Truth isn't always hurried, and sometimes we need to watch it emerge in its own time.
“It’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong.”
– Richard P. Feynman
It’s so easy to fall in love with our own first opinions. It makes us feel and seem clever. Ah! Those twin balms, security and certainty. Lovely!
But failure to keep the gates of meaning open, as comforting as certainty is, leads us away from truth.
Do we want the truth, or comfortable falsehoods?
I recall during a therapy workshop I was attending a woman describing how she’d had this dream in which she’d been floating in a pond and began to gently drown.
One of the other therapists present in the group immediately cut in: “Oh, how terrible! That must have been horrifying!”
To which the other woman replied, “No, not at all! It was the most beautiful and gentle feeling of my life!”
Now nothing was particularly lost in that encounter. But it shows how quickly we can, if we’re heedless, go from zero to:
- “That must have been horrifying!”
- “Obviously this is to do with your childhood.”
- “Certainly you must still be carrying trauma!”
We expect ‘experts’ to have answers. But of course, no expert is required to give an immediate and absolute answer. Important ingredients of expertise, after all, are humility and patience.
Truth isn’t always hurried, and sometimes we need to watch it emerge in its own time.
The meaning of ‘meaning vacuums’
We teach our depressed and anxious clients to hold meaning vacuums. We help them practise holding off from premature meaning-making, especially when a situation or event is ambiguous.
Those with low self-esteem, for example, tend to be too certain of themselves and their take on reality, leaping readily to interpretations that cast themselves in the worst possible light.
- “She didn’t text back yet. That must mean she no longer likes me.”
- “They’ll all definitely hate me at the party.”
- “He has to be thinking I’m a total moron.”
Self-esteem is given space to improve once someone learns to use self-doubt productively: “What’s the evidence they’ll all hate me? What other possible reasons are there for why she hasn’t texted back yet?” And so on.
When we help clients resist prematurely filling in the meanings behind ambiguous events, we help them live more happily.
But it’s not just those with low self-esteem that can show this tendency. We also see this over-keenness to prematurely assume in the deep pessimism of depression and the catastrophizing of the anxious. So knee-jerk leaps toward harmful conclusions are central to much mental ill health.
And yet, if we’re not careful, we can enact a similar tendency when seeking to help others.
Therapy is perhaps essentially an exploration of the truth about how someone is and what may be possible for them. It’s not a race for what may prove to be false but satisfying certainties.
We need to ‘travel’ with our clients, but in the right direction.
So how can we help our clients better by avoiding premature assumptions about them?
One: Remember when you’ve been wrong
“It’s obvious, isn’t it!” This must be it!”
“… Oh.”
Either life teaches us to be humble, or we become heedless. ‘Heedless’ is an interesting and underused word. Arrogance, pomposity, conceit are all conditions of heedlessness. Assuming we know best and we know what is best.
Rushing in where angels fear to tread.
Sometimes we do know, of course, but we need to genuinely know, not just believe we do. And there’s no shame in being wrong… as long as we know we are wrong.
If any shame can be attached to the search for truth, it lies in assuming we must be right just because we are who we are, or we’ve trained with so and so, or we’ve got immaculately framed certificates to prove it.
Don’t our inherent righteousness or moral superiority, our wide reading and training, all point to us being right?
Maybe so, but false certainty poses cunningly as real and intuitive knowing. I’ve often found that feeling inwardly self-satisfied or ‘clever’ is so often a prelude to falling (usually metaphorically) flat on my face.
We need to learn from our clients just as they learn from us. And we need to see each client as unique.
Often I’ve said things to clients like “That must have been difficult” only to be told, “Not really, it was actually quite inspiring overcoming such a challenge!”
We might all recall times when what seemed obvious turned out to be wrong. If not in our client work, then in other contexts. I’ve learned, I hope, to shut up a bit more by recalling the many times I’ve been wrong to leap in too soon.
Talking of shutting up (if that’s not an oxymoron)…
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Two: Sit with silence
We don’t want to sit silently with our clients in the kind of way that has them wondering if their newfound therapist is actually a serial killer.
But we need to provide them with enough space to tell their stories fully while we hold off from applying certainties that may be false.
Of course, eventually we need to do more than just listen. Most of our clients come to us for more than simply to meet their basic need to receive attention. But we do need to let them offload properly.
We can nod and interject not with statements but with questions.
“I’m guessing that was really difficult. Am I right, or…?” might be more gentle and more likely to lead to truth than “Ye gods, that must have been blinking horrible!”
