Claire-Madeline Corso

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Williston, VT
Claire-Madeline Corso

Inspiring the professional development of millennial clinicians overcomming perfectionism in modern healthcare systems.

Sign up for my weekly Notes Between Sessions e-letters for your virtual end of the week check in. //My Story//

I'm a fourth-generation coastal small towner with a big-city calling and a heart that's always yearning to return home. I'm a fiercely independent go-it-alone kinda girl with a desire to sink my feet in the sand at a beach-house my one-day children will inherit....

I'm a believer in the

both/and of things. And I'm here to support you in making room for contradicting, can't-be-reconciled parts of your lived and written stories. Because it's not in seeking certainty but in living (& writing) into ambiguity that we find freedom (on the page & beyond it.)

//A Few Core Beliefs//

I believe that writing is a vehicle for self-transformation. I believe that we have a God-given right to celebrate ourselves with joy & reverence. I believe that taking interest in ourselves and in our work is our responsibility as humans and creators. And most importantly, you already have everything you need inside of you. You just need to learn to trust yourself through intentional relationship.

//My Purpose//

To help you become your own biggest fan in your professional and creative lives so that you can trust yourself to take life-giving risks in your creative writing and beyond it.

//Level Up Your Inbox//

I inspire the professional development of millennial clinicians overcoming perfectionism in modern healthcare systems. Click here --> http://go.cmcorso.com/NBS

Tell me where to send my Away From My Desk e-mail series, where I share insights from my work in mental health care on the divine creativity and grace in being human. Drop your e-mail here to receive monthly self-development and creative writing prompts, plus exclusive podcast episodes, and so so much more

Click here --> http://go.cmcorso.com/awayfrommydesk

//Seeking Psyhotherapy? I can help!//

I’m currently welcoming clients under professional supervision, via telehealth, and in Hampton Roads to residents of the state of Virginia as Resident in Counseling (No. 0704016061 under Rachel Jones No. 0701010442) in the state of Virginia. Learn more at by visiting my virtual office at https://relationshipcenterva.com/claire-madeline-corso-med/

02/10/2025

I'm *so tired* of trying to achieve my worth - aren't you?

We act like the new year is a great time to set goals and finally resolve to become who we want to be.

But if we're being honest, much of this goal-directed energy is driven by regret.

It's as if we have some relief that when we turn the calendar page to January 1, we can hit a reset button.

As if we can still make up for all we haven't done.

This way of establishing goals sets us up for failure.

Not actual failure, as in, the true failure to achieve something. But a perspective on ourselves that sees ourselves as deficient without this.

This year, I'm thinking about legacy.

And I'm not looking ahead, into 2025, but back, at 2024 to see what foundation I have built.

I'm thanking myself: for the commitment I had to showing up, but also for the inexplicable way a path is being created for me.

When we look *only* at the year ahead, we miss *context.* It's too nearsighted.

When we look at the year before, we have to acknowledge the years before that, and we have to recognize the forces working in support of us.

We have to acknowledge our worthiness. We have to acknowledge the ways we honored ourselves even when we were met with doubt or disappointment or uncertainty.

And we have to witness the evidence of some larger calling coming to fruition, not because we achieved it one calendar year, but because we trusted ourselves, and something bigger than ourselves. We had faith, and we believed we were worthy.

I'm doing my goal-setting, and annual reflection process differently this year.

Unhurried.

Reverently.

With the intent to deepen my trust in myself.

And I'm sharing with you the questions I'm asking myself to prompt your reflection, too.

Join me in journaling. The prompts are in the comments.

06/30/2024

I move to Williamsburg where I think what I want is privacy. But already I am waiting for someone’s texts, and spend my days pretending this is not the case. It’s strange. I don’t know why I am lying to myself like this. Why I want to both check my phone - to at least keep it in ear shot – and also to pretend I am completely adrift in a WiFi-less existence.

I don't even want him to hug me.

Instead, I imagine kissing the skin behind and beneath his ear lobes. His lips. I imagine letting him give himself to me. And then giving him space.

