The Good Therapist, Part 2

I want to tell you, I say to T, why I need  to work with you. About the reasons I can commit myself fully to this process – with you.

We met a few times several months before we really started working together, but I needed to finish some things, and you encouraged me to do that. I knew I had to go back into the typhoon, fight to stay afloat, see if the captain could get us safely to shore. She couldn’t. I knew that, but I was unable to let go, not yet. When I came to you, bludgeoned and bloody, you sheltered me. You accepted my experience of the events as more important than what actually happened. I mattered – not just details of the trauma.

And I cried – which is unusual. Not that I don’t cry; I do. I just typically don’t do it in front of people. Not even with therapists. You didn’t patronize nor sympathize, which would have been just as bad. Instead, you welcomed me with empathy and compassion. My tears kept falling. Session after session after session.

I have plenty of experience doing therapy in ways that didn’t work. The knowledge I gained is now guiding me in defining what I do need in a therapy relationship. I’m going to itemize the things that matter to me, matter a great deal, in our work together. Just so you know.

First, and maybe most importantly, is that you’ve been in my chair. You have been a wounded child – a client, patient, student, searcher, and, so you tell me, the miracle who came out on the other side. My angst, my need, my longing, my hurt – you not only understand it, you know it. You’ve walked in my stubborn boots. And you’ve made a promise to walk beside me – to guide Little Me through the injuries that continue to reverberate in my life today.

You are old enough to have life experience, and I can tell that you are assimilating that into wisdom. I, too, am beginning to realize the power of wisdom, to develop some of my own and trust it. Certainly our experiences and thoughtful consideration of them means something. I need to engage with someone who is at that level in their journey. I think you are.

At the same time, you admit you are imperfect with flaws that may be challenges for our relationship. The key, to me, is that you take responsibility. You own your defects. You don’t gaslight me into thinking that your flaws are my pathology. Your candor helps me believe what you tell me – about other things as well. You are not the mysterious Oz, appearing to be something he is not. You have planted seeds of believability that I intend to nurture, and which will, I am sure, grow into trust.

These are foundational aspects of therapy with T, and there are more. Stay tuned.

I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.  - Tony Robbins