A Therapy Begins

NO MATTER HOW OR WHY ANYONE ARRIVES, THEY BEGIN BY TELLING A STORY

They may have a lot to say. They may have little to share. Maybe there’s clarity in details. Signs and symptoms are pronounced – the physical ones, the emotional ones, the damn-middle-of-the-night ones. Or details may be scarce. “I’m not sure what I’m asking for.” “I just don’t feel like myself.”

The telling may include an experience expected or unexpected; something making sense or a concern bewildering. Maybe there’s a stress at home or at work. A grief with a loss private or public. A change in health. A complicated relationship. A difficult decision. Or a traumatic experience in the here and now, in the past.

Perhaps there’s creative impasse. A struggle with intimacy. A dread that sneaks up or a flatness where pleasure used to bloom. Perhaps body is signaling constriction in muscle, tension in belly, anxiety buzzing, or a sense of collapse.

Maybe there’s been change in the family system –  identities, roles, relationships – and the sense of one’s place in context. Maybe there’s been change in well-being for a family member or another dear one, expected or not, and now the rhythm of the relationship is shifting in ways subtle, or not. There’s uncertainty.

Perhaps it’s one’s own well-being. Health spins on a dime. A diagnosis, acute or chronic or uncertain. Perhaps a treatment or a surgery. Body in recovery. Recovery of self. Vulnerability.

Sometimes people arrive with curiosity about what might have been or could yet be. Perhaps there’s a readiness to put one chapter to rest and open one anew. Perhaps there’s desire to make meaning about how one’s life has unfolded. Within retrospect’s wisdom one often finds strengths along with threads of grief and grace.

No matter how the telling begins, the initial concern or question comes forward. It gets laid out fully or just in part. Maybe in code. It doesn’t matter. The first step’s taken. There’s talk. There’s pause. It goes on like this. There’s checking in. And there’s a felt sense that both story and the storyteller are being listened to and received.

Sessions come and go. Somewhere along the way the woman listening intently and responding thoughtfully to stories – stories with and without words – that same woman tracking and attending to experiences out in the world and inside the privacy of the heart, well, she stops being a stranger. And so do you.

Coming together week by week becomes familiar. It feels comfortable or, perhaps, comfortable enough. Some sessions bring more vulnerability than others. Risks are taken. New awareness. What has felt constricting softens. Work deepens. Insight. Possibilities stir. Shifts begin to take place.

It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens because there’s a shared belief an authentic therapeutic relationship holds possibilities for change, perhaps healing, in whatever forms they may eventually take.

No matter how or why anyone arrives, they begin by telling a story.