Positive Health Online

Introduction

Accepting that it is inevitable that a therapist will be affected at some level by therapeutic interaction, the aim is to understand that change more deeply by tracking it across time. Reflecting on personal growth entails a degree of subjectivity, and I will balance this as far as possible using evidence from client base as well as supervision and development log. In so doing, I hope to demonstrate, using practical examples, the notion of ‘perception is projection’ as applied to the therapeutic relationship, or how the client and therapist are each other’s reflections.

This can be thought of as a form of Discourse Analysis in that there is a search for meaning on my part, as evidenced in my client base over time. Initially considering my own history, development and imprints, then examining how my caseload over the past few years has reflected my own journey and growth.

It is my belief that since the client and therapist are inextricably linked and ‘what affects one affects the other’, it is essential for the therapist to be as transparent a vessel as possible. A reflective review of client patterns and themes may bring to consciousness shifts in the therapist that may have been beyond awareness, enabling progress towards transparency. The client base is then useful to gain insight into the therapist’s personal change, thus benefiting self, clients and others, especially family. If we do not identify and resolve our own issues, as Gilligan[1] puts it:

“The problem is that an unintegrated response repeats itself until integrated. On this point nature seems eternally patient and forever cruel. It may take years or even generations, but a negative experience returns until human presence is brought to touch it with love and acceptance and integrate it.”

Corsini and Rosenburg studied mechanisms of therapy through the ages and produced a paper in 1955.[2] They identified nine key factors that are encapsulated under three headings that philosophers have repeated for millennia:
Cognitive Factors: Know yourself
Affective Factors: Love your neighbour
Behavioural Factors: Do good work

This sense of therapy from the inside out seems to be the most important aspect of all. By monitoring the growth of the therapist through the issues presented in the client base, the therapist is able to maintain the momentum of their own growth. As well as highlighting areas of strength it will also highlight vulnerabilities and, therefore, areas for further development. Through paying attention in this way, as the therapist grows so does the level of expertise offered to clients, and a virtuous spiral is created.


The axis above demonstrates the various combinations of relationships between
control and responsibility. The dotted line through the middle of the axis represents
my progress from the "there & then" to the "here & now".
Personal therapy facilitates progress along the dotted line.

Yet, this is an area that often causes discomfort and is shied away from by many. As Carl Jung[3] puts it, “This challenge to the doctor to transform himself in order to effect change in patients meets with scant popular approval, for three reasons. First of all it seems unpractical; secondly, there is a prejudice against being occupied with ourselves; and thirdly, it seems very painful to make ourselves live up to everything that we expect of the patient. This last is the strongest reason for the unpopularity of the demand that the doctor examine himself; for if he conscientiously ‘doctors’ himself he will soon discover things in his nature which are completely opposed to normalization or which continue to haunt him in a most disturbing way.”

And yet Jung realizes the importance of this self-examination to keep his practice current and develop it further.

“What was formerly a method of medical treatment now becomes a method of self-education, and therewith the horizon of our modern psychology is immeasurably widened.” This is as true today as it was when first published in 1933.[3]

Gilligan[1] echoes this theme, “each experience within the client opens up something in the therapist.” This idea can be further developed and utilized in three ways. It can be that the client’s issues are reaffirming a change already made by the therapist and that he is consciously aware of. It can be that the issue raised by the client creates a change in the therapist in the moment. It could be that the event is indicating a need to change on the part of the therapist. It is as if the client’s issues are either moving towards us as something we have yet to resolve in ourselves, or something that we have already resolved that is moving away from us. The key point is our awareness of presenting issues and patterns, and the honesty with ourselves about our own need to change that takes our practice and ourselves forward.

My Own Self-Development

As an illustration of this concept I will briefly outline my own development as an individual with associated themes and patterns. I will then explore the correlation between my issues and their resolution and those presented by clients.

Ainsworth (1978)[4] would describe my mother as ambivalent, demonstrating a pattern of inconsistency; warm, alternating with ignoring. Perhaps as a consequence, my father sought to please her by providing greater and greater material security. The harder he worked, the more he earned, the more he earned the more he was away, the more he was away the more marked the pattern of my mother’s behaviour. The pattern of my behaviour became anxious before separation, distressed during separation and ambivalent during reunion, seeking and avoiding maternal contact. Consequently, full of insecurities and overly concerned with what others thought of me, I found it difficult to concentrate at school and it was soon decided that I was ‘not the brightest’ and I went to boarding school age 11. I had the sense that there was something ‘wrong’ with me and nobody liked me. My father’s recollection of my childhood is of “too many rules” and never enough time for him to play with me. To the outside world, and as far as my parents were concerned, I was well provided for and taken care of. It was my emotional needs that were largely unmet. Gilligan1 sums it up very well for me:

“Early on in life sponsorship is largely assumed and modelled by those in charge; parents, teachers, community. If they ignore, reject or violate a presence coming through one’s centre, it goes unnamed (and hence unknown) or else cursed as not fit for human society. We become afraid of it (i.e. our awakening self), thinking its awakening will destroy us. This leads to a shutting down around the centre, a dissociation from one’s natural ‘fressen energy’, and a spinning off into some disconnected sense of self and world.”


