What’s it like to run a private practice while living on a sailboat? In this episode of The Traveling Therapist Podcast, I talk to Raquel Ortega, a DBT therapist who has taken her practice offshore—literally! After working in a DBT clinic in London, Raquel found herself at a crossroads when the clinic shut down. Instead of settling down, she embraced a nomadic life, moving back to her home in Mallorca and taking her practice online. Now, she lives aboard a sailboat with her partner, navigating the ocean while continuing to help her clients.
Join us as Raquel shares the ups and downs of her sailing therapist lifestyle, including how she manages her caseload, deals with unreliable internet, and even crossed the Atlantic Ocean—all while maintaining her practice.
In This Episode, We Explore…
Connect with Raquel:
https://www.stepinto-yourself.com/
https://www.instagram.com/sailingmenyr
https://www.instagram.com/stepintoyourself
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Transcript:
Kym: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Traveling Therapist Podcast. Really excited today. We have a super interesting guest today, Raquel Ortega. She's got quite the story. Raquel, how did you go from being just your typical therapist to a traveling therapist? Let's just jump right into it.
Raquel: So it wasn't necessarily by choice that I made this lifestyle move. It was happenstance. I used to work for a clinic in London. It was one of the only, it was the only dbt clinic in London that was free of charge at the time. And it closed down due to lack of budget. And so I found myself in London, not really liking the city.
Sorry to whoever loves London. It was not for me. It's too
Kym: I've heard that. I've heard that. I think, I think of going to London and I'm like, you know, I don't know if I really want to go.
Raquel: I love the sun. So this is why this life choice made a lot of sense for me. So I decided to leave London and I'm from Mallorca from Spain. It's an Island. So I moved back and I had all of my previous dbt clients that were wanting to continue working with me because there was no other option available.
So I decided to set up my private practice. It's called step into yourself and it's dbt informed. therapy, so I'd only do individual sessions I went back to Mallorca, not really sure what to do with my life because I wasn't planning on opening up a private practice at 27 years old. And then I met my partner who lives, who lived and lives on a sailboat and I decided to just go for the adventure and try and work online from a moving home.
Kym: Oh my gosh.
Raquel: So it wasn't really in my plans. I was envisioning a completely different future. It was just really luck,
Kym: Yeah.
Raquel: that came my way.
Kym: you were from Mallorca, moved, did you move to London for that job and then move back or, or had you, were you just living there and then you got a job there? That kind of
Raquel: it's a bit complicated. I've moved around my whole life, so the nomadic lifestyle is very familiar to me. I did my university in New York, did my, my undergrad and master's there. Then I moved to London because it's very hard to get a working visa as a therapist in the US. And I got this job, so it was just looking, I don't work in Spanish, I work in English.
So I just moved to the next, the closest city to New York, because I love New York. And that was London.
Kym: Wow. That's so interesting. So, so that, that's something we never talk about on here is if, if you're a therapist from another country and you want to come in the U S and get a working visa, that's hard to do. That's interesting to me.
Raquel: yeah, very difficult.
Kym: What is that process like?
Raquel: As you're a student, you have an F1 visa. And that covers you while you're there, but you cannot work. You can only work at the university and you have a certain amount of hours that I think you can do This is a while ago. I think you can do outside of the university.
then you have, you have an OPT, which is a one year after your degree where you can actually work.
Kym: Oh, interesting.
Raquel: So after I got my master's and I wanted to do my licensing hours, it was, yeah, I could have done it. I did it in the year, but then I didn't find any companies that would sponsor my visa, which is what you need to stay.
Kym: see.
Raquel: So I basically got my education in the U. S.
Kym: Interesting. Oh my gosh.
Raquel: I haven't been able to practice there.
Kym: That is so interesting. Oh my gosh. Yeah, so could you get licensed in New York or wherever if you wanted to at this point? Are you licensed in the U.
Raquel: Not anymore. Not anymore, because I didn't do the exam when
Kym: Interesting.
Raquel: I knew I wasn't staying. So I just crossed over the pond and went back to what was then Europe.
