memory Archives | Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy

Beginning the journey

Starting psychotherapy can be a daunting prospect for anyone. An analogy that is often made is that of starting a journey. What is daunting is that this is a journey into the unknown, akin to the journey into the forest that is so often embarked on in fairy tales. This journey into the unknown must be taken for psychotherapy to take place. And yet, psychotherapy currently exists against the backdrop of a society that demands certainty. With dazzling technology at our fingertips, we demand to know what an experience is like before we have experienced it in order to then agree to experience it. This demand can blunt the excitement of the new, and, indeed, the wonder of the lived experience, but it is what many of us have come to expect.

Support and challenge

Throughout the ages, readers of fairy tales have had the support of the familiar and repetitive structure of the stories to help them journey with the characters into the unknown. On the therapeutic journey, we need to take a step towards what is unknown. However, at times, we also need to lean back and be supported by what is known and stable. The combination of these two aspects allows the therapy to be safe and yet not restrictive, alive and yet not too overwhelming. In gestalt therapy, this is viewed as a combination of support and challenge.

Support and challenge can be thought of as the two wings of a bird. These wings need to be in a perfect balance, otherwise the bird will not fly. And so it is when a parent is with a child learning to walk. The parent cannot learn the walking for the child. Even if they hold the child to keep them steady, at some point, they will have to let go. Without this letting go, the child will never walk on their own. The parent needs to bear witness to the child falling down again and again, offering their presence and a kindly yet watchful eye to prevent their child from walking into a road or over a cliff.

So for the purposes of this blog, support could be the known and challenge could be the unknown. And to complicate matters further, there is the fact that for some people experiencing support from another is both unknown and extremely challenging.

Known and unknown – entering the forest

In my view, people come to therapy because there has been either a holding too tight or a neglect of the watchful eye during some point in their development. These instances can be many and varied in example, but often form the underlying structure of the difficult symptom experienced. What is known is the difficult symptom. What is unknown is what might emerge in the therapeutic space. It is also what is out of the person’s awareness or as the psychoanalysts refer to it, what is unconscious. This could be thought of as the primordial fears located in the forest of the fairy tale. We may be invested in keeping certain experiences, memories or feelings unknown. We may desire to keep these things in the forest. But these things must be faced and experienced, understood and processed if the symptom is to diminish; perhaps not entirely disappear, but diminish all the same.

In conclusion

So what can support entering into the forest? In the world of fairy tales, the happy ending functions as a support for the hero/heroine. In the world of therapy, it is the presence of another person alongside as well as the consistency of the therapeutic process. And, of course, a leap of faith.

Julia Wright is an experienced UKCP-registered psychotherapist working at both our Hove and Lewes practices.

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It is not unusual for prospective or current clients in psychotherapy to ask, “What is the point of me remembering that and feeling sad, upset, angry (insert whichever uncomfortable emotion comes to mind)?” And even when not posed directly, the question plays in the unconscious through resistance in the therapy and a quick shift of content or a dissociation from emotions that are coming up. memories

Remembering to forget lies at the heart of psychotherapy, and it is no coincidence that, like so much in the world of therapy, it is a statement with more than a hint of the paradoxical to it. After all, how can remembering possibly lead to us forgetting? Perhaps the answer, or one of the answers, to how this paradox unfolds lies in why we often seem destined to repeat the past in our lives – a key factor in what often brings clients to therapy.

The past repeats – particularly in our relationship to ourselves and others – until we become conscious of our past; our unconscious drives us until it is brought into consciousness. One way of thinking about this is that as we travel through life, we all collect trauma (with a small ‘t’.) Trauma is shapeless and formless, yet, once again paradoxically, it takes a substantial hold and can exert significant influence over our lives. Trauma, or the effects of it, also reside in the unconscious – the body.

Therapy is about giving shape, form and language to trauma – whether that is trauma with a small ‘t’, or more substantial trauma in the shape of single incident PTSD or Complex Childhood Developmental Trauma. We give shape, form and language to our trauma by listening to the communication of our unconscious which uses symbolism, repetitive behaviour and the body to communicate to us.

This is why we need to remember. We remember so that we can bring our emotional being back into contact with the sensations, emotions and feelings that were evoked when the event we are remembering occurred. Our emotional system is not linear or logical: when we remember, we feel what we felt at the time.

What good is it to feel what we once felt?

It is only though the remembering of the felt sense – the somatic memory – that we can allow our emotions to express themselves in the way they could not at the time of the original event or experience. And unexpressed emotions do not go away, they simply find other ways of telling us that we are hurting.

Psychotherapy is about feeling those unexpressed emotions – giving shape, form and language to them – and allowing ourselves to feel without becoming overwhelmed.

How do we know the outcome will be different this time around?

We may find we are defended against remembering as, after all, it did not make us feel better when we felt the pain the first time around. The art of feeling, whilst staying present with the here and now as well as being attuned to and witnessed by a psychotherapist is where the potential for change resides.

And so it is through a grounded and gentle approach to being witnessed and validated in our process of remembering that we can process our trauma and finally allow ourselves to forget the need for unconscious reminders that dominate our lives. Remembering to forget thus ceases to simply be a paradox and instead becomes a road to freedom.

Mark Vahrmeyer is a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist working in private practice and palliative care.

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Beginning psychotherapy – heading into the forest

Beginning the journey

Support and challenge

Known and unknown – entering the forest

In conclusion

Remembering in order to forget

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