L
Leaving, Listening, Love
Leaving
If going to therapy in the first place is the most consequential decision in any therapeutic experience, then deciding to leave is in second place. However long or short the relationship, the ending of it is often a microcosm not only of the relationship but of the client’s experience with much else in their life.
The choice to leave should always be the client’s. It is not up to the therapist to say “You’re ok now. Have a nice life”. It’s up to the client to raise it and, hopefully, allow themselves and the therapist to explore it together.
Laura wants to leave because she feels she’s ok now; she’s achieved all she wanted to achieve. Great. But how does she come to the decision to wind down? Does she just want to send an email saying “All done, thanks” or does she want to wind down over several months to make absolutely certain that she feels ready to leave? Is she seeking her therapist’s approval of her decision or does she not give two shits what he thinks?
Lin wants to leave because it’s not working. They’ve been coming for two or three months but the anxiety remains, nothing has changed, they feel stupid to think it ever would. How does Lin usually approach losses? Is there a tendency to give up if there’s no instant result? What about the therapy is not what they need? Do they feel ok telling the therapist that it’s not working, or will they just ‘run away’ and not turn up?
Leo wants to leave because his work rota has changed and his current slot isn’t practical anymore. But does he mind? Did he ask work whether it was possible to not intrude on his appointment time? Has he asked his therapist if he might be able to swap appointment times? If the work pattern hadn’t changed would he have stayed indefinitely or did it provide a useful context for leaving as he was hoping to do anyway?
None of these are unreasonable responses. But all of them contain meaning. How a client approaches their leaving of therapy will often be a microcosm of the entire experience.
Listening
From Minute 1 of Day 1 in any therapy training (I hope) the first skill you learn and are refining for the rest of your career is how to listen. Without intent, active listening there is no therapy.
Being listened to is the fundamental ingredient of therapy: whether because they weren’t listened to as a child, or they can’t hear what they say to themselves, or – as clients often say – they want an “outside perspective”. The therapist’s job, before anything as exciting as “How do you feel about that?”, is to listen: to the story, the words used to tell it, the inflections, the rhythm, the mood and the intention.
That’s why so much of what therapists do involves repeating back what they’ve just heard, summarising what’s been discussed, encouraging a clearer expression of what has been said. It’s not because we’re thick or pedantic (well, not usually): it’s because we want to check that what we’re listening to is what the client is needing to express, and that what we’re hearing is as faithful to the client’s experience as it can be. To do so also allows the client to listen to themselves.
As Susie Orbach says “If you can find a way to listen, people will find a way to talk.”
Love
Love is a fundamental part of the therapeutic process. And not just for the obvious reasons: that it can explore the absent or ill-expressed love the person experienced growing up, or the troubled love in a relationship, or the overwhelming love that inspires jealousy or bad behaviour, or the love that makes us grieve for people we’ve lost.
Love also exists in the therapeutic dynamic, whether for its presence, its absence or its implications.
Lorna loves her therapist for his care, his attention, his gentleness, his yearning for her to be happier. Nobody has ever loved her like he has, Lorna feels. Every session feels like being held in a loving embrace: a place of safety which allows her to express who she really is and still feel loved and accepted in return. But she worries: how will she ever be able to leave him?
Levon wants his therapist to love him. Levon feels he’s kind, funny, smart, thoughtful and yet he’s never been able to experience love from somebody else. Not at home, not at work, not even in his marriage. He has gone to therapy, he now realises, to see if he can understand why nobody can love him. But it’s all gone wrong: he doesn’t think his therapist loves him either. And it makes him so angry. So what’s the problem with Levon?
Luc is terrified of loving their therapist or of their therapist loving them. It would make the experience unsafe, humiliation would surely ensue: that’s what always happens. Their therapist will reject them, or they’ll have to run from their therapist, or, worse still, the love will stop the therapy being therapy. Love (of any kind) can only mean ruin. So what does this fear of love tell them about themselves?
The love we have for our mother is not the same as we have for our lover, which is not the same as the love we have for our best friend, which is not the same as the love we have for chicken curry, which is not the same as the love we have for Ant and Dec.
We may love our therapist; our therapist may love us. But it is not the same as parents, lovers or friends. It is a love that exists only in its particular circumstances. And, like any other kind of love, feeling it can be the most wonderful thing in the world. Or the scariest.
Next Week: M
Madness, Masturbation, Meaning-Making, Money