1. “How do you feel about that?”
It’s a horrible cliche but an important question. And here’s why.
I want to help you find what the feeling is behind the thought, and encourage you to get closer to that feeling than you might normally feel able to. Does that memory make your stomach tighten or your foot tingle? Is there some anger beneath the humour? Do you feel nauseous when you talk about something? Does your voice go husky at the memory of something?
“Feel” is the key word. If I can help you notice what you feel, maybe I can help understand what your body is telling you. And what we might do about it.
2. “Mmm” and “Uh huh”.
It’s a horrible cliché: the therapist nodding sadly and going “mm-hmm”. But it’s important. Here’s why.
Therapists want to acknowledge that we’re listening and perhaps how we’re feeling about what a client has said, but equally we don’t want to interrupt the free flow of thoughts. Staying silent may allow some clients to feel really listened to, or for others it can seem objectifying or abandoning sometimes, but interjecting can be intrusive either way. We want to stay connected with you.
3. Silence
It’s a horrible cliché: the long pauses that can sometimes descend. But it is important. Here’s why.
For some people silence feels uncomfortable or awkward: some feel embarrassed, others talk through it to avoid it. But some find it relaxing or supportive: they can take their time without anything being demanded of them as can be the case in other contexts. Therapy is not a free-form conversation such as you might have with a friend. As a therapist I want you to be able to talk as expansively as you need to on any topic, and sometimes, by allowing a pause to follow a statement, some further thoughts or feelings can come up by themselves. Some way into a relationship I get a feel for the natural rhythms that sessions will find with each client, but in the earlier stages I prefer to give the client as much space as they might need.
Silence isn’t intended to make you feel self-conscious. It’s intended to let you take your time to feel and think whatever you feel and think.
4. “Time’s up”.
This is a horrible cliche (and to date I don’t think I have ever uttered it) but it is important. Here’s why.
Keeping to the therapeutic hour of 50 minutes is partly just a sign of being organised and predictable and allowing the therapist a break before his next client if he has one. But, much more importantly, it is to allow the client to pace themselves. If a session under-runs you could feel that I was lacking interest, or feel unsatisfied in some other way. If it over-runs then you could feel overwhelmed by the material covered, or even un-held by not knowing when the session will finish. If it’s predictable, and the therapist can get into a routine of noting when there’s 5 or 10 minutes to go, it can help to keep you feeling as safe as possible.
Running to time is to help you feel as contained as possible.
5. “Is this about your mother/father?”
A horrible cliché, and again not something I can ever remember asking. But, yes, it can be a good question sometimes. Here’s why.
For all of us our parents are fundamentally important to how we relate to the world beyond our family, what we seek in partners, what we expect from people in the world, how we react to therapists. If the parents were absent or abusive it can lead a person to feel hyper independent or mistrusting; if their parents were perfect in every way, that can be a big challenge to want to equal. Whether your experience with your parents was good, bad, mixed or variable, it will often be a useful way of understanding who you are now.
6. “Is this about me?”
From Freud onwards, a reasonable therapeutic gripe can be that a therapist “always wants to make it about him/herself”. Here’s why.
How we relate to others is as likely to be reflected in our dynamics with our therapist as anybody else in our life. If you tend to assume people are taking you for a ride, there’s a good chance you’ll be looking for that from your therapist. If you assume people always treat you as a child, you’ll be looking for evidence of that from your therapist. If that’s what you’re looking for that’s what you’ll find. When a therapist invites you to explore your relationship with him or her, it’s to give you the opportunity to have an experience of a particular level of honesty and directness which may be unfamiliar in your other relationships.
I try my best not to lapse too often into therapeutic clichés, as I know how much I hate them when I hear them as a client. But sometimes they’re inevitable, and, sometimes, yes, they are important.