kind to yourself.
Dipti Solanki: Well you need to build trust with your therapist in order to do stuff like this anyway, don’t you?
Xena James: Definitely, definitely. And yeah, what was I going to say? I think the biggest thing is be brave. What have you got to lose? There’s such a freeness that comes from being able to shed where some of those, I’ll call it in a way, shackles. You know, it’s like extra bags that you’re carrying and making life just heavier. You know, once you can take some of those bags off in therapy, you know, through your experiences, you live a freer life.
Dipti Solanki: Xena could you just tell us what your role is currently?
Xena James: Yeah, so my full-time role is I’m a practice tutor. I work with around 20 students. It changes, it’ll go up soon. I say that and it looks like I’m sad, I’m not. I work in a children’s charity and I support students who are doing their masters in relational social work. So yeah, I visit them in their local authorities, have one-to-ones with them, talk to them about theory. That’s my nine to five and then I’m a student currently with the Awareness Centre, so that’s once a week student placement. I’ll be qualifying in around September. Yeah, then the doors open and yeah.
Michaela McCarthy: And as they say the world’s your oyster.
Xena James: The world is my oyster. I give thanks.
Michaela McCarthy: So what’s the plan in this oyster?
Xena James: I like to flow with the universe, you know. So the plan is there, but I’m not going to get too attached to it. I will open up a private practice, but I also see myself doing group sessions. I’m really in touch with nature and find nature can be soothing and really beneficial for us, as you both know. You know, so yeah, I’m keeping my options open. I’m keeping a, yeah, keeping myself open because there’s loads of ideas. I think of group sessions, definitely doing one-to-one work.
Dipti Solanki: Xena, it’s been so, so lovely to have you here. Thank you for coming in and speaking with us.
Xena James: Thank you both, it’s been a pleasure.
Outro: You’ve been listening to A Bunch Of Therapists with me, Michaela McCarthy and Dipti Solanki. And if you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to review, like and subscribe to wherever you listen to your podcasts and do follow us on our socials. Until next time, see you soon.