…another way of depicting my journey is the curve above. From the moment
of birth, a gradual build-up of tension like the winding of a spring.

I developed severe acne at the age of 12, perhaps a physical outward expression of my inner emotional turmoil that was ‘not OK’ to verbalize. Branded as ugly by the bullies in the boarding house, my self-esteem was further eroded and I began to believe them.


The more I develop what I offer, the broader and more complex the client base
becomes. That being the case, there is an undeniable link between my own
development spiritually, emotionally and intellectually, and the development of my client base.

On leaving school, my main motivation for joining the well-respected organizations I chose for a career was one of wanting to be accepted and to make my parents proud, which indeed they were. I did ‘OK’ in both institutions until age 32 when I reached a crossroads. In essence, I found myself asking serious questions about how I had reached this point and for whom, and where it was all leading. It felt as though it had little to do with me. After a reactive depression and some NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) therapy, I began to unravel what had been conditioned during my earlier life. I realized that what I wanted from life was not what I was doing or being, and so took massive action to change things. Just before my ‘crisis point’ I believed, at least consciously, that I was doing really well. It seems I was only fooling myself! As Jung3 puts it, “Most of my patients knew the deeper truth, but did not live it. And why did they not live it? Because of the bias which makes us put the ego in the centre of our lives – and this bias comes from an over-valuation of consciousness.”

I was, in fact, a Being with the Faith squashed out. I took responsibility (blame) for everything and felt I had control over nothing, and consequently sought to control everything. ‘Everything’ refused to be controlled! I became aware of my lack of personal power and insecurity and concerns about abandonment and associated despair. I had a deep unconscious belief that I was ‘a worthless piece of shit’.

To continue Gilligan’s1 theme: “This is what a symptom attempts to do for a person: it is a ‘call to return’ to the relational self. What it requires is a surrender of the power principle, a willingness to engage and sponsor the other (interior or exterior) self without violence. Unfortunately, a person generally has been led to believe that surrender or letting go would be a disaster…at some point, a person feels that control is slipping away and comes to a therapist in desperation.”

The axis above demonstrates the various combinations of relationships between control and responsibility. The dotted line through the middle of the axis represents my progress from the ‘there and then’ to the ‘here and now’. Personal therapy facilitates progress along the dotted line.

Understanding the Value of Self-Healing

Ten years on, I am finally beginning to understand and embrace the meaning of faith, intimacy, vulnerability, humility, love and acceptance, both personally and professionally.

If we are all born whole and from pure spirit and that is where we return, then another way of depicting my journey is the curve overleaf. From the moment of birth, a gradual build-up of tension like the winding of a spring. There was no malice in my parent’s actions. Full of insecurities and vulnerabilities, they were doing their best, given the parenting and development they had themselves experienced. Their insecurities and vulnerabilities were then unconsciously projected onto me. Nonetheless, I reached a point where I realized I had choice and began to resolve what had been repressed in me. It was from that point onwards that I began to be able to facilitate change in others.

This appears to happen in reverse chronological order. Perhaps we are only able to deal with the more painful and profound truths when we have resolved what has been obscuring them, and are sufficiently strong.

It soon became apparent to me that the more I grew personally the more effective I became in assisting others to do the same. Given that I have never advertised my business, it has been built on word of mouth. People buy me. This meant an appropriately slow start!

The more I develop myself the more I develop what I have to offer. The more I develop what I offer, the broader and more complex the client base becomes. That being the case, there is an undeniable link between my own development spiritually, emotionally and intellectually, and the development of my client base. After ten years of involvement with NLP, it is only now that I feel congruent and happy to say “I am a Psychotherapist”.

Therapist-Client Parallels

I have always had a sense of a connection between my ‘stuff’ and issues presented by clients. It was not until I immersed myself in eight years of notes for several days that the extent of that relationship became apparent. Even now there will be things beyond my awareness! What emerged are two parallel patterns of connection. One of skill and technique development and scope of practice. The other, a connection between my own life events and clients who reaffirm, create or indicate a need for my change and growth.

