How To Stay Connected Despite Rejection

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Let's return to the problem of "presence despite". Another aspect of it has to do with the situation when the therapist encounters a rather aggressive, sometimes simply annihilating in its manifestations, rejection on the part of the client. This situation is by no means uncommon in psychotherapeutic practice. Clients reject us for various reasons. It is quite easy for an offended therapist to see in this a person's "bad manners", cruelty as a personality trait, cynicism, or simply "borderline personality disorder." The whole situation seems to be conducive to this. On the other hand, for a therapist accustomed to dealing with rejection in this way, it is sometimes completely impossible to notice other components of the client's likely motivation.

For example, his fear, toxic shame, very great fragility, frightening vulnerability, feeling naked and therefore very vulnerable, etc. It is easy to punish a client for aggression, but sometimes it is very difficult to sympathize and maintain contact with him, despite rejection.

Customers have the right to be rejected. Sometimes they just don't know any other way to deal with the horror that lies at its core. People have the right to build relationships the way they can. This is the difference between psychotherapy and everyday life. If in my ordinary daily life I would rather not maintain contacts that are difficult for my experience, then, working as a psychotherapist, I am more tolerant. I take the trouble to see in the client’s habitual rejecting acting out of his fragility, vulnerability and pain, and also remain attentive to his needs at this moment. And again returning to the essence of psychotherapy as an art of Living, I will note that it is in this that I see the therapist's risk of Being and his effort to Live. In this case, the contact situation changes radically. In front of me is no longer a monster destroying all life in its path, although this is how it seemed to me just a few minutes ago. In front of me is a man with his suffering, still, perhaps, "biting" me, but with the chance that appeared thanks to this position to accept his confusion, pain and despair.

In the process of psychotherapy, we often meet people who are simply unfamiliar with the experience of presence and experience. Therefore, working with them presupposes the process of acquiring this experience. Something like learning something new - walking, reading, writing, etc. This process, as a rule, is not easy, fear and despair appear in it from time to time, which can cause anger and rage. And if a person once abandoned the experience due to a traumatic event or a series of such events, then this process may also be accompanied by a collision with the toxic feelings of pain, shame, guilt, which block the experience, etc. Of course, patience is indispensable here. But not only patience, it is not unlimited. Every therapist, before starting to practice, should ask himself the question: "What can keep me close to another person who, in his despair and pain, rejects me?" And if this something has a constant source, for example, in the form of basic respect, love and curiosity for the Other, and most importantly - in the person of the client himself, then the practice can be started. If this is something exhaustible, for example, will and patience, then it is better not to risk mental health, your own and the client's. In such difficult work as psychotherapy, you can protect yourself from burnout only by constantly nourishing yourself from contact with the Other. Otherwise, the career of a psychotherapist will be rather short.