We recently connected with Kelly Lynch and have shared our conversation below.

Kelly, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What was the most important lesson/experience you had in a job that has helped you in your professional career?

I spent a decade working in Emergency Medical Services prior to becoming a therapist. While emergency services became a proving ground of sorts for me, for many reasons, one of the most important lessons came from my instructor, Dawson Blackmore, in the process of taking the class to become an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician).

This man was absolutely larger than life, and to this day he’s still one of the most intimidating people I’ve ever met – but he and his wife, Marie, also became two of the most important, impactful mentors I’ve ever had. In working shifts with them, I quickly realized that they were intimidating because they were highly respected in our community, had absolutely giant hearts, and treated their roles and patients with a level of dignity, respect, and reverence that I had never been exposed to before.

One day during the EMT class, Dawson walked in and in his usual manner, hollered at me and my classmates to sit down, pay attention, and be prepared, because he was ready to begin. This was over 20 years ago at this point, so I don’t remember what the particular topic was that day, but I’ll never forget what he said.

In the process of this lesson, Dawson said to us –

‘The day you can say you’ve seen it all, done it all, and know it all – retire. Retire, because you just became dangerous.’

This lesson has contributed to shaping how I approached my decade in emergency services, and it’s heavily influenced my 14-year career as a social worker.

Dawson knew that my classmates and I were about to walk out into the world, doing a dangerous job, and that there was a huge amount of information we’d need to know that was impossible to teach in entirety in class. There was life experience we’d need to do this job effectively and care for our patients properly while also staying safe, and he understood the necessity of teaching us why it was so important to keep our egos in check and remain lifelong students.

This lesson – remaining a lifelong student – has touched every aspect of my life and career. Knowing that there is always a way I can continue to work on bettering myself so that I can be more equipped to help the people I care for in my personal and professional lives is something that has driven me forward for the better part of two and a half decades now. I don’t ever want to be the smartest person in ‘the room.’

There’s always a way to ‘level up,’ increase our baseline, and expand who we are and what we do. I find that idea to be absolutely thrilling.

Finally, I’ll offer my own interpretation of Dawson’s lesson.

Stay humble enough to always be a student of your craft, whatever that may be.

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?

People have told me in the past that my story is unusual and impressive, but I believe we all have impressive stories. This is just part of mine.

I became an EMT in 2002, and spent a decade working in Emergency Medical Services (EMS) while I was becoming a therapist, and starting my career as a therapist. I went to school for social work, and graduated with a Master’s in Social Work in 2009, getting licensed as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in 2011.

I became an EMT because of 9/11. I tried to join the military after 9/11 happened, but couldn’t join because of an orthopedic issue. EMS became the next, most logical step, which landed me in an EMT class. I intended on volunteering for a few years, not really having a clear plan for what I wanted to do with EMS beyond just serving my community, but as I went through the class and started working shifts, I absolutely fell in love with it.

In the process of working EMS, I realized – I also really loved helping people who are struggling. Being able to bear witness to the depth of possibility of human struggle in the context of EMS taught me so much, especially about the resilience of the human spirit – but also what it looks like when that spirit is starting to crack and break under the weight of emotional trauma and pain. It was working in EMS that made me realize I wanted to have a full career of helping people learn how to lean into the depths of their resilience.

In the process of wanting to help people – I didn’t know that I’d also be someone needing that same kind of help one day.

I got married in 2009, the same year I started my social work career. The relationship lasted 9.5 years from the beginning, to its end in 2014, a year and a half after I had our daughter. I divorced my ex-husband as a result of domestic violence. It was the darkest time of my adult life, and I had to work HARD in my own therapy process to really understand the shame, embarrassment, sadness, and anger I felt about what my life had turned into. People were shocked when I left my marriage because I had been hiding the problems for years. In going through the process of divorce, financial ruin and then recovery, and learning how to be on my own as a single parent, I was starting the process of discovering and developing who I needed to become in order to create what I have today. I was leaning into and living on what would later become GRIIT and POWER.

