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People are often scared by what they are feeling and experiencing, for example, it might be a well of sadness, massive anger or crippling fear. Or it might be feeling numb, lost, disorientated. It may not feel ‘safe’ to let these experiences in or they might be viewed as not helpful, not productive or plain weird, and so they are screened out or pushed aside.

Therapy offers a place to tolerate these uncomfortable experiences, and to become more enquiring about them, without the need to ‘fix’ or name them as something ‘wrong’. This involves entering a space where we don’t know or necessarily understand what is going on; it is in developing a curiosity into these otherwise unwelcome processes that other things emerge.

Sometimes, the exploration of a body symptom or following an image is a useful way of by-passing the mind’s tendency to shut out experience that might be perceived as threatening. In the way I work, it is less about trying to work out ‘where did this come from’ and more about learning to tolerate the feelings/sensations that arise and describe them. In doing this, it is possible to develop a different relationship with what is disturbing, to become more emotionally resourced and to discover unknown aspects of yourself.

I am reminded sometimes when I listen to clients that the things that they often remember after a session are not what I have said, but in fact what they have said themselves. Hearing yourself say something in the presence of another, especially in a non-hurried or unguarded way, without the other person trying to change the conversation, is very powerful.

Too often we can feel penned in by relationships and life circumstances. Patterns of thinking and behaviour can keep us in situations in life that can be unfulfilling, frustrating and painful and may appear as having no alternative options. Once verbalised to a therapist, ideas and thoughts take on a different life. The therapist may just listen or repeat, or comment on the thought pattern, or ask a question about it. The client is then challenged to respond and in the response they might hear themselves saying something different, something new.

Therapy offers a space to access different parts of self, partly by having conversation in which rigid patterns of thought about oneself can get disrupted. It seems strange that this is so much harder to do by oneself. And also that change is promoted by listening to what is already there.

This theme comes up a lot in the therapy room. People judge themselves harshly against an ideal standard that they have constructed for themselves and against which they can never match up. Not living up to this standard can be very disabling for a person and can lead to dissatisfaction in many spheres of life.

In a work context, this behaviour can drive people to push themselves too hard leaving them lacking satisfaction in what they do, and often feeling burnt out. In the field of education, perfectionism can lead to problematic procrastination, which if left unchecked can create immense pressure to meet deadlines and the feeling that work that is submitted is never ‘good enough’. Regarding parenting, perfectionism can present in feelings of shame and self-berating if the parent isn’t always and constantly attentive, calm, patient and understanding with children.

In relationships, this can be a struggle to accept that no one can meet all our needs and perhaps raised expectations of what a relationship can deliver. In being creative, this can be an inhibitor from the start: trying hard to ‘get it right’ from the start can mean that new things aren’t tried out for fear of making mistakes or not doing something well enough. Regarding physical appearance, people can feel very low about their looks held against the perfectionist body images from media. Feeling lovable with imperfect looks can be challenging.

Perfectionism can make people very unhappy and dissatisfied with their lot. The fear of failure has a very disabling effect. It can distract from what might be going well and prevent actions and behaviours that can bring a sense of accomplishment to peoples’ lives.
Therapy is a good place to unpack some of these ideals and to bring about self-acceptance.

I was recently lucky enough to be at an event where I got to hear one of the great contemporary existential therapists, Ernesto Spinelli. He challenged modern ideas of therapy which have come to mean a change for the better; an improvement; a medical intervention, when in fact the original Greek meaning, Therapeia, was the attempt to stand beside another.

I can imagine that a client who is in a lot of pain and distress might find it hard to see that my role might be to stand beside them, helping them explore their inner world, rather than trying to facilitate change whereby they will be relieved of their difficult feelings. However, I can also see that if I have an agenda about how the client should be this may not be helpful. The therapy is more effective if I can accept the person as they are and not be the superior one who ‘knows’ what is best for the client.

From this place, the first task of therapy is to assist the client to hear their own voice more truthfully and accurately. Spinelli says for this to happen, the therapist must be ‘an idiot’: asking the most obvious questions. The questioning is more along the lines of ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the client’s experience (description) rather than explaining causes. It is through describing experience that we change. Asking a client how their descriptions are experienced in their body makes it unique and more concrete, and helps facilitate a link to associations and memories.

