Being a mental health therapist, has been one of the greatest privileges I have experienced in my young life. Every day I struggle, fail, and learn how to look outside myself and love another person. Considering how much I love control, it also gives me repeated opportunities to let the therapeutic relationship unfold and not grip so tightly to attempt to control the outcome and life of another person. Working as a therapist gives me an opportunity to help others dig into their own soul, while I simultaneously dig into my own.
At the end of my work days, I often find myself reflecting on the journey I took that day with other people. In my opinion, being a therapist is an adventure. I often have feelings of joy, peace, sadness, anxiety, and hope occurring within the span of a day. Everyday is a challenge for me to look past my own way of seeing things and do as Alfred Adler said and start "seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another." Through this every day work as a therapist, I am constantly having revealed to me how much we all need one another to grow and develop in this life. I think Jeffrey Kottler described being a therapist well when he wrote in his book On Being a Therapist:
"And yet, there is no other profession that can be fulfilling and satisfying, no other job that provides as many opportunities for continual learning and growth. Being a therapist is truly a lifelong journey, one in which we accompany others on a road toward enlightenment or peace or salvation. It is a journey into the unknown with many obstacles along the way. Like any journey, there are hardships for each pilgrim, but also many joys. We are afforded the opportunity to live myriad different lives through the relationships we have with our clients. We are offered glimpses, even deep searches, into the questions that haunt people the most. We experience a level of intimacy with our clients that few will ever know. We are exposed to levels of drama and emotional arousal that are at once terrifying and captivating...We become companions to people who are on the verge of making significant changes and we are transformed as well."
I also tend to reflect frequently on how my spiritual life as an Orthodox Christian, is integrated with my work as a therapist. I think about this question often: what does it mean to be a therapist as an Orthodox Christian? How is the Orthodox life consistent with the job of a therapist? Asking these questions leads me to reread the quotes I have underlined in one of the best books I have ever read on counseling called When Hearts Become Flame by Stephen Muse. Here are a few excerpts from Stephen Muse' book which I believe describe the way I feel my life as an Orthodox Christian and as a therapist merge:
" 'When the therapist is reacting, there is no room for the client's mind.'" It is a sober recognition that silence is as important to the pastoral counselor as it is to the hesychast in prayer. Both are call and response drawing from the unfathomed artesian well of Grace, the waters of refreshment and new meaning that restores life."
"In the beginning, we walk into the house of people's souls as anxious repair persons feeling the pressure of a positive outcome on our shoulders rather than as privileged guests, mindful of the presence of the Unseen Guest in our midst. Our minds are too busy with theories, diagnoses and anxiety-driven self-doubts to experience the person really. We fail to notice the subtle states of breath, sensation, movement and feeling in oneself and in the other that mark the changing qualities of the relationship and the emergence of new meaning.
As we mature and become quieter inside, we really begin to notice people and to notice ourselves noticing them. We learn that much of life involves suffering that we can do nothing to alleviate. Rather it is the human suffering which rightly engaged, produces maturity, strength of character, engenders hope, deepens humility, fans burning coals of prayer into flame, and evokes mercy and compassion for others flowing from what we ourselves have found need for and received, because we have recognized our blindness, paralysis, and need."
"Being a good and responsive guest is what true pastoral psychotherapy, or healing of the soul, is all about. Very often we do not fix people. What we really do is walk the road to Emmaus with them, offering them the pastoral care of attentive call and response to their experience and witness of their longing. Our hearts begin to burn together as co-pilgrims on a common human journey, looking together at the world as it is without turning away into fantasy and avoidance, hoping in the goodness of life itself and the One who creates and sustains us, to reveal a way forward."
"We find that we move between host and guest simultaneously. The hospitality we receive is of the most precious kind-entrance into the courtyard of another human soul in the presence of God. What we have to offer in return is the authenticity of our honest observations and the commitment to continue looking beyond our experience to encounter the unknown other who is always beyond our experience. Good psychotherapy is a humbling enterprise. Its essence is rooted in our acceptance of our humanity and our recognition of our dependence upon God."
"...Counseling always requires an invocation before the altar of one's client or supervisee, in the same way as the priest who stands and prays before the altar in the Divine Liturgy interceding for himself and the people before God. Both are trialogues wherein a high quality attention is called for, a form of neptic wakefulness evidenced by the intention to stand with one's whole self: body, mind, and feeling, and listen."
These words inspire and deepen the work that I do every day. I am beginning to see what a privilege it is to be invited in as a guest at the table of another's heart.
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