Why Effective Therapy Can Be So Awkward
Photo by Pawel Janiak on Unsplash
The therapeutic space is certainly a strange one…
…entirely unlike other relationships in our life, the therapy relationship is confined to one hour a week. It bears no consequence in the real-world, demanding nothing of us outside of the hour. Our psychologist has no relation or ties to our family, workplace, or friends. In fact, confidentiality and comfort in disclosing our true selves mandates that our therapist have allegiance to us and our wellness, not to maintaining our family harmony, to placating friends, or to ensuring we are productive employees.
Our relationship with our therapist is also one-sided. While it is caring and real, we are encouraged in therapy to stop care-taking of our therapist, to let them manage their stuff while we use the space to explore ours. While knowing some things about our therapist can be helpful—their background and training, some about their personal lives, and even some about their thoughts/feelings in the space with us—our therapist must always be intentional that the space is being used to serve our best interests, not their own. As soon as therapy becomes about the therapist meeting their needs, the relationship is no longer therapeutic.
The therapeutic space is also very peculiar in that we are asked to stop doing precisely the sorts of things we do in our relationships “on the outside.” That is, we are encouraged to allow and feel things that have been off-limits in previous relationships. For example, if we find ourselves frequently internalizing our frustration toward others as self-blame we are asked to own and assert our anger. If we are frequently irritated at others instead of hurt we are asked to own and feel our sadness. If we frequently inhibit numerous feelings in order to maintain relationships, we are encouraged to experiment with being out of control.
Most therapies, regardless of theoretical orientation, have some element of addressing avoidance in this way. The most effective therapies, from CBT to EFT, emphasize doing something different—not just talking about doing something different—as the key to success. By experimenting with new ways of relating to our thoughts and emotions in therapy we experience a great deal of freedom when we realize we don’t have to put up our normal defenses. In fact, through therapy we often learn that it is, quite unfortunately, the very defenses we are employing that prevent us from living the lives we want.
Discomfort is crucial to change…
It is perhaps no surprise then that as we begin to experiment with doing something different in therapy we begin to experience a great deal of discomfort. When we start expressing our anger instead of bottling it up we may have an incredible sense of guilt or fear that our therapist will chastise us. When we take up space in therapy to just be totally alone and sad we may find ourselves worrying that we need to check in with our therapists as they may be overwhelmed by our sadness. When we stop coming to therapy with an agenda we may worry that our therapist will lose interest in us or become bored with us. Each of these fears (being chastised, overwhelming others, others being bored, or others leaving us) are precisely the thing that prevents us from regularly experiencing cut-off parts of ourselves. These fears keep us locked in our own world. When our therapist asks to accept and celebrate these needs to be angry, sad, or seen, it can be very hard to believe. Instead, we often interpret the discomfort of doing so as aversive, and go right back to “business as usual” by ramping up our defenses. For example, when our therapist highlights our sadness we may immediately ask our therapist how they are doing, wonder aloud if they are taking care of themselves, or say something to demonstrate to our therapist that we can take care of them. While these sorts of behaviors may have been necessary and adaptive in response to a history of uncaring behaviors, it is these very behaviors that prevent us from being cared for in our sadness in the here-and-now, keeping us alone.
Thus, the road to meaningful change can take time as we receive—often much more than once or twice—messages from our therapist that differ from our expectations of others. Good therapists will patiently accompany us as we shy from our anger, as we keep avoiding eye-contact, as we inhibit our sadness, as we keep smoothing things over, or as we ventilate our irritability. Good therapists are compassionately aware of the many reasons we have had to engage in such defenses in our lives. Good therapists will engage themselves with us in this process, acknowledging the pain of these defenses, keeping an eye for opportunities to celebrate those brief moments of light when we hope, even just briefly, that relationships do not have to be this way. That we do not have to do these things to be close to others. Over time we begin to experience these moments of light more fully, bit by bit. Eventually we will find ourselves basking in them. Basking in the care we receive from another while sad, rejoicing in finding we do not have to be alone, relieved by the fact that we can be angry with someone and still be close to them. We will become overjoyed to find that there are relationships safe enough that we we do not have to control them. We will find incredible peace as we learn that even in the absence of doing anything, just by being, we are worthy and deserving of attention and care.
Therapy should involve a space that can accept all of you, your full range of emotion, and continue on each week. Therapy should involve a willingness on both the part of the client and the therapist to explore the various parts of you together. To experience discomfort and not shy away, to risk ruptures and experience repair, and ultimately to heal. Of course it is awkward. It is awkward to be so vulnerable. Awkward to risk rejection. Yet, only through awkwardness can we truly experience something new. Only through vulnerability can we be celebrated for our full, authentic selves.