Kym: Wow. Okay. So, so then you get the job in London and then you decide, I don't want to be in London or the funding dried up for the clinic and you had all these clients. So the way it works over there, it was it totally fine to just take all those clients that you had in London, just like take them remotely and see them in Mallorca then as far as like licensing rules or anything like that, did it, did it matter
Raquel: in Spain, some currently registered with the Spanish Psychologist Association. For telehealth, you have to abide by the ethical rules of the country of the client. PC rules are very similar to, well, they're all based on the APA rules, so it, it worked fine.
Kym: that's amazing. That's great. Then you you had your your private Case load for your, your dbt practice that you that you had going and then you met your partner and you decided, okay, I'm going to take this on the road and go.
We're going to get sailing. Not on the road, even on the ocean sailing. So what was that? Like, had you had you had interest in sailing before, or your partner was just. It's
Raquel: absolutely not.
Kym: doing it. So you were like, let me jump in.
Raquel: Yeah, I had never been on a sailboat before I agreed to live on one. It was a bit of a wild move. So, yeah, never sailed met my partner and he said, Do you want to go around the world with me? And I was at a time where I was looking to moving to the UAE, moving to Australia, getting my PhD in the US.
I really didn't know. So it was the perfect moment to jump into any opportunity that showed up and. I moved in on the boat and opened up the practice at the same time in April 2021, I believe, or 2022. And it was terrifying. It was absolutely terrifying, going from being an employee to having this caseload and then Having to mediate the weather, the seasickness, the fact that everything is moving all of the time.
Like, I am currently moving, swaying back and
Kym: my gosh.
Raquel: hmm. It was extremely difficult. Extremely difficult.
Kym: Oh, I want to talk about all that cause I just couldn't even imagine like wifi is such a nightmare anyway, you know, for me and a lot of traveling therapists, I couldn't imagine how you even navigate that on the water.
tell us like how I just how do you navigate all of it? Like do you have to be in a in port?
Do you have to make sure you're in a certain place when you're when you're gonna see your clients or just how does all that? Work.
Raquel: what works best for me is I don't work while sailing, because that is too many roles all at once. So we make sure that we choose a stable anchorage, that the weather conditions are going to be good for the next few days, and that there aren't cliffs around. We, we have Starlink, so it's satellite, internet.
And sometimes it can be a bit iffy if there's Mountains around. For the most part, it works well. So that's usually what I look for is I check the weather and make sure that There aren't any huge storms coming or big swell coming into the anchorage. And, and that there's good internet. And then we stay for a couple of days.
So currently we're, we're in the Caribbean. We just crossed the Atlantic Ocean last last
Kym: oh my gosh you did
Raquel: So yeah, so that's another added layer is you know, trying to progress in my career and also trying to move westward and complete this, this trip around the world.
Kym: my gosh. So, so you guys really are going around the world. That's the plan.
Raquel: That's the plan. Yeah.
Kym: Wow, where did you start? Like where have you been? I'm just so curious. I'd love to see like a map of like where you go, where you
Raquel: Yeah, I can maybe send you one. started in Mallorca.
So if you imagine Spain, and then you imagine the little, the three little islands towards the east. I'm from one of those. And we spent a summer doing all of those islands, trying to see if I could even, if I even did like sailing. So we spent a summer there, and then we, Exited Gibraltar into and went to Portugal, where we spent a winter there, and we quickly realized that the old boat we had was way too small and really was not conducive to this type of work.
And my partner's a software engineer, so really, he can work from a hammock. But as you know, we can't work from hammocks, right?
Kym: Right. Well, we could. I don't know. Our clients would like it, but we could.
Raquel: the first challenge was, okay, we need to change boat. We need a bigger boat that can satisfy the needs that we have. So we went looking for another boat. We found one in southwest France. So we left, we sold the boat, left everything in Portugal, went to pick up the new boat, sailed all the way down back to Portugal in Lagos, it's the Algarve, and it was a nightmare because I don't know if you've heard the orcas that are currently Attacking sailboats.
