Cecil Walker, LMFT, is one of the talented psychotherapists that works with CVT Georgia, based in Clarkston – a city known for its growing refugee population.

Walker works one-on-one with CVT clients and families, all of whom are refugees and asylum-seekers from around the world who’ve found solace in Clarkston area. In addition to these counseling sessions, Walker also provides external training, presentations and skill-building sessions on behalf of CVT for for partner organizations as well as refugee and immigrant populations.

Walker sat down with us to talk about his work with CVT and the vitality of self-care as a mental health services provider.

Q: How did you get involved in this work?

Walker: I was trying to find a way to provide services to some of these underserved populations who don’t have as easy of a time accessing mental health services. 

I also work in private practice and see a lot of children of immigrants and students who are from marginalized backgrounds, but that’s very different from refugees and recently displaced people who have migrated here.

My dad emigrated here from Antigua and the Caribbean when he was a kid, so being the child of an immigrant, it felt really close to home. We didn’t have much money growing up, and nobody really ever talked about or addressed mental health issues, so making sure that I was at least doing something to provide access to populations in need had always been something really, really important to me. 

Q: What has most surprised you about this work?

Walker: The therapy is very different from the therapy everyone thinks of. A lot of people picture you lying down on a couch and some old guy just asks you how you feel. 

For an American middle class person, the standard is often very connected to cognitive behavioral methods. It’s very, ‘Tell me what your problems are, what are you afraid of?’ And then as therapists, we’ll work our way through that, undo the distortions of how you’re thinking about things, we’ll manage those feelings. We’ll directly intervene and talk really directly and very clinically about whatever it is that’s going on for you. 

But therapy here is much more relational. It’s much more like building a relationship with the clients, creating a safe space. This might be the first time in their life where they talk to a non-family member in such an open and vulnerable way. 

When you’re fresh out of school, you want to pull out all the tricks and interventions that you learned. 

But to slow down and realize that this is really about the relationship and how impactful those relationships can truly be was a bit of a shock for me. 

It’s easy to overlook that impact, even in your regular life outside of work.

Q: Why is self-care important in this line of work?

Walker: For a million reasons. People that are drawn to working at places like CVT are the people with really big hearts and who care a lot and want to help the people most in need. There’s this spirit of ‘I’ll give it all for these people who need help.’ 

I’m glad people like that exist, but the thing that happens when you give your all is you have nothing left. Now you’re someone who’s in need. 

The hard part of the job is taking care of yourself while also taking care of someone else. You have to draw lines for yourself in your brain that says, ‘I can’t be working in the middle of the night, or figuring out these problems, or answering these emails.’ 

You have to realize that not having a work/life balance is not just bad for you, but it’s eventually bad for your clients. You won’t be in the place to feel well enough to keep going in this work if you run yourself down. You’ve got to take time to do nothing, to invest in your relationships, to really fill yourself back up.

Q: What does self care look like for you?

Walker: I’ve been trying to be a lot more physically active, and that feels really, really great. I’ve always tried to eat healthy and get good sleep, because I can feel the difference during those weeks where I don’t. 

I grew up here in Atlanta, and I’ve created so many communities of people and that’s how I spend most of my time – with friends, talking to mentors and family. During undergrad I double majored in music and psychology, so a lot of my friends are musicians too, so we’ve been trying to make more time for playing music together and just that really fills me up. 

Q: What else would you want to share about your work?

Walker: People often look at this job from the outside and they ask, ‘How do you keep yourself from burning out? How do you keep yourself from feeling maybe too burdened by the trauma?’

There is the risk of that, but I don’t feel drained by this work. I feel lucky to be able to engage with people in this kind of way, because not everyone gets to see these sides of people or of humanity.

I walk away from these sessions with less of a cynical view and more of a hopeful, global view, because I get to see people be really resilient. I get to see people talk really hopefully. All these terrible, difficult, things have happened to them, and yet they’re still trying to feel better, trying to do better, trying to improve their children’s lives. 

I get a front row seat to how resilient human beings can be.

I get to look at how hope can show up in hopeless situations, at how vulnerable and how trusting people can be when they have no reason to be. Not everyone gets to experience that.