I honestly didn't know what levels of openness and honesty to dare, that day. The sun so hot, the cross over from virtual to real promised more information...but the experience was overwhelming.
I had wanted to see how it felt.
Chemistry - I wanted there to be chemistry.
I had sat in the car for about twenty minutes, noticing that practicing Wim Hof Method really had changed my tolerance to hot as well as cold.
One cannot arrive early for therapy, or leave beyond one's time.
Boundaries!
Then I got out of my car, took my bag out of the boot and set off down the road.
Everything was dazzling. The sun bleaching my vision. I was floating in pretty sandals, no heals, slightly Goth, black leather with bronze studs! I had on my grey jeans, my black shirt. On my head a nest of dreadlocks, a Medusa swirl. I'm not slim, I'm not fat. I felt that I looked as good as I can for someone so old, who has just sweltered in a hot car for too long, now walking under a too hot sun, down the too hot road, crossing the road and seeing...Oh my goodness! Is that him? Standing on the pavement watching for me. I keep walking, slow and so mindful not to mess this up - the sandals can't be trusted - and I want to appear super cool, super calm, super collected.
He waves, and I wave a slow, languorous wave back.
My eyes are fixed upon him; white shirt, dark trousers, his energy, the way he moves.
This is real!
Inside his room, darkness and silence. I open my bag and take out the super perfect vegan chocolate biscuits bought especially for this day. He made a comment about dogs, and not being able to stop eating, and so the biscuits go back in my bag. And my shields (think of a star ship) were up and failing; his first question scattered across my skin like buck shot, and into my mind ripping my intellect and words into babble.
He - "Well we have been meeting for over a year now, what's it like being face to face"?
I said a lot and nothing - I said that normally at home I sit on the floor, that I'm used to VR and crossing from virtual to real is better. But my heart and mind were speeding, all the time trying so hard to work this all out.
He - I was a bit surprised by your email about the article I wrote (see previous post).
Me - "yes, I gave you a glowing review"
He - "My intention was, based on our conversations about how trauma isn't about the event, its about perception..."
And I'm trying so hard now to use his concepts and to hold onto my own view, and I'm drowning. Nothing I've said has been followed up. And now it is absolutely clear that he doesn't want any form of closeness with me.
He - "...and therapeutically what matters is the filter, not the event, which is what the article is all about really".
Me, echoing - "what really matters is the filter not the event"
I try again. I don't agree with him! And I no longer have the email. I know I wrote about his clarity and insight, and other flattering things. But (and I must have been coming to my senses at this point) but ultimately this - our session - is supposed to be about my research!
Me - all the people in my focus group will have experienced trauma, whether it is trauma in the sense you mean is another matter, they felt it was trauma - but I guess this needs questioning as it invalidates everything from here on - if it isn't trauma <nervous laughing!> but I'm not going to ask them - because the point is, they all say that they would not have avoided the traumatic experience because as a consequence they feel more connected to others. What I'm looking for are the experiences that transformed their trauma..
He - "therapeutically?"
Here is a language problem I never imagined - how is therapy separate or different from any other experience? What does he mean, therapeutically?
I tell one story of transformation...
He - "There's all sorts of important things in there I think. Not everything that is therapeutic happens in therapy, I mean it can't because the therapist is who we are, and not every therapist can offer everything - and some things are just not doable in the therapy room."
Ah, a dagger has just struck deep into my heart! He is right, what I need from him is negotiation, navigation and probably a separation of three years. At the time of this meeting I was a trainee, I hadn't even begun my 100 hours placement. Now, as a qualified therapist myself, I see this moment very differently. I've felt some clients stepping over the edge of love or limerence with me and I feel at those times the echoes of how I felt this day. I trust my experience of this pain, this day, to make me kinder and wiser.
Back to the room!
