Personal Perspective: Many people lose patience with the healing process. Turning waiting into a recovery technique opens new avenues of self-discovery.
Teaching patience as a method of healing is often a hard sell.year in the mental health field I’ve been reflecting on the variety of techniques that I’ve encountered along the way. From Primal Scream, Gestalt, Psychodynamic, and Aversion, to Biofeedback, Exposure,and countless others, they all promised the alleviation of suffering. I was encouraged to add these tools to my therapeutic toolkit and offer them when there was a match between the client’s needs and desired effect.
Since this realization, I’ve often been reminded of the advice that the poet Rilke gave to a young poet experiencing emotional turmoil, “Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? You must be patient like someone who is sick, and confident like someone who is recovering; for perhaps you are both. And more: you are also the doctor, who has to watch over himself.
To counter the “What was I thinking” self-criticism, it occurred to me that the introduction of techniques and modalities have a purpose even if they fail. The sagely wisdom of therapeutic homework assignments give clients a sense of control and the wherewithal to endure the waiting period while the supportive nature of a therapeutic alliance allows the person’s natural recovery mechanisms to do their work.
Turn the time-honored advice, “Don’t hold your breath,” into the meditative practice of counting your breaths when life hits the pause button.
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