The Key to Deep Healing
Ever since I started this work, as a therapist, I have been asking myself some version of the following question. “How in the world does this stuff work?”. I have understood the theory behind the practice of the work I do with clients. I have seen incredible healing and change. And yet, so often, I ask myself what aspect of the therapeutic process really creates deep change. I’ve come to discover it may not be anything I am doing, as the clinician, at all.
Here is a basic therapy theory rundown. The theory goes as such, the relationship between the client and counselor is the key to growth and healing. Research supports this theory and has been supporting it since the 1950s when Carl Rogers wrote “Client-Centered Therapy”. Rogers, the founder of Person-Centered Therapy, posited that people had an inherent ability to grow personally. From this lens, the counselor becomes a supportive guide through the therapeutic process but it is the client that is going on the journey. In my experience, I find that Rogers, and his theory, are spot-on. Here’s what I have discovered.
Rarely does the deep healing that therapy provides occur in my office. Do we dig deep in therapy? Do we access and show kindness to the parts of us that desperately need help? Do we reprocess trauma? Yes, and so much more! However, this is not when the depth of healing I am referring to occurs. Instead, that healing occurs outside of therapy! It occurs where my clients are at in their lives outside of my office. At most, I see clients once a week. They come in, we connect, and we get to work. This would account for 50 minutes of the client’s entire week. See where I am going? My clients have much more time outside of therapy than inside therapy and that is why I argue the healing, growth, and change therapy provides occurs outside of my office.
Why is that finding significant? To me, it points back to Rogers's idea that people have the inherent ability to self-actualize. All I have to do is help them make space to do so. That is what therapy often is, making space. When my clients take the time to “do the work” in our sessions we create more space for the healing and growth to come in. This is why I think that deep healing occurs when clients leave my office. They leave with more space than they came in with and the goodness and kindness of their true deep core being can fill said space.
Clients don’t look to me in the middle of a session and say “I figured it out, I am all better now” in response to some therapeutic intervention I am offering at the moment. No no, rather clients “figure it out” in their own time in their own ways. So often I will be meeting with someone who has been having a tough time grasping the new perspectives and reframed thinking I offer in therapy and then one day poof it clicks. It clicks outside of the session that is. They come in with a new attitude. They share with me that they are understanding themselves and the world on a new level. And we celebrate what is their achievement, what they did, and the healing it will bring. However, this process takes time.
It takes time to learn new ways of thinking. It takes time to see the courageous work of reprocessing trauma pay off. It is rarely a quick fix. I invite my clients to uproot the old ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving in exchange for new patterns that better fit their lives. This doesn’t happen overnight. Let’s say you are consistently working on developing these new patterns slowly, but surely, change will come. And the change will stick because it is you, the client, who made it happen outside of the therapy office. All I did was guide and lend a hand.
So, what are the implications of all this that I have found? Number 1, be patient with the process. It takes time to heal. Number 2, give yourself grace. The process of healing is bumpy, not linear. Number 3, be proud of the work. It is not easy work to do, but you are courageously doing it. Number 4, YOU are doing the work. You are the one healing yourself. You are the one growing. You are the one achieving your goals. Number 5, the route of therapeutic change is unique to everyone. Each person needs their own space to do their own work. What works for Client A may not help Client B. It means more when you, the client, do the healing. Change you do for yourself sits deeper within you than anything someone else forces upon you.
