PSYCHOTHERAPY

Welcoming Self

I view the purpose of therapy as welcoming Self. With every client I have worked with thus far, we end up discovering that Self, at the core, includes love. When a new client comes to therapy (and that applied to me as well when I started therapy as a client), they either have the notion, implicitly or explicitly, that something inside should not be approached too closely, or is bad. In my practice, none of these perceived qualities of Self end up being true. But we carry those beliefs because along the way, we received messages, sometimes directly, often times implicitly, that something about ourselves may be defective (I am thinking of abuse and neglect, but also of environments which, while materially caring, lack emotional acknowledgment).

Welcoming Self has two “components:” developing awareness of Self (a) and forming a warm relationship with Self (b). I believe that awareness of Self and the quality of relationship with Self are deeply interwoven. To be anchored, a warm relationship with Self needs to be done in understanding of Self. Else, there may be doubt: am I really embracing Self, or am I only embracing the parts that I see, leaving off the parts of Self that I implicitly deem as unacceptable? (If so, then I don’t really welcome Self.) And developing awareness of Self needs the support of a warm relationship with it. Else, why would I want to consider looking at those parts of Self which I do not accept (yet)?

What I notice is that we still experience external stresses when we get to welcome our Self (presumably because of our cognitive abilities, our sentientness, and our mortality). But these are dampened by the foundation that a warm internal relationship with Self provides. We no longer have to deal with the internal stress of feeling inadequate. The capacities for vibrancy, courage, risk assessment, empathy, and meaning become freed. We get to feel at home inside.

>on the nature of therapy