A SIMPLE WAY TO REDUCE ANXIETY

Give yourself time | Photo by Kalen Emsley on Unsplash

I would like to introduce you to Time Decompression; or Time Expansion, if you prefer.  It is a technique I developed while researching counselling psychology, and studying the way time seems to work in therapy sessions.

If you have ever watched yourself when you were anxious, or reflected on it afterwards, you may have noticed that anxiety often has at its root an impatience for things to be otherwise, and quickly.  Perhaps you are anxious because you have an exam next week, and you do not feel that you know enough.  This kind of anxiety has four components:

1. You feel that something in your life needs to change

2. You feel that it is difficult or fearful for you to effect that change

3. You (consciously or unconsciously) conceptualise a time limit for that change

4. You (consciously or unconsciously) feel that the time limit is too short

WHAT I NOTICED IN COUNSELLING SESSIONS

Therapy sessions are often set at 50 minutes.  Some therapists try to offer convoluted reasons for this, but the main reason is that an hour is western humans' go-to time for meetings, and therapists need to wee, and make notes (10 minutes therefore deducted).  The strictness is so that therapists can appear very professional.  I mean, really, what would therapists have to denote ther professionalism if they did not control the time, and pathologise anyone else who wanted to control it?!

What I noticed was that anxious clients often felt the need to cut meetings short, and certainly were out of the door quicker than depressed clients.  It was as though anxious clients lived in accordance with an invisible rule: get home as quickly as possible.  Home, whatever it was conceived to be, was a place of safety.  Time pressure was evident pretty much all the time, even in micro-behaviours.  Such clients tended to be watchful of other people's movements, and keen to detect when it might be time to move on.  It was as though they were alarm clocks, set with a hair-trigger mechanism, liable to panic at the least provocation.

Time felt compressed.  As a counsellor, I often rely on absorbing a sense of where a client is in the moment.  Internalising into myself what was going on for them, I became aware of a kind of impatience, and over-watchfulness, together with a sense of personal inadequacy - a feeling, in short, that, as above, (1) something was wrong, (2) it was difficult to confront, (3) it felt urgent or pressing, and (4) waiting was not an option.  Thus the body became a kind of pressure cooker, boiling up with urgent need, perhaps the skin flushing, panic symptoms arising... all in a kind of impatience with the world.

I don't want to pathologise my clients.  I experience the same thing too.  Most of my human knowledge is gained from self-observation.  I am at least as guilty of anxiety as the next person.  But I am outlining what I think I saw.

HOW THIS APPLIES TO EVERYDAY SITUATIONS

This, to me, is to do with our experience of time.

We all, consciously or unconsciously, apply time frames to our lives.  You might feel you should be married by the time you are a certain age, or out of bed by a certain time, or have disposed of a lost loved one's possessions by a certain month... we are often full of self-imposed requirements that our worlds change by a certain time.

In my research, I took this thought, and tried to apply an opposite.  If anxiety is often characterised by time compression (i.e. wishing things could quickly be otherwise for us), then perhaps anxiety could be reduced by time-expansion (or time decompression), by lowering the pressure to change our world in a short time.

TIME-EXPANDING TASKS

I began to ask myself: what tasks do we perform which might be time-expanding, and anxiety-reducing?

A CLUE IN BOREDOM

In my ponderings, I noticed that boredom was a kind of opposite of anxiety.  I noticed that, when bored, individuals' adrenal systems closed down, and they started to fall asleep.  They no longer needed to be alert and hyper-sensitive.  Now, I bet you have never heard a doctor prescribe boredom as a medicine for patients!  But perhaps it is not such a silly idea.

Boring situations have certain characteristics, which are in many ways the opposite of the anxious characteristics:

1. We feel that our challenge or extreme action is not necessary

2. We feel that it is all too easy to assimilate and experience

3. There seems to be no time limit to things (such as an interminably boring lecture!)

4. There seems to be no urgency (perhaps everything is flat, routine, predictable)

DESIGNING YOUR OWN TIME-EXPANDING ACTIVITIES

I am not suggesting we live our lives permanently bored!  But I am suggesting that we apply to anxiety an opposite context, in order to balance it out and calm it.

If you are anxious, I suggest you design for yourself an activity which consists of the following:

1. A manageable, minimal level of challenge

2. A fairly easy thing to get your head around

3. A time guide which is much longer than the activity needs

4. Something that is not urgent

An example for me: if I wish to calm down easily, I pick up my boots, and polish them.  I know how to do it; it's easy; I give myself half an hour, much longer than I need; it's not urgent (my life won't end if I can't polish my boots!).

For you, it may be something else.  But try to choose something easy, and give yourself a longer time than necessary to do it.

