I became a therapist because I enjoy connecting deeply with people. One of my main interests is helping people view life's inevitable pains and difficulties as opportunities for growth and personal development. I don't expect you to "cheer up" in the face of adversity. I want to hear your story. Also, you may hear it differently as you tell it to me. We can learn a great deal from our pain.
"The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem." -- Theodore Isaac Rubin
One of my mentors, Leonard Shaw, used to say "Avoid seriousness." At first I thought he was telling me to live a "la-la", unexamined life; I eventually came to realize what he meant---that it's not helpful to take your pain too seriously, that we miss opportunities for joy and growth if we're habitually fending off pain or grasping pleasure. Therapy can be helpful in this regard, through the process of refining awareness of our actions, thoughts, and feelings. Greater awareness gives us more freedom, and fosters a greater ability to change our lives and the way we think and feel. When our mental and behavioral habits are flexible, we're more likely to be truly at ease, and less likely to continue in our usual patterned approaches to life. We often cling to some precarious and rigid stances that may have come to seem normal to us, yet contribute to most of our suffering. We can learn to be more free!
"If I could tell you what it means, there would be no point in dancing it." -- Isadora Duncan, modern dancer, responding to a request to speak the meaning of her dance.
Some aspects of our lives aren't easily understood using cognitive abilities. A graceful dance is a complex blending of conscious and unconscious forces. To live gracefully and fully we sometimes have to loosen our grip on the desire for control (and instant understanding), especially at those moments when we're most frantically grasping for it. Trusting.
Yet, our cognitive abilities are very valuable, particularly when there is development of an awareness that allows us to harness our creative mental abilities rather than being driven by the power of habit. We have great power to consciously shape many aspects of our lives, and therapy importantly is, in part, training in use of that power. I encourage myself and others to be honest with ourselves about our needs and aspirations, while remaining in touch with our waking and sleeping dreams, often only faintly heard as an inner voice of direction or purpose. In addition to being a therapist, I'm another vulnerable human, accompanying others through unfamiliar, confusing, and often frightening "landscapes", in a joint quest for lives of grace, meaning, and love.
"We're all just walking each other home." -- Ram Dass