Meet Katey Kingra

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

Katey, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

My self-esteem is mercurial. When I feel up about myself, which is the majority of the time, it is often traced back to this simple truth: I love humans. I’m a human and so, naturally, I love myself. What I love about us is how multifaceted we are, how impulsive, joyful, thoughtful, scared, and quirky we are. As a therapist I get to spend concerted time with individuals, learning about their lives and worldviews. I get to honor their feelings and affirm their thoughts. Perhaps it is even more apparent to me when I’m not on the clock, though, humans are endlessly fascinating. We get up to all sorts of surprising things.

My self-esteem, when it is up, is just an extension of that. I’m impulsive, joyful, thoughtful, scared, etc. When it is my human experience I’m fascinated by, I get to spend as much time as I want exploring. By and large, I find us all wonderful. (Confirmation bias at its best.)

When I’m feeling down about myself, it is almost always because I have some distorted perspective on something. I am fed the same stuff as everyone else. At any moment I can tune into some feed telling me I’m awful for a thousand reasons and so is everything else. That is very much available to me and frequently it gets to me. When it does, I can feel quite down.

What do I do?

I realize it is a perspective issue. I’m probably taking in too much noise from non-humans, which is to say corporations, NGOs, bots, and even committees. Instead of allowing entities like that to inform me about my own worth, I turn to my loved ones. They know what’s good.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I’m a clinical mental health counselor. I work in New York with truly amazing clients. Over the years I have found myself working with college-aged people, PhDs, post-docs, and academics.

I got into this field because I was being pragmatic! I have always had an idealist’s engine inside me propelling me to seek answers. I can’t really distinguish a rhetorical question from a real question. If something puzzles me I’ll pursue an answer or a theory or a hypothesis until I’m satisfied. Growing up I wondered about the deep questions of life and found myself reading about world religions, humanism, and post-enlightenment philosophy. There is wisdom aplenty in those texts, but I found the life of the mind to be fairly lonely. It was also fruitless, in a way. I certainly enjoyed thinking, wondering, and puzzling, but I really liked finding answers. I like impact. I also love people; connecting with them, understanding them, and celebrating them. My work allows me to provide guidance so my clients can find answers and it rarely feels fruitless.

As a therapist I am allowed insight into others’ worldviews. They share with me the provenance of their beliefs and feelings and I get to honor them…. until we agree it might be best to dismantle them. Then I can help them build something new!

The human mind is an incredible thing and spending my days exploring it with my clients is endlessly interesting. If you are thinking about therapy, for whatever reason, I certainly recommend trying it out. You may need to meet a few therapists to find a good fit, but once you do, it is life-changing.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

1. Empty your cup. This is practical Zen wisdom. In order to learn something new you must clear out prejudices, preconceptions, and expectations. It is hard to do, maybe impossible. It is still worth pursuing. To be a good therapist, which is to say, to be receptive to another person’s thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and physical energy, you really have to clear out your own stuff. Inevitably, you will fail. Unless you are a Zen master, you will not be able to empty your cup. Trying anyway looks like this.
-know your prejudices
-know your expectations
-know your theories and hypotheses
-aim to minimize the impact of the above
-know you have blind spots and plenty of ignorance
-be humble
-when you fail, whether big time or small scale, don’t beat yourself up
-keep emptying your cup

2. You cannot be everything to everyone. Sometimes it hurts me a lot when a client decides I’m not a good fit for them. Self-doubt can flood in. I can feel embarrassed. It is unpleasant. Other times it is so obvious we are not a good fit. Sometimes a client is a bad fit for me and I have to really encourage them to find a more suitable therapist. In each situation I return to that truth: I can’t be everything to everyone. What goes along with that is another truth: there is a better fit out there.

Knowing there is a better fit out there is such a relief. I know I’m not alone when I feel like maybe I could be, or should be, able to do the job (whatever it is). Understanding there are certainly other people out there who can already do the job very well, even expertly, takes the pressure off of me.

3. Human connection is primal. It is essential. It is powerful. Sometimes a session will be heavy and a client is doing some intense work. Other times it is light. In lighter sessions I can wonder about the value I’m providing as a therapist. I am reassured by this fact; human connection is primal. By simply caring for them, honoring their stories, and celebrating their victories, I am providing the goods.

These three things help me in and out of work. I definitely forget them often…. but when I remember them! They are like an oasis in the desert.

Tell us what your ideal client would be like?

Gosh, an ideal client….
Therapy is part exploration, part healing, and part growth. If you are willing to do those things, you are already a good client. Improving on that, let’s say you have patience and understand change takes time. That is also helpful. If you excel at insight, that is wonderful! But, I can help you with all that stuff. Willingness to explore, heal, and grow; those are the basics for a good work in therapy.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kateykingra.com