He - "And that's a wonderful story of non-verbal connection - I think non-verbal connection is a key part of what happens in therapy. These are my books and they are full of words, they can't be full of anything else because they are books. But those words in every therapy book I can think of are words about other words...and wordless experiences are also possible to write about, and they are just as important so...And I wonder just so I'm on the right lines here, is this a conversation where we're just exploring what's what, or is there a particular question in mind"?
I try so hard to bring us both into the same space - to approach the question "what is it like being face to face".
I say - "So much of this is re-centering, this is different, it is 360, the whole thing - that maybe this will be the whole focus. But I do have my piece of paper, but there is no real question...whatever comes out, whatever is interesting, we will go towards those
He - "underlying all of this there is a key question...because for some clients, the client doesn't know for a while explicitly - some do - so the question I ask, the tone of voice, the body language all of that, if somebody is talking to you as daddy or mommy because that's where the deficit is, developmentally. And if somebody is seeing you as adult to adult sorting things out together, that is quite a different session"
Is he talking about the here and now - me!?
He - "And you have got to know, because if you are talking at cross purposes, therapy isn't going to happen"
At this point the dark waters go over my head. We most certainly are talking at cross purposes! I speak from where I am.
Me - "I don't see myself as a client, and this is a fizzy grey area, I feel I'm acting illegally. I don't see myself as a client, I think what is most useful for me is to learn from you...so, how do I see you? I don't see you as my dad, do I come over as a child, do I appear childish"?
He - "No - I think there's been a bit of a cross here...."
For me - the heat outside, the darkness in the room, the strangeness of water and cider vinegar - which I didn't accept - and I'm trying to talk about my feelings, because actually, I prefer to talk about how I feel, but I've got it all wrong - and this is my overwhelming feeling - all is wrong. Metaphorically, my brain starts oozing out of my ears, I'm lost, befuddled, can't be honest. "Wordless experiences are also possible to write about, and they are just as important"...I tried.
He - "because my assumption was, this is the new thing...I almost called it coaching, but that's not what you called it is it?"
Me - "mentee and mentor.."
He - "So really my question was about - when I'm doing therapy, when you are doing therapy, the question we need to ask of the client is - not addressing you as the client, us together looking at client x - it is important to know what we see"
It's no good, the floor has fallen away, I'm in a void of ambiguity, no sense of direction! I need, I want to say how I see him. I want to be straight, I want him to know! It was the ambiguity of the words - "not addressing you as the client" - I wanted that to mean - addressing you as an equal, an ordinary person, as you. "Us together looking at..." us together, in this moment, not in a hypothetical situation.
I'm gone.
Me - " So how do I see you, how do I..."
He - "No, no no....the question is - when I'm doing therapy the question is, what does the client want of me. The implication is, when you are being the therapist you need to know what the client wants from you."
And then I tell him a lot of what I really think - which is that his kindness when I was a client was important to me. He asked me to say more, and I skittered away to say truthfully that I find his descriptions of the filter and phantasy a bit frustrating - because since 1991 I've been 'postmodern' as it is a totally Buddhist way of viewing things. I get that reality is without inherent meaning. I understand that meaning is a construct, and arrived at through a process of meaning-making, limited or facilitated by language and the reactions of others. And I want him to see that I'm his equal in terms of this! To stop explaining to me as if I should be amazed. I can't be amazed!
Why doesn't he get that we are on the same page?
I feel so frustrated!
I see now, it wasn't my amazement he expected - it was my agreement that deficits are remedied by a subtle reparenting process. I neither agreed or disagreed then. But now when it's me as a therapist I certainly don't assume that developmental deficits or needs are ruling the client's roost. I ask them! Courageous, collaborative dialogue is important - this is the lesson I gained from this session.
I also hear in my voice the seeds that grew into a problem. I had hurt his feelings, and for whatever reasons investigating, reconfiguring and re-creating back to where we were, wasn't an option. I was, in his terms, discarding and discounting what he said - paradoxically as he had discounted the importance I place on transformational experiences.
He - "I don't really know what you are referring to - you get frustrated when I talk about fantasy...?"
