Connection

 
In 2007 Dave Mearns and Mick Cooper wrote a book called ‘Relational Depth’ a minute part of which covered Mearn’s counselling work with the client ‘Dominic’. One sentence between Means and Dominic went like this:

“Dom, be here, be here drunk, but don't play fucking games with me.”

and small bomb went of in the Person Centred counselling world. You can read the rationale for the opposition to this way of being here:

Objections were founded in theory and as such are sound and worthy of discussion but in the midst of the debate was the unspoken, something indefinable, and for me it came down to issues of who counsellors often are, who clients often are, the ways in which we define ourselves and most importantly, the terror that many counsellors have of actual connection. Connection is the primary concern of the book and the work of the counsellor.

In reply to my previous piece Amanda commented:

I found myself absolutely tongue tied when I spoke to her for the first time after the event. We do not share a spiritual path, but even if it were so I do not know what I could have said to her. I am not a mother, I cannot begin to know the pain of losing a child. This is one area that troubles me as I consider continuing on the path to fully involved pagan clergy... will I ever be able to find the "language of mystery" to help with this very particular kind of grief with no knowledge of that relationship myself?

which touches on an important aspect of counsellor or clergy training: how do we empathise with people who have had an experience that we have not?

The pat answer is that we all share similar experiences and can use them to empathise with the experience of the client. There’s some truth in this but the existence of specialist support groups speaks to the importance of the truly shared experience. People can communicate in intimate shorthand without having to explain or pull their punches for the sake of the listener, a shared journey with close companions, people who don’t need to be told everything for there to be a sense of kinship.

Connection has been categorised and simplified, codified and reduced to a technique. “You can empathise with a woman who’s lost her baby because your dog died.” Not really. One of my peers wanted to prove that online counselling was able to provide Buber’s I-Thou relationship between client and counsellor. That this person wanted to prove anything in research was a measure of her need. Despite discussions she went off and did the research which, astonishingly, showed that an I-Thou relationship was possible in online counselling.

Buber spoke of moments of I-Thou relationship, brief (but timeless) instances beyond speech touching the realm of mystery; fragile, unrehearsed, attuned to agape. This goes beyond empathy into the realms of perfect love and perfect trust, connection rather than relationship, existential meaning-making and life purpose.

Buber is wonderful to read: dense, rich and complicated it takes time to absorb his wisdom. There are many other authors who build on his work and create their own whose writing is accessible and not in the least mystical without losing any gravitas or wisdom. I entirely recommend Working at Relational Depth by Dave Mearns and Mick Cooper which brings together the philosophy and research into connection of many of the most important modern voices on the subject – and builds beautifully on their foundations. Try anything by Peggy Natiello, Brian Thorne and Irvin Yalom.

Immerse yourself in their writing, try feelings on for size, respectfully experiment with your friends – see how it is to truly attempt to move into their frame of reference, see what, if anything happens. But here’s the magic ingredient: expect nothing to happen.

A very respected Pagan leader recently expressed his disgust with someone we’ve known for many years: “I've tried for years to make her less miserable. I don’t care any more.” How awful of this woman to not do what he wants. Who knows what she needs to do, or why? One thing is certain, she doesn’t exist for people to change, to make her easier to be around, to heal and Paganism is veritably heaving up with healers. Physician, heal thyself. When I’m made queen of the world all counsellors and clergy shall be made to repeat this every month, and best it be when the moon is full: “I am attempting to heal myself when I work with clients.” For better or worse.

If we have an agenda it can only come down to “Let me do no harm and let me be truly of service to this individual.” Not to heal them. Not to make them feel better. Not to stop their pain. Not to make contact or do the I-Thou thing. But to be available and worthy of contact.

So much of the time I don’t know what I’m doing with clients and ironically if I can be comfortable in the not-knowing, trusting the process, then I know something is going well.

