V
Validation, Value, Variation
Validation
Valerie comes to therapy for someone to listen to her without telling her what to do. Van comes to therapy to release a long-standing experience which he has hitherto never spoken of. Vic comes to therapy without knowing why, but they want help understanding why they have such enormous anxiety all the time despite leading a seemingly low-stress life.
Valerie, Van and Vic have different needs, stories and motivations but they all need validation. Val needs to hear someone say “What do you want to do? What do you think is going on here?” Van needs to sit with someone who’ll indicate in their reactions to his trauma: “That’s ok. I’m here with you. I can hear how hard that experience was, and I can manage it. Let me see if I can help you manage it too.” And Vic needs someone who will show her that however comfortable her life is on the surface “I can really see how hard you find it on some level. We just don’t know why yet. Let’s try and find out how to help you, together.”
Tears are, of course, a common experience in therapy but sadness is not necessarily the main cause. Being seen, being heard, being listened to, being understood… all are about being validated and with the tears of relief can sometimes come the tears of grief for not having had that experience enough before.
Value
What value anyone finds in therapy is, of course, up to them. Sometimes the value is in understanding themselves. Often value can be found in their experiencing a different kind of relationship with the therapist than they have achieved elsewhere. Sometimes the value is in processing trauma and challenge, sometimes in crying without judgment or dismissal.
My own opinion is that the value of therapy lies in visible change. At the end of a period of therapy, whether six weeks or ten years, I would like a client to be able to point as aspects of their life or experience and say “This is new; that feels possible; I am now comfortable with this” in a way that they weren’t when they started.
Variation
Like any relationship, therapy benefits from variation: variation in tone, variation of subject, variation of approach. There is more than one way to gain access to difficult material, or to explore how best to help a client make changes. To my mind (and this is not necessarily a widely-held view) if we have too many sessions which look and sound the same as each other there’s a danger we might get settled into a familiar pattern, whereas I think therapy should always be leaning forward towards the better life we’re trying to find for the person concerned.
Sometimes a “how are we doing?” check-in can help provide the variation; a periodic review of what we’re doing and where we’re going. Sometimes an injection of creativity can help. Occasionally something more practical: swapping seats for instance.
Life is variable. I think therapy needs to reflect that where it can.
Next Week: W
“What do you hear when….?”; “Why?”; Window of Tolerance; Witnessing; Words