I refined my techniques and became ever more flexible with my approach as I had referrals from wider sources. Initially from associates/work, then from the voluntary sector and then corporate, and now from GPs and insurance companies as well as psychologists and psychiatrists.

Whilst I still have a broad framework of how I approach work with clients I am now much more flexible about how I use it, and have added in tools from other fields, e.g. Transactional Analysis. My review has highlighted a progression from a process led human doing to a client lead human being. The parallels with my personal journey highlighted earlier are striking and poignant.

Life Events

It would take many thousands of words and perhaps make tedious reading, to review every client over the past eight years! As with the development of technique, the connections with client issues are striking, both in terms of my earlier history and life events over the last eight years.

The simplest way to depict the connections during those years is in the table on the previous page.
It is as if there has been a logical progression from issues presented at an environmental/behavioural level to those concerning mission and spirit, in line with Robert Dilt’s Neurological Levels shown above, which absolutely reflects my own journey. It is also apparent that the presenting issues have shifted from predominantly an external focus (work, relationships, family etc.) to largely internally focused. Perhaps, as I have returned to my own ‘relational self’ and connecting with my own spiritual self, I am able to facilitate others to do the same, regardless of which life area the presenting symptom/problem presents in. When clients connect with their ‘relational self’ the issue is resolved as “human presence is brought to touch it with love and acceptance and integrate it”.[1]

There is one client above all who stands out as an exemplar of the connection between client/therapist development. I first saw this 40 year-old single, professionally successful male in October 2001. He was overly concerned with what others thought of him and wanted to “be himself and find the real me”. He had poor self-esteem and negative beliefs about his physical appearance. Outwardly he was ‘doing OK’ yet inwardly nothing was ever good enough on his continual search for perfection. He had had a series of unsatisfactory relationships with women, fuelled by his own concerns about rejection. We initially worked for 12 hours over a number of months and resolved negative emotions using Timeline Therapy™ and elicited and resolved his Prime Concern “I am a worthless piece of shit.” These were his words exactly and I was careful to avoid any installation. I saw him for a total of five hours over the next two years when he was tested both at work and in a relationship, and used mostly reframing and metaphor to resource him. He continued to work hard to resolve his issues between meetings and grow personally.

In September 2005 I finally let go of my own futile search for perfection and resolved to accept myself as good enough as I am, whilst recognizing there is always more!

This seems to have been a huge shift for me and enables me to enjoy my ‘journey’ and connect with self and others with love and acceptance.

I had not heard from this client for 18 months and presumed no news was good news. Then in October 2005 he came to see me to tell me “my life is better in a million ways”. He had a far from easy time since our last meeting. He had been ‘very fed up’ at work, at times felt depressed, and two weeks before our meeting a former girlfriend had died suddenly. He had ‘ridden the storms’ successfully.

His conclusion had been that “the universe will give me what I want”. He had put his absolute faith and trust in this and it had manifested what he needed, often against overwhelming odds, in a number of areas of his life. His biggest learning was that he is very careful about what he thinks about/wishes for, because it comes true consistently.

For me it was like hearing myself speak, and a point of confluence where he and I merged.

So much for the retrospective view, what about the future? What excites me most about the links between my clients and my development is the potential it creates. Through my own continued growth spiritually, emotionally and intellectually, I will further define my own personality. As I evolve so will my therapy and practice and what I offer clients. As that continues, I will offer even greater choice to my clients, which fulfils my mission and purpose. My challenge, then, is to remain vulnerable and vigilant, challenging yet humble. As long as I am just one step ahead of the client then they and I will stay safe and grow.

Since I live in ‘England’s last wilderness’, Gary Snyder’s[5] concept of cultivating a ‘wild mind’ has particular resonance: ‘It means self organizing… It means elegantly self-disciplining, self-regulating, and is self-maintained. That is what wilderness is. Nobody has to do the management plan for it. So I say to people, let us trust in the self-disciplined elegance of wild mind. Practically speaking, a life that is vowed to simplicity, appropriate boldness, good humour, unstinted work and play, and lots of walking, brings us close to the actually existing world and its wholeness’.

References

1.    Gilligan S. The Courage To Love. Norton. 1997.
2.    Corsini RJ. Current Psychotherapies. 6th Edition. FE. Peacock. 2000.
3.    Jung CG. Modern Man in Search of a Soul. First published 1933. Rutledge and Kegan Paul. 1961.
4.    Birch A. Developmental Psychology. McMillan. 1997.
5.    Carolan T. The Wild Mind of Gary Snyder. 1996.