Today, I own a private psychotherapy practice in Connecticut, where I specialize in working with First Responders. I also own a private coaching practice, The GRIIT Project, where I offer mindset coaching for entrepreneurs, along with business coaching for mental health therapists in private practice.

Under The GRIIT Project, I help entrepreneurs realize the importance and power of mindset as they work on crafting lives and businesses they’re actually excited to show up to. I’ve developed comprehensive methods for managing mindset and problem-solving that are the first of their kind, called GRIIT and POWER.

GRIIT is all about mindset, while POWER is all about problem-solving.

GRIIT:

Growth
Resilience
Identity
Integrity
Training

POWER:

Pause for perspective
Observe and organize
Work the problem
Express the impact
Recover

I’m so proud of these methods, because they are truly all-encompassing, touching on each point that’s needed in going really deep on developing a powerful mindset and understanding what it takes to consistently level up, while also managing the inevitable problems any one of us could end up facing as we move through life.

I developed GRIIT and POWER in the process of supporting a therapy client who was struggling, but in creating these methods, I realized quickly that not only are these things all people can benefit from, but that I had also been living them for years, beginning with being in EMS, and then going through a traumatic marriage and divorce. There are many coaches and clinicians who talk about and teach mindset and problem-solving strategies, but in almost a decade and a half of being in this field, I’ve never found actual, step-by-step guides like this. I knew, in wanting to help that one therapy client and in understanding what it means to walk my talk, I needed to make something that didn’t exist yet.

When clients come prepared to dive into the deep end and really get to work, there’s no way to use these methods and stay the same. GRIIT and POWER are pathways to discovery and deep change.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I was never really taught boundary setting, what it is, and what the purpose of boundaries are when I was growing up. Most of the time, this is something taught in childhood through modeling from parents or parent figures and other healthy authority figures, such as teachers and coaches.

Not understanding boundary setting led me to a lot of performing for approval, codependency in relationships, and being very anxiously attached to people I cared about. I protected people who shouldn’t have been protected because they were unsafe and unhealthy for me, and this was most evident in my marriage.

In experiencing domestic violence, divorce, and going through the process of figuring out how to pick up the pieces of my life, I carried what felt like a metric ton of shame. I come from a good family with strong values, and in ending my marriage, I felt like a complete failure. Coming out of that, I had to learn – and unlearn – so many lessons, boundary setting just being one of them.

At the time of my divorce, I had been a therapist for five years. I knew conceptually what boundaries were, and taught it all the time to clients, but was mortified when I realized I had never really set boundaries in my personal life. I had to take ownership of the result of my lack of setting them – I behaved like a doormat – and the traumatic impact of that. It was a tough pill to swallow, but it was so necessary in the process of taking the ownership over my life that I had craved, and really stepping into becoming a powerful woman, mother, and entrepreneur.

Today, I’m so proud of the boundaries I’ve established in my life. There are boundaries we all need to have with ourselves, and then there are boundaries we need to have with others. It’s important to remember that boundaries aren’t there to keep people ‘out,’ but rather they exist to protect the most sacred spaces in our lives.

The boundaries I have today – and the boundaries you can have too – support my health, home, relationships, career, and the joy I choose to keep in my life.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

I would choose being a therapist, every single time, over and over again. I wouldn’t change anything.

While I’m not someone who grew up knowing what they wanted to do for their career, I absolutely am thrilled with my career and I love what I do.

I’m invited into my clients’ lives and allowed to look into the most personal, private parts of their lives in intimate detail. It’s wildly humbling to know that people are willing to trust me in that capacity.

To get to bear witness to the resilience, tenacity, and beauty of the human spirit is an absolute privilege and gift. I couldn’t imagine doing anything other than exactly this, walking alongside my clients in the process of self-discovery, every day.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thegriitproject.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thegriitcoach/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thegriitcoach/

Image Credits
Brent Woods, wildwoodscreative.co