Get To Know Our Team: Featuring Aspen Romriell

Before you read our interview with Aspen, we wanted to share a little bit more about them. Aspen is a Marriage and Family Therapy intern who prioritizes understanding and affirming the unique struggles, experiences, and needs of their clients. They approach therapy collaboratively in order to navigate the relational and systemic struggles you may be facing. And they love incorporating your personal interests and sources of joy into sessions in creative ways to enhance your work together.

To read more about Aspen’s motivation for this work, the modalities they tend to use, and some fun facts about them, you can visit their therapy profile page here. To see their insightful answers after being asked to speak in more depth about social identities; chronic illness; and mixed-neurotype, neurodivergent, and inter-abled relationships, read our interview below!

On your page, you say “understanding myself and my identities has had a life-changing effect.” What do you think is the significance for someone or impact of understanding and being able to affirm their social identities?

Something that’s important about knowing your identities and how those show up for you is being able to understand how you relate to the world. There are lots of ways that people are treated based on a certain identity, and I think that knowing that about yourself can really help you identify how those things show up for you and what comes with that. That could be recognizing the difficulty of managing those things everyday or just being able to acknowledge the energy and time and effort that it can take to try to navigate an identity that isn’t super accepted and the ways that people treat you because of it.

I also think it’s important in having compassion for yourself and the things that you’re going through. Trying to understand what’s there in your life and what kinds of things you’re trying to navigate. Knowing, “hey, I’m going through a lot right now, and I can identify that because I know what leads to it.” 

So, understanding ourselves and our identities can help with understanding more about who we are, how we relate, and what kind of things we need to remember to be compassionate with ourselves around.

As someone with an invisible chronic illness who also helps people who are chronically ill, what do you wish people knew about chronic illness (whether it be the general public or people who are experiencing it themselves)?  

The biggest thing is that I wish that people would be more understanding of how people show up. For example, if someone has to take a lot of time off, there can often be this perspective of “oh they’re just not trying” or “they’re not working hard enough” or “that’s not allowed.” And I just wish people would be more conscious of how much in our society we’re expected to go go go and to reach certain expectations, and that not everyone has the same abilities or time or energy to do that. 

For me with school, it’s been really hard because I miss a lot of days being chronically ill, but also those days that I miss are days when I’m in so much pain I can’t even do anything so I wouldn’t be able to show up even if I was there. And I think that sometimes people just see missed days and are like “oh, they’re just not showing up” or “they’re not trying hard enough” or “they’re trying to trick the system” is what some people seem to think - like I’m “tricking the system.” So I just wish people were more understanding about that. Understanding that everyone is different and everyone has different amounts of time that they need to get to the same point as someone else or different ways that they need to go about it. 

I feel like I've gotten a lot of judgment from people at school because I do only telehealth, and a lot of people have been like “oh, but you’re not learning the other way” and all this kind of stuff. But for me, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do in-person because it’s so difficult for me and I have so many physical needs. So yeah, that’s what I’m thinking - people opening up their minds to the fact that not everyone can meet the expectations that they can and that’s okay. It doesn’t make that person less than. Everyone has different ways of doing things, and that person might have something else that they’re better at. Those things should be more talked about.

One of your specialities is neurodivergent and mixed-neurotype relationships. What kind of support or information do you wish was out there?

I think it’s helpful to read things that neurodivergent and mixed-neurotype couples talk about online and watch videos they make about what their experiences are in their relationship and what kind of things are common patterns. Just to see people and the struggles they go through; the things they experience; and all of the beautiful, incredible shared moments like finding sensory things together or the impact of body doubling. In relationships where both people are neurodivergent, there’s a beauty in having someone who can understand (things like how society treats you, trying to find therapists who understand, and more general things). And that’s where a lot of stuff is lacking. There’s this focus on “here’s all the conflict” and “here’s how we fix it” rather than focusing on “this is such a special and rewarding relationship.” It can be tough, but it can also be so rewarding.

Another of your specialities is inter-abled relationships. What kind of support or information do you wish was out there?

For inter-abled relationships, I think it’s important to break down how you were taught to see relationships - especially the roles in the relationship. This shows up a lot in inter-abled relationships - one person being disabled, how does that affect things around the house/household chores and who takes what role in certain areas. It may not be how you were taught to do things or wanted to do things. For example, maybe someone is AFAB, has been expected to be a caretaker, and they were trying not to take on that role. But now they have to take that on and find themselves in a caretaker role.That can then affect how they see their role in the relationship. 

So, I think with inter-abled relationships, it’s important to consider: how does disability stack on top of other identities that are also there? And how does that influence the relationship and how people are showing up in the relationship? It’s not always going to be what you expect; people are going to take on a little more sometimes and less other times.

Also, with the revolving nature of chronic illness, there can be a lot of variability. Learning how to navigate how roles evolve and how your relationship will evolve, accepting variability and how each person feels and how each person can contribute to the household and the relationship at different times and in different moments - all of that can show up. 

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview and share your thoughts with us. I think you’ve highlighted some really important messages that I hope continue to be shared. It’s been a pleasure.