It's a quieter Wednesday morning. In the middle of this week, I feel as though I've found a gap - a place to breathe for a moment or two, a place to allow some integration of the fullness in which I've been swimming. I'm aware that I haven't been writing much these days, not in my paper journal, not on this screen. Mostly I'm good with the falling away, compassionate to myself and my present circumstances of continuing to land on my feet in a new line of work and find my hands with a new endeavor of passion.
Thinking about how to convey my experience of working with Counseling Associates has been challenging. Maybe it's the same with sharing my experience of massaging. There's this steady pull to the surface each time my thinking moves towards conceptualization and articulation of what is happening. At the surface there are these ready-made, prefabricated ideas of what therapy is all about. From my readings and learnings, however, the therapeutic relationship is described in ways that leave me feeling flat - not that they're without value but that each fails to capture the essence of what I feel within the experience, how I feel so utterly moved and altered.
I wrote a while ago about disassociating as part of my survival strategy to get through 8 sessions of 50-minute therapy a day, 4 days a week. I don't think that's so true for me these days. If I was disassociated I don't thin
k I'd find myself smiling so fully when I see a familiar face in the waiting area. If I was disassociated, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't feel so warm, wouldn't be in awe, wouldn't be laughing and crying during those 50 minutes. If I was disassociated, I'd be watching from a separate place, disconnected from the mystery of what is unfolding within and around me. Instead, I'd be reaching for my DSM-IV TR manual and leaning into the codes that strive to classify the human experience.
k I'd find myself smiling so fully when I see a familiar face in the waiting area. If I was disassociated, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't feel so warm, wouldn't be in awe, wouldn't be laughing and crying during those 50 minutes. If I was disassociated, I'd be watching from a separate place, disconnected from the mystery of what is unfolding within and around me. Instead, I'd be reaching for my DSM-IV TR manual and leaning into the codes that strive to classify the human experience. And I do have my manual beside me. I do have hours of classes in therapeutic ethics in my bones and blood. I have engaged discussions and writings of the nature of the therapeutic relationship and how to manage appropriate and healthy boundaries for both the practitioner and the client. I want to protect us both. But then a part of me asks, "protect from what?" From abuse. Absolutely. But do I want to protect my heart? Do I want to model that for my client?
It's not so different, in fact it's basically the same in my experiences of body therapy. I was massaging a client over the weekend who recently lost her dog to cancer. While working on the fronts of her legs, I began crying, quietly. I connected with sorrow in my heart. I felt a quality of grief which, when welcomed as a guest in my being, can only be described as delicious. I felt a moment of tightness around my sorrow, asking myself if it is okay to feel something while holding a safe place for another. My body overrode my constriction and I gently continued to weep, continuing my movements, connecting from my heart through my hands into the place of dizzying mystery that holds the human story.
Weep. What a wonderful word.
I feel nervous to touch the fullness this way and put it out for others to judge. If you asked 100 clinicians what they thought about being moved by the intimacy of the therapeutic encounter, at least 99 of them would warn against it - fear of losing perspective, the danger of blurring boundaries, the potential threat of abuse and misuse. I understand the compulsion to buoy back to the surface to the concepts and constructs of what is happening in the space between a client and a therapist. At the same time, I feel an invitation to trust the contact, trust my body and my ground of being, trust the movements that stir me, and stay present to the possibility that something very powerful happens in the space of a genuine meeting.
