Blame and Happiness

Hey, it’s nice to see you here.
I haven’t written a new blog post here for aaaaages – there’s been a long gap that was largely due to my computer deciding it didn’t like WordPress anymore, but which was also down to an overload of college work, and worst of all, an inability on my part to think of anything to write about.
The technological stuff and the college work were survivable, but I didn’t like feeling as though my brain had been switched off for a few weeks. It was weirdly unsettling.
But never mind, I’m back, and guess what? OK I’ll tell you: I’ve got something to write about. So here it comes.

Today I had a bit of an epiphany. It’s not very easy for me to say what it is though so instead of telling you about it, I’ve decided to show you what’s going on for me by writing out a reimagined version of a session I had with a client. Don’t worry, I’ll maintain their anonymity by creating a fictional human.
I really hope the following words help you, whoever you are, to understand something about the world. I also hope it gives you a glimpse into one of the ways that counselling can work.

Me: “Hi… Um.. Let’s invent you a name, a gender, and an identity… Gemma. That’ll do. Hi Gemma. How are you doing today?”

Gemma: “Ugh. I’m not feeling particularly good today, I woke up quite angry.”

Me: “Angry?”

Gemma: “Yeah, I keep sort of finding myself staring into space and just daydreaming, and I always catch myself blaming my ex for lots of the problems in my life.”

Me: “That’s easily done, I think I know what you mean.”

Gemma: “Yeah it’s not much fun though. I wish I could just stop thinking about it but it keeps whirring around my head, like I’m trying to solve a puzzle… But then sometimes it feels like I’m going round in circles and… I dunno. It’s a puzzle but perhaps I don’t have all the pieces.”

Me: “Mmm, I understand that. And I understand that figuring these things out on our own isn’t usually the easiest way to solve these puzzles. Maybe we can talk about it and see if that helps it to lessen a bit.”

Gemma: “OK. I don’t know where to start though.”

Me: “Well, you’ve given me a good starting point already: you mentioned ‘blame’ a moment ago. So how about we look at that word? What does blame mean to you, Gemma?”

[pause]

Gemma: “…I hate to say it, but I think it might be when I feel something I don’t like and I hold someone else accountable for it.”

Me: “That’s interesting. So you’re feeling something, and…”

Gemma: “Yeah, and it’s my ex’s fault. He was so cruel to me. I can’t believe I walked into that awful relationship, or that I put up with it for so long.”

Me: “I understand that, it’s not unusual to feel that way after a damaging relationship.”

Gemma: “Is it?”

Me: “Absolutely. I mean, how would you expect one of your friends to feel if they’d had the experience that you’ve had? If they found themselves in a situation that wasn’t working for them?”

Gemma: “Yeah I see your point. But how do I move on? There must be something I can do.”

…It’s not always easy when moments like this come up in a session. I get the urge to start talking about myself, and to give advice, and to make the whole moment all about me me me. But of course it all has very little to do with me me me, and my role has very little to do with advice giving. So I allow the urge to slip away, I take a sip of lemony tea, and I re-center myself. Sometimes, in the pause, my clients fill the silence. Other times, I fill it. And when I fill it, I like to show my clients that I’m genuinely involved in the conversation, that it’s safe for us to talk, and that our interaction means something to me. I do this because I like it when people do the same for me, whenever I’m trying to sort my head out.

Me: “You know, I really believe that talking about these things in a fair way is how we find our answers. So thank you for talking to me about this. I know it takes some courage and I really admire that in you.”

Gemma: “It’s funny that you say that; I don’t feel very courageous. Never have.”

Me: “Hmm. Now I’m interested to know what it feels like to be courageous. I was already thinking about this recently actually. So here’s something we could try: how about I name some of the times that I think you’ve shown courage, and we’ll look at how you felt in those moments?”

Gemma: “OK…”

Me: “Cool. Well, for a start, I’m always blown away by your honesty. That seems courageous to me, talking to so openly to a stranger about your worries.
“And, you’ve recently left a harmful relationship – that sort of step takes tremendous courage, no matter how you do it.”