Kym: No. Oh,
Raquel: So, orcas, this is a race against time. We were working, full time, sailing in the afternoons, trying to basically race against time because the orcas were moving up the coast of Portugal, we were moving south, and we didn't want them to attack our boat. We had just bought it. So it was a very, very stressful time.
Racing against the orcas, we passed really, really close by, but luckily they didn't notice us. And then we did
Kym: must have been so scary.
Raquel: We were constantly on watch, just on all of the Telegram channels watching for orcas. And so that's one challenge of working on, on a sailboat. You have to beware of the, of weather and animals. And then we did our first
Kym: gosh. I never even would have thought of that. I never would have thought of that, the orcas. You had to worry about them. Oh my gosh. Were you scared? I would have been so scared.
Raquel: it, it was more nerve wracking than scary. And it, we were so in it just working full time and sailing part time that I don't think we had a lot of time for fear. But we, we tried to be really ready.
Kym: Yeah.
Raquel: there were a few things that you can do. You can like throw sand in the water and apparently it disrupts their sonar So they don't attack you.
We didn't have to try anything out because they didn't come towards us But yeah, there's a lot of boats that are being hit.
Kym: That is crazy. After we get off here, I'm going to go read about that. I've never even heard of that. Oh my gosh.
so when you say bigger boat, like how big of a boat is working for you too? Because it's two of you, you're having to live on this thing. You're also having to work. My boyfriend and I, when we're both working, you know, we, we always get a two or three kind of bedroom place to make sure we have room to be, you know, separated when we're trying to work and stuff.
So I'm just curious, like about the boat and everything.
Raquel: never enough space on a boat, but currently this format works It's 43 foot or 13 meters and it's got two cabins. So one cabin is My office, and then the other person, usually my partner, works outside or in the other cabin or in the saloon.
Kym: that is so neat. so you said something there like we were going to see if I even like sailing. How, how is it? Do you like it? Like, I know there's got to be like pros and cons. Like maybe we could talk about that a little bit and where you are with it.
Raquel: It's been three years, and I can just say now, as of very recently, that I do love this lifestyle.
Kym: Okay.
Raquel: it's a very long process.
Kym: Mm
Raquel: First of all, I'm not really understanding what the pros even were. Everyone was talking about, Oh, this lifestyle is amazing being on anchor and exploring. And I suffered from really, really bad seasickness.
So the only thing I could see was my body is hating this. My body is rejecting this. Why am I here?
Kym: Mm, mm
Raquel: Yeah. And so that was really difficult. And leaving land was I grieved it. I grieved land and I grieved the friends and the hobbies because you don't have access to the hobbies that you're so used to doing.
So it was a process of really tolerating distress, really tolerating uncertainty and sitting with, what do I really want? Why am I doing this? Really just observing what I was going through without trying to touch it too much. And it has been a constant moving towards fears and overcoming them. From the first moment we sailed, I don't know if you've ever been on a sailboat, but when there's a bit of wind, it moves, it, it heals, right?
So it moves to the side. And the first time that happened, if you imagine a cat going into a bathtub and hating that, that was basically me.
Kym: Yeah. Oh, my gosh.
Raquel: so scared of it. now it's great. I understand how the boat works. I understand that I do have a sense of control and I can make choices. But when you don't know anything, that you don't even know, it's, it's not even in your awareness, what is in your control, what isn't, then the only thing you see is the fear and the uncertainty of it.
Kym: I can hear the, the DBT therapist in you when
Raquel: Oh, really?
Kym: about that, you know, just, yeah,
Raquel: and change.
Kym: it's a radical acceptance and you know, what do I have control of, you know, all of that stuff, but that's So true, though, it's gotta be, I just, I couldn't even imagine, like, having never done it before and then said, okay, I'm just going to jump in and do this lifestyle and just see how it goes.
I mean, I guess that's kind of what we're doing too, but not on the scale you are and then crossing the Atlantic like.
Raquel: Yes, that was a
Kym: How long did that take? Wow.
