This week I share the fourth essay of my intended 64 for my coming book…progress, but a long way to go! This one on “the courage to be” follows on from themes such as “knowing” and “the gift of presence”. I won’t be publishing all the essays, but I hope sharing a few over the summer give you an essence of Part 3 of my book: Humanistic Psychotherapy: experiencing second order change*
The Courage to be
It can be a surprise to some people when I describe my path as a therapist as one involving courage. I can come over as self-assured and determined; and yet much of that “strength” originates in driver behaviour and the need to be the backbone of my family, “the reliable one”. And, people might note how quick I am to differentiate bravery (the armour of protection) with courage (a much softer, open hearted stance). One is worn, the other is uncloaked. I grew up interpreting the world as one I needed to be brave in: to hide my vulnerability with a strong outward persona. I now understand vulnerability as the truest strength; and that takes courage.
The courage to be is a blatant call back to Paul Tillich. We visited his book and ideas previously. To recap, Tillich’s writing on courage provides a philosophical discussion of being as interwoven with anxiety, requiring the courage to be. It is courage that is called upon in the face of knowing that our being conjures nonbeing. For what we are about to go into, it is useful to remember that non-being is not just death (the end of our physical being) but is anything that threatens our individuality.
Relevance of the courage to be for the therapist might be thought of in a few different ways. We can start with the courage to simply be. In an essay in the book to come, I have considered how our presence alone is healing; trusting there is nothing to fix is a central tenet our the humanistic paradigm. And, if we follow that through if there is no problem, there is no solution…and no need to do anything. We often get busy in the room because our fear; often a fear of our client’s suffering and pain. I say often, because in the Tillich frame of reference, we might well act to assert our being in the face of non-being. “If I am just sitting, doing nothing, who am I?” The courage to simply be rests on fearlessness. Sitting in presence we will encounter waves of experiencing; and the first ripples might be the fear that not doing anything says something about what kind of therapist we are; and the core belief “what kind of person am I?” is not far behind! Readers might make links to the second two couplets of Tillich’s thinking: the anxiety that presents when we realise our being is unsatisfactory, the “am I doing enough?” that manifests “relatively in terms of guilt, absolutely in terms of condemnation” in Tillich’s words; then there is feeling the threat of non-being when we feel we have no place or purpose in the world, or as Tillich says “relatively in terms of emptiness, absolutely in terms of meaninglessness”. Whether it’s imposter syndrome, colluding, or withholding while each has a different energy, they often encase a threat to our being on some level. Courage to simply be is the “strong back, soft front”. The strong back helps us stay upright as these waves come through, grounding to counter the impulses to reach in or pull back. The soft front represents our staying open (rather than constricting) and maintaining the flow of energy. Sitting in presence allows the felt experiencing of the relationship and the situation to become clearer – as if increasing the signal to noise ratio (we will all know how loud the radio channel of ‘shoulds’ can be!).
Connecting to our heart space also allows our vulnerability to resonate with that of the client’s. Vulnerability begets vulnerability. This might be considered a second inter-connected aspect of the courage to be who we are. I have written previously how greatly inspired I was by the presentation of “fellow pilgrim” by psychoanalyst Sheldon Kopp. I have a vivid recollection of sitting in supervision and experiencing one of those first moments when I realised I disagreed with my supervisor (and that being okay). I wanted to be the kind of therapist who took in, case by case, moment by moment, the benefit of disclosing my own vulnerability: sometimes that might be sharing my own experience of a similar situation (whilst being mindful of the distinction between the content of our wound and the fact we also carry woundedness); but more likely, sharing how the client’s story was moving me: both my interiority and more overtly, emotionally. It is my experience and sense that it can be incredibly healing for client’s to know their stories move others – we might also see this in Tillich’s frame: moving others means they exist; that they DO matter (figuratively, metaphorically).
Perhaps the hardest drawer to pull out in the chest of courage is the courage to be different. It is one thing to meet our client’s vulnerability with our own; it might be another level of challenge to be authentic when our client is acting out from their wound and that stirs our own. Can we find the courage to stay open, to not close or defend; to not take the onslaught of intense client process personally yet feel it humanly. This might bring Tillich’s notions of non-being forwardly more vividly. Recall a client encounter when you felt there was no room for you, or there being so much aggression you thought you might be destroyed. No wonder we can stay quiet; and yet, courage here allows us to be (perhaps the only) “true” mirror to our client. Is this not where we owe them our honest, very human response (note, not reaction)? The courage to simply be who we are, especially when we feel our difference, drops us into a space from where we can communicate congruently. Courage IS needed to trust the intuitive response that arises from this relational field. The same said supervisor above once encouraged me to ‘blurt’ more: to say without editing how I was feeling in response to my client’s being. Like the client who once accused me of “only caring because I pay you” when holding her to paying a cancellation fee, and responding “ouch, that stung”. On discussing this attitude with a supervisee recently, she was lamenting “it’s so difficult” to which I too blurted “yes, and?”. This gestalt interventional style might well lead to a mis-attunement or a more major rupture; and yet as I was able to demonstrate in the here and now with my supervisee, our role is not to perfectly attune; rather, we are the representative Other with whom self can become Self. Our world will constantly mis-attune with our wants, hopes, desires: how do we offer our being in service of the client’s being-in-the-world-with-others? Sharing as a reflecting mirror is not to say my reflecting is the objective truth, it is merely my experience of the client, my knowing of our of relating through my own experiencing. Sharing such, I have never regretted doing so. Even if my offering lands awkwardly, the rupture takes us somewhere. And it’s not that my fear diminishes: what I shared with my Supervisee is how the fear becomes the flag that I know there is a need for me to step up, to step in. To feel the fear – not to “do it anyway” but BECAUSE we feel it!
A final facet I wanted to dip into was the courage to be uncertain. Renowned Jungian psychoanalyst and cantadora, Clarissa Pinkola Estés emphasises the importance of not knowing as a source of creative power and resilience; an aspect of the feminine principle that is especially potent as we become an elder. Listening to Estes one morning as I travelled into work gave me the courage later that same today to hold my seat and admit my “lack of words” to meet a client’s words of self-loathing. Client presentations with such intensity and despair (like disordered eating or suicidal ideation) can really aggravate our desire to save; yet what I needed to do was to sit with her in that space; no words could do justice to her or my pain with that initial disclosure. To know we don’t know is not only modelling the courage for radical inclusion, it is the ultimate compassion.
——–
Simply writing this essay and the posting of it here on the blog ahead of the book draft has asked of me to remain courageous. Discussing with a supervisee this week their own desire to write, I shared how I so often feel the imposter when it comes to my writing for a therapist audience. “Really?!” they exclaimed. “Absolutely”, I reassured them. Writing is one way I get to practice working with my anxiety of non-being. The deflation and listlessness that signals I am scared. When I sit in presence keeping that feeling company, I begin to hear the critical voice “what have I got to offer?” in the face of the deep literature base written by experts who have been practicing far longer than myself. I sometimes have to work hard in remembering not “what I know” but rather the what and how of “my knowing”. As I wrote in my journal in response to this emerging sense “And so, the more I write from my experience and less I engage in knowledge, the more my contribution comes forth”. My offering is my unique voice: not unique declaring ‘special’, but rather a personal honest account. This is the kind of courage we need in the chair, a humble one.