Before becoming a mental health counselor, I was a social studies teacher with training in geography. I love all things maps, environments, cultures, and people. In particular, I was interested in how people interacted with the environments around them. While at this time in my life I was often focused on the big picture, I now see how this applies to my everyday life, but especially how it applies as a counselor.
Geography isn’t just about countries on a map, it’s about relationships. The relationships between people and place, place and place, and people and people. Geography is the study of space. Any kind of space. Sometimes a change of environment is just what we need. Other times, we need to determine what is best for us and make changes where we can. We make and give meaning to each environment in which we exist – including the environment in our heads.
During my master’s in education, I decided to take a one-month summer course with one of the most beloved professors in our department. Bold, bright, and genius she brought innovative, and oftentimes unorthodox, methods to teacher preparation. That month she assigned us no less than four books to read. Most were aimed at increasing our cultural competence and empathy building, but one book she assigned to help us cope.
I’m not sure what I expected but assigning us a book to help us cope with the stresses of being a teacher was not it. However, once I got my hands on You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment by Thich Nhat Hanh something in my mental space shifted. It wasn’t all at once or even upon the first read in this class. I have probably read this book upwards of ten times now and still find new lessons to learn.
You Are Here guides the reader through mindfulness and how to enact it in everyday life. The focus on the here-and-now was a new concept for a graduate student focused entirely on future goals. Future goals that distracted me from the people, places, and relationships all around me. At this time, I was experiencing deep existential anxiety about things I could not control. This book though was the first step I took to reclaim my power over my space – both mental and physical.
After witnessing the positive changes this shift in perspective brought me, I became interested in how it could be more widely used. Upon transitioning into the mental health profession, I carried these lessons with me. I’m still deeply interested in my client’s histories and families, but I am also interested in their present. I want to know how their environments affect them and how they affect their environments. I want to understand the landscapes in their minds and if it sometimes gets too loud in there. When I hear clients discuss existential stress or a mind that never takes a break, I find myself reaching for the lessons taught to me in that summer class I took so long ago. A lesson on how to exist in our personal geography and thrive in the present.
