‘Being Born’ and ‘Bearing Loss’. Two different aspects of Therapy

Most people come to therapy with a desire for change- it might be a very specific area of life centring around difficult relationships or behavioural patterns like addiction or sometimes the ‘dull ache’ of emptiness or lack of meaning.

What kind of change is possible in the therapy relationship? Well, the bad news is that the change that lasts tends not to be the kind of fantasy which we all hold at one time or another - that we can either add or subtract parts of our personality to better fulfil our wishes for a better life. This depends on willpower being flexed against our essential nature and often relies on shame and guilt to enforce the ‘new regime’.

What is clear to me about all effective courses of therapy is that when change happens it is intrinsically uneven, paradoxical and mysterious. Much like the life outside that it seeks to support, therapy progresses through phases and moments of clarity, awareness and feelings of new freedom but it also includes times of bleakness, pain and stuckness where our human limitation is evident- and I’m talking about my human limitation as a therapist as much as yours. Change can be a kind of ‘birthing’ where new awareness and new possibilities are ‘born’ while change can also be a kind of holding- where the limits and parameters of who we are and what our life has been is ‘borne’ with tenderness. We are all unique people with the bodies, minds, nervous systems we were born with and our environments further shape that uniqueness- a uniqueness which is both borne and born at every moment.

Ultimately this interweaving of differnt kinds of change is the most precious area of therapeutic dialogue - the slow and steady building of a relationship where the ‘peaks and troughs’ of being human are held , with humour, humility and delight and where your essential nature is revealed, shared and honoured .