Getting Unstuck

I often find clients getting stuck in patterns with partners or on their own. Soemtimes it is shame that holds us back, rather than any thing specific.

Shame to try something new. Shame to admit what is really going on. Shame about admitting when we have made a mistake.

Succumbing to shame is succumbing to a fear that someone will see us, know us, know what we did. In the end, though, most of the time, our shame about who we are or what we have done is much bigger than anything someone else would put on us.

How do we know? By having the courage to share those fears and shame with someone whom we trust.

That is what often happens in therapy--people name and share a shame or event or feeling, and this allows a door to open; a slight crack in our universe through which we casn put, first a toe, than a hand, and then, at some point, we can walk through.

Crises and Courage

Sometimes it is the hardest and worst of times that can be the instigation for real change. In personal terms, it can be hitting the bottom; sometimes for couples it can be a hitting the bottom too--the final blowout, the worst argument, the point at which you do something or say something which you haven't done before and which frightens you into acknowledgeing the changes you need to make in yourself. Sometimes we shame ourselves into making changes, guilt ourselves into realizing what we need to do. However and wherever we find our looking glass, we need to look hard, and then like Alice, go through it, so that we use that moment to build something better.

How To Make Your Therapy Move Faster: More About Secrets

Usually people come to counselling with a true willingness to change or improve their lives. Even with that approach however, there can be a part of you that holds back. Holdback is usually about fear, and it gets labelled, by many therapists, as resistance. That label can stop them from trying to help you.When we see resistance as fear or as a meaningful part of who someone is, then we can help our clients.

The fear can be from past experiences, about anxiety about the unknown, because you do not trust your therapist. It may be because you fear how someone around you will think of you if you change, or how you will see yourself.

The best way to handle those fears is to talk about them with your therapist. Let your therapist know what you are not telling him or her, what you are afraid to talk about. I had a client once who said to me, " there is a part of me that does not want you to be right." Just saying that was helpful for her to move past that barrier.

You can tell your therapist that something is going on, and tell him that you are not ready to talk about it more than that. This is legitimate. But at least you have said something.

In some ways, unspoken thoughts and feelings are like secrets. If you have ever kept a secret, you know that it can become a burden, and you know that letting someone know is a relief. That is true about telling about past sexual abuse, about sexuality issues, or about being the one who took the last piece of cake. The fewer secrets you are keeping, the more you will be able to help yourself. That is true in the relationship with your therapist as well as with people in the rest of your life.

Individual and Couple Counselling: On Forgiveness

I think the concept of forgiveness is one of the most important aspects of individual health and also the health of couples. It is about self acceptance, and acceptance of someone else's weaknesses.

Forgiveness is not easy nor simple. Janic Abrahm Spring, in her book, " How Can I Forgive You?" talks about three types of forgivenss--
1. cheap forgiveness
2 acceptance
3. genuine forgiveness.

It is the latter which is the most fulfilling, but can only happen with someone else's engagement, or with engagement with self. Sometimes, all we can do is accept and move on. True forgiveness is also about work on the part of the injured party--they have to be willing to risk and let go, rather than hold on and self protect.

Counselling: If The Paint is Peeling

A client said to me the other day, " I figured it was like in my work, when I paint. If I saw that the paint I was using was always peeling, I would go out and get new paint."

He was saying that he had been running into situations, and always reacting in the same way, as though repeating the patterns of his past and using the same reactions as the past. When he realized this, he could begin to look at new ways of interpreting events as they occur, and begin to react in different ways.

Alcoholics Anonymous makes the same point, a little differently: " Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

All of us can think about our reactions and think about the meaning of the events and relationships that trigger them