Part 1: Systemic Self-Sacrifice with Megan VanMeter
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Welcome back to Therapist Expanded! Today I’m interviewing Megan VanMeter.
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- Megan is an art therapist and she takes us through the story of her early years in the field when managed care was coming on the scene and how that impacted her and the field
- Megan is licensed in Texas, Arizona and Indiana and has an online private practice
- Megan provides services to reignite the creative spark in people who have lived a life of self-sacrifice, namely helping professionals (therapists, physicians, nurses, clergy members, educators, dentists etc) who received childhood messaging that it’s better to give than to receive, and tending to the needs of others is more important, and that they don't need to have their own needs
- She shares that the systems, workplace and our own helper cultures in the workforce continues to reinforce the self-sacrifice and it leads to burnout, exhaustion, and vicarious trauma
- Megan reports this looks like her clients coming in with anxiety, burnout, depression, and that the work is to help the client find “that long-lost person of the Self"
- I share how I’ve seen this in the health providers I’ve worked with and we discuss that many of these health professionals are women and how the self-sacrifice is ingrained
- I also share how when we stop self-sacrificing we help people more and Megan describes this deep irony
- She shares how this deep socialized conditioning gets really loud when we start to change this way of living in the world
- Megan describes the institutions as “the titanic heading for the iceberg, and they’re not going to change directions anytime soon” and that even if the system changed over night, the trauma within the helpers is there and needs to be healed at the individual level
- I share that if we were meant to live someone else’s life we would and that the dreams and goals we have are why we came here
- I bring up some of the statements Megan shared ahead of our interview and that her emails actually felt like a mic drop. The first one is “Internalization works to unconsciously help us embody institutional values.”
- Megan explains perceptual processing and how that shapes this phenomenon and how we actually absorb culture through this perceptual channel that contributes to our sense of self. She gave us an example with the pandemic and graduate school.
- She describes the “sick toxic places” of internship sites we are sent into as students and that when we get back into the sites as workers we learn “sick stuff”
- Megan shares the research on what happens with a very difficult cognitive load like we have in mental health jobs, and that the studies found higher than anticipated levels of glutamate when mentally fatigued (with only a 6.5 hour day) and that leads to neurodegeneration
- I describe how I believe we can feel the body saying stop, but that we are conditioned to push through
- Megan further describes the cultural norms of therapists catering to this sick, overworked system
- I share how our group clinic is all about reversing this paradigm and how I feel when reading the oppressive paperwork from intern’s universities - I realize while hearing Megan that we’ve changed the system around us at our clinic
- I share my passion for working with interns because they’re less conditioned - but that change is a decision at any stage of conditioning
- Megan sees how what we’re doing at the clinic can nip imposter syndrome in the bud, and she goes on to explain the foundations of imposter syndrome and how therapists collect qualifications to try and feel enough
- I share my thoughts and feelings about the endless slew of trainings and workshops therapists take to try and feel enough after this hierarchical conditioning where we’re taught to earn our worth, and try to feel like less an imposter, while the dopamine control system hijacks the brain into only wanting more. There is a solution to this and I name that as well.
- We end by discussing that living from your deepest desires and purpose fully and freely magnetizes the life you want.
- Stay tuned for part two, and in the meantime, you can learn more about how Megan works with helping professionals and the important work she’s doing in the world: at her website and LinkedIn profile.
Thanks for listening!
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On a serious note, this quiz could illuminate the beginnings of a path to your fulfillment so take the QUIZ today and receive curated content just for you!
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