This article came out of an audio recording, which I include in case someone prefers to listen.
I’d like to share my understanding of how therapy works.
As a therapist, I’m not a different kind of person. I have my own challenges. I make my mistakes in life and learn by reflecting on those. I’m not a different kind of person, a different kind of human being. If there’s any difference, it might be in my sensitivity, interest, or curiosity towards reflection. When something happens, it triggers emotions and thinking. I then become curious about those things. I look into myself. Looking is not the same as thinking. I am not thinking necessarily, but I’m sensing, observing, and witnessing what happens in me. In this regard, I might be doing something different from what typically happens in life for most people.
The other thing that might be different about me is that when difficulties arise, I turn towards them. I have my escapes and coping mechanisms, but in many other cases, I turn towards my challenges. And this is not necessarily problem-solving. It’s not that I have a method to find solutions to problems. Instead, I turn towards what’s going on with the intention to understand it–not necessarily fix it. The fixing can happen afterwards as an organic response to understanding, or it may not happen, and I might be left with acceptance and understanding only, and that’s also fine.
While most people would like to fix or do something about a problem, I am also very curious about understanding the situation–doing is nice but secondary. By being an honest observer and a witness, I gain a more solid footing towards the situation, even if I cannot change it. So, in those respects, I am doing something different.
These are the things that I share and apply in my work as a therapist. When I am with somebody, helping them, working with them, these are the things that I’m sensitive towards. What is their situation? What is our collective situation? How do we understand it? It is not necessary to analyse what we are doing (or failing to do) about it but how we see it and what feelings arise. What is our understanding? What is the meaning of the situation? How does it touch us? What impressions does it leave? Have I encountered these impressions elsewhere? What have I understood in the past? It is not necessary that the understanding of the past always applies, but what is my deeper position, deeper receiving of this situation? Do I have an automatic, unseen position that I over-apply? Therapy works with this sensitivity and by such observation.
Through observation, the problem tends to release its grip on us. Things may not resolve, and things may not necessarily arrive at an improvement. While this may not happen externally, our internal landscape could change. Our automatic responses could be weakened and dissolved. Our degree of freedom could increase. If nothing else, being able to share with another human being makes a difference to most people so that someone’s problem is not limited to them. Their sorrow does not remain unseen. Through therapy, there is another witness to someone’s sorrow.
Actually, sorrow is universal. Sorrow appears to be localised. It seems that it’s my sorrow and not anyone else’s sorrow. But by sharing, we can unburden that sorrow. And by receiving the response from another human being, it might even be that our sorrow is not so unique to us, that sorrow is universal. We may have trapped ourselves in a view that our sorrow is particular. Letting go of such a view can be liberating.
So, therapy is not necessarily problem-solving. Therapy is more likely a collective journey towards understanding, receiving, and responding with authenticity. Having another person accompany the journey for a short while can help.
Ultimately, it is our own accompaniment that’s missing, and that’s being developed. Ultimately, we are our own therapists, the truest, deepest friends. And with another’s help, we develop our relationship with that inner therapist. So therapy is cultivating that inner dialogue, that inner relationship with ourselves. The word cultivating could be misleading. It is not necessarily a method or a particular series of steps. It’s more like strengthening, unfolding, growing, or nurturing our inner person so that we receive that person more clearly.