August 5, 2003

• Therapeutic Talk

  
  

  Those who have never been in therapy probably won’t relate to this at all.  Most of those who have never been in therapy would have no reason to give the matter much thought.  To those who have not experienced it, there is often some stigma attached to having been in psychotherapy.  Paradoxically, there are a lot of neurotic normal people running around (neurosis is the norm in this culture) who think that having been in psychotherapy somehow brands one as nuts.  That’s about as reasonable as assuming that having had a wart removed means you’re warty, or believing that going to a barber lengthens your hair, but people do think that way.  As more of us get more experience in therapy and more people become therapists, etc., perhaps there is less of that stigma.  One hopes.

  
  

  That’s beside my point, but if you’ve read me before you may know that I digress… frequently and often at length.  What I came here today to express is a disorderly pile of thoughts about the therapeutic aspects of self-expression.  I hold nothing back.  By that I do not mean that I never hold anything back.  Sometimes I do delay expressing thoughts and feelings, but never with the intent of keeping them always to myself.  When I wait to speak or write, it is only to wait for a better, more appropriate moment, or for the best audience.  If the feeling demands expression, if I feel I might burst if I hold it in, or even if I only feel as if not telling someone right now would be in any way detrimental, I may not wait for the proper audience, but spill it here in a blog or to whomever is near at the time.

  
  

  Then, when the person who needs to hear it comes around, such as when it is my husband or my son who has triggered some emotional upheaval I needed to vent in his absence, I say it again to him.  Sometimes that is even better than if he had been present for a spontaneous burst of venting.  I will have had time to reflect on the feelings and I may have had feedback from whomever got to listen to my venting in the first place, to help me refine the rant.  Feedback is one of the more important reasons for bothering to express feelings at all.

  
  

  One of my new friends likes to say that perfection is not as easy as he makes it look.  Therapeutic talk, the “spontaneous” spilling of emotional baggage, is not as easy as I make it sound.  I certainly do not feel that it is any easier for me than it is for anyone.  If anything, I just think it must be that I have greater courage than most people because I don’t let the fear of self-disclosure stop me from letting it all out.  Experience has taught me that it is less dangerous to reveal my inner self than it is to try and conceal it.  I have discovered that courageous self-expression is its own reward.

  
  

  I was recently the delighted eavesdropper on one end of a therapeutic conversation between my soulmate and his mother.  For the first time, he asked her if she knew about his suicide attempt at age seven, which he had believed that his father concealed from her after cutting the boy down from where he had hanged himself.  He not only learned that she had known all along, but he got from her some background regarding his motivations that has the ring of truth although he had not recalled it that way.  In that same conversation, he brought up to her the lack of adequate early “mirroring” interaction that is widely believed to be behind his narcissistic personality disorder.

  
  

  I know it was difficult for him to bring those things up with her.  It has been difficult for him to talk to me about them and he has had many difficult moments of overflowing emotionality as he has processed and reflected on his condition and how he got that way.  The “work on self” to which E. J. Gold referred when he said that if it was easy we wouldn’t call it The Work, but would call it the play or the relax, is primarily spiritual development.  I feel that one cannot entirely divorce psychological healing from either physical healing or spiritual growth.  Thus, I am willing, for the sake of body, mind and spirit, to do The Work on myself, hard as that may be from moment to moment.  I am also willing to the best of my ability to share my insights and help along the Work of those I love….

  
  

  THOSE I LOVE… that just happens to be all of you, in case you didn’t know.  At least in my most lucid moments, when some errant fear or another hasn’t blinded me to my own enlightenment, I do feel, experience and practice universal unconditional love.  It’s a good feeling, for me, from my perspective.  The feedback I receive, however, would suggest that it is not so universally well-received as it is sent out.  Loving, in my mind, translates as being frank, open and truthful, fully expressing myself, my perceptions.  I have heard many times (although this is not my own experience) that the truth hurts.  I can but wonder how that could be.

  • 5:49 pm
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