Liberation
“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting our time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” – Lila Watson
In the last 2 years, I completed my master’s degree in Speech Language Pathology. While my master’s program was incredibly rigorous and taught me many important things about speech and language, I found myself noticing by the end of it that we had failed to learn the most important thing of all: that being a clinician is as much about helping yourself as it is about helping others. Perhaps this is something that an academic program can’t really teach, and so I’m grateful to the life experience that has brought me to this awareness as I begin my first year as a Speech Language Pathologist (SLP). By telling a piece of my personal story here, I hope to illuminate for fellow SLPs, clients and their family members, and anyone interested in communication in general what I mean when I say that my liberation is bound up with the liberation of the people I work to help.
I remember the first time I heard my brother’s label: autism. I was 8 years old, on my way to piano practice when my mom told me. Before that, I had just thought of him as my brother. Eccentric for sure--he loved to talk about history and draw dinosaurs. But then again, I was eccentric too--I liked to do my homework in a closet while dancing to the Spice Girls. Once I knew that he had that label though, it changed how I related to him. In some ways it helped, because I could now realize that sometimes when he was annoying me it was just because he was experiencing things differently. It also helped him to get access to resources he needed like therapy and extra time on tests. Often though, the label made it harder for me to relate to him, because I was so conscious of there being something “wrong” or different about him. I became so concerned that he would do something weird in front of other people that I would always make sure to let people know that he had autism before I introduced him to them. I became so worried that someone else would make fun of him for how he talked or acted that I spent the majority of my time with him correcting him: telling him to fix his hair, stop scraping his fork against his plate so loudly, and stop talking so much about history because nobody was interested. As a result, my brother became more closed off towards me, and I started to feel guilty whenever I thought of him.
I carried this guilt pretty heavily, and it occupied my conscience so much that it led me to pursue an unusual path: the career of Speech Language Pathologist. I thought that if I could understand what was wrong with my brother and help other people like him, then I could help him, help my family, and ultimately help myself. What I didn’t know then was that my logic was backwards: I needed to understand myself better first, not my brother.
As you read this, I invite you to think of a situation in which you have felt such a strong sense of guilt or judgement towards someone that it made you feel uncomfortable whenever you thought of them. Keep that experience in mind as I tell the rest of this story, and maybe it will lead you to a similar realization as the one I am about to describe here.
Over the course of my time in my master’s program, a few pivotal things happened in my life that had nothing to do with grad school. My family went through a big conflict, and in a dramatic display of anger, I shaved my head. Then, the COVID19 pandemic hit. Suddenly, I was isolated in a house with my mother, my father, my brother, and all of our issues, and I had a haircut that made me look like a 9 year old boy. It was an interesting time, to say the least.
With so much time alone, I began to unravel layers of myself. I stopped wearing makeup, and started wearing my ex-boyfriend’s clothes. Without much contact with the outside world, I started to realize that there were many aspects of my identity that I thought were me, but were really just things I had been told were me.
The past year has been a delicate process of unfurling, as I have emerged from this place of deep introspection. I realized that how I communicate with others is a direct reflection of how I speak to myself in my head. When I tell my brother that nobody will like him if he looks or acts a certain way, I am telling myself that I am not worthy of love if I don’t look or act a certain way. What a painful thing that is for both of us to hear.
As I begin my career as an SLP, I run into this same dynamic frequently. The family members of people with communication challenges often criticize that person at home in an effort to shield them from criticism out in the world, without realizing that their words cause just as much harm as a stranger’s. And not only does it harm the person they are speaking to, it harms the person who is speaking too. So how do we escape this well-intentioned but harmful pattern of communication?
This question brings me back to the Lila Watson quote about liberation that I began with. In order to help others, I have to begin with myself. I am making it a part of my practice as an SLP to ask myself questions like:
What can people with autism teach me about social norms?
What can people with ADHD teach me about attention?
What can people who stutter teach me about speech?
One of my clients who stutters told me the other day that he is hyper-aware of his flaws and tries to hide them at all costs, whether it’s his stutter, or a mole he doesn’t like on his face. He told me a story about a classroom of kids and teachers staring at him with confusion and judgment as he struggled to get a word out in response to his teacher’s question. Moments like that are part of what causes him to hide his stutter to this day. It sparked the memory for me of a boy in my kindergarten class telling me I had “man arms.” It was such an insignificant comment, so long ago, and yet I have been removing the hair from my arms ever since. I told my client this, and while neither of us had a resolution to offer, I felt something click between us.
The more I learn, the more I see that the clients I work with teach me just as much as I teach them. As I’ve become gentler towards myself, I’ve noticed myself soften towards others as well. I no longer have the urge to judge or correct my brother all the time, and when I do, I am more able to pause and reflect on the impact of my words before I say them out loud. This shift has led to something beautiful, which is that I can finally relax and enjoy hanging out with my brother again, instead of always trying to change him. This past summer, we went on a walk to the beach together where he encountered a hermit crab. I listened to my brother as he carried out a 5 minute conversation with this crab, who he named Martin. The creativity and wit of this very one-sided conversation made me laugh so hard that I cried. My brother laughed too and patted me on the head, “I’m glad you’re here Meanie,” he said. I was glad too. I had missed my brother so much.