101 stories from the therapy room

(A non-clinical approach to psychotherapy and counselling)

My 28 year old client was struggling to form romantic connections and have experiences similar to those of her friends who all seemed to be in loving relationships. She was in love with a boy living in another country, who, despite reciprocating her feelings, had made it clear that he did not want to pursue a long distance relationship. The client was however stubborn in her hope that things will change for the better one day and spent her days pining for him, unable to move on.

Therapist reflection

I realised that the client’s tolerance to wait for the boy was high and she had already lost a year in waiting. This need to hold on to a long distance relationship could also represent her inner fear to feel close and intimate. 

Both of us were aware that she was stuck in a deadlock, waiting for a boy who had denied her the relationship she wanted and we did not know how to proceed further. That uncertain moment gave me some clarity. Since what the client really longed for was romance in her life, I thought of shifting the focus to that rather than working on the prolonged waiting period.

I proposed the following exercise – I asked the client to fantasise her romantic scenes in her mind and share it with me. The client said, “It’s late evening, the sun is yet to set and the moon is up and there’s a cool breeze around. We are in a mountain valley staring up at the few visible stars twinkling in the sky, leaning against each other’s shoulders.”

The client seemed to think that this romantic scene was wonderful and perfect, but intuitively, I felt she was quite distant from that scene. So, I asked her if she felt connected to that scene and unsurprisingly, she said she didn’t.  

It was evident now – the distance and lack of connection she felt with the boy was the same she was feeling with the scene she had created. This struggle to feel intimate also reinforced my earlier hypothesis – “fear of being close” for me.

In order to break through the disconnect, I asked the client to take some time to stay in silence and asked her to take the romantic scene she visualised  into her heart. When she took it into her heart, it further led her to be able to connect to the scene and she was able to acknowledge her longing for such experiences. The client was actually distancing herself from her yearning to feel intimate. The client’s difficulty was in her need for romance but her resistance towards it, to own and acknowledge her needs since romance was a taboo concept in her household when she was growing up. Holding on to the romantic  feeling in her heart for a longer time made her feel connected to it  and she felt so great about it.

I decided to use this ripe and vulnerable moment to ask her what she would say to the boy if he was in front of her right then. She hesitated at first, but expressed her love for him with a poetic and romantic expression. She then paused for a while and said, “Geethan, these are the exact words of my senior who was in love with me. I keep rejecting him and waiting for a guy who is not responding to me.” Realising that she had used another person’s words for her to describe a non-existent relationship with this boy, the client realised that maybe she should go to her senior, accept his feelings for her and maybe find out if there is potential for a future with him. Once she acted on this instinct, she realised that her senior was a perfect match for her and got into a relationship with him who was indeed longing for her. And from then on, the breeze, the moon, the stars and the valleys held more meaning to her and she felt connected to her love for this man and their romance still continues on …