Catherine Byrne is uniquely suited to work with pre-tenure professors. Like any good counselor, she is warm, personable, approachable, and understanding. Part of what sets her apart are the specialized insights and empathy she brings to those on the tenure track due to her own experiences in academia. I can say without hesitation that my sessions with Cath helped me have a healthy perspective towards this academic rite of passage and provided me with several psychological tools to manage my response to the process in a sane manner. I am now a tenured professor thanks in part to her help. I count myself fortunate to have made her acquaintance during such a crucial point in my career.
What I really appreciate about Cath is how quickly she is able to get me out of my head and into my heart. She has this ability to move me to the core of the issue. I also love her directness and willingness to ask the hard questions. Oh, and I stand in awe of her humanness and accessibility...it is easy to be with her.
As an assistant professor going up for tenure I found it immensely useful to talk to someone who from her own experience understands the pressures of academia and how it can spill into other aspects of personal/family life. Catherine is there for you along the frequently stressful pathway - to talk through research ideas, set writing timelines, listen when you're confused, frustrated or just anxious. She brings a unique combination of experiences and was therefore able to provide excellent and subtle insights and tools.
In working with Cath, I was always struck by her engaged patience that created an environment for exploration and growth. Her warmth and humane sensibility instantly put me at ease even when confronting uneasy things.
I am so grateful for my work with Cath. I experienced both professional and personal challenges during my years leading up to tenure. I was initially skeptical of what I could accomplish only over the phone in work with a coach or counselor, but that skepticism quickly disappeared. Cath brought to our work superb listening skills, the ability to quickly grasp a situation or dilemma, a very helpful set of tools, and experience working in academia and supporting others working in the academy. She helped me see what I was contributing to my struggles, formulate practical plans for making progress with challenging tasks, make sense of my more complicated work relationships, and make progress caring for myself and connecting with my wife at a time when it was too easy to put my best efforts only into my work. I found work with Cath invaluable, and have strongly recommended her to colleagues as a source of support and personal growth.
Cath is a highly empathic counselor. When she counsels me, I always feel heard and understood. This is such an important and healing gift.
As an assistant professor I find the balance between work and family breathtakingly challenging. I am deeply committed to both and yet many times I find myself trying to balance plates on poles hoping none drop. Catherine provides me with a safe place to think about all the emotional, personal, academic and political dimensions and complexities of my life. It helps that she has worked in academia and understands the passion and tension associated with scholarship, teaching, and service. It helps that she understands the importance of balancing family and work as she does this herself. She "gets it." Our work together has helped me through difficult personal/family situations (heart attack, parent death, sick child, spouse's job loss). Having her support through professional and personal challenges has only strengthened my sense of self. While I look forward to successfully completing my tenure journey, I am grateful for what I've learned in this process with Catherine's guidance.
As I settle into life as an Associate Professor, what is remarkable is how many things that I worked on with you while I was an Assistant Professor are now (almost) second nature to me--from daily organizational strategies to approaches to dealing with colleagues, from what to do when I am "stuck" writing to carving out weekly schedules, from the importance of self-care to strategies for transitioning between work and home. Perhaps most profoundly, however, is my comfort with two (on the surface, seemingly contradictory) feelings --the deep satisfaction associated with having earned tenure and the putting of tenure in its proper (low) place in terms of cosmic import.
I never thought I would seek out a counselor for what I perceived to be a 'marriage problem.' I was distressed and saw no hope. Catherine lead the way for a discovery of a different nature, me. She enabled me, with warmth and kindness, to see into myself and into my past as a way to answers and ultimately freedom."
In the midst of a storm of adapting to a new job and new country, Catherine's counseling provided a safe haven. Always supportive, she gently and successfully challenged me to think positively and constructively. I am now doing so much better at my job, in my personal relationships, and in my new, adopted culture.
Upon the advice of a friend, I wrote Catherine Byrne an e-mail a little about 18 months ago. This is what I wrote: "I'm a tenured professor who can't seem to write. I am also overwhelmed with feelings of being a fraud. I was just taking to my husband right now and neither of us can figure out what is the chicken and what is the egg here. Most frustratingly, I've already dealt with these sorts of emotions before. Two years of counseling, paxil, some nine years ago. It really made a difference at least for a while. Even the perfectionist in me is proud of my first book so it's not like I'm incapable of producing." Catherine immediately responded with a comment and a question that helped set me on the right track. First, she suggested that this feeling of being a fraud is fairly pervasive in academia and, having been there herself, she saw it as the "systemic dysfunction (oppression) of academia - particularly its review system." More important, she asked me to ponder something before even arranging a phone conversation. "Academic reviews aside, what does your "soul" (spirit) really think about academia and the prerequisite of writing... does it want to do it? or would it prefer you to be doing something else right now?..." We change. It sounds like you have been very productive with your first book, is your spirit/body in need of some rest? As you daydream, you may get a sense of what it really wants, or this question may fall flat and not resonate. Either response (or whatever else comes up) is perfectly fine." In my case, I was clear that writing a book was indeed something I wanted to do. I just wanted to so it with less pain and suffering! I think one of Catherine's biggest contributions in helping me reach that goal was her ability to help me draw distinctions between my work and myself. What I learned was this: Yes, I routinely come up for review. Yet whether I ultimately receive a "thumbs up" or a "thumbs down," I am more than a single review. While I was determined to judge myself a failure (all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding), Catherine encouraged me to pace myself, to enjoy myself, and to be kind to myself. Lo and behold, I became more productive and, counter-intuitively, less exhausted. Because Catherine was a veteran of the UC-system, moreover, I did not have to spend a minute explaining the intricacies of my job, the review process, or the real pressures professors face. She already knew all that from first-hand experience. So we could immediately move on to how to feel better in this situation. Catherine also impressed me because she was able to understand the work that I do even though it is a different field than hers. I also benefited from Catherine's South African background. Given my research interests, it was an additional benefit to talk to someone who understood the historical complications of racial oppression. Logistically, one of the nicest aspects of working with Catherine is that she is completely available via phone and via e-mail. I still have never met her face-to-face but can say sincerely that I enjoyed our conversations a great deal, benefited from them even more, and am continually recommending her services to others.