Gemma: “Yeah.” [pause] “I dunno. Talking to you feels… It feels easy, because I don’t feel like you’re going to judge me. And leaving my ex, well… That just felt like I was running away. Escaping. Hiding. It felt really desperate. And there was no closure y’know?”

Me: “Sure, yes, and the lack of closure is maybe contributing to this feeling of ‘blame’. But let’s just take note here of what you’ve just said: talking to me feels easy, and leaving your ex felt like an escape. You mentioned hiding, and feeling desperate. I wonder if those are some of the ways that courage takes shape.”

Gemma: “Oh I see what you mean. Yes, maybe ‘courage’ doesn’t feel quite how I thought it did.”

Me: “Maybe…”

[pause]

…I’ll be honest, I generally have no idea where a session is going at any point in the conversation. Sometimes, for a client, the process of counselling feels like the therapist kind of knows what’s going on and is guiding things in a certain direction, but the truth is that therapists really have no fucking clue whatsoever.
Actually that’s not true; we do have a clue. We’ve got a lot of clues. But our clues are the signals we get from ourselves – the physical sensations, and the ideas, and the worries. We do our best to put ourselves in our client’s shoes and to embody the ‘As If’ quality. We try to experience the world ‘as if’ we are our client, while retaining a sense of who we are at the same time. These are our clues. Our clues are our understanding of ourselves, and our best efforts to understand our clients. Yeah, it takes lots of understanding, and sometimes all of everything is easier to understand if we don’t really try to understand it. If we just allow it to be what it is. In that respect it’s all very Zen. Less doing and more being. Being more curious. Being less hasty. Being more humble.
Being, with a client, is a great way to find clues.
At any given point in any given session, all I can do is be myself, and listen, and communicate my thoughts in the most accessible way that I can manage. It’s a strange old thing. My role is to half-suspend myself, and to expect nothing, and to try not to guess or assume without checking the facts.

Me: “So let’s look at ‘blame’ again. Where do we stand with that right now?”

Gemma: “Well. It feels like my ex took advantage of my trust.”

Me: “Yes, and of course trust is another thing that it takes some courage to give.”

Gemma: “Yeah, and that’s the thing, it feels like I did a courageous thing, I took the plunge and I trusted him, and it kind of backfired. So now I don’t trust my judgement anymore.”

[pause]

Gemma: “So I suppose maybe I’m blaming myself really.”

[pause]

Gemma: “But what you said earlier, about imagining a friend went through what I’ve been through… I dunno.”

Me: “Go on…”

Gemma: “I guess I mean that it’s me who I’m angry with. But I’d never want my friend to be angry with themselves. And you’ve made me see that I’ve had courage, even when I haven’t felt like I’ve had it. So… God, this is confusing.”

Me: “You’re making a lot of sense to me. It sounds like you might be feeling angry towards yourself for letting someone get close to you who wasn’t good for you. I think that’s very normal. I actually wouldn’t expect anything different from such a relationship, even though it’s not very nice to feel angry at yourself. So maybe it makes sense to want to push that anger onto your ex.”

Gemma: “Yes. And it keeps me safe to do that. I worry that I’ll let him back into my life if I stop being angry with him.”

Me: “OK, that’s fair enough, and you have every right to feel angry, but is it also possible that you’re somehow distancing yourself from a part of you while you’re angry with yourself? I wonder if you’re pushing yourself away a little bit, and I also wonder if perhaps there’s another way to go about this, which you may not have considered. I’d like to tell you my thoughts if that’s OK?”

Gemma: “Yes please.”

Sometimes this happens in a session. Sometimes I realise I’m doing most of the talking, and I wonder if I’m managing things as well as I could be. And sometimes I think, ‘Oh shit, now I’ve offered to explain something, so now I need to work out what it is that I want to say.’ It’s another weird experience which springs me straight out of being and directly into doing – it puts me in the driver’s seat, but it’s a car that I’m not sure how to drive, and I’m not sure where we’re going, and I’m not sure if it’s my car, and I’m… Do you see how easy it is to lose the thread? The trick, as a counsellor, is to disregard the idea that a thread even exists, and to just carry on being. It’s a pretty good trick if you’re not a counsellor too.

