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 Written by:
Darren Haber
03/20/2008
The questions I’m referring to reflect a widening perspective that, while alleviating the initial anxiety, may actually open up the person for even more profound existential uncertainties. For example, the question may initially be, How can I find a spouse…but might, if the client is lucky, “morph” into the more subtle question of, Why am I still so lonely at times, even though I love my husband/wife? Rather than, How can I jumpstart my career?, a client may soon be asking, Why do I still feel so dissatisfied, even though my career is taking off? or I’m glad I have a good career, but does it really mean anything or help anyone in a significant way? Relationally speaking, a client yearning for parenthood may find herself asking, I love my child, but why does parenthood seem to add to my psychological/existential challenges rather than “fix” them?
These are the types of questions that, hopefully, a therapist has occasion to ask of him/herself. (Or maybe at the beginning, until one becomes “seasoned” and stops worrying so much.) For instance, I sometimes ask myself if I’m truly helping certain clients by facilitating change, or only “patching them up” between problems and/or “crises”.
The point is, that in all of this process – the questions, the answers, the answers that lead to questions – there is going to be anxiety, no two ways around it – anxiety which can be difficult to tolerate as the new clinician encounters situations and challenges which are…well, new. (I often chuckle myself when reflecting upon the temptation to respond to clients, at times, with my own question, namely, What are you asking me for?)
I can’t escape the conclusion that anxiety must be dealt with. (And not just because I’m a neurotic ex-New Yorker.) But isn’t the therapist’s process of, if you will, individuating from his/her own anxiety parallel to therapy itself? Isn’t it a call for us to develop even more spaciousness, groundedness and UPR – which we’re often hoping to instill in our clients, in order to replace some of their own self-loathing, mistrust and anger, etc? Talk is cheap; it’s how we role-model all this stuff that counts.
To paraphrase a 12-step maxim, we clinicians seem compelled, if we are to remain effective and healthily detached, to continue to take our own personal inventory.
And then there’s the compassion piece. To this clinician, at least, the search for guarantees equals a need for reassurance, which in turn speaks to anxiety…and thus leads back to Rogers again, and empathy. Again, empathy seems to offer a way out. More next time.
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