Month: August 2023

Some couples enter therapy like they are entering Eurovision. They are competing. Or one person in the couple wants the therapist to adjudicate,to act as ref, to awards points. Is the person who earns more money right? Or the person who puts away the laundry? Or the one who has more friends? Or is it the party with the least problems? Is it the better looking person? Is it the person who wants more sex, or the one wants less. Is it the person who is faithful, or unfaithful. Is it the person who loses things, or is it the person who finds things. Is it the victim, or the aggressor?

Who is good and who is bad? After a the long summer holiday reset, couples may feel they have been able to move onto a richer perspective. Or they maybe thrown into a binary logic, split, divided an uncomprehending. Their differences may be woven into an intricate tapestry, or it may shatter their union into a thousand pieces.

Each person may be wedded to their viewpoint and seek for the therapist to decide who gets the moral high ground. We are all self obsessed to varying degrees. We are all able to understand others to varying degrees.

I guess the independent perspective of the therapist, who is sympathetic, but doesn’t take sides, may allow new ways of thinking to mutate and emerge for the couple.

Many of the emerging patterns and difficulties may be rooted in family scripts that run back many generations. Many unique issues will be constellated by the unique material and dynamics that the couple generate together. This is extremely complex and world’s most powerful psychic microscope or telescope, if there was such a thing, wouldn’t be able to pick up everything.

Couples therapy may provide a living laboratory to explore, examine and reflect on these various scripts. Each party may move away from getting out their score card, grudge list, or kompromat. It may be difficult to put down well used psychic weapons, and shields, which have served a good purpose in relationship combat. Yet, a truce, an atmosphere of dialogue can work wonders in releasing new energy into a relationship. Incredibly, repair and restitution becomes possible, and new scripts can emerge.

Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper are onto something when they sing about being out of the shallows and in the disorientating depths of the psyche

Shallow

Tell me something, girl
Are you happy in this modern world?
Or do you need more?
Is there something else you’re searchin’ for?
I’m falling
In all the good times, I find myself longin’ for change
And in the bad times, I fear myself
Tell me something, boy
Aren’t you tired trying to fill that void?
Or do you need more?
Ain’t it hard keeping it so hardcore?
I’m falling
In all the good times, I find myself longing for change
And in the bad times, I fear myself
I’m off the deep end, watch as I dive in
I’ll never meet the ground
Crash through the surface, where they can’t hurt us
We’re far from the shallow now
In the sha-ha, sha-ha-llow
In the sha-ha-sha-la-la-la-llow
In the sha-ha, sha-ha-llow
We’re far from the shallow now
Oh, ha-ah-ah
Ah, ha-ah-ah, oh, ah
Ha-ah-ah-ah
I’m off the deep end, watch as I dive in
I’ll never meet the ground
Crash through the surface, where they can’t hurt us
We’re far from the shallow now
In the sha-ha, sha-ha-llow
In the sha-ha-sha-la-la-la-llow
In the sha-ha, sha-ha-llow
We’re far from the shallow now

Therapists around the world are cranking back to work. After the long and sometimes idle days of summer, it can be a shock to the system to get going again. However, too longer in the paradise of summer has its down side too! Too much inactivity, food, drink and sun can make the body cancerous and inert. The fantasy of being on holiday forever, is just that. A holiday forever rarely if ever delivers what it promises. As Carl Jung said, we need problems. Without problems we atrophy, stagnate, and get bored. The human mind and body need a gradient to work against. Too steep and we get demoralised. Too flat and we fail to get stimulated. But if we find the right gradient we are onto something. The Kenyan marathon runners who run hills know that. They develop muscles, they train their bodies to work against something. Athletes who go to the gym know you need to lift weights. Weights provide stimulation to the muscles and bones spurring growth and repair.
Weights even stimulate bone growth. Sometimes we may wish for weightless days of summer, carefree, downhill, and freewheeling. But that only makes sense if we can return to the gravity of our lives. The weight, sometimes burdensome, is also essential for our psychological and physical development.

As we change gears, and the days become incrementally shorter, and cooler, it may be a good time to reflect where we are going. The blue moon is pulling the tide this way and that. Tropical storms are battering the world. Traffic control systems are breaking down and leading to chaos as people criss cross the world. Whilst psychotherapists are increasingly interested in external weather systems, and climate catastrophe, they are equally attuned to our internal weather systems. What is the climate inside us?

As we pack away the sun tan lotion and get back to reality, what have been avoiding, what do we find in our psychological inbox? Are we feeling replenished and revitalised? Are we able to approach difficulties with new vigour and flair? Or are we faced with the same old dead ends? Can we bring some of our holiday spirit to our work?

There are times to go into hiding, and times to emerge and face the world. As August draws to a close, new possibilities emerge. As i find myself transported from the sunny climate of California, to the grey September clouds of south London, the change is inescapable.