We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Caitlin Diamond a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Caitlin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We love heartwarming stories – do you have a heartwarming story from your career to share?
One of my most heartwarming moments early in my career occurred during my internship. I was in supervision with a fellow intern and our shared supervisor, and we were expressing feeling stuck around not “doing therapy correctly” or not feeling adequately adept and skilled yet. Our supervisor then shared a video with us about what it means to trust your clients’ timing, their intuition, and their system in order to facilitate healing in a way that works best for them. I actually cried while watching the video because it was so beautiful. That supervision session completely changed my outlook on how to show up as a therapist – it taught me that my job is to support clients on their own path, rather than showing up with an agenda of how to “fix” their “problems.” It taught me to just be, to just sit with my clients, and to let their systems shine a light on the path forward. I still tear up sometimes when I think about that moment, which was such a huge shift for me. It warmed my heart toward myself and my clients in a deeper way than I ever could have anticipated.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a mental health counselor in Austin, currently working at Autonomy Therapy in North Austin. I primarily serve clients with complex trauma, body image and eating disorder concerns, and neurodivergence (especially ADHD and autism). I’ve also been honored to work with clients who are members of the LGBTQIA2S+ community, which I belong to myself, so that is definitely an area of passion for me as well. I consider myself heart-centered and relationally-minded, which means that I lead with a trauma-informed approach and a deep sense of care and respect for the sacred personhood of my clients as we walk the path of healing together. I’m not here to blame, shame, or change my clients. I’m here to be with them in the messy and beautiful process of introspection and personal growth. I also work from a Health at Every Size framework, which means that I honor all bodies, all abilities, and all health statuses as inherently worthy of respect and equitable treatment. I always strive to be body liberation- and disability justice-oriented, neuro-affirming, queer and trans friendly, sex positive, and culturally humble. I’m ultimately committed to uplifting the autonomy of my clients by empowering them with self-trust and self-compassion. At the end of the day, I believe it’s my job to honor my clients for exactly who they are right now, and support them as best I can in reaching the personal and relational goals they express.
If you could go back, would you choose the same profession, specialty, etc.?
If I could turn the clock back and reevaluate my career path, I am truly confident that I would choose to be a therapist in every lifetime. This is the best job in the world. I’m someone who cares very deeply about other people – I’ve been this way since childhood – and it’s such an honor to me that I get to sit with folks in their pain, fear, excitement, joy, life transitions, stuck moments, and everything in between. I spent much of my twenties trying to understand myself better and find a career path that made sense to me, and that discernment process offered me a lot of clarity and intentionality about my choice to become a therapist. Sincerely and honestly, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?
Being a successful therapist, in my opinion, is about so much more than just your training. That only takes you so far. It’s imperative that we gain as much expertise as possible, and education and training are cornerstones of that process. However, I think that doing our personal work in our own therapy and our own lives is paramount when it comes to becoming the most effective therapists we can be. There’s a saying in our field that goes something like, “you can’t take your clients further than you’re willing to go yourself.” I think that speaks to the idea that if we as therapists are hesitant to really go to certain emotional places within ourselves, it’s much harder to walk with clients as they go there, too. So it’s very important to me that I remain open and willing to look at what’s under the surface of my own emotional world, what’s happening in my relationships, what I learned from my upbringing, and more. That way, when I show up to support my clients, I can say with more confidence that it’s possible to do what I’m recommending they do. It’s certainly not a matter of me having everything figured out so that I can teach my clients how to live their lives – it’s more along the lines of creating space in my heart for all of the feelings and fears that I can hold, approaching myself with as much tenderness as I tell my clients to approach themselves with, and welcoming all of the parts of myself as friends. In so many ways, that allows me to show up for my clients as warmly and authentically as I can.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/caitlin-diamond-austin-tx/1449743
- Instagram: @heycaitlincounseling
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/caitlin.diamond.lpc.associate/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caitlin-diamond
- Other: https://autonomytherapyatx.com/caitlin-diamond-austin-tx
Image Credits
Kim Fry, John D. Jameson