Raquel: days. A year ago, I told my partner, Hell no, I'm not doing it. There is no way, I will take a plane, I will meet you in the Caribbean, but I am not doing that. And slowly I found myself wanting to experience this disconnect. And because it was, when we crossed from Portugal to the Canary Islands, it was really beautiful.
It was very calm and the disconnect was just exactly what I needed at the time, so I was craving that. And this crossing was different. First of all, it was much longer and the preparation
Kym: hmm.
Raquel: Just having to account for feeding, you know, four mouths to feed during four weeks, having enough water, having enough fuel, having enough medicine, and then having enough things to carry you when you arrive in the Caribbean because everything is so expensive here.
So that was exhausting. Getting the boat ready was exhausting and we left. The first week is always about finding your, the rhythm, the rhythm of the waves, the rhythm of night shift, because you, someone has to be on watch all the time. It's like you're driving, right? So you have to look
Kym: Yeah, I was wondering about that. Like, what do you do?
Raquel: Someone's awake. Someone's always awake and on night shift.
Kym: Wow.
Raquel: Yeah, so having to get used to that and the exhaustion of sailing as well.
Kym: Oh my gosh. Yeah, I couldn't even imagine. Did you say four mouths to feed?
Raquel: Yeah, so we had crew. No, there's two, but
Kym: crew! Oh, to go across. I see.
Raquel: two of us, that means that We have long shifts, right, and we would never see each other. So I, that was my condition for the Atlantic Crossing. I said, if I'm coming, there has to be crew so that if anything happens to him, there's other people that can help take care of the boat.
Kym: Oh my gosh. That's so smart. Yeah, I was just, like, imagining just the two of you, like, crossing the ocean. Just, you know, taking shifts. Like, oh my gosh. That's
Raquel: no, that was too scary for me. So we left with with crew and it went really well. The first, it was very interesting because There was no fear. That was my greatest fears that I would be terrified the entire way. There's, you know, you've got four meter waves. I don't know how much that is in feet, but it's pretty big.
And you never really know. Yeah, it was, we hit a storm and we kind of had to stop in the middle of the ocean and wait it out. And even throughout that, I, it wasn't scary. So that's why I can now say that I like this lifestyle because I went through The worst thing that I could have possibly imagined, which was a storm in the middle of the ocean, I survived it.
So I'm reaping the rewards now.
Kym: That is amazing. Oh my goodness. Wow. So, on the sailboat is, is it literally you're dependent on the sails or is it also one where you can like kick in a motor if you have to, like
Raquel: Yeah, we've got an engine as well.
Kym: you've got an engine. Okay. Okay. Oh my goodness. Wow.
Raquel: we have to, for long crossings, you don't have a lot of, you don't have enough fuel to cross the entire ocean, so you have to be conscious of that.
Kym: Wow. And the crew, are they just expert sailors that y'all pick up the people that just do this all the time and they, they
Raquel: They were
Kym: across the ocean? Yeah.
Raquel: family and friends, so one of them was a complete rookie, had no prior sailing experience, and the other one had been in the French Navy, so she had. The basics of sailing.
Kym: Oh my goodness. Oh my gosh. So do y'all like, do you like pay them to do this or are they like, we'll just go because how cool is that to cross the ocean? Is it that
Raquel: No, they, they, they were like, we're gonna go. We shared costs of food and, and water. And I think some people do pay crew if it's a professional crew. But usually there's a lot of people looking for boats. And the costs are shared usually.
Kym: Mm hmm. gosh, I just have a thousand questions about this. when you get out there, obviously, I mean, you have Starlink. I don't know, does Starlink work the whole time or does it
Raquel: Uh,
Kym: communication?
Raquel: We lost communication. We decided to just to make things a bit harder. We decided to do the crossing old school. So no internet, we wanted to be
Kym: oh my
Raquel: disconnected. so we didn't have a live weather forecast. We had through a little device, we got some weather information. It wasn't as reliable as if you're looking on the internet.
But you can have Starlink all the way. It's just a different subscription, but we decided that we really just wanted to make it both a physical journey, but also an internal one. And we didn't want to be, we didn't want to have notifications or. Or anything that would distract us.