I hear cell phone text tones I know aren’t mine – sometimes, the subtle electronic beeping of a car door left open while a Door Dasher delivers lunch to a sunbathing neighbor - and check my phone.

I tell myself it’s best I do, since changing the tone on mine to one less invasive – one I can barely hear or recognize.

Depending on how inconvenienced I am – like when I have to get out of the lounger I’m sitting on in the shallow depths of the pool deck, prompted by the sound of a cell phone’s ring – I am entirely annoyed.

Outraged, even.

It’s only six inches deep. But how dare he have the nerve to make me get up to acknowledge his absence – his disinterest, his ambivalence. Maybe his self-involvement or ADHD. Who knows. We are complete strangers to one another, after all. Though the internet, and some, what I call sublime sense of other living beings, makes it feel otherwise.

Typically, I’d want to lull myself into a state of primal longing with a half glass of wine. This time, I want to feel it all completely soberly. I don’t want to recede into this feeling, but to observe it like a lighthouse keeper keeping watch for this bobbing self.

The things I know of him include that he hopes his daughter will wrestle, which at times I take to be a good sign, at others, an indication of a projected narcissistic self.

(Continued in the comments.)

04/23/2024

Every once in a while you'll see a prayer post. These prayers are taken from my journals.

Specifically, from a journal I'd kept in the months after we sold my childhood home, before I'd left the only place I'd ever really known.

I'd lay there on the living room rug in this apartment I lived in, in a renovated mansion down the street from my where my grandmother lived - where we'd moved her.

I'd watch the light change outside my window - the pink light, streaked with white clouds revealing blue behind them in the waning sun, a seagull flying across it - and think of her, there. Think of my home - our home - between us.

I mean it was a religious experience, sprawling out on the floor with my unspeakable sadness.

I just gave it up. I just gave it up to God.

I yielded.

And in my yielding I found want.

Want for my own life. Want I didn't ask for, but had to find.

It was a kind of relief. To unburden myself of the responsibility to do more than I could. To be in a state of over-extension and walk it back.

Lay it down.

Give it up.

There was no moral judgment about the wants that arose.

No moral imperative to do good. Be good. Be better. Become whatever was expected. Rise to the occasion - to what the situation demanded.

Just the simple freedom to allow myself what I needed.

Just the boring glory of my God-given right to be.

If you were looking for permission to turn that unconditional curiosity inward: this is it.

Ask yourself these questions:
☝🏼What's one thing you need to release?
✌🏼What's one thing you need to choose?

Trust the first thing that comes to mind.

Don't know the answer? Offer up a prayer to become unconditionally curious about your own desire.

Open the door and invite yourself in.

04/01/2024

What if you were actually okay?

What if the life you have - the life you’re creating - is *actually* the life you want?

I’ve been thinking about this a *lot* in relationship to myself lately. Like. Daily.

And I think the hardest thing to reconcile is that the life I have isn’t the life I dreamed of all along.

The person I’ve become isn’t increasingly reflective of the person I imagined I would be when I was young.

And that can make me feel like I’m *really* far off from my goal.

Not like I’ve exited onto an entirely new path and have succeeded at whatever *that* is.

But like I’ve somehow gotten completely derailed.

The weird part is that every step of the way I’ve made decisions that honored what I needed.

But what I’ve needed and what I’ve wanted. What I’ve valued - what I've aspired to embody. And what I’ve valued - deeply and abidingly and spiritually. Have been in conflict.

Irreconcilably in conflict.

And the inexact way I’ve navigated these impossible-to-negotiate things…

has both compromised me *and* led me into my calling.

It has both made me who I am.

And it has also made me less of this.

It has made me honor my legacy.

And also abandon it.

It has made me sacrifice a part of myself in the name of this, and also to choose myself, over and over again.

First and foremost. And also after the fact.

What sense can you make of this?

What sense can anyone make of this?

And isn’t this - this impossible question, this contradiction, how we are in some ways obliged in other ways compelled in still others honored to embody it - what it means to be a woman?

I want to talk about this more.

I want us to admit this to ourselves and to one another, more.

Not so we can solve it.

Cut our losses and move on down the road toward our most fully realized selves.

