Being seen, being heard

This has been a big week for me. After hundreds of hours of lectures, skills practice, placement sessions with clients, personal development group meetings, reading, personal therapy and endless self reflection - not to mention thousands of words of essays and other assessments - I have qualified as a psychotherapist/counsellor. Deep breath. Exhale. And relax. 

Well, not quite. This milestone, although a source of significant pride and a degree of relief that I was able to stay the course - it was very challenging at times and required a good deal of stamina and resilience - is not the end, but the beginning of an exciting new journey. I have opened my private practice and am humbled and grateful to already have my first paying clients. I have made the first tentative steps as a qualified therapist.  

All of my practice so far, and the aforementioned teaching and learning, has taught me so much that I will draw on during the rest of my career, but the most significant thing I learnt was something I already probably knew because it was one of the reasons I had initially sought out counselling myself.

Much of my own pain and lived experience with my mental health, culminating in my 2014/15 breakdown and subsequent life reset, was linked to my need to feel heard, to feel seen, to feel loved. 

Every client I work with is unique and brings with them their own story and experiences, and yet everyone who comes to therapy should receive the same thing - *counsellor cliche alert - the same gift. I know it felt like a gift to me when I first entered therapy and I hear it day in and day out with clients when they appreciate having a space in which they have the experience of being seen, of being heard. 

Someone sitting with you and truly listening to you, not judging you, not telling you what to do, not telling you the feelings you are having are silly, or wrong, or are to be ignored, but holding you, seeing you, hearing you. 

I have been supported on my journey to qualifying by my amazing wife, Aileen, who embodies the vows we took when we married over thirteen years ago; to have and to hold. She holds me every day with her listening: her commitment to seeing me and hearing me and never to invalidate how I am feeling, no matter how uncomfortable it may sometimes be to hear. 

There have been others whose work, writings, podcasts and ideas have also been alongside me over the last two years or so. Amongst them Viktor Frankl, with his deeply moving "Man's Search For Meaning' (I have now read it five times!) and more recently Lori Gottlieb, who I have followed through her ‘Dear Therapist’ column in The Atlantic (and the accompanying podcast) and whose book (‘Maybe you should talk to someone’) I am currently reading. As well as writing with beauty and clarity she captures perfectly the power of being heard, both as a therapist herself, a client and a mother and daughter. 

As I turned a page this morning I was stopped in my tracks by her deeply moving description of the relationship she had with her father (who was approaching the end of his life) and his capacity to demonstrate his love through his actions, his words and his presence. She speaks of not wanting to wait 'too long for us to really see each other' and that her father shows her 'how it feels to be exquisitely seen'. Not just seen, but exquisitely seen.

This idea - this gift - of hearing and seeing someone is so precious and so important that I have tried to make it my abiding meaning and focus every day, especially with my daughter. I want her to feel truly heard; truly seen; truly held by me every hour of every day. A gift so vital and yet so missing in so many lives. 

Thanks to Lori, Viktor, Aileen and so many others, I now have the chance to offer that gift to others through my practice. What a wonderful, exquisite opportunity.