I think the most frequent problem young therapists have is feeling they have to *do* something, especially something to make the patient feel better. It is difficult to allow a person sitting across from you to be sad, crying, unhappy, discouraged. The urge is strongly present to say something or suggest something that will make him feel better, because we therapists like to feel useful and helpful. Lacking procedures to perform, we attempt interventions of other kinds, assigning homework and the like in an effort to take away the sting, the weight of those feelings with which we ourselves are uncomfortable. I suspect one of the attractions of cognitive behavioral approaches, for new therapists especially, is that it provides interventions and strategies for alleviating discomfort.
But isn't that what therapy is all about, you may ask?
And the answer is sometimes.
"The principle aim of psychotherapy is not to transport one to an impossible state of happiness, but to help (the client) acquire steadfastness and patience in the face of suffering."
-C.G. Jung
This notion does not sit well with most Americans, for we are a can-do people and it is not without reason that the psychology of happiness movement started here. We are a nation of people who originally came here to get away from unhappiness and suffering elsewhere and that is still the guiding image for immigrants here. The idea that suffering is a necessary and valuable aspect of life is incomprehensible for most Americans. In Ryan Howe's Seven Questions series, Judith Beck says:
4. In your opinion, what is the ultimate goal of therapy?
To reduce suffering as soon as possible, to help clients reach their goals, to facilitate a remission of clients' disorders, and to teach clients skills (particularly in changing their thinking and behavior) to prevent relapse.
Beck and Jung, along with most depth psychotherapists, inhabit very different psychotherapeutic universes.
It takes time to learn to handle our own discomfort in the face of another's pain, to allow the patient to be in and with those feelings. It is the same kind of discomfort and urge to rescue that parents feel when their child is having difficulty -- the best course is often to allow the child to wrestle with it, to feel the feelings and with as little intervention as possible, find her own solution. We therapists have to come to terms with the reality that our desire to help often comes from discomfort with our own difficult feelings and from a desire to have the patient feel grateful and to like us.
"My work as a psychoanalyst is to help patients recover their lost wholeness and to strengthen the psyche so it can resist future dismemberment."
-C.G. Jung
I'll be writing more about this in later notes.