As the founder and Creative Director at Vervewell, I take creativity rather seriously. I encourage my team of exceptional therapists to create their own worksheets, their own methods, their own lenses with their clients. I can’t help but to feel that each time one of us suggests a book, or some outside source for our clients, that we undermine our own expertise in this field, and create an exchange with our clients that does not represent the high-end care I pride myself in housing at Vervewell.
While I DO encourage each of us to continually educate ourselves, and to continually read and absorb current and classic trends in psychology and therapy, I push the importance of assimilating and organizing concepts we’ve learned, methods we’ve practiced helping our clients, by using our own voices, our own intelligence, and our own beliefs. We do the heavy reading for you, so that you don’t have to. I happen to believe, and my team continually proves this to be true, that we are rich with skill, talent, intellect, and thoughtfulness. We are, independently and collectively, experts in our field.
I’ve spent most of this year writing a book. I’m thrilled to announce that it is now in the hands of editors, as I eagerly await their feedback which will allow me to produce a book of highest quality to each of its readers. It is a self-help book, but one that includes many stories of my own life; the stories that have allowed me to write this book, create therapy methods, supervise my team, and grow into a therapist who is an empath, in every session, with every amazing client.
This book isn’t G-rated. So, heads up. It is a very honest, transparent, vulnerable declaration of where I’ve been, mistakes I’ve made, strengths I’ve flexed, and balls I’ve dropped, often causing harm to myself, or causing hurt to many I’ve loved. It may read like a cake walk to some, or like a train wreck to others. Either way, I am hopeful it offers helpful ideas to each reader; ideas that build autonomy, belief, heartfelt direction and thriving strides.
The email before this one included my RERank Method, a method spelled out in the self-help part of my book. It is a method I use regularly with my clients, and a method I’ve shared with my team.
Here is a very short excerpt from the personal stories in my book, pre-edited. I’ve also shared some of these stories, as well, with my clients. I often work with creatives, big thinkers, rebels, and empaths. My clients have told me that they feel seen, heard, and helped when we can “story swap” in session.
“My mom took us swimming in a private swimming pool at a racquetball club that summer. My sister got a job as a lifeguard, which is why we had access to this private club, but she had lied about her age. My parents were proud of Laurie for getting the job yet overlooked the lie. My dad liked having this country club type access but wouldn’t afford it himself. My mom held me in her arms while in the water, a feeling I loved more than anything. I liked how we looked like a normal family when we were there. I would float on my back in the water, with my smiling face beaming up to the sun, basking in the summer. My mom kept her arms just under my back as I floated, offering a glorious feeling of safety that I felt so seldom.
Laurie ultimately got fired for her lie, and her actual age.
I felt a categorization happen that summer, with the way I saw people and the way I would continually view myself. A categorization that had been building for many years prior. Us and them.
A familiar feeling of roughness washed over me, a feeling I had felt too many times before. A feeling that would ultimately become so one with me that I would struggle with differentiating between the roughness and my actual existence. The tackiness of inferiority, the lack of connection within, the on-going fears I held each night as I slept so lightly, the embarrassment of the behaviors of my family, the ugliness of my body, all tangled together. That was the roughness.
I felt revealed, exposed when my sister got fired. The Good People at the racquetball club could see our true colors, I just knew it. The Good People could see that we Rough people didn’t belong. We never again returned to that racquetball club.”
from Chapter One
“All Is Very Well; missteps and thriving strides”
Sharing creativity can often be scary. And I am not exempt from such fears. But I believe in my stories because they have grown a version of me today whom I don’t mind so much.
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With love,
Beth Lewis, LPC-S
therapist offering therapy
Vervewell.org
