2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
A complete stranger comes to your consultation.
You are a stranger to him, he is to you.
This alienation to each other in a big city is already so familiar that it is almost not noticed, almost normal, natural.
It is easily transferred when you go about your business, past numerous people who, for you, are as if not people at all, but simply flickering strokes of the space around you, details.
The same details as you are for them.
But now, from the diversity of space, a person arises.
He sits in a chair opposite, came to you with his difficulties, problems, pain … and the hope that at least you can help him.
Alien, complete stranger … with hope …
The habitual alienation suddenly starts to interfere with you, there is awkwardness, tension.
He is also noticeably worried.
Two tense people opposite each other …
To relieve the general tension, you start asking questions.
The questions are familiar, one might say, standard: what is the problem, what would you like to change, have you already had experience of working with a psychologist, psychotherapist, have there been results, what are the expectations from joint work?
Along the way, you learn about the family, the environment, the details of life.
You tell something about yourself, how you work, under what conditions.
You establish contact, in general.
It's not a quick matter.
Because the main thing is not in words, but in feelings - how are you with this person next to you? How is his difficulty felt, is it related to his request?
As a rule, the difficulty is hidden deeper than words, outside of awareness.
Otherwise, he would not have turned to you for help.
Deeper than words are experiences.
It is not easy to be aware of them.
It takes time, and you both need it.
There is an amazing thing in psychotherapeutic contact - you and the client seem to become something united, while remaining each one of them.
Perhaps more than just two people …
Such contact does not always work out, not with every client.
It is impossible to predict its occurrence, it is only possible to try to create favorable conditions for it.
But if he, this contact happens, something truly amazing happens.
For example, you begin to feel the experiences of your client so well that at some moments you can voice them instead of him, and all the words will be exactly those with which he himself would like to express himself.
Or - changes in yourself, in your own experiences inexplicably cause changes in the experiences of your client.
As if there is some kind of invisible, intangible connection, which, nevertheless, is guessed, manifests itself in something.
The mutual experience of this connection sometimes gives amazing results: the difficulties that tormented the client are resolved, the answers that have not been found for a long time are found, they seem obvious and simple.
And the most amazing thing is that in the moments of this connection with another person, your client, you feel unspeakably happy, just like him.
Still, there is something in the idea that all of us, humans, are somehow connected to each other.
And the feeling of this connection is experienced as an extraordinary happiness of unity in something piercingly true and light.
Maybe in love?..
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