But so we can speak honestly on this divine and inexplicable work we are both cursed with and called to.

So we can embrace the beautiful impossibility of being a woman.

If you relate comment PODCAST below and I’ll share my email only workshop style reflections.

03/07/2024

I grew up having intimate conversations with my grandma over coffee. These conversations lead me to become a psychotherapist. The experience of being listened to all those years during our long talks, coffee in hand, sitting in adjacent chairs at the picture window, made me who I am.

These conversations allowed me to come to know myself.

As a psychotherapist, my primary responsibility is to hold space for others to tell themselves the truth about how they feel, what they fear, and who they desire to become.

And as a writer, I’m holding space for myself to do the same.

The page (whether in my journal or in a piece of writing I intend to publish) is a place where I get radically honest about my lived experience and take the first steps to change how I think about who I am and relate to what I believe is possible.

So often when I'm sitting with a client I am reminded of these conversations with my grandmother, and feel so astonishingly privileged to bear witness to another human being, coming to know themselves more intimately.

And at the end of each week - sometimes at the end of very long days - I am reminded of how important it is that I maintain that conversation with myself.

My writing practice is *essential* to my clinical work, not just for my own longevity in the field, but for my capacity to advocate for clients. Here are my 3 reasons to prioritize your creative writing as a counselor, and a link to my blog post on how to make it actionable.

03/01/2024

Here's the thing:

No one else has the call to the counseling profession - and therefore the capacity to impact it, than you do.

*AND* the only way future-you can solve problems in healthcare, is if current-you is bold enough to speak from a place of conviction (and uncertainty) now.

It is, of course, *essential* to acknowledge the cultural context from which we do our work in the counseling profession so that we are sure to honor the values and worldview of our clients...

But our worldview is also what allows us to apply our training and knowledge to meet the needs of our social world, in a way no one else can.

This is your reminder to trust what led you into the counseling profession, every step of the way. Trust in what you care about. Trust your instincts about why it matters. And trust yourself enough to raise the conversation.

This is your superpower at every table you sit at.

02/28/2024

Some thoughts after this week's psychotherapy client sessions:

I didn’t know the day would come when I’d miss Vermont. I mean, really wished I would step out of my apartment and find I’m in the grassy patch outside of the original hospital entrance with the summer bugs whispering and the smell of river water in the crisp night air. I read something recently, a quote by Franz Kafka that might be correctly attributed or might not be - who knows - that said all we’re trying to do is find the words to express something that we feel in our bones that can only be felt in our bones and I resonated with that. I mean it pained me.

I mean, I think this is the thing that writers find so difficult which is that when you say what you need to say you ultimately say it for no one but yourself and after all is said and done that’s just that. All is said. About what has already been done. And what I’m trying to say is that it’s a deeply private thing, becoming a person. I remember when I broke up with my first adult boyfriend I had visited him in California and wrote something about how leaving was as easy as abandoning a war zone and that’s how I feel about my time working in the hospital in Vermont. Just as easily as I came, I left.

And it haunts me sometimes, the people I knew in those hospital rooms; they appear to me in their scrubs and borrowed clothing as if still with the same sense of urgency, the same unacknowledged dedication to living, the same, relentless despair. I mean, I hear them in my inner ear the way I might the lines of a poem that expresses something about someone else’s grief that intrudes upon me when I’m applying my lipstick in the morning or idling at a red light — some, deeply personal insight they summoned and found the language for on the 27th day of their treatment stay. I mean their lives, literally depended upon it. How do you ever forget that?

And I’m talking about the divine act of listening. I’m talking about what it is to bare witness. Each of us like tiny Gods, standing there, letting one another find the words for what is unsayable in the dark of oneself, listening as we each dare to ask the question “am I there?”

04/20/2023

When you think of self care you think of a spa day - amiright? 🤔😜

(PSST want the live chat where I flip the script on this myth check out the video tab on my IG feed.)

You think of feeling blissfully content. Completely free of worry. Eyes closed on a massage table with some one gashing the sh*t out of your lymph or something like that while someone holds the most perfect combination of essential oils above eye pillow.

