Mark Vahrmeyer was recently approached by Viva Lewes for an interview on ‘Mending the Mind. Below is a scanned copy of the full interview:
Mark is an integrative psychotherapist with a wide range of clinical experience from both the public and private sectors. He currently sees both individuals and couples, primarily for ongoing psychotherapy.
This piece is written by a ‘fictional’ client who is a composite of three real-life clients who have shared their experience of psychotherapy with me. Some details have been changed to ensure confidentiality, however, the thoughts feeling and experiences expressed are those of three very real clients:
When I came to psychotherapy I did not even really know what it was. I knew I needed something because I knew I was struggling but whether that something was counselling, psychotherapy or what I simply had no idea.
As well as not having much of an idea about what to expect from my psychotherapy, I also had no idea about how long it would take. And I was impatient! It is therefore with a surprise that I look back upon my two-year journey of weekly one-to-one psychotherapy with some degree of awe with regards to how little I really understood what I needed and for how long; from my initial impatience, a sense of appreciation and security developed from knowing that on Tuesdays, at 5pm, I would be seeing my psychotherapist.
Where I say that psychotherapy taught me how to live life, I mean this in the sense of courageously living rather than existing.
Prior to psychotherapy I approached life and relationships from a default fear position. Not that I knew that at the time – the way I was all seemed perfectly normal to me. Normal is, after all what we are familiar with.
However, part of me also know that I felt unfulfilled and lacking in purpose and meaning. Meaning in terms of my own desires and meaning in terms of what relationships could offer me.
It has been through a slow process of learning to be in relationship with my psychotherapist that I have slowly learnt to have a healthy relationship with myself. Through being held in mind, I have learnt to hold myself on mind. And through trusting that the relationship with my psychotherapist was and is genuine, I have come to accept that just perhaps, relationships with others have something to offer me.
I am now two years into my ‘ongoing’ psychotherapy relationship. It has been hard, frustrating, frightening, constructive, containing and life enhancing all in equal measure. The only commitment: we both show up each week for the session.
Most of all I have let go of the past. My experiences still happened, of course. There is no magic to undo that. However I have accepted that I can still have a life without having gotten what I needed as a child. And through this have come to accept that I can treat myself differently to how I experienced my parents treating me.
‘Has psychotherapy made you happy?’, people I know sometimes ask me. No. But then happiness is not the purpose of life. I do, however, at times feel content and even happy. More importantly, I am able to feel the full range of human emotions without running away from them. I can navigate my emotional world using my mind in a way I simply could not before psychotherapy and instead would use all sorts of distractions to avoid feeling.
I have far deeper and more authentic relationships with others – something I now realise I avoided in the past for fear of them really seeing me and then rejecting me.
Relationships have become important to me and I am far more able to tolerate difference in those around me – to accept that they have different minds.
Put simply, my life now has substance. I know more about who I am, who I have been and how I spent much of my life hiding from myself and others because of not feeling accepted; I now have compassion for this part of me.
Mark is an integrative psychotherapist primarily informed by attachment theory and object relations psychotherapy. He works relationally and sees individuals and couples in Hove and Lewes.
Starting psychotherapy can be a daunting prospect. Researching the right psychotherapist; making contact; booking the appointment; finding the practice; waiting in the waiting room; and then…. you are invited in.
You enter and sit down. Water is on the table. Perhaps you help yourself as you are suddenly unexpectedly thirsty. Or perhaps, unconsciously, the thirst delays the awkwardness of starting the session. Eventually that moment arrives and you are unsure where to begin and so ask ‘ where should I start?’.
In fact, my experience is that this is a question that, for some clients, will repeat over and over again in the relationship and it becomes a significant part fo the work: how to work out where to begin each week.
Whilst it is conceivable that someone with a perfectly good childhood should choose to enter into psychotherapy, it is in practice highly unlikely. Especially if we differentiate between short-term counselling or psychology, and open-ended psychotherapy.
All of us can fall victim to the uncertainties of life and can find ourselves struggling to make sense of a difficult event – perhaps a divorce or an accident. These would be perfect examples of events that may require a period of focused counselling. However, as troubling as these experiences can be, it is only if they throw our whole existence into doubt or bring down the edifices of our defences, that psychotherapy would be required.
Therefore whilst it is possible that someone with a good childhood would come into psychotherapy, most of those who do are coming (unconsciously or not) to work-through and repair attachment damage, neglect and trauma in their early relationship(s).
And for children who have been neglected, and thus not held in mind, it can then be hard to suddenly find themselves in an environment where the Other (the psychotherapist) is fully holding them in mind and is interested in everything they have to think and say. Where in the world should they start and how can they learn to feel comfortable taking up the space for themselves? Being truly seen when one has not been seen can feel very exposing.
When a client asks me where they should start a session I will mostly hand this back to them in a gentle manner. I invite them to be curious about how they might work out where they want to start.
I then quite often get a relaying of the week’s events, if the client is one I have seen before. Once again I will hand this back and ask them what it is that they want me to know about how they are feeling about their week. Often this is then met with a blank stare and then we can perhaps address the issue at hand: how can they work out what they want to share with me as someone they are in relationship with?
Knowing where to start is all about desire. It is about having a relationship with ourselves and working out what we would like to think about in the therapeutic relationship. It is akin to choosing what to eat off a menu – in order to know what we want to eat, we need to get in touch with what we ‘feel like eating’. We try the different dishes on in our mind and then choose which we will focus on – which becomes the dish we will order and eat. Therefore desire tells us about what matters to us – what is important to us.
And yet choosing were to start has a further complexity – we must choose what we want to talk about and then bring this onto the relationship which means acknowledging that our psychotherapist will have thoughts, feeling and perhaps judgements about what we tell them. That can bet very confronting!
Psychotherapy is a relationship and as in all relationships, they are not static. They follow a trajectory of, if the relationship is positive, deepening over time. It shifts and moves, develops and cements as a relationship, where two people are in dialogue with each other and who matter to each other.
Where we start a session then is about allowing ourselves to accept that we are in a relationship with someone who not only holds us in mind and to whom we matter, but crucially, letting our psychotherapist matter to us. The question of where to start then simply becomes, ‘what do I want Mark to know about me?’.
Mark Vahrmeyer is a UKCP registered psychotherapist and co-founder of Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy. He works with couples and individuals using an psychoanalytically informed integrative approach and sees clients in Hove and Lewes.
Recently Dr Simon Cassar interviewed integrative psychotherapist and co-founder of Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy Mark Vahrmeyer on the question of ‘What is Integrative Psychotherapy. This is the last in a three-part interview where Mark explains the difference between integration and eclecticism, why integration is about co-building a relationship between therapist and client and how integration is about psyche and body integration. Check out Part 3 here:
Recently Dr Simon Cassar interviewed integrative psychotherapist and co-founder of Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy Mark Vahrmeyer on the question of ‘What is Integrative Psychotherapy. This is the second in a three-part interview where Mark explains the difference between integration and eclecticism, why integration is about co-building a relationship between therapist and client and how integration is about psyche and body integration. Check out Part 2 here:
