I return again to who I am as a therapist, and what is it that I do?
I recently read something but do not have a the author’s name or reference to properly attribute his/her exquisite and prescient words.
“She spoke explicitly of her vocation, and of yours and mine, and said: ‘I know I cannot save them. I am not here to save anybody or to save the world. All I can do – what I am called to do – is to plant myself at the gates of Hope. Sometimes they come in; sometimes they walk by. But I stand there every day and I call out till my lungs are sore with calling, and beckon and urge them in toward beautiful life and love’.
There’s something for all of us there, I think. Whatever our vocation, we stand, beckoning and calling, singing and shouting, planted at the gates of Hope. This world and our people are beautiful and broken, and we are called to raise that up – to bear witness to the possibility of living with the dignity, bravery, and gladness that befits a human being. That may be what it is to ‘live our mission.'”
So often as a therapist, I face clients who come to me for help, who come to me for a “cure”, who need and expect me to eradicate their anxiety or depression.
How to gently shift them towards greater acceptance and a willingness to learn to develop greater equanimity with whatever arises?
They don’t yet know that the place of healing begins with being heard and seen and understood and gradually known, all within our safe place of unconditionally, our ‘container’, and within my/our endless curiosity. To further paraphrase the rest of original quote above, I have to know that my mission is to plant myself at the gates of Hope – not the prudent gates of Optimism, which are somewhat narrower; nor the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense; nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness.
My mission is to walk with them on their road to a sometimes lonely place, the place of truth-telling, about their own soul first of all and its condition, so universal, so plaintive. They may gently traverse the place of resistance and defiance, the piece of ground from which they see the world both as it is and as it could be, as it will be; the place from which they glimpse their struggle differently, not only struggle, but joy in the struggle. And I stand there, beckoning and calling, telling people what I am seeing, asking people what they see.
My next post will deal with shame, and the following one will deal with uncertainty and not knowing.
Peace dear reader, and a gentle journey forward.
Michael Cohn -November 2014
