anxieuse abroad

Thinking about moving, there were tons of things I was worried about. But the biggest concern and a reason I didn’t push too hard to move years earlier, was the loss of my therapist. I’ve been seeing her since October of 2018 and I credit her expertise in CPTSD as the reason I’ve finally been able to make real progress in my life.

Before I go any further, I just want to acknowledge the incredible privilege I have in being able to find and afford trauma therapy. Of course I want to live in a world where we don’t need therapy, but as that is probably never, ever going to be the case, my second choice is to live in a world where we all have access to mental healthcare. And one of the main reasons I want to talk about therapy at all, is the hope that it keeps pushing the conversation, reduces stigma, and increases interest in and access to what I consider a human right.

Because I’ve been fucked up (aka super depressed) since I was a kid, I’ve been in some form of therapy on and off since I was about 10. Some of it has been awful, like the guy I saw for 6 useless sessions when I was 16. I knew in that first meeting, when he talked about his Harvard diplomas that were hanging behind his stupid head that we were not a match. My mom had pre-paid for all the sessions and demanded I see them through. The only thing I remember other than that he was Harvard trained, was his recommendation that I read, “Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man” by James Joyce. Which I did buy and couldn’t get past 3 pages of. At the end of our 6 sessions he told me that I was “cured” and that our work was done.

Also not great was the therapist I saw in NYC who would fall asleep while I was talking. I tried not to take it personally. But most therapy has at least been useful and some of it was life changing — like the first time I was introduced to any type of somatic therapy in Boulder, CO where the MA student I got to see for free taught me how to listen to my body for the first time in my life. And the therapist I saw for years in Chicago after college who treated me with such kindness and respect, openly sharing her life too instead of treating me like a broken patient.

But it wasn’t until I got into trauma therapy, until I even knew what the fuck CPTSD was, that things really started to change in a meaningful way. The other forms of therapy weren’t getting deep enough into the things that were really wrong and why. Understandably, I was kinda freaked out about moving away and losing access to the one thing that had made the biggest difference.

When I moved from Oregon to Washington, my therapist was able to get licensed in Washington in order to keep seeing me, which even as I think about it now feels so incredibly generous that it makes me cry. During the pandemic Washington State apparently allowed many therapists in other states to get licensure because the need became so great. So when I talked about moving abroad, she looked into what the rules were with regards to her insurance and licensure on the off chance that we might be able to continue to work virtually.

And to my complete surprise, it was a GO! The state of Oregon didn’t have a problem and confirmed France didn’t either. I don’t really know or understand all the ins and outs but just know that I’m legally able to continue therapy and what I thought would be my biggest regret — not being able to work with her anymore — was no longer an issue.

TL;DR: this whole post is just a PSA to say if you’re concerned about moving to a new country because you’ll have to quit therapy, ask your therapist to check it out. It’s wild to me that if I’d moved to say, Montana, I probably wouldn’t have been able to continue but 1/2 way around the world? Totally fine.