Me: “OK. Bear with me. I’m feeling my way forward here, so I’ll tell you if I get lost. And please tell me if you get lost.
“What I’m thinking is that if I’m angry with someone, then I don’t feel like they deserve my kindness, or my respect, or my patience, or any of those lovely things. Right?”

Gemma: “Yeah, all those lovely things. They’re really missing from my life.”

Me: “Right. So, I’m curious, are they missing from your life because you’re angry with yourself? I wonder if you’re denying yourself your own kindness and respect and patience, because you’re not sure where they belong while there’s anger there.”

Gemma: “Definitely.”

Me: “Mmm. But let’s imagine that those are some of the ingredients you need in order to feel trusting towards your judgement. Where does that leave us?”

Gemma: “…Well… If I’m not being kind to me, why should I expect anyone else to be kind to me?”

Me: “That’s a really good question. And now I’m wondering what steps you can take towards being kinder to yourself, or what steps you can take just to have the idea in your awareness. Actually I suppose this conversation has brought it to the awareness of both of us already. And I wonder what you’d gain from it, if you found a way to feel some of those lovely things from within.”

Gemma: “I think I’d feel less resentful. And maybe I’d feel less like I need to get those things from someone else, which might help me to stop getting into these shitty relationships…”

Me: “Now isn’t that interesting?”

Gemma: “Yeah. God, I really want to do some yoga now. I’ve felt really blocked from it for ages, like I’ve wanted to do it but I haven’t actually done it. I guess because I haven’t felt like I deserved it or something.”

Me: “Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but maybe there’s the answer to your puzzle – maybe you were so busy looking to your ex for the missing pieces that you kind of forgot that you might be holding the pieces all along.”

…I love it when a counselling session bounces into the realms of paradox. To me, a paradox signifies something massively empowering and liberating; it opens me up to a world of possibility, where the only things that exist are options. And without options, I get stuck. Stuck in the past, which equals depression, and stuck in the future, which equals anxiety. A paradox frees me from those horrible feelings and brings me into the present, where I can make a decision. It was so heartening to hear my client make a decision today. She decided to get her yoga mat out and give it a go. She decided to do something kind to herself. She decided not to feel how she was previously feeling, which was a feeling she didn’t like. The power of Now. The right now of wow. When you feel it, it’s fucking amazing. We parted on a new thought, which crystalized in my mind at what I felt was just the right time.

Me: “Sometimes I think that our relationships with others, and with the world too, are just reflections of our relationship with ourselves. It feels really important to say that just now.”

Gemma: “Yeah, I see that now. Thank you.”

Me: “Well, you’re welcome, but I feel I should be thanking you – I don’t feel like I’ve done anything other than give back what you gave me. So thank you for sharing this hour with me. I really mean that.”

…And I did really mean it. I find the act of communicating with someone, at a level of honesty and trust that we don’t all experience as often as we might like, so incredibly rewarding. So as we said goodbye, I couldn’t help but feel grateful. Grateful to my client for helping me to understand the nature of blame. For helping me to catch a glance at the mechanics of it. For helping me to make some sense of something that wasn’t only unclear to her, but was also not entirely clear to me. They say that we’re constantly learning from our clients, but of course the lessons we learn can’t be predicted in advance. They also say it’s not all about me me me, but… In a way, how can it not be? Allow me if you will, to take you back to the land of the paradox: when you consider that we’re all ‘me’, and we’re all figuring it out in our own way, and we’re all just as clueless as one another, why does it matter which ‘me’ is doing the learning?

So what’s the lesson I learnt from this? Well, funnily enough it’s something that I already knew but which I routinely forget.
The relationships I have with the world and with others are entirely a reflection of my relationship with myself. It’s that simple. When I feel something bad about someone else like blame or anger, all that happens is that I feel bad. And if I feel bad, well, then that means I’m not in a happy life. So that means it’s my job to make me feel nice. To do something else. Doing does have its place after all: it brings new feelings. And, with a little practice, and a smattering of kindness and respect and patience, it can bring happy ones. And, so much of the process of working all this out comes from communication. Jesus, it’s good to talk. I like this counselling lark I do.

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