Sometimes in therapy…

Sometimes a therapist just needs to listen, without interrupting, without commenting, without doing anything but being our audience. Sometimes we need to be the star in our life, for once, instead of only the supporting cast. Michael Balint, quoted below, was a Hungarian psychoanalyst and physician. Worried about his fellow doctors, he created the Balint Groups, meetings where physicians could come together and share their feelings about being doctors, their fears about being doctors, their loneliness and their frustrations. He wrote prolifically, and we psychoanalysts are all the richer for it. What he wrote below, about the therapist serving almost like a substance for the patient, like earth or water, goes for everybody I think. I think we all need to be there for others, and more importantly for ourselves. We need to provide a safe place, willing to allow ourselves to feel whatever comes to us, quietly, privately, indestructibly. If we are not for us, who will be??

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” Listening to ourselves, in private, quietly, patiently, without any agenda, is the olympic level of self-care.