I’m receiving therapy at the moment, and have noticed that often sessions begin with me feeling a little absurd and acting unserious – in a bad way: deprecating rather than playful, my voice halting and sing-song, as if it doesn’t want to commit to what its saying, as if I don’t want to commit to believing that I can be any use to myself through this.
By the end of the session things are usually different. I find myself in a different register, also distinct from the register I found the week before. No longer self-conscious, no longer afraid to find a tone of seriousness, of commitment to my words being true, or at least true-for-now.
It’s the same journey again and again. I don’t start the session from where I left off, or if I think I do often discover that’s a layer of bullshit that just needs to be gently shaken off to find where I need to be today. And it’s good to actually realise that, that I don’t need to show up with progress. Whatever progress there is comes from a foolish beginning.
I’m finding myself wondering how much this is distinctive to the open-ended, solutions-free integrative psychotherapy approach I’m getting, and how much also crosses over to the patients I work with, in an approach that is certainly person-centred but is more explicitly technique-focused and treatment-like. And if there isn’t enough of it in there, is it useful to make a space for it?