J
Joy, Judgement
Joy
Time for a huge generalisation: there’s too little joy in the therapy room.
Not unreasonably, clients can often feel that therapy is only a place to talk about The Tough Stuff. If it makes you cry, it’s useful; if it makes you happy, it’s obviously irrelevant to the therapeutic process. I disagree.
What brings us joy can be as informative as what brings us distress. And, moreover, a therapeutic relationship is a relationship; as such it deepens as its range of shared experiences broadens. Congratulating someone for a big step forward or wiping away tears of joy about something fantastic that’s just happened is a wonderful way of sharing together in that person’s unique experience of the world.
It can also be helpful as even joy has different shades: why is it that Jez feels incredible joy about their boss telling he was proud of them, but shrugs off the exact same experience from their brother?
Joy deserves its time in the therapy room.
Judgement
If there was a pill which made a client always express their feelings it might quite often induce conversations like this:
Client: …and so on the way here I thought ‘what the hell’ and bought an ice cream.
Therapist: Ah.
Client: It feels like you’re judging me.
It’s a rare thing for an awareness of judgement (often a fear of it) not to feature in a client’s experience of therapy. Sometimes these are projections: the client feels guilty about something and so imagines the therapist telling them off; often they are re-creations of experiences the client has had before. That’s where it becomes useful.
Typical judgements which clients can be aware of might include:
- My therapist thinks I’m an idiot
- My therapist thinks this doesn’t matter
- My therapist is angry with me
Sometimes clients intuit more positive judgements, which can be just as useful to acknowledge:
- My therapist likes me better than any of his other clients
- My therapist thinks I’m doing well
- My therapist loves me
Fear of judgement, or being a victim of it, is one of the most challenging experiences many of us have in our interactions with others. Sometimes these imagined judgments might apply to others, such as family or partners. If you’re brave enough to raise it, perhaps it can bring about something useful along these lines:
Jada: When you asked me why I thought my mother said that it felt like you were judging her.
Therapist: Oh really? And what happened when you felt I was judging her?
Jada: I wanted to defend her; explain to you that she’s not a bad person.
Therapist: Why was that important for you?
Exploring the resonances of these fears is often difficult but usually telling.
Next Week: K
Kink, Klein, ‘Knowns’