Working with human minds…

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.

Helen Keller

The beginning of a session holds out hope for change, movement, progression, and reflection. It is sometimes messy, jagged, distressing, and frustrating. The hope of the therapist is to hold the space safely in a way the therapee can explore without judgement. True freedom of expression can be life-changing for some. Delving into a deeper level of awareness brings about relief for others. Making sense of trauma and pain is healing and cathartic for others still.

When you embark on the journey of therapy with another person, you are an observer, a reflector, a mirror and oftentimes a translator.

When we go beneath the surface and root around to see what is there, if we’re lucky, we hit the ‘raw data’. The feelings that occurred at a moment in time that for whatever reason stayed put. Emotional residue, if you will. Allowing them to surface up, to be expressed, validated and processed gives an opportunity for growth and development.

We might shut feelings off, suppress difficult emotions and refuse to engage with parts of ourselves that may need exploration. When we engage in this behaviour, we might find we have to work harder and harder to keep it away, out of mind, closed off, and pushed back. We might ask ourselves- why are we struggling and suffering? Why is it so difficult to concentrate? Why are we exhausted? Why does everything feel enormous?

Allowing space and time to sit with all of the components of the different emotions isn’t easy. It is powerful to acknowledge how we truly feel and it can bring about change and progression. It can give space and capacity for growth and development.

A reflective question might be ‘what am I running away from?’. Where does that take you to if you give yourself a moment to ponder?