A Process That Heals
Here at Lifeline we talk a lot.
We talk because it helps. And heals. People ring us and visit us precisely because that’s what they are looking for.
And what is it about our talking that brings this healing? How does it “work”?
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It might be asked: does it really matter whether we know how it works? Because for millennia people have grasped that talking to another person will help in times of difficulty. So maybe it is enough to know that it is helpful and then get on with it.
Then again, we know not all talking helps. Long before people have contacted Lifeline, they have been talking, but maybe this has not helped, or least not helped sufficiently. Sadly we know too, that some talking may have contributed to a person’s difficulties: for example, talk that has been blaming of the one in pain, or involved too much simplistic advice giving, or was a way of establishing subtle dominance.
So what if I rely on my counselling skills, won’t they guide me to talk effectively and helpfully? Well, yes they will, that’s why we learn and practise them. But they are guides only. In the end, it is the qualities of the person who is talking (to the one who is looking for help) that provides the critical difference between helping and hindering conversation.
When someone seeks help, they are usually unaware that they dismiss from themselves some part that they would rather not have belong. This part is disowned, but it does not thereby go away, but remains and then takes on, say, a more frightening or threatening aspect than before. The path to greater well-being is to gradually embrace the unwanted dimension, and learn by degrees to integrate it into one’s whole personality.
The person in need, however, may have already tried talking about her difficulties to others, but did so by projecting the unwanted part of her onto those listening. These listeners may, for one reason or another, have found this projected material too much to bear, and so have batted it straight back to the one in difficulty. This sort of talking does not help.
The talking that is much more helpful is communication that creates the “space to embrace”. People in need cannot do this on their own. This is what they look to the counsellor for. How do we go about achieving it?
At one level, we can do this my means of what Heinz Kohut described as “mirroring”. The counsellor reflects back to the client what is seen, heard and felt from the client, in a context of empathy and positive regard. The client sees himself in this reflection, with all his parts, but especially sees himself as accepted and embraceable. When the client actually moves to embrace what has been previously disowned, he is then empowered to address specific issues or situations that may have in the past proved problematic.
There is however, a deeper level to this process that is worthwhile examining. Let us imagine that the client has a fear of death, and wants (outside of awareness) to avoid feeling this fear. Because human existence is so shared and interleaved, I the counsellor will be brought to encounter my own attitudes to death as a direct result of the client’s communication.
Now let us imagine that I am unable to tolerate my own fears around death. The client will then be invited to share the experience that such fears are intolerable.
However, let us suppose that I have embraced my fears about death, and have as a result even managed to find meaning in death, then the client is offered the experience that death fears are in fact embraceable. What this suggests is that the mirror I hold up to another is as much a reflection of my own soul as much as it is that of the client.
Paul Coelho in his novel The Alchemist wrote: “Every blessing which is not accepted becomes a curse”. When a client approaches us to talk, it is usually because something inside is felt to be corrosive, and s/he is unable to put their finger on what it is, or why it is so.
Talking helps and heals when something, experienced as corrosive, is returned to its state of original blessing. And this sort of talking occurs when conversation is the vehicle not only of consciously understood thought, but also of a deeper form of communication that brings about the transforming power of creative embrace.
Denis Bunbury |
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