Emotional Fearlessness

I've had several recent conversations highlighting that what I now do as a therapist is not normal.

In day-to-day life, we tend to avoid talking about certain topics, for fear that they'll bring the other person down, or feel embarrassing or awkward. I used to avoid them myself – a sense of not really knowing how to come at difficult subject matter, a fear of putting my foot in it. But now, in the therapy room, no topics or conversations are off-limits.

In the course of a typical week, I may discuss death, grieving, various addictions, suicidal ideation, abuse, hopelessness or anxiety. Talking to a family member recently, they remarked that they were amazed that we're able to 'deal' with all these complicated emotions and difficult subjects – before quickly surmising that we must simply block them out…

Free to fly

That's not what I do. I feel fully, alongside the person I'm with. That's what I mean by emotional fearlessness – having 'one foot in' the client's frame of reference, as Carl Rogers called it, while keeping one foot firmly in my own.

To get to this place took work. For me, it meant months of triad training (alternating counsellor-client-observer trios) and personal therapy, resulting in weeping, grieving, personal revelations, frustrations and occasionally laughter.

Today, I feel fully congruent when I'm with my clients, carrying myself with a sense of authenticity that's been forged through a far deeper understanding of who I am, how I tick. This heightened sense of self is what lets me be fully with and work with another person who is doing their absolute best to make sense of, or change, some aspect of their own life.

By the end of that same conversation, my relative had reached their own conclusion – that it's the very things we struggle to say that most need saying. I couldn't agree more.