This published work is for informational purposes and should not be relied upon as medical, psychological, coaching, or other professional advice of any kind or nature. Enjoy my full disclaimer for more information!
When I started my psychology grad school program in California, I assumed I'd start full time psychology work as soon as I graduated; I assumed I'd get that full time job by interviewing at a large clinic that had salaried employees; and I assumed when I had children that I'd put them in day care and be a working mom... But you know what they say about assumptions.
Let's put paid to a couple of these ideas right away. In my last year of pre doctoral internship, my one year old son was in a great day care situation, staying with a woman who had been a preschool teacher and had a great little baby girl just his age. But. If I dropped my son off and went to work, and then a client no-showed when I could have been home with my baby, I felt murder in my heart.
Not to alarm you, but a therapist is supposed to be therapeutic about no-shows, not filled with red hot rage! I didn't know I would feel that way until it happened.
My second son was born two weeks after I defended my thesis and graduated. Despite my lack of domestic skills, I wasn't going back to work until he was in full-day elementary school. Which is to say, a lot changed before I worked even one hour as a licensed psychologist. By the time I did we lived in Idaho, which doesn't really have clinics to work in like California does. Most of the open positions I qualify for in any given year are in the prison system, and all of them are for program managers and supervisors, not for people who just want to be therapists.
So I went to work in private practice and immediately (!) I was responsible for completing 20 hours of continuing education per year. It was before training was accessible online, and the training in Idaho at that time was very, dreadfully, crucially, boring to me. How much CBT can one girl who chose the most hippie grad school in the country be expected to take?
I was so whiny. I was so dramatic. I was so put upon. I had such a terrible attitude I could barely listen to my own complaining thoughts.
And finally I said, Well fine! What do you want to do then?
What came to me, was Esalen.
Esalen is a bunch of hot tubs perched on a cliff above the Pacific Ocean. It's in Big Sur, a place that has been called "the most beautiful meeting of land and sea in the world." I love Big Sur. My husband proposed to me in Big Sur. There is ocean and redwoods and splendor. Of course I wanted to get my CEUs at Esalen!
Their catalog was online, and lo and behold, I could get 26 hours of EFT training.
EFT had just been approved as an "experimental" technique by the American Psychological Association, and I would be one of the first psychologists to get the training with the (lukewarm) blessing of the APA.
On top of that, if I brought a sleeping bag and slept on the floor of one of their shabby meeting rooms with a few other students, my total bill for tuition, lodging, and three organic meals a day overlooking the Pacific and surrounded by monarch butterflies, was $600. Even with the flight and rental car, it was only about 25% more than it would have cost to drag myself through 20 hours of CBT at home. (Nowadays Esalen costs way more, and online CEUs cost way less and have a lot of variety, but this was 2013.)
So on a Sunday in February I flew to San Jose. I took a side trip to Oakland to have brunch with some poetry friends, and then made my way down the coast of California on Route 1.
The sunset over the ocean was a riot of orange and fuschia, the blue sea pounded and frothed over tumbled rocks below, and towering trees filled the steep hillside above me. The road twisted and turned, and at last I reached the entrance to Esalen just as daylight faded.
Dinner in the large hall full of tables and benches preceded the first evening class. The crowd, here for a large variety of classes from yoga to art therapy, was mostly white, mostly ladies, and mostly over 50. I sat down next to one of the youngest people there, a 26-year-old who had come to do a deep-dive sexuality class with a much-admired teacher.
I want to contrast my experience learning EFT tapping that week at Esalen with my observations about the effect the sexuality class seemed to have on its students, because it highlights something I deeply believe: Who you learn from matters.
(Repeat after me: Not everyone who is smart is safe! Not everyone who is powerful is good!)
The girl and I chatted as we ate. I told her about the CEU desert in Idaho, and she told me about the amazing teacher for her class, who was so deep and so wise. And here she is, you have to meet her! I shook hands with the woman, a gorgeous creature in her late 50s with a raspy voice and piercing, confident eyes.
Are you looking forward to teaching your class? I enquired politely.
Yes, yes! she said with relish. People must learn what I have to teach: You can have satisfying sexual encounters within a committed relationship!
I wish I had video of my face as I tried not to visibly recoil from her. She thought all monogamous sex was dreadfully unsatisfying? For every single person unless they took her class? Incredible.
I could not get out of there fast enough.
(part 1/2)