I was going to title this piece, “The
Personal is the Professional” but realized I wanted to go a bit further into
the encounter of therapist and client and beyond that to being real throughout
work and beyond.
I cannot sit back, detached, uninvolved, impenetrable,
spouting stock phrases, when I work with a client. I am engaged, I feel, I
think, I occasionally share; I act ethically and responsibly as I create a
space for the client to speak of what they wish to speak about, and yet I am
impartial. This genuine regard for the other flows from my own life choices and
how I live my life. I seek an economic, intentional, honesty in my life. If I was
duplicitous and led a life of wild debauchery while promoting economy,
intentional and ethical honesty, I would be at odds with myself and would come
across as a fraud, which indeed I would be. I make mistakes, I don’t know some
things, I assume stuff every now and again, I have biases, but I work towards presence
and realness in the same way as I encourage my clients to explore.
There is some difference between how I am
in work and outside work. Doing psychotherapy requires particular skills to be
employed, just like any other work practice. There are, however, some basic
themes running through both.
I have to be engaged, but I have to be
impartial. I cannot declare myself powerful and infallible and yet be open to what
is said and not said to me (to listen to the quality of silences between). I
need to be able to hear the painful accounts of other’s lives, and yet also be
relatively impartial and balanced. Being impartial means setting aside my own
ideas of how things work and actually listening acutely to how things are for
the other person.
I need to be inventive and appropriate, in
order enrich my encounters (as much for me as being with others). The
conversations I have with my clients are not like any other ordinary
conversation and therapy is more than conversation, anyway. There may be
experimentation, journaling, drawing, music making, dream work (which I do a
lot of), hypnosis, building, or not, the transference, challenge, etc. Whereas
a conversation with friends and/or family depend heavily on partiality and the
mutual feelings from a shared past, the therapeutic relationship doesn’t. In my
own life, I’m endlessly experimenting with choices and strategies for the best
outcome. In this way, how I am in session and outside is very similar.
I need to be real in who and how I am. Irvin
Yalom asserts that the gift a therapist brings is
her/his own humanity and this allows deeper and deepening encounters. With this
process an intimacy builds that is born from a solid bond of trust. It is in
this space that a client’s intimate revelations can be spoken of, felt through
and through, cried with, and be responded to by the therapist in an attitude of
actual empathy.
The
personal is the professional and the professional is the personal. This is a
truism, but there is risk here. The therapist needs to be able to finish at the
end of the working day, prepare a meal, relax, exercise, socialize, or
whatever, and get on with their own life; in essence to “forget” the other
lives shared during the day. To maintain a professional integrity – being true
in work with others, requires a right intention for the same in a therapist’s
ordinary life. If they are at odds, then, I think, the practitioner is in
trouble. This is one very good reason to maintain a practice of regular
clinical supervision and peer conversation. The therapeutic work only works
when the therapist healthily maintains connections with others outside their work.
We’re human, after all.
Aiming to shoot straight the arrow of integrity, mindfulness and
realness through work and beyond suits me, because I like the imagery of the
archer and I aim to be an archer of life.
