Being a Therapist When the World is on Fire

by Vanessa Anyanso

I don’t know what it’s like to be a therapist during “normal times.” I, a Nigerian American born and raised in the Washington, D.C. area, moved to Minneapolis in Fall 2019 to start my doctoral program in Counseling Psychology. The world shut down for the pandemic in March 2020. In May 2020, George Floyd was murdered just miles from where I lived and Minneapolis became the epicenter of a global uprising. I spent that June raising money and delivering $20,000 worth of groceries and supplies to community organizations across the city. When I began seeing therapy clients for the first time in September 2020, I was learning how to sit with others’ pain while trying to make sense of my own. Every day, I would ask myself, “How do I be a therapist while the world is on fire?” Half a decade later, the question remains. 

In October 2020, the Lekki Toll Gate Massacre was perpetuated by the Nigerian Army in the midst of the #EndSars Protests. In April 2021, Daunte Wright was killed by a police officer just outside Minneapolis while we were waiting to hear the results of Derek Chauvin’s trial for the murder of George Floyd. While all this was happening, thousands of people were dying daily from COVID-19, I was adjusting to online learning, and it felt like a beloved Black celebrity, from Chadwick Boseman to Congressman John Lewis, died every week. 

No one says that training to be a therapist is easy. But I also don’t think anyone could have predicted the scale of death and continuous trauma amidst which my learning to be a healer would occur. As I’ve continued through my training, many supervisors and mentors have commented that they are impressed by us “pandemic trainees” and all we had to navigate socio-politically while completing our already rigorous and draining degrees. While I know these words are meant to offer some sense of encouragement and understanding, they often feel frustrating. An acknowledgment of nearly impossible circumstances without tangible support, resources, or an offer to lighten an increasingly heavy load.

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Many of my first therapy clients were college students who were thrown into online learning at the height of COVID, navigating COVID-related anxieties and social isolation, while attempting to complete their course requirements. At my most recent training site, I worked with many Black and Brown people and federal workers in Washington D.C. who were worried about how 45’s policies and funding cuts would negatively affect them, their families, and their coworkers. Despite the difference of five years and increased confidence in my clinical abilities, I still found myself in the same position of sitting in front of someone who was grappling with the same exact fears and worries as me and being expected to know how to help them. I know no other way to be a therapist. But from what I understand from more established therapists, this is not the norm.

When I started this essay, I was heavily reflecting on my doctoral journey while transitioning into my final year of clinical training: full-time clinical work, finishing my dissertation, and moving from Washington, DC to Boston. I was doing so amongst the backdrop of a genocide in Gaza funded by my tax dollars, attacks on the work I do that centers Black and other marginalized peoples, ICE ramping up raids and deportations across the country, and the knowledge that our country is slowly and steadily marching towards authoritarianism. Amidst this chaos, I became overwhelmed and stepped away from this essay for months. I am returning just hours after the news that ICE has executed a second person in Minneapolis, Alex Pretti, weeks after murdering Renee Good. Both of these murders follow Keith Porter’s in Los Angeles, which also has served as yet another reminder of which lives are more publicly valued and mourned.

The question returns: “How am I supposed to be helping others when the odds feel insurmountable? What can I meaningfully do for my clients when anything short of societal transformation feels inadequate?” 

Can a cognitive restructuring exercise feel like anything less than self-gaslighting when people’s worst fears are coming true? How long can I expect a client to “mindfully observe” and ride the wave of their rage, fear, and anxieties without letting them consume them? Is this what it means to be a therapist now? Sitting in front of someone, naming and processing what can’t tangibly be changed within a 50-minute session, feeling useless, and turning attention to whatever can be done to help more “solvable” issues?

In most other aspects, I feel able to hold onto hope and ground my rage in love that drives meaningful action. Whether it’s leaning into love to pour into family and friends, drawing on Audre Lorde’s conceptualization of self-care as a political act to slow down and pour into myself, or even alchemizing my anger into determination to complete my doctorate so I can join the 5% of Black psychologists and continue advancing Black mental health. 

However, transforming despair into action feels harder when sitting in the therapist’s chair. As an individual, I know I don’t have to have all the answers; but as a therapist, I feel a sense of responsibility for my clients’ wellness. I want to reduce their distress in the therapy room and remove the conditions that are creating their stressors altogether. 

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I write that knowing it is a lofty goal. I also find myself wanting to address that in the same way I would with clients. Sometimes there are no answers, there is no magic wand. This is the situation and hand we’ve been dealt, but what matters is how we get through it.

Maybe part of being a therapist while the world is on fire is removing that extra layer of responsibility. While I can do small things in my personal and professional life to alleviate the broader conditions, I do know there is real power and healing in simply sitting with someone through the unimaginable. 

I’ve often been surprised that some of the sessions in which I have felt the most useless are the same ones my clients tell me they deeply appreciated. Even if we couldn’t “fix” the problem, just feeling heard, being seen, known, and held in their messy, complex emotions, is meaningful enough. This is also true in my personal life – on days that I feel overwhelmed or hopeless, simply sitting on Facetime with a friend, watching their dog sleep, leaves me feeling lighter even if nothing has meaningfully changed in my life. I often tell my clients in high distress that just focusing on getting through a day, an hour, a minute, is enough. Just focus on getting through one moment, and once that moment passes, you can focus on the next. Maybe that’s also the role of therapy during these times. Giving people a space to pause, feel, be seen, and prepare for the next moment. 

In these moments of real human connection amidst the unspeakable horrors, the horrors feel more manageable – for just a moment. 

We help our clients remember that there is more than just the terror. We help them remember that there are people who care and are just as outraged. We help them take care of themselves, in whatever ways they can, so they can withstand and endure and make it to the other side of this. In this moment, we as therapists can be reminded that even if we can’t fix the world, we can make it feel a little less heavy. 

Maybe our role within the therapy space in this moment is to just bear witness as our clients get through this. And in that, reminding ourselves that while this may be what therapy looks like for now, it won’t always have to be this way.

Vanessa E. Anyanso (she/her) is a Nigerian American Black feminist psychologist-in-training, researcher, writer, advocate born and raised in the Washington, DC area. She is currently a Doctoral Candidate in Counseling Psychology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and is completing her final year of predoctoral clinical training at Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She has previous clinical experience in college counseling, career counseling, community mental health, private practice, and VA medical center settings. Her research examines the structural, societal, and individual level factors that affect the psychological well-being of Black and other marginalized populations and uses community-engaged methods to design and implement culturally-relevant interventions.