I'm a person

runpunkrun asked "What's the one thing you wish people knew about your profession?"

The one thing I wish all my (prospective) clients knew is that I'm a person. Massage therapy is a service job. Some people automatically discount people who do services for them, and other people have a hard time seeing anyone as a separate person. I wish everyone could see everyone as separate people!

My fragrance sensitivities do a fairly good job of filtering for people who see me as enough of a person to make sure they don't wear anything scented to sessions, and my Covid precautions are adding another layer of filtering, so my actual clients are mostly fine. Over the years I've learned to more firmly show up in my personhood, rather than letting people erase me in the name of "good service."

There was one prospective client who thought she got to negotiate about waiting two weeks after Covid-risky behavior to come in for a session. I'm not saying two weeks is the perfect amount of time, but I'm definitely the one who gets to decide on a boundary about who comes into my space. She eventually went off in a huff, which was fine with me.

More specific to massage therapy but still about boundaries, I wish everyone were 100% clear that therapeutic massage is not sex work. It's been a while since I had an issue with that, but a recent client seemed a little confused at first. Fortunately he didn't reschedule.

And about trauma work, I wish everyone knew that they don’t need fixing, and my work won’t fix them.