Why being a therapist is a privilege!
I’m back at work as a therapist and it’s busy! I’ve also just begun recording You Can Fix Your Anxiety in audio book format, and that is turning out to be quite a job! Audible’s standards are EXTREMELY exacting! Not even a breath may be left in! In fact, they’re so precise that I had to scrap two full days work and go back to the drawing board. Even with over twenty years of audio engineering skills and music production I’ve found it challenging. Every sentence requires careful delivery and there is much post production editing work, but it will make it all the more satisfying when I launch it knowing that it’s a TOP QUALITY product!
So, I wanted to share something with you that I was thinking about a lot yesterday. It’s been an intense (and tiring) week with my clients, but it’s been fantastic too. I was telling somebody yesterday how the privilege of being in the consulting room with them was actually MINE. You see, the quality of time a client receives from a therapist is completely unique. There are few other situations in life where anybody gives you such authentic, focussed, skilled care in life. Where else can you go to discuss your inner world so candidly with expectation of proper help being delivered immediately back to you. Therapy is awesome. I only wish we could bottle the stuff and sell it. Alas, there is no substitute for the real world experience of two souls working together in a room where the primary focus is YOU.
Scott Peck said “If you want to save someone who is drowning you have to get wet”. Bandler and Grinder (The NLP guys) said “If you want someone to go into trance, you need to go there yourself first”, and I agree wholeheartedly with both statements. Some therapists may retain a detached air of superiority but I know from experience that the best work happens when both therapist and client go into the client’s world together. This borders on a joint spiritual experience at times. In order to go where it’s necessary to go to achieve deep healing, we must leave the everyday world together and dive deep into the realm of hidden feelings and secret information – the unconscious world. Not every session we do involves such profundity but when it happens, it’s special. It is an emotionally intimate and sometimes vulnerable experience. Souls meet in that place, and we transcend the ordinariness of just “doing” therapy. We become travellers of the profound. Together we remember the deepest truths in our being – our original innocence, our unwounded hearts, our ability to care deeply for ourselves, and we seek a re-connection with those facets of our being. Of course this sounds vague in words but in the moment, it is often extraordinary.
And here’s why the privilege is mine. My wife doesn’t want to hear my wisdom :) To her I’m the guy who cooks dinner, makes rubbish jokes (that I’m still amazed she laughs at!) and irritates her from time to time for reasons we won’t go into! My friends don’t call on me for Wisdom. They hang out with me for small talk and a laugh. I’m happy to keep it that way. But, when I’m with a client, they give me permission to go into the very DEEPEST parts of my being.
I get to go into hypnosis regularly. I get to touch into the silence at the core of the self. I get to say positive, life affirming statements which remind me personally of what matters the most, and I get to share the joy over and over again of seeing someone come “home” to their-selves in a way that they’ve often been waiting a lifetime for. In the same way that the care that my clients receive is unique, it’s also true that the opportunity to give so deeply is also unique. It’s hard work being a therapist. Energetically, it’s taxing to say the least, and I have to be super careful about not drowning myself at times, but when managed well, the privilege really is all mine!
www.youcanfixyouranxiety.com & www.hypnotherapyforlife.co.uk