THE BENEFITS OF TIME-EXPANDING ACTIVITIES

There are several benefits to this approach.  I have used it a lot myself (I am my biggest experimental guinea pig!); and friends and clients have seemed to find it helpful.  A few classic benefits are:

1. It reduces adrenaline levels.  We all need to use our adrenaline systems, but not all the time, and not on overdrive!

2. It makes you feel more peaceful.  Your friends will appreciate your chilled-out manner :)

3. It broadens your attentional bias (when anxious, your world compresses; when peaceful, you can see more)

4. It gets something useful done! (Even Formula 1 drivers need their cars cleaned... you are giving yourself a 'pit stop'.)

5. It teaches your mind, conscious and unconscious, that everything is not urgent.  And it really isn't.  The universe has billions of years available.

Think of your diary as an elastic band.  When your appointments are constricting and urgent, you will feel your flow constricted and strangled by urgency.  Your body will tell you that it is tired, but your adrenaline system will tell you that things are urgent.  This is the formula for adrenal fatigue.

Time-expanding activities relax the elastic band a little.  Your life is still held together by a little structure, but you have room to move, to breathe, to be yourself.

SUMMARY

When anxiety is getting the better of you, try to find a simple activity that you enjoy, and give yourself a nice long time to complete it, much longer than you need.  You will find your adrenal system relaxes, your attentional system expands, and you become more peaceful.  What more could you want?

If you are interested in practicing this or other forms of relaxing activity in your life, do get in touch, and I'd be happy to work with you, and learn from you, in developing helpful techniques.  Everyone is different, and I welcome the opportunity to meet others who want to join together and find practical ways to be peaceful.

WHAT'S YOUR UNOPENED PACKAGE?

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What's your unopened package?

When things happen to us, we have one of two reactions.  If the experience is an easy one to assimilate, to understand, then we process it then and there.  But if it is difficult in some way - if we don't have time to process it, or we can't afford to, or it's too much for us to understand... then we make a little package.  We don't even know we're doing it.  We move on to the next thing, but the unopened package will sit there at the back of our minds for as long as we leave it, like an unopened gift left over from Christmas.

Except that it doesn't feel like a gift.  If, for instance, we have been abused in childhood, and didn't understand what was happening to us, then our unopened package can be like a ghost, haunting us without even telling us it is there.  If a current experience gets close to the one that we tucked away, then we can react in ways that we ourselves don't understand.  Our sensitivity seems out of proportion to the current event.  But it is only our mind trying to protect itself from the difficulty of having to open up the old package in order to understand, unblock, the current situation.

THE MISUNDERSTOOD STORY

Another way of understanding this is as a story we have failed to comprehend, to assimilate into our life story.  We all write for ourselves an autobiography.  When other talk to us about life, we recount selected events from our life as symbolic of who we are.  But we choose those events we publicise: we are our own PR team, desperately struggling to offer the world a clear and coherent picture of a successful human.

Except what happens to those stories, those experiences, that happened to us, but that we couldn't find any sense in?  The unexpected death, the unfair deprivation... these stories pile up behind the scenes, in that department of our mind called 'untold stories'.  We cannot tell them properly, because we have not found in ourselves the words to encompass what went on.  It is only when we have a language for it, that the 'it' becomes our story.

In that sense, the misunderstood story is the untold story, something that cannot be part of our autobiography, because there seems to us no sensible way of incorporating it.  It is denied, put away, left unopened, neglected.

THE ROLE OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL LANGUAGE

One thing that can be a great healer in providing language where there is none, is contemporary language.  Until there are enough words and stories in circulation, you can end up feeling alone, as though there is no way of expressing how you feel.  But as soon as your experience finds a parallel in modern life, finds a way of expressing itself by saying 'Yes!  That!  My experience was like that!' - once that happens, there is a kind of relief in associating one's own experience with general wisdom.

The person who years ago never came out as gay, can point to other coming out stories and say: 'Yes, that's me too.'  The person who has suffered at the hands of others, whether bullying, harrassment, or any other kind of abuse... that person can watch the film, read the book, learn the language, and then say 'Yes, that's what happened to me, too.'

THE ROLE OF POETRY

Some experiences, however, are too complex to be unwrapped by a single film, or a political movement, or a story.  They are the experiences that are left over, making us feel isolated from the world, because it may be that no one understands us.  Even if we suspect that others feel the same and have been through the same, there is no way of proving it.

Poetry is one way of offering that proof.  The way the system works, is that a poet makes a new form of words that attempts to encompass an experience or set of experiences.  If you like, the poet is defining a new emotion, as separate from anything anyone has defined before  A new modification.  In this way, the title of a poem can become iconic, as though it represents an experience set that has been somehow nailed to paper for once.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the proof of poetry is in the communication with the listener.  The listener can be the poet themselves: it's a perfectly valid form of poetry, words from the self to the self.  It can be transformative.  But, in addition, there are times when a whole room, or a whole body of readers, can participate in an enhanced understanding, simply by being open and hearing a new way of putting a story, an emotion, an experience.

THE ROLE OF COUNSELLING

Some experiences have the unlucky characteristic of being unshareable, for whatever reason.  It may be that they are family secrets which cannot be released more widely without repercussions.  Or personal secrets, where an individual needs to share and express inner voices which their usual world wouldn't understand.

