Dec 2017
Re-writing your past in
this present by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD
Irvin
Yalom, in his wonderful book, Creatures
of a Day, and other tales of psychotherapy, has a chapter called “You Must
Give Up Hope for a Better Past,” but in it he notes that the past is continuous
with the present and you can rewrite your past whenever you decide to. Therapy
is a very good place to do this. Therapy provides set-aside time, space,
confidentiality, professionalism, a trained listener who has chosen to listen
and be absolutely present for you; it provides safety and the therapist, a
skilled use of tools that can re-write the landscape of your history into a
more comprehensible, less destructive form. Therapy is like an alchemical
crucible where the telling and the hearing are part of the transformative
process of re-writing your life story.
I hear many
accounts of lives in my work. I have heard events in people’s lives that no one
has ever heard before, that the person never dared tell before. I am humbled hearing those things said for the
very first time as well as knowing that I will remain the only hearer of these things,
as I am sworn to silence (with two exceptions) by virtue of my profession. It
is times like these that the two of us carry your life (and I do know from my
own experience what a relief that is). I
am, though, merely a journeyman beside you, with a map out of the jungles,
ragged peaks, and marshes. I will travel with you as long as you wish me to be
there and then you can proceed as you wish. You can, of course, hire me once
again to walk with you whenever you like.
There are two exceptions to the
confidentiality rules we therapists are required to stick to: your safety and
the safety of others, or when I’m required by the courts to impart information.
In the case of the latter, I will fight for confidentiality as far as possible.
As I say, I
have heard, and hear often, events in the lives of my clients that have never
been said before, and hearing them, will likely never speak of in any
identifying way. My lips are sealed.
Some years
ago I heard an old woman, now deceased, tell of things she’d kept under wraps
for eighty plus years. She spoke of family, shame, blame, rapes, escapes, homelessness,
restitution, travel, education, careers, pleasures, fundamental vulnerabilities
and sensitivies, and a desire for her story to be heard, without criticism. The
two processes: saying and being heard mattered to the healing of her soul and
that’s why she came to me.
Sometimes
it is sufficient once to tell a trusted person stories that have not been told;
sometimes, though, the events in lives need much more work than a telling. A
re-authoring is needed. The past is rarely ever boxed away and discontinuous with
the present. What happens now changes how the past is thought and felt about.
Yes, of course, the facts of a past are
history, but mostly for most of us, the
facts are not what disturb us; it is our feelings from that past that can haunt
us. This is what can be re-authored; this is where change happens.
Imagine if
you will, you and me walking through the landscape of your past in the present
moment talking together. Our walking is a journey of the mind, of the soul. As
we walk, we talk and I bring to our therapeutic conversation the tools of my
trade. We experiment with ideas, we write and rewrite, I hear your dreams and
we traverse the language of the dream to the dream’s heart, I hear your aspirations and insights and I am
changed while you are changing. My journey with you is also transformational
for me (do you see now why I love my work?). Here, in this place of now, we
discover new vistas, opportunities and new ways of being in the world. And nothing is ever the same old, same old
again. The ghosts have left the room and you can be in the world freer, and
happier.
