Recently someone asked me how I help as a therapist. I honestly love a question - especially a reflective question. Though this question was unique in that I actually had an answer ready. Hours of reflecting weren't needed.
My experience of counselling started in 2018. As a student doing COSCA’s Counselling Skills I took in any commercial book about therapy I could get my hands on. Case studies in particular consumed me as a moth is drawn to flames searching for answers to my question. A distinct question - how to help?
What seems obvious today was not in 2018: there is not a single answer to this question and, arguably, there isn't an answer at all. In hindsight, I was looking for instructions of what to do that would mean I was helping a person. Simple-fix-style: “Do or don’t do … to achieve … for everyone”. I didn't consider seriously important aspects of helping like, what it means to help, what helping looks to achieve, why and for whom. How to be and beliefs regarding help did not pass onto my radar.
However, interestingly, it was one singular page regarding what a listener does in their role that opened my perspectives and highlighted the faults in my helping quest (which I like to call it). In 2002 therapist and writer, and my personal hero, Irvin Yalom, started his book The Gift of Therapy (p.1) by explaining his version of the counsellor’s task. He wrote, “My task was to remove obstacles blocking my patient’s path”.
Being in therapy really feels like two little walkers who are steadily walking and clearing their own path whilst helping clear the others. It starts because one little walker calls over to the other and asks if they can help lift an imminent heavy obstacle that's in their way.
And - lightbulb moment.
The path Irvin Yalom refers to is the client’s process of growth and change. It was his clear and succinct explanation that fulfilled my need to know what I ought to do for the client: “What I had to do was to identify and remove obstacles” (Yalom, 2002, p.1). Yet more than this, it highlighted fundamentals of helping I had not considered. Someone's path is uniquely theirs and theirs to direct, and my role as a therapist is to help clear their way by being patient, understanding and accepting. “Just as an acorn develops into an oak” (Yalom, 2002, p.1), person will guide their own process and develop in their own accordance, and I must be alongside them - not do something to them. At that moment, The Gift of Therapy in hand, I got clarity about beliefs regarding help that made sense for me. I knew how I wanted to help and be as a counsellor. I got an idea of how I wanted to help as a counsellor.
Someone's ability to know what's best for themselves and choose their own path and the counsellor’s role of facilitating the clearing of their way are the fundamentals of how therapy works. Clearing the path as person-centred therapists can be done in many ways, insofar as creativity and uniqueness of both client and counsellor. Our main tools are unconditional positive regard, empathy, and congruence, but the job is not simple - of course it comes with complexities and challenges.
One of the main challenges for helping others is keeping ourselves in check. Literally working on ourselves so we can work on others. It's the "put your own oxygen mask on first" principal.
"putting on the mask" = self-awareness
If you're asking others to reflect on themselves and share their awareness, us counsellors have got to offer this reciprocity. I engage in a relationship genuinely as myself, so I must know who I am. To have empathy requires I distinguish my felt bodily experiences from client’s. This requires constant honesty and commitment to myself. But, being able to sit with, understand and accept these feelings is in another league: the league counsellors encourage clients to edge towards. The process of clearing and walking the path of growth and change for ourselves and others is challenging work!
The following was a typical scenario for me when I started to train as a therapist. I would enter my own therapy session for my personal and professional development and my therapist asks where I'd like to start. I'm there for a particular reason but I never knew where to begin. Typical therapy session, people. I'd reckon the attention I gave to therapy in general as a counselling student - the theory and stages of process, openness to feelings and being sensitive – had the effect that when I turned to work on myself I'd stop in my tracks. Self-awareness and working on yourself is super hard.
Being a person who strives to help others can impact on your own self or personal therapy. For me, in training (and still) it was common for me to feel like I ought to save my energy to help clear other peoples’ paths rather than working on my own (we're still using Irvin Yalom's metaphor here BTW). The challenge of walking my own path was made extra difficult when I preferred to engage and solely focus my attention and feeling-is-healing-energy on my client. I'd think “Is this okay?” because I'd put a pressure on myself to be a self-aware and self-developing counsellor and so would feel an element of embarrassment when I shy away from the work that needed to be done on myself.
A major error here, folks.
Preferring to focus your energy on others rather than on yourself is a slippery slope. Nobody is helped in this scenario. Helping others is putting your own oxygen mask on first and working on yourself. When fit and strong, you can help others fight the hurdles in their way.
Written by Lily Llewellyn
20th February 2023
Lily is a psychotherapist trained and educated in person-centred counselling to master's level and achieved an MA in anthropology. Her areas of interest include our relationships with ourselves and others as well as the ways in which we relate to objects, such as food and money, and activities, such as shopping and work.
Irvin Yalom, 2002. The gift of therapy. Piatkus.
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