Me - "You are explaining something that I've really got an understanding of"
He - "when do I do that, talk to you about fantasy"
Me - "we are on the same page I reckon"
He - "But I don't remember"
I named the writer - Josephine Kleine!
He - "Oh fantasy with a PH!"
So I explain my understanding of how information is organised within the mind...and my interest in how strong beliefs can be altered; seeking an answer to my question - what are the optimum conditions for this? Are Carl Rogers '6 necessary and sufficient conditions enough - but I've seen that there are other and surprising routes to better.
He - "And the key thing about that in therapy is that for most people most of the time they will be unaware of the problematic experience as old stuff, and it is experienced that way (experienced as a new thing in the present) because it is fitting something that is pre-conceived and the original conception was conceived long before it became problematic. Again, that's what the article was intended to convey. And so it is important for - and again I want to be more explicit - for you and I to be aware of what our stuff is."
Well, here's a conundrum. I am very aware of my feelings in this moment. I am aware of my stuff. I have no way to know what his stuff is! I'm aware of the rules of therapy. I chose to behave informed by my knowledge of how vulnerable I feel right now. Compassion for myself is paramount so I can't do anything to risk our connection at this point. I'm simply not strong enough. I don't know how he feels about me - but I'm not strong enough to take a direct rejection, and curiously I'm not strong enough to deal with complete acceptance.
Why I feel as I do about him, is easy to decipher - it's his intelligence, his energy, the way he moves...and there is that aspect of him I will come to call 'the brother'. The unconstructed, 'real' person who forgets his therapeutic persona.
He -" because we will do the same to clients, we will look at a client and think 'yeah, I can see what's going on here' but it might also be our stuff - and I think, going back to your email that's where I can forgive Eric Berne, but I can't forgive, I can't forgive Fritz Perls because - and I just thought that this was worth mentioning..."
Ah Fritz Perls, a subject that never failed to deliver joy and mirth to both of us! I am a fan of Perls, I would happily have argued and fought with him as my therapist and never worried about saying the wrong thing. But here, in this room I feel constrained, as if I have to follow a tight and narrow, invisible and pre-defined line. He defines Perls as 'a thug' and that there is nothing in Gestalt that isn't better defined through other perspectives. I disagree. I had needed Perls' perspective so often. Perls deals with issues around power so well, calling out the absurd dynamic and challenging his clients to take back their power!
He -"And I'm sorry - no I'm not sorry! To bring it back to that article because the more I think about it - it is the basis for everything. And this is why as practitioners we need to step back and to know where our own filters are, because if we don't we will miss things" Or rather, we won't be prepared for our own reactions to clients, unless we understand where those reactions come from.
So here it is - this is why I'm in mandatory therapy, to know about my own filters, because I'm doing a course that uses the concepts he is so patiently and painstakingly explaining to me. A few months ago, I asked my boss how he listens without 'a self' - and he said "I took a lot of acid when I was younger". I said, "I do no self because I sat for hundreds of hours doing Tibetan Buddhist practice". Fundamentally we don't beleive that our thoughts, beliefs and feelings are key to understanding what other people think, believe, say and feel.
Our role is closer to Holy fools, we know nothing.
So we listen, we ask the question.
Certainly personal stuff has the potential to alter the dynamic in the room, but we work in someone else's language, I don't need to know what their word means, simply put I just need to be able to use it correctly according to them.
But here really is a paradox - right here right now in this room, why is he missing what I think is so patently obvious?
And I end the session describing the kitten carousel, an experiment that corroborates or underpins the Gestalt understanding - that we develop through interaction - linking it to the later work of Rogers of course, not Perls. A plea, really - to join me in exploring the edges, to step out of the known, to use experience, not conjecture...But that kitten carousel, it is ironic that it is still relevant for me, albeit for a different reason. I had quit my psychology degree many years ago, over that kitten carousel - one animal experiment too many!
But certainly it is an apt metaphor for where I feel myself to be right now.
