The most important part of my practice is the client experience

I’ve grown up in a volatile environment and so chaos and putting others before myself was all I ever really knew.

I have been doing therapy with Devra for many years now; since the start of the pandemic. I knew at the time I wasn’t content with my life or myself and so I swallowed the accountability pill and decided to finally do something about it. I got connected to Devra through my sisters naturopath and remember telling her “I want someone who’s going to call me out on my bullshit”, she said she had just the person in mind and got me connected to Devra. Let’s face it, we all have parts of ourselves we don’t want to accept, or willfully choose to turn a blind eye to. I never struggled with self-awareness - if anything I had too much of it. What I struggled with was reframing my perspectives and implementing new ways of being. I asked for someone real, and that’s exactly what I got.

I’ve grown up in a volatile environment and so chaos and putting others before myself was all I ever really knew. I grew up in an environment that consisted of survival mode; emotional regulation, care, and love were never modelled for me, at least not in the ways it should be for a child. These unhealthy ways of being were so normalized for me back then that I wasn’t even aware of what I was missing growing up, and what a real caregiver should have consisted of. So much of my life was spent in survival mode that it’s all I ever knew, and it wasn’t until I started therapy that it became apparent to me the ways I was living, beliefs I had about myself, or how I treated myself were not healthy.

Working with Devra initially was an interesting experience. She very quickly became someone I trusted and a safe place for me, a secure attachment figure that I could be vulnerable with in ways I had never been with another human. This was foreign and rare, especially for me. She knew when I would be putting my walls up and helped me take them down. She called me out on every single protective mechanism I had in place that no longer served me because I’m not the scared little girl that’s stuck in survival mode anymore. She always reminded me of what a proper caregiver should be, and did her best to call me out on my self-limiting beliefs - but in the most caring, gentle and sometimes protective way possible. She was and still is the figure I needed as a little girl.

I want to say a few things about the process of therapy:

First. I know a big reason why people don’t want to partake in therapy is the cost. I won’t lie to you, therapy isn’t cheap. It’s an investment, but one of the biggest investments you will ever make is betting on yourself. I had to cut down on frivolous things to make my mental health a priority instead at times.

Second, If you’re anything like me, (hard on yourself) you’ll get frustrated by the ‘lack of progress’ because it won’t be an instantaneous thing. It’s one little break through, a set back, another break through; it’s messy and it’s all over the place. It’s a spectrum from going through lot of emotions, to numbness, and sometimes it makes no sense and feels like you’re stuck. But it’s important to remember that it’s the baby steps that will get you to where you want to be and that’s part of the process.

The third thing I want to say is that, until you’re ready to do the work, therapy in and of itself won’t save you. But having a heaven-sent like Devra along by your side definitely makes all the difference. I can confidently say that I am proud of the woman I have become over the years thanks to her help, but it didn’t come without a lot of pain, opening up old wounds, and tears. It’s not fun but it’s worth it.

I am so, so grateful for having met Devra and know she was meant to come into my life when she did. I view Devra as a gift from above because I don’t know where I would have ended up or who I would have been without her being the intelligent, soulful, caring human being she is. She has always had a way of getting to the root and I swear this woman knows me better than I know myself at times. I still have many ways to go, I’m not perfect, but being able to truly feel proud of myself is a feeling I had never felt in my life not even once and I definitely have Devra to thank for that. I’ve accomplished many things I never would have imagined prior to, simply because she helped me believe in myself.