Lately, I’ve been learning that self-care is less like pampering ourselves the way we might at a luxury spa, and more like care-giving for a loved one transitioning into some unknown territory of living.

I mean, put yourself on the massage table in the *insert the hotel of your dreams here* and ask yourself this:

Are you any good at relaxing? What comes up when you put yourself in a position to feel that kind of emotional safety?

The self-care plan is less about following through on the habits (though those are important because they create the opportunity for the real relational shift) of hydrating and drinking your greens and making it to your weekly yoga class…

And more about putting yourself in a position to feel _________ [insert whatever comes up for you here].

For me it’s: undeserving. Embarrassed. Ashamed, maybe, even, of having needs that need meeting in the first place.

It’s the opportunity to shift the narrative about what you deserve and learn to give yourself permission to feel safe.

I want to encourage you to think about this for a minute: when you do the self-care thing you love and never make time for or do because you’ve made a Spring-season commitment to it, *why* does this feel important? What, specifically comes up when you engage this habit? What comes out when you /avoid/ it?

Name it, and then re-frame it. Hold yourself accountable to the self-care routine *not* because drinking 72 hours of water is good for and we should hydrate. But because you deserve to teach yourself how to feel safe.

If you thought about this reflection question: tell me: what story are you re-telling in your self-care routine?

Want my Guide to Meaningful Self Care guide to make it actionable?

Comment YES below.

💆‍♀️

07/28/2022

What's one thing you would do if you were entirely unafraid?

(Pssst. To all my writer's out there, this works as a character development exercise for your fiction in progress, too! So read on! 😉)

Maybe you're afraid of failure.
Maybe you're afraid of rejection.
Maybe you're afraid of not living up to someone else's expectations.
Maybe it's the fear of abandonment underneath this and you have to let go of a sense of worth that comes from receiving someone else's praise.

I want to invite you to imagine the possibility of living free of these fears.

For five minutes.

Imagine what it would be like if you didn't give a da*n.

Go ahead.

Turn off notifications on your Apple watch, set the timer, and for five full minutes, live into the freedom of what is possible beyond what you're most afraid of.

Because here's the thing.

Your fears and your comfort zone are one in the same thing.

Read that again.

//Your fears and your comfort zone are one in the same thing.//

Isn't that a mind f🤯ck? (Rhetorical question).

Like. We talk about what makes us *comfortable* as though we aren't trying to *protect* ourselves *using* the things that we fear the most.

Abandonment. Loss. Rejection. You name it.

In trying to *avoid* these things we actually build our life *around* them.

We box ourselves *in* to what we fear the most.

So I encourage you to ask yourself this.

What if you were *liberated* from these things?

What if you lived from the belief that you were accepted, supported, and unconditionally loved?

Whatever your fear is. Write the antidote to it.

Then free-write for five minutes around this question: what would be possible for you if you lived from this belief?

If your comfort zone was built around your faith instead of your fear, can you *imagine* how your life would expand?

Yah you can. And you can start imagining the next five minutes.

You're destined for greatness, friend.

Go get your dream on.

Did this post make you think of someone? Send them the inspo. in the comments below.

07/18/2022

I've been dipping my toes in these Instagram waters for the better part of a year (????) now (thank you, season-I've-lost-count of the pandemic for distorting my sense of time).

And yah know what? It's been *so* refreshing.

They say social media takes us away from our lives. And sure the infinite scroll can get the best of us when we're seeking distraction from our lives.

But showing up on social media in this season has made me *more* connected.

Weird, huh?

It's like, I feel a desire to make meaning of my experiences.

And that can be *so* difficult in seasons marked by grief, loss, or the undertow of a person treating you poorly.

(For more on *that* story tell me where to send you my monthly letter-length update - see the comments below).

It's like, you, yourself, can feel like you don't exist when someone else ceases to exist - in death, in a breakup, in a move.

And the call to make meaning can be faint, if you can hear it at all.

The commitment I've made - to show up here, to share my story with you - has required that I am *present* in each of my days.

To step into the unfamiliar and accept the parts of my self I'll discover in each new experience.

It can be scary, letting go of the known.