There then entails the creation of a descriptive narrative about the story told, wherein important themes might begin to emerge. Metaphor may be added in order to be more concrete or accurate about feelings. The process offers a fuller expression of self.
The purpose of this descriptive process is that it allows ownership by the client of their experience. If the client can experience a problem as their own, they are no longer a victim of a problem and their way of being with their problem shifts.

Spinelli goes on to talk about another phase in which the therapist is the ‘the fool’ who gives voice to ‘otherness’; the therapist’s own experience of being in the room which is different from the client’s, and thereby invites the client into some other possibilities. Clients can then begin to see that the issues that brought them to therapy are related to a stance they have adopted towards themselves.

Then there is ‘the executioner’ phase in which the client must consider the wider, more complex world outside of therapy. They have had the opportunity to experience themselves under certain conditions of the therapeutic space, and must now consider whether this can be transposed to the wider world.

I recently participated in a weekend seminar with the big title of ‘The Body, Psychotherapy, the World’, put on by Processwork UK. I had some big experiences (perhaps for a later blog) but was also reminded of the basics of the work that I do. Two central ingredients: warmth and curiosity. If I do nothing else but this around clients, I believe, I will be setting the groundwork for change to happen.
I don’t remember ‘warmth’ or ‘curiosity’ being discussed with any emphasis during my training as a therapist. Somehow they seem to belong more comfortably in a social context, and don’t quite sound technical enough, medical enough, or professional enough to be constituents of profound and life-altering psychotherapeutic intervention.
And so I am taken back to basics, of how I can be around others, what makes it safe and purposeful for them to dwell inside themselves and somehow share with me what that is like. Once they do that, I can enter the slipstream of their experience and then we are in business.
Warmth and curiosity go a long way because they create a framework for a client to tell, to show, to be seen; for parts of themselves to be revealed that they may have deemed unacceptable, unwanted, disowned or broken to come into the room for re-evaluation. The client can also become warm and curious about themselves, or self-reflective, thereby being able to access inner resources in challenging situations.

Therapy is about change. What generally motivates people to come to the consulting room is that they are unhappy, anxious, in pain. Their life is in a place that is not working for them and they do not know how to improve their situation. People often speak of feeling stuck or hopeless. They have tried to make changes but nothing has worked. Often patterns of behaviour (as well as patterns of thinking and feeling) have developed over a long period of time, some of which may be outside of the client’s awareness.

By having the space to talk through or map their subjective experience, clients build up a clearer picture of how and what they are doing, some of which may be directly contributing to the painful, stuck place they are in. With this awareness they are then in a position to decide to do things differently, to change the pattern. This often looks like a re-resourcing of the client. They feel they have more options available to them, and can even, for example, find that new words are coming out of their mouths which take them in a new and unexpected direction. This kind of fluidity, feeling the possibility of not being stuck and the hope that one day life will be different and that they will be happier is very energising. A glimmer of hope can create momentum for further change to happen.

Debilitating depression and anxiety paint pictures of an impoverished life of no hope. When this is overly dominant the client may need the experience of the therapist to carry the possibility of things being different and ask the client to trust them on this. This is where relationship is so key; if the client experiences that the therapist has really heard them and engaged with their pain, this can be the motivation to be open to change.

Clients often say that something they value about therapy is the opportunity to take an hour out of their week to reflect on their life. It sounds pretty obvious or even easy, but we tend to fill our lives with events, relationships, work and activity. Stopping in order to evaluate, particularly with another person in conversation, less so.

Related to this is the idea that life is understood (by looking) backwards – one can see a train of thoughts or decisions which led in a certain direction that was taken. In therapy, you can view your life as it is lived and therefore there is opportunity for choice and change.

Mindfulness and therapy share some common ground. Mindfulness practice offers the opportunity to observe ones patterns in life as they arise, and choose to do things in a different way. With therapy the process of talking about your life means that you are not only the protagonist you are also the narrator or witness of your own experience, and therefore choosing to do things a different way becomes a possibility.

Sometimes I notice that if there has been a break in the therapy, for example to due holidays being taken, the process of change seems to slow down, and sometimes old patterns start to creep back in. This would appear to be consistent with developments in neuroscience whereby it is observed that pathways are formed in the brain due to our experiences, which might be stressful ones. The process of therapy helps to modify neural activation patterns which have developed, eg around anxiety and depression, and provide new experiences which change these patterns in the brain. However, it is possible that the old patterns can re-emerge if old neural pathways are activated.