Kym: Oh my gosh. That is so cool. so it took you 24 days or that's how long it takes for somebody to cross usually?
Raquel: Took us. It depends on the boat.
Kym: Oh, I guess, I guess that makes sense. Yeah. Wow.
Raquel: So it took us 24 days, which is pretty average for a boat our size and, and this model.
Kym: so what do you do with your clients? Do you tell your clients? Are you like, Hey, I'm going to be sailing across the ocean. So I'll see you in like a month or like, how do you
Raquel: I did, did. In the beginning, when I first moved into the sailboat, I felt a lot of resistance with sharing with clients that I was in this lifestyle and living on a boat. And I've slowly gotten used to to sharing it because they're, I mean, God forbid touch wood, but if someone crashes into us and I'm in the middle of the session, I'm going to have to explain.
Kym: Yes.
Raquel: and there's a dbt metaphor with boats. So I tried to weave it in and make it less of a self disclosure, but also a moment to, to practice dbt. But I did prepare my clients for My leave, I was away for one month, so I told some of my clients six months ahead, so that they could start preparing, and, and, it was, I was trying to, to mediate the uncertainty of it, because you can't say, I'm going to be back on the 23rd of December.
It really depends on the wind. So going away in an open ended, this may take three weeks, this may take five, and you can't contact me. There was a lot of preparation for that.
everyone survived.
Kym: yeah, everybody was fine. Yeah, they usually are, right?
Raquel: exactly.
Kym: so six months in advance, there's no way to contact me. I guess you, maybe you had another therapist on call and they needed to reach somebody and needed help, that kind of thing. Yeah. Mm hmm. Wow. That is incredible hash.
And were they all pretty on board with it? Or did you get any pushback from your clients?
Raquel: No pushback, actually. A little bit of anxiety, and worry for my safety. So that was an interesting work moment. And so I just I just gave, you know, basic safety devices that we had and then the anxiety went away. So, no pushback, just curiosity and
Kym: I bet. I bet they were like, tell me, tell me all about it. I want to hear.
Raquel: It's always difficult when I get those questions. Yeah,
Kym: it's like, let's talk about you instead.
Raquel: exactly.
Kym: So what, what is the dbt sailboat metaphor? I'd love to hear that just, you know, out of my
Raquel: Oh, so So I don't know if it is a DBT metaphor, but we used to use it all the time in the clinic, which is we're on a little boat, right? There's the client, there's a therapist, and we're trying to get from A to B. Marsha Linehan says that to get out of hell, you have to go through it. So we're on this boat and we're going through hell.
And at times it's going to be the client rowing the boat and the therapist will be cheerleading. Sometimes the therapist will have to help row. Sometimes the therapist will be outside of the boat and just looking. we're trying to go through a storm and I'm not going to be rowing for you, but The support will be different depending on, on what the conditions are.
Kym: Oh, I love that. Oh my gosh. That's great. okay, so you're in the Caribbean right now. How long will you guys be in the Caribbean? And, and just, I just would love to hear like, what's the plan to get all the way around the world? Like, what does that look
Raquel: Okay. So we usually say our destination is Mallorca via French Polynesia.
Kym: Okay. Wow.
Raquel: probably going to stay here in the Caribbean for two years. And then the plan is either crossing the Panama Channel or, I don't really want to do this, but heading down to South America and doing the long route. But it's
Kym: Oh.
Raquel: first of all, and kind of extreme.
It's well known for having adverse weather. And then the plan is to do French Polynesia, maybe Hawaii, not sure, maybe Easter Island, maybe Galapagos, and
Kym: Oh,
Raquel: head to Australia and slowly make our way back in the Indian Ocean and we'll see how things are. On the way back we take the Suez Canal or we have to go down to South Africa and go all the way back to, to Spain.
Kym: Oh, my goodness. so I like this idea. It's yeah, it sounds like you guys are really taking your time, too So like you'll be in the Caribbean for a couple years and then just slowly Work your way around. Yeah,
Raquel: Yeah.
