Psychotherapist Notes

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

… From time to time someone does not necessarily show up at the appointed hour.

Someone cancels the appointment with a call or letter. Apologizes. Experiencing.

Someone runs away from therapy, like they run from an unloved person. Secretly, without leaving an address, turning off the phone.

Both those and others think that if they do not come, it will surprise me, and therefore someone apologizes and feels guilty, while someone is so ashamed that they do not even have the strength to apologize.

In fact, it surprises me when they come. The fact that someone comes into therapy gives me admiration combined with amazement.

Why? Because it is very difficult.

When a person comes into therapy, they choose to be vulnerable. He chooses not to avoid his own pain, but to move towards it. Chooses to endure a lot of uncertainty, which is excruciating.

My patient agrees with the unthinkable - that he might be wrong. That maybe he should apologize. To those to whom he was not taught to apologize at all: for example, to his own child. Or in front of your body.

A person agrees with even more inconceivable things - that he may be right! That he needs to learn to stand up for himself. Or change something - marriage, friendship, the manner of communicating with oneself. Stay in the desert, endure fear and cold, mourn what has not come true.

My patients are often unaware that this is not what they expected. Not about weight changes. Not about the amount of muscle mass. Not about whether he should go to a stylist or get a haircut. And about the search for a vocation. Searching for love. Search for like-minded people. Search for those with whom I would like to share what is happening to you.

All this puts a person in a situation of a monstrously uncertain future, about which he does not understand anything at all, except that, perhaps, it will be better than the present.

It scares.

And in addition, a person has to pay for it.

People around pay money to buy a trendy coat. Or go to the movies. Or go to a restaurant. Or go on vacation. In our culture, people pay for things that distract them from the pain they are experiencing.

And the patient in psychotherapy pays to see what everyone turns away from. Pays to focus on the pain she is experiencing. It pays to acknowledge that a fancy coat won't diminish feelings of outlaw, and a Hollywood movie won't tell you how to deal with toxic relationships. Pays for a vacation out of your comfort zone. From a place where he feels confident and secure - to an area full of artifacts, touching which can be fatal.

Just imagine the courage it takes!

I am writing this text for my patients - past, present and future - to say: I admire your courage. Your strength. Your willingness to take risks and change. Your ability to present yourself as you are. And your trust in me.

You refuse to feed on our universal narcissism: find a cool job, buy an expensive car, tune your own body, tell the world about it on social networks - likes will distract you from existential horror for a while. And when it hits again, train harder, earn more, change the car, lengthen the route to the vacation point. Repeat until you die.

You are different.

In a culture built on careful avoidance of any emotional pain, you are ascetics. You are the energy of protest. And living proof that humanity has hope.

She is in those who risk themselves to change their lives.

S. Bronnikova