Eros in therapy. Starting the conversation.

Another therapist was telling me about her experience of Eros in the room. Neither she or the client spoke about it. It was only an undercurrent - not yet an undertow. And once this dynamic had started, therapy was ended very soon, by the client. No disclosure, nothing ever said. A year later my colleague is still wondering about herself, about what she really felt, and about the client. A sense that possibly she, my colleague ruined the therapy, hangs over the conversation we had about it. My colleague blames herself. I don't think she has any reason to. We live and learn.

Eros in therapy isn't simple. 

Both people in my colleague's session probably wanted to know - what is happening here and now, in this room?' And some therapists would use those words. When Kit asked me I answered him at the same level with. 'What's happening? Two people, drinking coffee'.  I answered the question he asked, not the one he wanted the answer to. For all sorts of reasons! But, I'd like to explain, even if the situation isn't as messed up as ours, why asking the client 'what's happening here ' isn't a good use of words.

The language, regardless of the presence of a subject, directs a person to consider 'what is happening' as if there is something else happening. 

But surely, as there probably is something, what words make this question more likely to shine some light?

Nothing is happening - feelings exist within the person. And this question places the responsibility to decipher all this atmosphere onto the client. Doing the work for the therapist.  

It isn't a collaborative question.

The person asking doesn't want to usurp the meanings of this something, yet they act as if they have power to give to the client, by conveying that the client will know more about it than the therapist! But what if the client doesn't want to talk about the something? What if the feelings are awful? Now the therapist has spotted the something, oh no! A sense of shame, bewilderment, no clarity, instead even more ambiguity? 

Fundamentally a 'what is happening question' implies a need to explore emotions without saying so. 

And if he had asked me 'I wonder what you are feeling, here and now,' though it is a clear request for feelings, for emotion, it has the same problems,. The question doesn't create safe and contained ways to encounter and explore experience. 

And it is a very direct question,  it could feel intrusive...

So, how to talk about feelings...about an atmosphere.

"How does that make you feel"?

Strategy 1. The therapist owns it. There are advantages and disadvantages with this. So, I would say something like, 'It is like the air suddenly feels really heavy to me, is this me, or do you feel it too? If the answer is 'No?' That's fine, no problem (my feelings go on the shelf to be looked at later) and continue to stay with whatever the client was talking about before I interrupted! If there is a 'Yes!' then there needs to be strategy 2. I seek permission to talk with them about their feelings by directly asking the client if they are willing to look at some of the feelings that might be a part of the situation. This contracting, seeking permission to talk feelings, needs asking when you feel the undercurrent, or to have started at this level sometime before. This is edge of awareness stuff, best explored through metaphor, sensing physical reactions and descriptions as externalisation - including the felt sense

So why didn't Kit and I ever work at that level? 

I took one film of myself when we were talking on Zoom before I was aware of how I really felt about him - I was interested in how I was during therapy. The camera faced me so I could see my facial expressions, and hear my responses, my tone of voice. I didn't film his body language, or capture what he was saying. 

The fascinating thing is, I could see it in my body language and tone of voice, I hadn't realised that I was almost flirting. I wasn't aware of it at all until I saw it...

Why he ignored it - I don't think it was difficult to see - is a question core to this blog.