And our automatic thoughts (to use language from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) tend to like us to think like the versions of ourselves we've been before.

But what happens when we grow out of who we've been?

There's resistance. The thoughts keep us stuck.

And it can feel debilitating, like the idea of just walking yourself down to the shore to dip your toes in is an impossible feat.

But there's a spirit of rebellion in there that might express itself as anger or frustration or the sense that this is just complete B.S.

That thing that came to an end, it's *calling* you into a new way of being.

Heed the call.

I am!

If you want to follow along with my life in Vermont, visit my page .

For now, I'll leave you with these thought-re-frames I've needed to anchor my perspective in as I navigate these new depths and find a direction that better supports my potential and purpose.

Which one do you connect with? Tell me below.

⚓

12/21/2021

Have you ever felt just, impossibly fatigued? 🤔

Did yah know fatigue can be a response to anxiety?

It took me like a decade to come to this realization. For me, it creeps up when I feel defeated.

I'll be thinking of something that makes me excited for the possibility of my future when suddenly, I want to take a nap.

How did I *not* link this to a fear of failure? 🤦🏻‍♀️

I've been using any piece of scrap paper to write my way through this feeling and I've noticed some themes:

🗒 Fear of failure (so obvious, I know)
🗒 Doubt in my dreams (have you ever felt called to something you feel you have no right to?)
🗒 Belief in an underlying unworthiness (anyone else have an abandonment narrative that's still authoring the internal dialogue or is that just me?)
🗒 Lack of self trust (this one is like, when I can overcome the above three, I still have this one to face).

For a season, I thought I really just needed rest. And I gave myself the right to honor that. But when the pattern continued I thought, maybe self-care isn't about giving myself a reprieve but honoring my responsibility to engage the anxiety.

To be curious about it.

To let it teach me what I need.

Our internal dialogue is inherently biased. It authors a story of our experience based on a pre-given narrative.

If we know what the script is, we have chance to re-write it.

I'll share more about my story, how I'm re-authoring it, and what dreams I've given myself permission to claim.

But for now I'll leave you with these notes-to-self to shift your perspective when you doubt your calling and your right to claim it.

Whatever your heart desires - whatever you're withholding from yourself right now - may you know you are worthy.

P.S Drop me a 💘 below if you want to see more actionable self-care tips in this corner of the internet.

09/15/2021

I was the kid who got in trouble for day dreaming on the soccer field.

They’d put me on the far side of the field to play defense and while all the activity happened on the other side, I’d look up at the clouds.

When I first moved to Florida, I positioned my bed opposite a row of windows. All I could see through them were the ever-morphing clouds.

Before moving to Florida, I spent some time in the mountains of Upstate New York trying to forge a sense of belonging.

Though the mountains did not, ultimately, call my name, Florida felt foreign.

Where there once were mountains, containing me, here there was only sky, far as the eye could see.

🌤

In moments of reprieve, I’d sit on my bed and look out through the window.

Like that moment when, driving over the bridge in my hometown, I'd reach the road’s peak and instinctively look up, I started to dream.

On those rides, there was something about the sky, and the height of the road, and the complexity of the architecture in my vision all converging that drew my attention and for a brief moment I’d feel completely still.

In that moment, I wasn’t where I was coming from - the beach at the end of town - or where I was going - back home to the multi-generational home where I lived and was raised.

I was at the height of the bridge, looking out at the sun over the bay water.

In the neither here nor there-ness of it, there was possibility.

✨

What if the unknown didn’t represent what all could possibly go wrong.

What it if represented what all could be possible.

📝

Joan Didion said that the moment a writer puts their first sentence down they’ve constrained the narrative.

Life can feel a lot like that. Like with each decision we make we limit what is possible.

But sometimes, when we lose everything we have ever known, we get to give ourselves what we needed all along.

And it’s frightening, to let it all go.

But when you can summon the courage to look out at the beyond of what is comfortable and known…

You’ll realize the future has got a hell of a view.

Here's to you. Here's to believing for what you cannot yet see.

Address

Williston, VT

Website

http://go.cmcorso.com/NBS, https://cmcorso.com/services

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