7. What is one pearl of wisdom you would offer clients about therapy?
Many patients come to therapy and then hold on to their secrets, afraid to tell the therapist, afraid they will be judged or rejected. But secrets held keep us in their embrace and make moving forward all but impossible. As Jung put it:
The inferior and even the worthless belongs to me as my shadow and give me substance and mass. How can I be substantial without casting a shadow? I must have a dark side too if I am to be whole; and by becoming conscious of my shadow I remember once more that I am a human being like any other. At any rate, if this rediscovery of my own wholeness remains private, it will only restore the earlier condition from which the neurosis, i.e., the split-off complex, sprang. Privacy prolongs my isolation and the damage is only partially mended. But through confession I throw myself into the arms of humanity again, freed at last from the burden of moral exile. The goal ... is not merely the intellectual recognition of the facts with the head, but their confirmation by the heart and the actual release of suppressed emotion (Jung, CW 16, p134)
I think this is hugely important, breaking the secrets.
There are lots of other important things, like saying whatever comes to mind, even ugly things or angry things or silly things. But saying it all, giving up the secrets in the safety of the therapeutic space, seems to me the most important.