This is an interesting read if nothing else. For more go here.
“I Feel So Much Better”
Most people go to therapy because they want to feel better. Duh! And why shouldn’t we want this. After all, feeling better is a sane, healthy, and logical goal. Unfortunately, no one can feel better without first doing the work. At least not for long anyway. Good therapists even warn us about this right up front, by saying things like that in order to feel better we’re going to have to struggle a bit. You know. Dig up the past. Dredge through the present. Things like that.
So do we agree to do this? Of course we do. Or at least we mindlessly nod yea, yea, all the while secretly hoping the therapist will make this happen, if not painlessly, then at least quickly. The thing is, no therapist can bypass human nature. Thus, while it’s fine to hope life may gift us at times with a bit of painless healing, for the most part, therapy happens like the old “change your oil” television commercial. You know, the one that ends with, “you can either pay me now or you can pay me later.”
Voiced as advice from a therapist’s seat then, this translates into, “you can either suffer now or you can suffer later.” In other words, you can either do the work of healing in therapy or you can suffer through an unhealed life. Either way, Buddha was right. You will have to suffer. Like it or not.
Why all this negative sounding talk about suffering? Simply this. Talk therapy hurts. Period. Not every second, mind you. Nor every hour even. But many times, it does. Especially when you are getting close to an unhealed wound. At which point your symptoms start getting worse. And while many folks, therapists included, can at times mistake this worsening pain for something going wrong, the truth is, the closer you get to an injury, the more life gets tough for a while. How tough? At times, if feels like a bad dream in which you’ve taken a wrong turn into hell. At others, if feels like heart ache served up flambé on a flaming foo foo platter.
All kidding aside, the point I’m making is, being in talk therapy requires you to hurt at times. Sometimes, even a lot. Moreover, we can either do the best we can to endure this pain or do our best to live with an unhealed life.
What about the idea that “time heals all wounds” though? Is there nothing to this old cliché? The truth? There is no truth at all here. Nada. Nothing at all.
Why say it then if it isn’t true?
Because time does tend to bury our symptoms. Which makes it appear to us our wounds have healed. They haven’t. But we’d so like to believe they have that we just go along with this farce.
Sadly, for many folks, their entire time in therapy is focused on achieving these kinds of outcomes; finding better ways to bury their wounds. And they do feel better for doing this. For a time any way.
So where do wounds go when time or therapy buries them? Mostly they get buried beneath layers of distancing logic and philosophical nonsense. Or beneath hundreds of bags of potato chips and couch potato numbness. Either way, when it comes to the idea that time heals all wounds, this is just an urban legend. A rural legend as well. And the real truth is, this never happens. Time does not heal wounds.
So why do we believe it does then? Because as I’ve said, there are many instances wherein time can act like a desert wind blowing sand over the footprints of an injury. This happens a lot in fact. And because we see no evidence, we mistakenly believe time has healed our wounds. How nice.
Ah, were it only so easy. Unfortunately because these symptoms are never the wounds themselves but only the evidence of our wounds, having our symptoms go away does not prove we have healed. All it really proves is that we no longer have visible symptoms.
Well if the symptoms are not the wound, then what is it?
In essence, it’s a situation wherein life once startled us, and in doing so, programmed us to relive this startle each time we relive this situation. Each time then, first time and every time afterwards, being startled empties our minds and renders us blind. And scared. Or angry. And tense. And worse.
Suddenly going internally blind does tend to bring out the worst in us.
This aside, my point is, if we want to heal, then we’ll have to suffer a bit. And if we choose to heal in therapy, we will hurt. Not every minute. Nor in every session even. But a lot more than we would probably agree to do were we to know ahead of time how bad therapy can hurt. The thing is, if we can endure this pain, it can really pay off. How? Well if it leads us to a breakthrough, then we never suffer this badly again. At least, not from this particular wound. Why not? Because a breakthrough restores a good portion of our sight. After which we never face this fear blindly again.
This in fact is how you can know if the therapy is working. You can know it is working when you make breakthroughs.
So what is a breakthrough?
The truth is, it’s a lot more complicated than simply saying we finally feel better. Again, it’s not simply that time has rewarded us for our suffering. Nor is it simply that our symptoms have gone away, although with breakthroughs, they do tend to decrease significantly. If not right then and there then at least within the days and weeks immediately following.
This still does not describe the nature of what happens to make these symptoms go away though. What exactly happens? To see, we first need to talk a bit about the nature of wounds. At least the part which causes symptoms to appear in us. What causes symptoms. And what are we breaking through? You’re about to see.
