Another enjoyable week devoting much of my time to writing. I am progressing well with the essays that will form part 3 of my book Humanistic psychotherapy: experiencing second order change. This week I want to share an essay focusing on the dialectic of empathy and challenge; one we might summarise through the sentiment of not falling into niceness, but instead offering kindness to our clients.
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Sometimes my biggest lament at course end is witnessing our trainees not realising a vital leap from being nice to being kind. Perhaps in the fear of detonating relational bonds and belonging, people will tend toward inauthenticity: a holding back of experiencing, keeping a part of self from expressing more freely, more honestly. Of course, in everyday life this is understandable; as even Buber himself suggests the I-it mode is more functional; and yet as therapists we owe it to our clients (and colleagues) to be capable of bringing something of a sharper blade: not to be cutting per se, but to say what we see-feel in the relational field and cut through enduring relational themes.
Imagine a client scenario. Each week they arrive, often late, and proceed to talk at you for 45 minutes. Looking at their watch, you can sense their frustration (with you) that they are not getting the solutions they came for. They leave, and you are left with the uncertainty if they will return; or indeed, left with the discomfort that you don’t want them to come back. How do you cut through this? Or another scenario; this time a client sits opposite you looking expectantly, not saying a word. Each week you find yourself getting busy, breaking silences and filling the space with your care.
As I have shared in my first book, when I first started my training providing clients with challenge and honesty as to my experiencing in relating with them, I would shy away and be ‘nice’. I confused the relational attitude of empathy with a fear of separation (Carter, 2023). As Fritz Perls, would say “there can be no true contact in empathy. At its worst it becomes confluence” (Perls, 1973, p. 106), the tendency towards merger and enmeshment. The confluent person leans on the other as difference is denied. With growing confidence in experience, and a confidence that it is only in contact with difference a true self can be found, congruent expression in the therapy room emerges. A supervisee recently offered her appreciation of the directness of my feedback. From my early career difficulties in wielding a blade, I know I can now bring a sharp blade, and I have to be mindful of how I grade my inner samurai! We thus arrive in a position of needing to know how to temper our tendencies to either go in too strong or not strong enough – another example of the clutch control needed in our work. Frustration with a client or a situation of impasse might mean we become too challenging (which can also risk activating a shame response in our clients); not enough expression of our difference means a collapse at the contact boundary and we won’t be able to offer relating that supports change.
In our client scenarios above; to let the client take the space is indicative of us sitting too far back. To meet them would require us to “push back”, to arrive with them in contact that might feel conflictual. On some level, their enduring relational theme might be “asking for a fight”. With our second client, they are far from wanting a fight; if anything you’re reaching to them for contact feels far too confronting and they withdraw from contact. They continue to find relationships in which they have people care for them and not find their own capacity to do so.
Contact can feel confluent, confronting, even conflictual. No relational field will feel the same. I can err toward challenge with one client; and yet a different possibility manifests in me with the client who comes to the room in the next hour. In order for us to put the presenting past back where it belongs is essential for second order change we need to find courage: we owe it to the part of the client’s self who is not yet courageous to come forward themselves. I find courage by remembering this cheerleader role; and to remember we are responsible TO the relationship not FOR it. Seeing the Einstein “madness”* of our repeating clients, why would we not speak up when it happens with us, in the here and now?
The work of Gerber and Siegel (2014) has been a useful support in my own practice of empathic challenge. They set out a clear continuum from sympathy, to empathy, to compassion. Sympathy includes a reactive element: we hear of the loss, and we respond from loss. This differs from empathy, a mirroring of another’s state. We hear the loss of the other and we know what it is to have that experience. In other words, empathy includes more mindful awareness – the knowing of (rather than the place of) experience. Compassion goes beyond empathy. We know our suffering, there is empathy with the suffering experienced by the other, and importantly, there is an allied wish to alleviate it. Germer and Siegel also offer this three-part breakdown of compassion: “I feel for you” (affective), “I understand you” (cognitive), and “I want to help you” (motivational). Adopting Kopp’s ‘fellow-pilgrim’ attitude, “we can go beyond empathy to compassion” (Carter, 2023 pg 86).
Gestaltist Philippson (2012) uses a metaphor that I find helpful: in the face of a closed door, you can ‘wait’, ‘knock’ or ‘push’ on it. The decision to challenge is made on the basis of how much (self and external) support both client and therapist have. Phillippson recommends waiting if the client is terrified and knocking to check how someone is doing. The more confrontative pushing of the door is best when limits need to be set and/or when the transference would be too destructive if the therapist waited. This latter point is important. Sometimes we have to consider the costs / benefits of what might be a rupture-inducing challenge in the short term with the longer term benefits of opening up possibilities for the client.
Empathic challenge is an attitude that underpins any intervention or experiment. As we explored in earlier essays, the clutch control of safety and emergency** is critical. Moreover, empathic challenges is not a technique we adopt and do; it is a capacity that with time we start to feel more naturally flows in line with our commitment to dialogue, meaning “”…allowing the outcome to be determined by The Between and not controlled by either individual. Yielding solitary control means each is affected by the differentness of the other and there is an allowing of and a dedication to the dialogue process” (Yontef, 1993, pg 223). There is a quality of surrendering, allowing contact to happen as we sit in presence and attunement. Korb (1999) describes this commitment as having an aesthetic quality, it “stirs my soul and involves me totally”. It is a commitment “to affirm the separate existence of the other with all that means: uniqueness, separateness, difference, acceptance, and connectedness” (Mann, 2010). As we see in the two hypothetical case scenarios, many clients are not available for dialogue particularly at the beginning of therapy when building a supportive environment is the preparatory focus; and by support we mean how we offer our being being towards the client’s being with honesty and openness in the service of the relationship. This has corollaries with the notion in academia of finding a critical friend; someone with whom we trust our work and feedback honestly. How do we offer ourselves as a critical friend to our clients; holding a mirror up that is trustworthy and reliable; that is “clear to be kind” (Lesser, 2021).
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*The quote, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” is attributed to Einstein.
**In Gestalt therapy, a “safe emergency” refers to a therapeutic situation where a client is encouraged to explore new possibilities, but within a supportive and contained environment facilitated by the therapist.
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