Attitude

A colleague and I sat having lunch together, talking about how his training in counseling was going. He was an experienced Christian priest not new to chaplaincy and he knew that becoming a counselor could only benefit his way of being with people. This wasn’t a pressing debate over how models vary or the theoretical foundations of his system but I was surprised when he said, “It all aids our purpose, which is healing.”

As individuals we’ll have different skills, specialties and interests in our lives as as chaplains and as people, but I think it’s worth taking some time to discuss what we mean when we talk about ‘healing’ and what role it might have in chaplaincy.

‘Healing’ is not the same as ‘curing’, but often these words are used in the same way. Many of us do ritual to ‘heal’ the Earth when in fact the Earth is not in need of healing but could probably do with some very mundane tidying up. Once more, this is a matter of being aware of the power dynamics in a relationship. For healing to occur there must be someone with the special ability to heal and someone in need of healing and the potential for abuse of power is obvious.

In my own practice, I know that I am not able to heal anyone of anything. I see my role simply to offer a therapeutic relationship, the intent of this relationship being to allow the person I’m with the space and opportunity to be any way they wish to be, with a limitation of not causing harm to anyone. My belief that this is the optimum way to approach the way of being of a chaplain is based in the Person Centered Approach, a mainstream psychotherapeutic model widely used in counseling and psychotherapy. The creator of the Person Centered model, Carl Rogers, was a professor of psychotherapy who perceived the existing models of human behavior as restrictive and models of healing to often be punitive; always an expert telling a vulnerable person what they are thinking and what they should be doing.

‘In his clinical practice he increasingly became convinced that it is always the client who knows what hurts and in what direction he or she needs to proceed if healing is to take place. The therapists function is to aid the client in the exploration and discovery of his or her own inner resources; it is not to impose, however gently, external solutions, strategies, interpretations or explanations. ”

‘Carl Rogers’ Brian Thorne 1992 Sage Publications

Person Centered people know that we’re all born pretty much perfect and that things happen to us that affect the way in which we experience life. We know that, given the optimum environment, we can all be trusted to make good decisions about our own lives and about our effects on other peoples lives. It’s a truism that humanity seems to make an art form out of cruelty, yet how would it be if every individual person were treated respectfully and trusted from birth, with guidance coming through filters of loving-kindness? It’s unlikely that we’ll ever know but all the research demonstrates that in a one-to-one, couples or group formal therapy situation of any and all models, it is the relationship between counselor and client that makes or breaks the perception of the client that the work is beneficial. Further, the therapeutic relationship is most valued by the client the more empathy and authenticity the counselor can bring to it. These three qualities of relationship are those which are the bedrock of the Person Centered model.

It’s clear that training in the person centered model and calling oneself a person-centered therapist doesn’t mean that these qualities will automatically be embodied. Many therapists who have a different theoretical model will come closer to the person centered way of being than numerous person centered therapists who translate these rigorous requirements into being sweet and nice. Sweetness and niceness is not what a person who is facing the most critical moments of their lives needs. When we’re alone in a storm and there is no shelter to be had, it’s good to have someone with us, to walk beside and accompany us, someone who can weather the storm and won’t need us to carry them. This is the essence of a good therapeutic relationship.

Because the research so clearly demonstrates that this is the case, it’s worth spending some time examining these qualities in some detail.

Sex

Beltaine seems a good time to consider the Pagan hospital chaplains approach to not ignoring sex.

Needless to say, sexuality in hospitals is outlawed and at the same time absolutely everywhere. An entire genre of pornography is devoted to hospitals; male professionals are chaperoned so that they can’t perpetrate or be accused of impropriety; touching and altering the physical body is what general hospitals are all about; abusive responses to gender, sexual preference and sexuality bring many people into a psychiatric unit. People who enter hospitals are sexual beings whatever their diagnosis, prognosis or job description. Sex, like the Mysteries, is hidden in plain view, and because there is so much filth and abuse associated with sex, gender and sexuality no one dare say a word about it and all non-clinical touch is taboo.

Which is a very miserable and cowardly state of affairs with far-reaching effects.

