Inspiration and Links

I believe that therapy should be practically helpful, and inspiring. That doesn’t mean that I think therapy is some kind of relentlessly upbeat process. Looking into painful situations in your life is just that, painful. But therapy should be, despite the pain, constructive and supportive — and the heart of it is a creative approach to life.

No one else has the answer.
No other place will be better.
And it has already turned out. At the centre of your being you have the answer.
You know who you are and you know what you want.
There is no need to run outside for better seeing.
Nor to peer from a window.
Rather abide at the centre of your being.
For the more you leave it, the less you learn. (Lao-Tzu)

Things are not how they seem, neither are they otherwise. (Gautama Buddha)

Article Contents

These two quotes express for me the heart of therapy — the value, and the necessity, of not running away from the problem, and the fact that what you need is already there, right in the centre of the person with the problem, or the question. The second quote seems to sum up the paradox of therapy — often you enter therapy wanting to change things, yet at the end people often feel that they are just — just! — accepting themselves as they are.

Therapeutic Techniques

Success relies on the trust built up between the client and myself, respect, and scrupulously ethical behaviour. I keep up to date with research and techniques from all therapeutic approaches, so they are ready to be drawn on whenever they, authentically and directly, seem to fit the person and their situation. As a therapist, that’s what my job is, to see what fits. I have to think outside the box, and see what is right in front of my face.

Therapeutic Alliance

Therapy is about forming a therapeutic alliance which is safe enough and provides you with enough courage to look around at how things really are, to be open and to look in any direction, past, present or future, at what is happening in the mind, heart, or spirit, inside or outside. Looking in those directions, which we normally strain ourselves into strange patterns in order to avoid, is often painful. Not running from the pain is usually a totally new experience. Doing something new leads us to see the world, and our place in it, in a different way. The therapeutic relationship provides the safe conditions to experiment with this and feel supported, whatever we find.

Therapeutic Process

You discover what you are responsible for and what you are not, and what resources you have to heal yourself from an abusive relationship, or to change patterns of behaviour, or discover more freedom and satisfaction, or whatever brought you to therapy. This can be a long process with plenty of blockings, stallings, rebellions and lurches both backwards and forwards, not to mention round and round. But you are not alone.

Sometimes the ‘problem’ is a question of external circumstances rather than some internal problem within you. It is not about fixing something inside which has gone wrong. It’s about maximising your resources to deal with the situation, or doing what you can to change it. The realisation that many things are not ‘all about you’, and not your fault is key in the therapeutic process — and in feeling better!

My Inspirations Are…

Learning, clarity, spontaneity, honesty and paradox. Creativity, being in the flow, forgetting who I am as I do something. Writing, walking, swimming, dancing, weeding, laughing.

Mindfulness, although in my experience no spiritual frameworks or specific practices are necessary. The way just paying attention helps me find the resilience to survive what life sometimes throws at me, and keeps the creation of extra stress to a minimum.

The human capacity to change, get confused, yet nonetheless return to a sense of being here and now, real and alive, able to make choices, able to make those connections with others which are hard to form when we’re frozen by trauma, paralysed by anxiety or befuddled by depression — and barely here at all.

The process of finding this solid ground, this sense of accepting and respecting ourselves — a process that cannot be taught, willed into being or rushed, but is best accompanied, witnessed and skilfully helped along the way.

I am not inspired by ideals of completion, or perfection.

Just as you are
Really
Just as you are
(Inagaki)

Links

If you’d like to try online counselling now, please go to Getting Started.

I hope I have provided most of the information you might need on the pages here. Please note that I only provide counselling services after receiving an introductory form and initial payment. Any other queries can be sent to me here:

 

Bookmark and Share

This page was last reviewed by Sarah Luczaj, Monday, 1 March 2010.

The URL of this page is:
http://mytherapist.com/sarah/inspiration.html