My approach
Play
Counselling often proves to be a hard thing to study. We've made some great progress in the regard, though much is still shrouded in mystery. Additionally, there are approximately a million modalities that claim to offer the way to approach mental health. On the one hand, we have an antiquated medical model of therapy, and on the other we have new age spiritualism that might bypass some of the hard won knowledge we have acquired. Add to this, the prevalence of mental health advice in the misinformation age, and it can be overwhelming to know where to start.
One simple facet of therapy keeps emerging across modalities as the biggest predictor of success with clients, and that is your relationship with your therapist.
Narrative Therapy
We inherited a bunch of baggage from the enlightenment that we are gradually starting to shed. One foundational piece of thinking that spurred on a great flurry of intellectual activity is that humans are rational atoms and that through dissecting we come to a deeper understanding of things.
Narrative therapy challenges the idea that a human is an island; rather, we can think of humans as being situated in the relationships they have. As such humans are multi-sited: we are distributed over the world and our relationships to others. We are also multi-storied: my story of myself is different from my partner’s story of me. I may even have stories of myself that are in conflict with each other. In fact, that’s kind of the norm.
Once we are free of the tyranny of thinking there is only one allowable truth we get to be a lot more gentle with ourselves, and also appreciate how maleable and changeable we are. Our stories are ultimately ours to write and rewrite. We get to choose the frame through which we see our experience, which can feel empowering and also daunting.
Narrative therapy does have some structure that I appreciate. It does no good to simply ask a story to disappear so we can replace it with another. We settle on stories because they do something for us. Throwing out old and less preferred stories can be hard, even when it’s obvious to our intellect that we should. Instead, we start by seeking out new evidence. Perhaps some new piece fits and supports the story, but perhaps some don’t. The story itself can block us from finding conflicting evidence, so this part can be hard.
Eventually there may come a point where there is enough evidence challenging a story that a new alternative story starts to emerge. For a while these stories can live alongside each other, in blatant contradiction. By allowing the old story to persist and accepting that it has value for us, we actually make it easier to step beyond the story. A lot of resistance happens when we try to remove a story by force before we’re ready, and also a lot of shame.
Person-Centered
Is at once a radical and surprisingly simple approach. It focuses on the core tenets of counselling: Being genuine and present, non-judgemental, holding others in unconditional positive regard, and an assumption that the client is the expert on themself.
This approach is more about being than doing. I view my work as a person-centered therapist as a lifelong commitment to my own nervous system. When I am with clients, I am renting out the nervous system I have spent my life working on. We are social creatures, and we are hardwired to connect with each other, regulate with each other, and share our joys and pains. My job is to provide the opportunity to coregulate and share in connection, while at the same time being cognizant of my own potential triggers. I stay in balance as a tether for my clients so they can be curious and brave in their explorations.
I also view nervous systems as inherently self-healing. I believe that every nervous system seeks out its own injuries in an attempt to bring them to the surface and heal. This is what it means to get triggered - we project our old injuries onto present day situations in an attempt to reengage with them. My goal is to create a place where self-healing can happen. More on trauma here.
Given the right environment (safety, security, connection), these wounds can be explored and integrated in such a way as to make normal memories out of traumatic ones. In the present day we have more tools then we did at age 8 when we experienced a trauma. And you can also come armed with a buddy nervous system (therapist) that helps with coregulation.
What does this look like in Practice?
How is more important that what
I am a lot less committed to what we do together, and a lot more interested in how we do it. I have also found that when we are in the state of safety, security and connection, that I have fun ideas for play as well. My most joyous moments are when my client gets their own ideas for play, using me as a safety net. I always introduce play as an invitation, but my client is ultimately in charge of what we do. Some of the ways it can look like are:
Somatics
Locating where feelings are stored in the body. We can play at trying on a feeling we get from a story and seeing where it lands, how it shifts when we get deeper into the story, how it shifts when we come out. Where different feelings seem to reside, how their texture changes with our attention. And so on. Sometimes this can involve movement. Lying on the floor or swinging our arms around.
Visualizations
Letting our imagination drift after setting intentions and seeing if we can reason through our feelings with visual representations of them. We can add colour and shape and size, and relative position in the room and so on. Sometimes getting out of the linguistic and rational brain allows us to engage with our emotional reality more readily.
Role Playing
Maybe you are your parent and I’m you. Maybe you’re the angry version of yourself and I’m the little you. Maybe you’re you doing a thing that’s a little outside your comfort zone and I’m the rest of the people at the gathering. Maybe we play the scene from either side a few times and by the end the scenario has a little less heat than at the beginning.
Exposure/Experiential
For social anxiety barriers, we can practice exposure. Perhaps that starts with imaginings in the confines of an office, but proceeds out into the world where we actually get that coffee in public that felt like a remote possibility on the far side of fear. Perhaps what’s needed is being together and sharing a song, or a walk in nature. As long as we engage within ethical restraint, then I am open to what works for you.