We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Fanshen Thompson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Fanshen below.

Fanshen, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.

In 2020 as the pandemic began, I was working as a Behavioral Health Care manager for a large medical company. This was my dream job. I was overseeing 2 large programs, Both were critical programs in our department in that they represented the entryway to behavioral health care for our clients. My team began with brief screenings, then moved clients forward to my other team who provided more in depth assessments and connection with care. Prior to this job, I worked for many years in community based organizations who primarily served specialized populations in need. It was rewarding and foundational work for me, but moving into the large company fulfilled a dream of mine to be part of impacting large system change. For me, this was my professional identity. I felt like I had something to contribute and that it was a calling, of sorts. Which is likely why it was so difficult for me to recognize, when the time came, that I needed a change. It was 2021, we had spent the last year reinventing our services and doing our best to serve clients in this new climate. Not only a climate of virtual care, but all kinds of mental health stressors, including social, political and environmental. During this time, in the Bay Area, we had our infamous “red day” where the sky turned an unprecedented dark red during historic tragic fires. The mood of our community was reflected in the calls we received in our department. It was not long after that that my manager, who I trusted and respected, left our company and our department began to drown fairly significantly. After a few months, a new manager came in and changed the dynamics dramatically. Prior to this, I had been barely getting by and was noticing the signs of burnout. I was doing all the things, exercise, sleep, eating well, etc, but was feeling discouraged and hopeless about the capacity for things to change. Yet, it took my partner reflecting back to me, “you know you could quit” for me to even allow that thought into my awareness. Quitting for me meant giving up on my identity. It meant leaving behind what I thought was my future. But I am forever grateful to my partner for suggesting what was so obvious and right in front of me, yet impossible to see. This was a defining moment, but little did I know that I had more defining moments to come.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I did not set out to become a psychotherapist, but rather a social worker who supports individual and system change. After leaving what I thought was my lifelong career as a behavior health care manager, I began to do deep inner work that led me to the place I am now: supporting and co-creating lasting change with people who are dealing with, what I call, Ordinary Loneliness.While we may be more connected as a society by technology and other advances, we are more disconnected than ever, allowing loneliness to fester inside our own minds, creating a myth that we are alone in our loneliness.  But in reality ordinary loneliness is more universal than we think. It is that sense that we are not good enough as a human, just the way we are. That we need to fix, or change, or seek something outside of ourselves. Social media and media in generali reinforce the idea that we are not good enough as we are. That we need to strive to be better, do better, work harder, achieve more, and only then will we be good enough. While deepening social connections is the traditional route to healing loneliness, the people I work with have not found that to be a sufficient antidote to loneliness and are craving something more, something deeper. That something, is learning to connect to their own unique inner wisdom in order to both soothe what ails and to find solutions to life’s daily challenges. I support people using somatic (body based) and mindfulness tools to bring more awareness to both the present moment, as well as how our bodies respond to feelings, stress, triggers, etc and allowing them to be present without needing to fix, change or even figure them out. I see myself as a co-creator of healing, bringing an element of structure, support and guidance through a process of self discovery. I find that clients I work with often are able to find their own answers and wisdom through this process, and make lasting and transformational change.

I found myself here by accident. I left a career I thought would be where I retired, but I followed my own inner wisdom to arrive here, rather than holding on to a story that somehow had become my story, but then no longer resonated. My vision for the future is to expand my work to reach more people and to create a sense of community with the people I work with. I am doing this at a slow and steady pace that feels manageable to me and by listening to the needs of the clients that I currently work with and of course, to my inner wisdom that sometimes shows up in mysterious ways.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When I quit my big company job where I thought I would retire, I assumed I would just get another management job, as that was what I did. That was who I was. After taking some time to decompress and recover, I began looking for jobs. I had a number of interviews and inquiries, however nothing was resonating with me. I just could not see myself in any of these positions. I was changing. At a certain point, I had been unemployed for long enough that I decided I needed some kind of work to support my family, so I started working for a start up providing online therapy. I was surprised that over time, this grew on me. It also felt natural. I realized I had something to offer. While I had always connected with helping people, I never saw myself as a therapist. I saw myself as a system change maker. But the more I did this, the more it actually felt right for me. Listening to this within myself took some time, but once I did, I was all in on the pivot! After decades of leadership and holding onto an identity that I was a leader, I let go of that and allowed myself to pivot to be where I am now. And I have no regrets.

Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?

Absolutely not. It chose me. I always knew I would be in the helping profession, it was who I was from a very young age. I grew up in a family that cared deeply about social justice. It was everywhere around me, this passion, so I soaked it up and it became who I was. The way that I have developed throughout my career has been inspired by me always following my intuition, my heart. So regret is not something that enters my mind. I know I am in the right place.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.fanshenthompson.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100086164215212
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fanshen-thompson-lcsw-672425216/

Image Credits
Allison Busch