When Alignment Doesn’t Look the Way You Expected

Oct 6

“Please leave yourself room for the journey.”

What if becoming more aligned with yourself didn’t require becoming someone new?

What if it is actually a process of shedding the expectations, rules, fear, and identities that have made it difficult to fully inhabit who you already are?

That question sits quietly underneath much of my conversation with Dr. Tina Vitolo in Episode 20 of Spiritual Friction.

Tina is a licensed clinical social worker and doctor of social work who has spent nearly two decades in the mental health field. She is also the founder of The Black Sheep Therapist and the The Innovative Practitioner Accelerator®, communities created for therapists who are looking for a different way to exist within their profession.

Our conversation moves through spirituality, clinical work, intuition, burnout, visibility, professional expectations, cyberbullying, inner child work, and the courage it can take to trust a path that doesn’t look like everyone else’s.

Giving Yourself Permission to Be More Than One Thing

One of the things I appreciate about Tina is her willingness to make room for complexity.

As therapists, we can sometimes feel pressure to fit ourselves into clearly defined roles. We’re taught what professionalism should look like, what belongs in the therapy room, and sometimes even which parts of ourselves are acceptable to bring into our work.

But people are multidimensional.

We can be therapists and spiritual. Clinical and intuitive. Grounded in our training while still remaining curious about experiences that may not fit neatly within it.

As Tina says in our conversation:

“I’m all things.”

For me, this is less about choosing one identity over another and more about giving ourselves permission to become more fully who we already are.

You Have to Model What You’re Trying to Teach

At one point, Tina says:

“You have to model what you’re trying to teach.”

That stayed with me.

We can encourage other people to trust themselves, listen inward, set boundaries, and live more authentically. But we also have to be willing to ask ourselves whether we are doing the same.

Sometimes that means noticing where we are still looking outside of ourselves for permission or trying to follow a path simply because it is the one we were taught to follow.

One Manageable, Uncomfortable Step at a Time

Tina also talks about how her own work developed. There wasn’t one perfect plan or moment when everything suddenly became clear.

Instead, she describes taking:

“One manageable, uncomfortable step at a time.”

I love that because change does not always require knowing exactly where we are going. Sometimes it starts by knowing what we don’t want.

Sometimes we know only what the next step is.

Sometimes we are following the breadcrumbs.

And sometimes the next step is realizing that something no longer fits and allowing ourselves to choose differently.

Sometimes the Next Step Is to Stop

We also talk about something I think many of us struggle with: the feeling that we should always be doing more.

More planning. More building. More figuring things out.

Tina shares a message she repeatedly receives in her own spiritual practice:

“Stop touching it.”

Not everything needs to be pushed forward.

Sometimes there is value in allowing what we have already created to exist without immediately asking what comes next.

Finding Another Way

This conversation is ultimately about giving ourselves permission to question what we have been taught, listen inward, and find our own way forward.

Not because every rule needs to be rejected or every path needs to look different, but because there are moments when the life we are living no longer feels aligned with who we are becoming.

And maybe the work isn’t always to become someone new.

Maybe it is learning to trust more of who we already are.