Kym: that's
Raquel: It's, we gave ourselves initially five seven years to do it, five to seven years, but we found that it was way too rushed, way too rushed. People who are on sabbaticals and do this trip, they can do it in two years or three years, but.
Kym: Oh my gosh
Raquel: With working and balancing, we want to have fun, so Yes, our goal is to go around the world.
But our immediate goal is to, we say, love and happiness. So wherever we're happy, we're just gonna stay there and and take each day as it comes.
Kym: Aw, that's amazing. Mm. I love that so much. So your boat, is that, is it something you can dock? Like I guess it's, you could just find a place to dock if you want and go inland. Do you guys ever go inland or do you always
Raquel: Oh, of course. No, no, no, no, no. You get cabin fever after a little bit. You have to go to land.
Kym: I bet.
Raquel: So, the way we are right now is we're on anchor. And we've got our dinghy, which is basically our car, which takes us to shore. And, and then we go explore. But we can also bring the boat to a marina, a port, and then leave it there. And then, you know, we know the boat is safe. And we can just go explore backpacking or do whatever we want to do.
Kym: do you ever like stay in a hotel or Airbnb or something or you always come back and sleep on the boat kind of
Raquel: We used to do that a lot on the other boat, because it was smaller. We don't really feel the need to do that now, because it is so beautiful just being on the water and having the sunset just, you know, in your backyard, and seeing sea turtles swimming around the boat. But if we do do land trips, we take a plane, then yeah, we stay in Airbnbs and hotels.
Kym: Oh, that's so cool. Wow. Now, are you a sailor now? Like if you learned how to sail just through Your partner or does he still
Raquel: Kim, this is when my imposter syndrome is just going to be like, alert, alert. I still consider myself a complete rookie, even though I've got certain miles that I've done, I've crossed an ocean. But my point of comparison is my partner, who is a sailing instructor, he's been sailing his entire life. So. I still have a lot to learn and I can maneuver the boat.
I can get it from point A to point B, not very smoothly still. But there's so much to learn with weather and just learning all of the cloud types and what they mean. That's just so much information. And there's a lot of mathematics involved as well. We'll see.
Kym: Oh, yeah,
Raquel: Yes, exactly.
Kym: brain just shuts down. I just like literally shut down.
Raquel: it's like I, I did not study this.
I don't like this. Don't talk about math.
Kym: Don't make me add numbers. No. Yeah, no, I know. I'm the same way. Wow. That's
Raquel: myself a rookie.
Kym: Yeah. Yeah. That's so interesting. Yeah. I just wonder. I mean, I figure you have to pick it up, but then it's like, how advanced do you want to get with it? And like, you know, God forbid something did happen to him and you're somewhere like, could you get, could you get somewhere?
You know, to
Raquel: Yes, yes, I think I could. With the help of adrenaline, it would just, I think, kick in. When, when you have a safety net, you know, he's the captain, I know that he can handle the boat. There's that safety net. If there is no safety net, then you are tested. And you really realize how much you know.
Kym: Yeah.
Raquel: he's around, you can get complacent and I don't want to do this, because it's hard work as well, haven't
Kym: he's got it. He's got it. I've got to see my clients. Yeah.
Raquel: yeah, I think I could get the boat from point A to point B, or at least call for help. That's definitely in my skill set
Kym: Are you normally in a place where you can pretty much see land or is it, are there times, I mean, obviously when you're crossing the ocean, but like, are there times where you Well, you're not around land for quite some time, or is it usually in the distance?
Raquel: It's,
Kym: Yeah.
Raquel: you know, I'm looking outside the porthole and I can see green, so there is we're usually in bays so close to land. Because otherwise it's too deep and you can't actually anchor because we don't have enough
Kym: Oh,
Raquel: So you have to be closer to land. So that you have a good grip.
Kym: That makes sense. Wow. So interesting. Oh my gosh. So cool. So are you guys, are you documenting this anywhere, like on Instagram or YouTube or anything
Raquel: yeah, actually, we are documenting it on Instagram. Our sailing handle, it's at sailingmenir. Menir is the name of the boat. It's spelled M E N Y R. And, yeah, we're slowly documenting it for our friends and family who are following along and we don't want to answer the same question 1500 times, so we're just
Kym: Yeah,
Raquel: Instagram and so people
Kym: here's where we are. If you
Raquel: Yes, we're alive. This is what the Caribbean looks like.