I recently saw a new film called ‘Look At Us Now, Mother’. It is a documentary film made by an award-winning director about her relationship with her critical, narcissistic mother, and how the daughter comes to a place of forgiveness with her mother. In fact, the relationship is now so good that the pair are on tour together with the film, doing Q & A sessions after screenings.

This got me thinking about the role of forgiveness. A lot is spoken about forgiveness being important to letting go of painful situations and relationships, and that holding on to resentment and anger ties one to the perpetrator or scenario. There are many who claim that holding on to grudges and resentment can restrict energy for other, more fulfilling things in life, and can even create illness. Got it.

However, sometimes it seems to me that people may want to jump to forgiveness in order to maintain the status quo and keep difficult feelings shut down. They may be frightened of the consequences of being angry or engaging with their feelings of hurt. They may be concerned that key relationships may break down irrevocably.

Therapy can offer a space to give voice to anger and hurt, recognising that these emotions may be necessary to restore a healthy sense of self and separate from those who have imposed violent or abusive behaviours. A counsellor can bear witness to difficult and painful experience that socially people may shy away from, and may never be acknowledged by those who inflicted the pain. Keeping quiet and pretending that all is well can be a collusion that keeps the victim stuck in old patterns, rather than creating space for new ones.

Once the emotional fire has been allowed to flare up, and plenty of space given to emerging feelings, THEN there may be a place for forgiveness… or it may never come.

One could say that in counselling, the core experience of the client is that of being listened to. Properly. In a social context, people often interrupt each other; a train of thought is not followed through because distractions and diversions arise. Some people seem incapable of listening to others, and constantly want to draw attention back to themselves. Socially, most people will operate a degree of self-censorship for fear of being judged or rejected.

So the focused listening, or attention, of a therapist may be an unusual and possibly healing experience in itself. Add to that the often-mentioned advantage that the therapist is not directly involved in the client’s life, does not need to be taken care of, and offers a safe and accepting environment, then a client may be able to reach into their material more deeply. An effect of this, not always perceptible to someone new to the process, is crucially that the client starts to listen to themselves.

Sometimes this can have the result of solidifying an experience or feeling. For example, a client hearing themselves week after week, recounting a painful experience, may finally hear themselves, notice the pain they are enduring and decide to take a different course of action. If they hadn’t heard themselves with this clarity then they might continue to repeat the painful scenario.

Sometimes the externalisation of inner experience can turn up surprises. In speaking and being heard, a client may see themselves in a new light. They may sink into their experience more deeply and find new and unexpected material lying therein.
This sense of being listened to can also allow people to become less entrenched in a position. Once they have given voice to their top-line thoughts and feelings, they may then be able to access a less conscious, perhaps more suppressed viewpoint which challenges their dominant, and more known, position. This can be a very healing and growthful place for clients.

One of the gifts of the therapist is that they listen in to what is not being said, or become drawn to places that the client may have glossed over. This gentle reorientation can genuinely offer a client new perspectives or a deeper understanding.

Many clients use the term ‘over-thinking’ to describe the problem they are having in their lives. It amounts to not being able to turn off their brain which is spewing out negative self-beliefs and ideas. Despite the fact that people invariably know that these thoughts are distorted, inaccurate or at the very least destructive, they feel captive to them. They feel somehow compelled to listen to these thoughts and are unable to dismiss them.

A typical description of this problem by clients is having a long list of things that are not right about themselves and their lives. This turn over and over in their mind in some kind of attempt to correct/make good these many problems. Of course nothing is resolved by this activity, only a headache.

Increasingly Mindfulness meditation is favoured by many people as a way of coping with these thoughts and putting things back into perspective. I will regularly recommend Headspace, Simply Being and other Mindfulness Apps for smartphones, which can be a useful tool in coping with this challenge.

The intervention of therapy can operate like an interruption to this process. Slowing down to take a look at the contents of the over-thinking with another person can operate as a buffer when they return. Instead of churning the thoughts around and around, there is the possibility of a introducing a new perspective which is not convinced by the thoughts. The thoughts are no longer permitted to have free reign; another view has been aligned with and thereby the client is somewhat released from the thought tyranny.