The World Health Organization defines sexuality as a central aspect of being human throughout life and encompasses sex, gender identities and roles, sexual orientation, eroticism, pleasure, intimacy, and reproduction. (18) Sexuality is experienced and expressed in thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviors, practices, roles, and relationships. Although sexuality can include all of these dimensions, not all of them are always experienced or expressed. Sexuality is influenced by the interaction of biological, psychological, social, economic, political, cultural, ethical, legal, historical, and religious and spiritual factors.

In the literature, it is described as a dynamic process that has a psychosocial element. (5,11) Hospital admission may affect an individual's concept of his or her sexuality as it impinges on the individual's self-concept, self-esteem, and social relationships . . . Furthermore, it is clear from the literature that addressing clients' sexuality requires a multidisciplinary approach and is not the responsibility of a single professional, (4,13) yet the health care professions are ambiguous about the issue of addressing client sexuality.

Subhajit Sengupta, Dikaios Sakellariou

So how do Pagan chaplains address, without fear or bravura, the sexual nature of Pagan patients and our own? I’d suggest that we have at least two aims: to simply acknowledge that sexuality is part of wholeness, and not to make a fuss about it.

As part of the Imbolc ritual patients and I share includes some of Z Budapest’s inspiration. We dip two fingers in a bowl of milk and then touch our own forehead saying, “Lady, you bless my thoughts.” Then our lips, saying “Lady, you bless my speech.” Then our hearts, saying “Lady, you bless my feelings.” Then our genitals, saying “Lady, you bless my desires.” Then the ground, saying “Lady, you bless my life.” Our sex is as important as our speech or our feelings.

At Beltaine a drop of fragrant oil is massaged into the palm of the person next to us saying, “You are Goddess” to a woman and “You are God” to a man. The sensuality - the scent, the tactile experience, what we hear, what we say - of this small act can be profound and moving and we don’t talk about it it’s just something to think about, just as making eye contact, saying “May you never thirst,” and being passed a chalice of water is something to think about.

My way of dealing with it is to not initiate a conversation about it which is a fairly natural way of being, and to treat it as entirely unremarkable when someone else wants to talk about it, to remain grounded and to make the speaker the focus of attention rather than saying anything about myself or my views. So far, these conversations have been rare as hens’ teeth, partly a testing of what my response will be, partly a self-testing of their own response, to see if they can even allude to sexuality without something out of control occurring.

The great unspoken is rape and abuse. I’ll leave other, better-qualified people to discuss the incidence of rape and abuse and their effects, but there it is, shrieking and convulsing in the room with far too many people, men and women. It’s such a monster and requires such specialist attention that I never, ever even allude to it in a non-mythological manner. But I’ve found the myth of Persephone to have some potential.

http://www.mythindex.com/greek-mythology/P/Persephone.html

Myths speak to and interact with our deep unconscious. There are so many layers of understanding in this myth that our unconscious can engage with, some of them potentially disturbing: if Hades is a God in charge of such a huge kingdom and has such power, and if Persephone seems eventually content to remain half the year with him, with her own power and dominion, then . . .

But to hear an archetypal story, perhaps to begin to feel less isolated, to see that rape occurs even to Goddesses, this is the very beginning, a potential foundation for positive growth. Is it any use to men? I don’t know. Men, being better placed than women to know what myths are healing for them, will know better than I.

Beltaine is here, everything is in blossom, we’re wearing fewer clothes and bearing some skin to the blessed Sun, wandering off from the confines of hearth and home. It affects us all no matter how ill or even disembodied we are: communication with the Otherworld is particularly possible now. We bring Beltaine with us, trailing the scent of hawthorn and the song of the blackbird into the ward along with our good, solid, sensual bodies. Simply by thinking about the Shadow of Beltaine, in naming some demons, we diminish some of their power and in doing so, we clear the path of the Goddess and the God so that they can perform their Mysteries with even greater joy and love.


Sengupta, S. Sakellariou, D. Sexuality and health care: are we training physical therapy professionals to address their clients' sexuality needs? Physical Therapy: Jan 2009