People suffering from depression or despair are in dire need of therapy and counseling. How can therapy meet those needs, particularly when it is less of a commodity and more of a relationship? What does this mean exactly?
Therapy won’t do it for you; it will not solve your problems, provide you with a cure or give you a corrective or medicine-like dose to change your mood or life conditions. From short-term counseling, or symptomatic counseling, to deep or major psychotherapy, which is carried out over many years, as well as at all stages in between, this is the case. The client, or patient, cannot just show up and spend time in therapy; they are required to participate in a real, motivated way, with purpose, application and persistence. This is not a simple matter, because we are human beings with a mixture of conflicts, sub-personalities, voices that disagree and modify other voices and different points of view; we are a body to body, a Hieronymus Bosch image of what the Buddha called suffering.
In the midst of all these conflicting forces, the client really has to want to change. One of the common responses in the field of psychotherapy when change does not occur is resistance. But it is quite simplistic, condescending and demeaning to offer resistance as the great condition sine qua non of the task and of the therapeutic aspiration, because it represents the obstacles or blockages without which the therapy has nothing to work with. We need to have respect when an individual makes the decision, from whatever level of his consciousness, to persist in the emotional and behavioral patterns that he has learned as an adaptation for survival.
It is always a matter of choice. Consciously or unconsciously, we are making choices all the time, and this is one of the essential insights for effective therapeutic work. After all, if we weren’t ultimately responsible for what happens in our lives, we wouldn’t be able to change. since we is it so Ultimately, those of us in charge can do something about it through therapy, self-discovery, and mindfulness practices.
And this requires our conscious cooperation, because therapy does not provide a cure, as medication may claim, for example, nor does it exert an active force on us, the passive recipients of therapeutic healing. Rather, we have to participate and do at least as much as the professional we consult. As customers, we may have to do plus. It is a joint practice.
As therapists, we need to evaluate ourselves in the practice of therapy from the standpoint of personal participation in the client’s healing process. When we are thinking between sessions, or trying to solve problems, or get ideas, dreaming, fantasizing, or visualizing our client’s recovery, we are probably taking on the responsibility for self-healing that rightfully belongs to the client. We have to stop doing it, because we are taking responsibility away from the client. It manifests itself in our tone, our attitude, how we approach, speak and interact with the customer. Ultimately, it can disempower the client, although it may be the client’s transference that provokes a reaction in us. This transference can be summed up as “Take care of me”, “Do it for me” or “I can’t take care of myself”. Therefore, it is essential that we challenge that in the customer at the right time, as well as refrain from buying into it by reacting.