Something can seem a certain way but prove to be the total opposite.
I observed a real therapy session once in which the eager therapist said to a crying client, who’d been talking about her recently deceased but by all accounts abusive father:
“You hate him, right? It’s understandable.”
To which the distraught woman replied, “No, I love him, that’s just it. I love him so much…”
So we need to give our client enough space to reveal their reality so that we can get more of the whole picture. We need to avoid filling their space with our own mental furniture, so to speak.
This can be especially difficult when we are overly keen to seem competent or professional. So…
Three: Ditch the (over)professionalism
Being and appearing confident, able, and clear minded is therapeutic in itself for our clients. No one likes to feel they’ve brought their problems to a bungling buffoon.
A doctor’s ‘bedside manner‘ has a placebo effect all its own.
But we also need to inhabit the ‘beginner’s mind‘ with our clients so that we are more able to see their uniqueness as well as understand the universal patterns they inhabit. The beginner’s mind also allows us to work as naturalistically as possible, unencumbered by jargon or complicated theory. We can speak ‘their language’, keeping things simple when exploring and describing why problems may have developed and what we can do to help.
So we need to understand common patterns of human psychology in our individual clients. But we also need to avoid the following.
Four: Ditch excessive diagnosis
Some health professionals exhibit signs of HDLD (Hyper-Diagnostic and Labelling Disorder). Yes, I made that one up.
This isn’t to say that diagnosing and labelling are never useful, but like anything potentially beneficial they can be overused to the point of counter production.
Do we want to suggest a client is ADHD or bipolar for their benefit, or to make ourselves feel better about our own experience and professionalism (or even to excuse potential difficulties in treating them!)?
- “Ah! Had you considered you might have ADHD?”
- “Hmm, sounds like autism to me!”
- “Ah, I see you have anxious attachment disorder!”
Yes, I know some people say it’s a relief to be given a diagnosis so they don’t just feel like some ‘freak’ and they have an explanation for some of their troublesome traits and experiences… but at the same time, we know that people can come to live their labels and in so doing limit themselves – sometimes severely.
Sure, we can ask our clients if they’ve been diagnosed with anything, and some of them may have already considered a self-diagnosis. It’s hard not to in our current time.
But we need to hold back on prematurely trying to fit people into neat little boxes. A box, however comfortable, is still a constraint – even a prison.
And lastly, we need to contain our excitement.
Five: Don’t blurt theories too soon
It’s so tempting, when you think you see a pattern in your client’s mind or life, to immediately and authoritatively present it to the client. But timing is vital. Even if your assessment is spot on, sometimes clients aren’t ready to hear neatly encapsulated theories around their suffering.
- “Ah, so you’re trying to punish your mother by spending more time with your father!”
- “Seems like you have a secret attraction towards your boss!”
- “Sounds like you’re overcompensating for feeling like a failure when you were back in school!”
And yes, these interpretations and theories might be on point… or they may lie further adrift of the truth than a politician’s pledge.
Take a mental note and file it for another time (perhaps!)
We don’t always blurt out our oh-so-clever reframes straight away. Often it’s better to log them mentally for later use if it seems likely they’ll land once we know more. Likewise, we can file away theories in our minds.
Of course, we might make tentative suggestions or ask the client what they think. But by simply making authoritative pronouncements and assuming they must be 100% correct, we risk damaging our rapport with the client.
Patience and calm are vital.
This seems a certain way… but let us just wait a little while.
Professional pride, insecurity, heedless haste all block truth perception.
For intuition and professional experiential knowledge to flow, we need to mentally remove the wall of theory that may sit obstinately between us and our clients and just… see.
See the person right in front of us. As well as teaching our clients about meaning vacuums and the importance of relaxing with uncertainties, we need to show them how to do that in the way we help them.
I might insist a path must lie in the way I think it should when I visit a foreign land… or I can get to know the land itself.
Nothing is a foregone conclusion until it is gone and is concluded.
How to Add Hypnosis to Your Therapeutic Toolkit
As therapists, we need to use every tool available to us to help our clients as quickly as possible. Hypnosis is the human mind’s most powerful capability and can effect change rapidly and deeply. Learn how to use clinical hypnosis with our online course Uncommon Hypnotherapy.
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About Mark Tyrrell
Psychology is my passion. I've been a psychotherapist trainer since 1998, specializing in brief, solution focused approaches. I now teach practitioners all over the world via our online courses.
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