I wish that people knew that meaningful therapy involves two people embracing and exploring the unknown.
Our culture puts a lot of emphasis on certainty. We are taught to be right and not wrong. We think we should know the answers. Yet all of us get lost at times. Often in our lostness we grasp for certainty and answers. Social media is filled with these types of pop-psychology "answers". It's naive and dangerous to think our psyche is so shallow. Instead, we need to develop a capacity to sit with and talk about our problems. Only then can we find what we need to develop to outgrow them.
Dr. Seuss says it well...
“When you're in a Slump,
you're not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
What this looks like in a therapy setting is two people, both the client and clinician, being able and willing to think, listen and talk with a spirit of exploration. Together a client and therapist need to be curious about the origins, patterns and difficulties of a problem. Of course a therapist needs to have enough clinical understanding to be helpful. It's paramount that a therapist dedicates themselves to developing that understanding and skill. That doesn't mean that a therapist knows the right answers. Too often I've found that a therapist's own desire for certainty has hindered a clients growth. In fact, most often therapists need to offer their thoughts to a client as a hypothesis. If it resonates for the client then it's to be discussed and put into the clients own words.
Clients also must also be willing to take the risk of a hypothesis. Taking such risks is essential and difficult. It's vulnerable to embrace the unknown within ourselves and share first-time thoughts about our lives. The therapist and client then explore those thoughts together to find what's helpful. In this process we do two things. First, we make what was unknown - known. We know ourselves better. Secondly, we develop the necessary tolerance for the inevitable unknowns and difficulties in our lives. Developing new ways of thinking and making choices about our hardest issues.