We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Chaundra Prehara a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Chaundra, appreciate you joining us today. Can you share a story with us from back when you were an intern or apprentice? Maybe it’s a story that illustrates an important lesson you learned or maybe it’s a just a story that makes you laugh (or cry)?
In the last year of graduate school you have two final hurdles, completing your master’s thesis, and securing an internship working with actual clients. My very first client ever was an 11 year old boy who was mandated to attend counseling as part of his probation for vandalizing property. I couldn’t tell who was more uncomfortable as we sat down for our first session, rookie overwhelmed me, or miserable, overwhelmed him. The initial silence was deafening. He didn’t want to talk or if he did, he had no idea what to say to this stranger, and it had never occurred to me that I would be meeting with someone who didn’t want to be there or talk. As my mind fast pedaled through two years of grad school training searching for the “right” approach at some point it occurred to me that while I knew nothing about boys, or this boy in particular, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that we were both humans and we were connected not necessarily by similarities, or by my being trained in information he needed to know, but by our humanness. This realization allowed a spaciousness to open up inside of me, where I found a wellspring of compassion and healing energy that showed me then, and has informed my work for twenty plus years, that after all is said and done, we are all connected and the most important part of healing comes from humans connecting relationally first, skills and tools second.
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?
In order to pay for my undergraduate schooling I worked in retail, which was really the beginning of me becoming attracted to helping people. I worked for a chain of stores called Ann Taylor, and it was considered a professional sales job. We were trained to not just sell clothes, but to spend time getting to know our customer, what were her preferences, her insecurities, how did she want to feel in an outfit, what did she want the outfit to convey, it’s was a personal and psychological approach, and I liked that part of the job, but not so much the long evening and weekend hours or standing all day. After I graduated I was able to secure my first corporate job for a big company. While I appreciated the contained hours and the pay, the job felt soul sucking to me and I knew this was not my long term path. Remembering my love of talking with people and helping them I went to grad school at night to obtain my masters in counseling and eventually my state license. I’ve been blessed to work with many diverse populations for other companies: children, families, teens, chemically dependent women in a residential setting, and divorcing families. Eventually I took all of my experiences and opened my own private practice. I am a relentless learner and I have been blessed to study with many master therapists. What I’ve learned over and over again, no matter from what perspective I’m studying, from what mentor I’m learning, is that connection is the answer. Living a relational, deeply connected life to yourself, to others, and with the planet. Connection shifts all client problems, makes space for the greatest transformation, no matter what the presenting problem, no matter what the history. Now that might sound like an over simplification, like panacea, but there it is, when I am connected to myself, when I am in a warm, regarding relationship with myself, I enjoy an inner plenitude, open heartedness and peaceful certainty that allows me to share my therapeutic energy and open a channel to transformation. From this place I help clients connect with themselves, their people, and the world, and from there they are able to heal their trauma, shift their distress, and develop new frameworks for behaving, thinking and feeling. From a theoretical perspective, the two theories that I find support deep connection both philosophically and concretely with tools and skills are Relational Life Therapy and Internal Family Systems. I layer Internal Family Systems with RLT, but RLT is my main modality. I’ve studied it for many years and eventually became fully certified as a provider. RLT goes deeper than the processing and affirming of talk therapy, therefore it has the potential to be effective and invite not just healing, but transformation. With RLT you are able to discern the root causes of relationship problems, what gets in the way of you connecting with yourself, what gets in the way of connecting with others, and then provides a concrete, systematic way to get back into healthy connection, and sustain health connection. RLT has transformed my life, practicing the skills from RLT has transformed my relationship with myself, and with my husband, children, and others, and I believe it is one of the main ways I am helping leave my little corner of the world better than I found it.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
The journey to become a licensed therapist is a long and expensive one and interestingly teaches you one of the core skills of a good therapist, detachment from outcome. By detachment from outcome I don’t mean apathy or avoidance of feelings. Detachment from outcome is about knowing what you want, yet being able to let go of how it needs to specifically look and be resilient, able to withstand long periods of uncertainty, and recover quickly from adversity. There are many stories from my journey that tested my resilience. You need to earn 3000 hours to sit for the licensing test and paid internships are almost non-existent, so for the first two years I would work my corporate job by day and then head to a community agency at night to see clients. I interned in a school, for free, where my office was literally a janitor closet, but I still knew what I wanted, to be a full time therapist. I thought I had made it when I eventually earned a minimum wage job in residential recovery, so I was able to quit my corporate job, and there the resilience became about preserving my healer’s heart, as many well intentioned clients in recovery just aren’t ready to make the necessary changes and so they perpetuate self destructive behaviors over and over again, despite your best efforts to help them, but I still knew what I wanted, and after two years working in residential recovery, and several months studying for the state test, I finished my 3000 hours and I sat for my licensing test and passed.
Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?
In the healing/wellness professions I think it is most helpful to have a regular practice of your own growth and healing work, a practice that allows you to be warmly connected to yourself in an authentic way. We therapists regularly swim in distressing energy, not a lot of people do growth work when their lives are smooth and happy, so honoring a primary relationship, you to you, is essential to avoid burn out. Moreover, your warm relationship to yourself will allow you attune to your clients and healing unfolds more collaboratively.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.palmspringscounseling.com
- Instagram: palmspringscounseling
- Linkedin: Chaundra Prehara