Kym: Oh, nice. I want to go follow you for sure. It's such an interesting journey. It really is. So how do people connect with you if they want your dbt services or if they want to work with you, how would they find you?
Raquel: So it's mostly through Google. It's if you google www. stepinto yourself. com you can find my website and can book a Calendly appointment pretty quickly. And that's usually where most people find me. I do have an Instagram, it's a bit it's not very active. It's at stepintoyourself.
Kym: Okay.
Raquel: I just share some of the DBT skills there, but it's mostly through, through my website.
Kym: Well, thank you. Is there anything we didn't ask you about that? That you want to share or that you wanted to tell people about about sailing or you know being a therapist on a boat You know anything like that that we didn't touch on.
Raquel: talking about using actually sailing as a clinical tool for self reflection and as a DBT practice in and of itself and the travel as well as a, as a means of you know, the cultural competency competency component of, of being a therapist. I find that.
Kym: Mm hmm.
Raquel: this lifestyle really helps broaden horizons and, and really challenge assumptions that you have that are so implicit, right?
Our own biases and prejudices. So this lifestyle really makes you face all of this and fix yourself in ways that I haven't been able to do on land. And in some ways, even with supervision, there's, we always say a boat is a place where you cannot hide from yourself. You just
Kym: Wow
Raquel: So in terms of relationships, whether it's the one with yourself or the one with your partner, or the one with crew, the development that you would have on land happens much, much faster on a boat.
Kym: wow, that's super deep and intense to think about. Yeah, it really is
Raquel: So that's just another component of of being a sailing therapist, is
Kym: Yeah. Wow.
Raquel: having to You know, maybe deal with the weather, deal with seasickness, deal with yourself and everything that's coming up that you try very, very hard to avoid and repress and relationships and constant movement. So it can be a really beautiful way to deepen a clinical practice.
Kym: That's amazing. Yeah. And, and just taking all of that experience and knowledge back to your clients as modeling it to them, you know, and, and teaching them from your own, you know, as we, what's the saying? Like we can only go as deep with our clients as we've gone with ourselves. That kind of thing. You know?
Yeah.
Such a cool lifestyle.
Raquel: It's a circumnavigation around the globe, but I'm also excited to see how my own practice and who I am as a therapist is already changing as we move west.
Kym: Wow. That's so interesting. Yeah. I have another question. How do you, how do you manage, are you doing okay with the time zones? Like as you move further away from your primary time zone? How's that going? Yeah.
Raquel: So right now I am four hours behind most of my clients. So I'm having to wake up around five. So I can start work at 6am and be done around noon, 1 or 2pm. So that's fine, it works really, really well. But as we move further west, that's going to be challenging. Because being 11 hours ahead or behind or in front, I have no idea.
That's a problem I'm going to look at in a year's time.
Kym: Yeah. I hear you. It's not a problem for today.
Raquel: for it as of right now.
Kym: Well, it sounds good that you've got like you're doing kind of the slow travel. So if you do get in a time zone where you're going to hang out for a year or something, you know, being able to adjust your clients to fit your lifestyle instead of having to stay up at like three in the morning or something.
Yeah, that's, that's interesting. because that's a struggle I hear a lot. People are like, should I, should I change their appointments or should I change my time? You know, I think a lot of people, worry about that. Or, or, you know, especially if you're moving quickly, it's like, how do I manage that?
It's
Raquel: Oh
Kym: know, like on your nervous system. Yeah.
Raquel: I cannot imagine moving quickly from one time zone to any, you know, different time zones that can be really stressful. So that's why we're choosing to travel. I mean, we cannot travel fast anyway with a sailboat. So it's not necessarily also a choice, but it does help in that regard.
Kym: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So interesting. Well, thank you so much for taking the time today to share your story. It's so amazing.