In psychotherapy we are primarily addressing emotional wounds.
Emotional wounds can only heal in presence. In sitting with what hurts, in allowing it to hurt us, in tears, in anger, in facing our limited existence and how precarious it is.
A 35 year old man comes to therapy, experiencing deep anxiety every day, and particularly when a close emotional relationship threatens to develop. Over several weeks, we touch upon a faint memory he has of being sexually abused by a family member as a seven year old child.
As we learn to trust each other, we start to explore what this memory feels like. Perhaps it is a blank, emotionally. I ask how his body feels when picturing this memory. It seems there is a sense of wanting to sit wider, spread one’s sit bones wider, a restlessness in the pelvic area, a wish to stretch out the legs far and wide, a wish to shake the thighs.
Over several months, we encourage these impulses to express themselves. What do you want to say, that will amplify these movements? “Fuck you!”, he says in an angry, enraged voice. There is a guttural scream, a roar that follows. “Fuck you bastard!”. The eyes light up with the anger. There is an aliveness to the person in these moments, struggling to hatch out of his subdued nature.
All these months, there are many fuck you bastards felt and spoken by him. He finds that anger is good. It makes him feel more himself, more alive, more pulsating with life. He also sometimes upsets others who prefer his old ways.
Slowly the faint memory becomes more vivid. The year it occurred becomes more clear. The time of the day becomes more clear. The days in the aftermath become more clear. The client’s gait shifts in subtle ways, tensions in the hips and thighs become lesser.
A year and a few months pass as we do this in most sessions, once a week. The client confronts the family member and others in the family about this incident. Not everything goes well, some of the responses he gets express the repressed and fearful nature of the family, but the client himself emerges more strong, courageous, and able to stand up for himself, although there is still work to do around adjacent wounds, and deeper layers of this particular wound.
This is a somewhat simplified illustration of what is meant by saying that in psychotherapy, we are addressing emotional wounds.
Emotional wounds require emotional healing. Emotional healing means acknowledging the pain – experiencing sexual assault as a child, rather than only a vague sense of anxiety; feeling it in all its intensity – the exploding rage and fear that emerge in the sessions; and acting constructively – seeking therapy, re-assessing the role of certain family members in one’s life, confronting them with one’s truth.
Acknowledging (and not denial), feeling (and not numbing), acting (and not freezing) – can only be facilitated by someone who has gone through these in his own life, by working through his own wounds.
Many of us have been sexually abused as children – in my practice, about half the clients have had such experiences, even if they may not foreground them as the concerns that bring them to therapy. Others may have not spoken of them so far in therapy, but may open up to them later. These experiences are sometimes severely scarring, at other times less so, particularly in comparison to other wounds the person carries.
We can replace sexual abuse with other painful incidents, or chronic atmospheres of one’s upbringing rather than single incidents, and what needs to be done essentially remains the same. Rather than sexual abuse, one may have experienced physical assault, being screamed at, severe emotional neglect, shaming, being made to witness fights in the house, a general atmosphere of conflict and tension, extreme control by authoritarian elders, imposed by lingering threats of violence – the varieties of wounding are endless. But they all require acknowledging, feeling, acting.
The woundings of adulthood are equally varied and at times, equally deep.
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The primary factor in the making of a therapist, therefore, is his emotional journey. Among the most important elements of this journey, often the most important one, is the therapist’s own therapy journey. One becomes a therapist by being in therapy for years and years, ideally with different kinds of therapists.
However, many people go to therapy but do not become therapists. Simply going to therapy is not enough. A wider interest in personal growth, in knowing oneself and understanding one’s place in the world, a wish to practice methods that deepen this – meditation, body work, engagement with nature, art – and making such personal growth the core of one’s life, rather than one among many interests; these, perhaps, are what allow one to become someone who can facilitate introspective journeys for others.
All clients wish to remove their symptoms, but those who can also facilitate similar journeys for others are the ones interested in a life of healing, in questions of what it means to be here on this earth – the ones who put these at the centre of their lives, a centering that is visible and palpable in the number of hours they give to such work every day, as also in the life choices they make.
Therapy training, however, usually does not agree with this. Most therapy training does not require any personal therapy for the student at all. In my knowledge, of the dozens of universities training therapists in India, only one has such a requirement that is essential to getting your degree – the requirement is only one hour a week for three years. In the more rigorous psychoanalytic traditions that exist outside universities, it is three times a week. The rest of the five or seven or ten years one spends on studying psychology can be spent in classrooms, in reading dense books, in writing papers, in discussing ideas with one’s peers.
That is an overwhelming disproportion.
When looking for a therapist for myself, I am not particularly concerned about how many degrees the person has, how many papers they have published, the number of acronyms in front of their name, which foreign university they went to, how many psychologists’ organisations they are in and so on.
I would like to know who they are as a person. If they have a photograph of themselves I’d like to see if their eyes and face express kindness and humility. Have they written something about themselves? I would like to see if it expresses some of their humanity, some of their own life journey even, perhaps, something about their ability to empathise – that is to feel what the other person feels.
I would like to do an initial session and see if I feel deeply understood. If they seem to be able to feel what I feel, and also what I am struggling against feeling. If they can offer these parts of me, in words, to me, so we can feel them together.
If the therapist avoids eye contact, or seems to think he is an expert on what I am thinking, or comes across as emotionally distant and flat, or is authoritative rather than dialogical, certain rather than explorative – I wouldn’t go again.
The problems we take to therapy are emotional problems, they require emotional healing, in a relationship where emotions are deeply honoured.
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