101 stories from the therapy room

(A non-clinical approach to psychotherapy and counseling)

I shared in the previous session how the client became aware of his anxiety associated with his goals and how he changed them to smaller achievable and enjoyable goals. However, as a therapist my intuition picked up sadness in the client every time he got excited about his goals. 

As his therapist, I felt that if the sadness is not addressed, the excitement the client is feeling could be temporary. I would like to share what happened when I brought this sadness for discussion with the client.

The client was blind to the emotion of sadness. However, once I brought it to his attention, he was able to sense it. I taught him how to get in touch with and stay with the sadness through the sensations in his body. When the client got in touch with that sadness, memories of the past started resurfacing.

The client recollected the memories of growing up with a strict, monitoring mother. The sadness came from his longing to be noticed – “I am your son – look at me and my pranks, my laughter, see how clever I am“.  He recalled that as a child, he received his mother’s attention for things he did for her but was not accepted for the child he was. His longing was to be cuddled, played with, and laughed with. However, the child realized the bigger the things he did, the more attention he got. So doing things bigger and bigger became his goal.  This was the way the child learnt to receive attention. Behind these goals, the longings got buried, but never went away. His longing lurked behind the goals like a shadow, always there. 

Decoding the sadness brought the client’s need for tender love and affection to the surface. This unmet need of the client was projected onto his potential partners – the client believed that he must be caring and affectionate to his partner. This understanding helped decipher the reason that he had set the goal for himself to be “the best caring partner”. The client is trying to provide to others the affection and tenderness he did not receive as a child. This distracted him from realizing that what he wanted to provide to others was a deep longing that existed within himself.  The sadness was a just messenger for this unfulfilled longing. Becoming aware of his longing helped the client own and accept it. The next step for him was to figure out how he could look past his vulnerability and ask for the care he was longing for. The client wanted to go after this longing and that itself was a start to put himself and his needs first.

Summary of the session:

• The client’s anxiety became the source for his excitement.
• His sadness helped him draw attention from others to himself.

We began the session focusing on the goals – on how to make goals not only achievable but also enjoyable. The bonus was the insight the client got from his sadness, which gave an indication to understand that the client’s heart was whispering songs of longings which he was finally able to hear. This gave the client the space to carry the holiday spirit not only on the outside but also on the inside.

In relationships, often we offer to others what we want the most. Reflect if this is true for you in your relationship…..