And Laughter And Tears And Therapy

Video: And Laughter And Tears And Therapy

Video: And Laughter And Tears And Therapy
Video: Therapy? - Die Laughing 2024, March
And Laughter And Tears And Therapy
And Laughter And Tears And Therapy
Anonim

This article is about the therapist's feelings in therapy. On the manifestation of feelings by the therapist. And, I think, there are no definite answers to the questions raised in this article. This article is about my own answers to them.

I was completing short-term therapy with a five-year-old boy who did not know how to be friends. There were supposed to be 10 meetings in total, and the boy knew that after that the work would be completed. At the ninth meeting, he scattered all the animals that we had previously played, and which "just learned to be friends." “All the animals are dead,” he said, and sat down, turning his back to me and facing the wall. There was a lot of sadness in this session. I wanted to cry unbearably. For some time, there was an internal struggle inside me: to hold back the tears or to afford them? I opted for authenticity and cried for most of the session. Interestingly, the child took it quite calmly. I cried and continued my work.

On that day, I made a decision. Since then, I have allowed myself to cry, working with clients of all ages, in those moments when I feel like it.

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I cry with a client when his story is tragic and full of pain.

I cry for a client sometimes when it is unbearable for a person to come into contact with these feelings in himself. Thus, giving confirmation: yes, it really hurts, but you can endure.

I cry for myself when in communication with the client my own wounds and losses begin to ache, my own pain resonates.

After some time, I found myself at an open consultation with a more experienced colleague and saw her crying not just in the presence of clients, but in the presence of a large group of supervising specialists.

Perhaps there are many of us working like that.

But therapy is not only about pain and grief.

There are sessions when you want to laugh uncontrollably. Sometimes it becomes funny for both: for me and for the client. Then there are no inner doubts - laughter together, there is joy in it, there is energy, there is a resource. Probably, I realized the ability to laugh at consultations with the client as my peculiarity of work even earlier than the ability to cry.

However, in the sessions there are moments when it becomes funny to me, and the client at this time is in some other feelings. And here the same question arose inside me: to restrain laughter or to allow myself to laugh? And again I made a choice in favor of authenticity and laugh at the consultations when I find it funny.

I laugh with the client.

Sometimes I laugh for joy for a client when he suddenly does something meaningful in a session or makes an insight.

I laugh, it happens, and I understand that this is a defensive reaction from the heavy material that is going on in the session (I usually explain this laugh out loud to the client).

I also laugh when something funny happens to me in the session.

These features (cry and laugh) persist even when I work in an open format, in the presence of colleagues. I noticed that when colleagues give feedback after completing the work, tears get a neutral or even positive assessment, while laughter more often causes criticism, concerns are expressed about how it might be perceived by the client.

The clients themselves, during the session, usually react calmly to my tears and to my laughter. Not so long ago, at the end of a session, I heard from a client the words: “Thank you for crying,” and for me this is about the fact that the value of the manifested feelings, sometimes, for the client is higher than insights and discoveries.

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