A good counsellor understand their role in this respect.  The client may have come to them as an act of trust, so that they can begin to disclose to an other things which have had to be kept under wraps.  The client brings their unopened package.

TRIAL AND ERROR

Often, a client brings, at first, a small package.  They are testing the therapist, seeing how well they can handle a client bringing before them something confidential, sensitive.  If trust is found, then another, bigger package is shared and unopened together.  Then another.  Until, perhaps much later, a big package that has been clogging up the hallway is brought in for gentle dismantling and opening.  It is essential that this process is safe: it can be like unwrapping an unexploded bomb.  It deserves ultimate respect.

An analogy from real life is the friend to whom one brings one's problems.  You may have different friends for different problems, because you have learned that different people can and can't handle different things.  Often, in adult life, you will be drawn to friends who can hear things your parents couldn't.  You are seeking that listening ear you didn't get back then, so that you can open the packages from childhood that you deferred opening because you didn't understand them, couldn't relate to them.

WHAT'S YOUR UNOPENED PACKAGE?

 So, I'd ask again, I wonder what your unopened packages are.  The unresolved stories you have lying around an untidy mind.  The emotions that get stirred when a current experience has a weirdly profound effect on you. 

You are a richer mind than you know, full of these things, waiting to be explored.  How much, or little, you want to explore them, is up to you.  But it can be quite a rewarding thing, quite freeing.

And to be able to help others open their unopened packages, in safety and in confidentiality, that's a skill and an art worth developing.

SUMMARY

We all have stories from earlier in our life that we can't yet process, and hide away.  In our adult life, we make up stories about ourselves, and collect them together into a well-practiced autobiography that we rehearse in conversations.  But the untold stories never come out.

Sometimes, though, new cultures offer new languages, new stories, with which we can see our past.  We watch a film or read a book, and see our own reflection for the first time.  Or we write a poem, and offer a new sharing of something, a new way of opening life's incomprehensible packages.  Or we go to a counsellor, or a trusted friends, and respectfully and carefully unwrap each other's unknowns.

It's always a question worth asking: what have I not understood?  What have I packed away without bothering to open it up?  What are my unopened packages?

LANGUAGE IS A SENSE

I'd like to make the case for language being a sense.

I know that sounds ridiculous.  But perhaps I could take you to a place where I had the thought.

I was writing a poem that was partly about our sense of smell.  How it was a very old sense in evolutionary terms, possibly deriving from when simpler organisms responded to changing chemical environments.  And I wanted to write the line:

Smell is an ancient sense,

older than words

I thought: I am, in part, treating language as a sense.  It seems perfectly natural, but why?

And I started to think about what that was all about.

PUTTING OUT AND GETTING BACK

The thing about senses is they are active.  They are not just a question of receiving signals.  That's a misunderstanding.  Without putting out tentacles, you don't feel.  Without putting out assumptions about sound, you don't hear, not clearly.

Here's an example of what I mean.  Your hearing system is not just passive; it is constantly adjusting itself, testing the world and acting on feedback.  I remember reading the story of someone who was deaf and was cured by an operation.  At first, the world was a mess of sound.  What their brain had to do was learn to calibrate itself until the world's signals were manageable.

Vision, too, works on these principles of putting out feelers and assumptions, and receiving feedback.  If you want proof, check out the concept of 'afterimage'.  When we look at something, we apply to it a barrage of assumptions; in the to-and-fro, we develop a way of adjusting our assumptions until they are sculpted, if you like, to the shape of the object we are witnessing.  When the object is suddenly withdrawn, the evidence of the assumptions we are 'putting out' is betrayed in the afterimage, which is an imprint of active assumptions against a now-neutral background. 

HOW WE PUT OUT AND GET BACK WITH LANGUAGE

Sensory adaptation is, in this sense, the act of putting out, getting back, and developing a network of residual assumptions which assist us in understanding the world.  When we learn to speak, we start by putting out noises.  (Actually we don't, we already have a set of assumptions ready from the womb; also words are not just noises, they are signs... but let's simplify things for the moment.)  We put out a noise, which is a word in its most basic form; a meaningful sound unit.  We get a response.  Maybe an echo, maybe a smile.  We spend our childhoods calibrating this 'sense of how to hear and what to say' until our word communications build in maturity.

ISN'T LANGUAGE A CONCEPTUAL NETWORK RATHER THAN A SENSE IN ITSELF?

Some would say that language is conceptual, and operates via hearing, seeing, touch etc as appropriate.  In these terms, language belongs in the general realm of 'thought', rather than sensory input and output.

But I wonder.  What if we turned the whole thing on its head, and considered thought itself the original sense.  The idea would be that organisms learned to interact in sensitive and selective ways long before the development of mammalian sense organs as we know them.  This redefinition of 'sense' would place the conceptual field right at the centre of sensing, with the five traditional senses redefined as mere sense-organs.

A TRIAL DEFINITION OF SENSE

A sense, then, might be defined as a system of knowing made up of putting out, getting back, and modifying.  It does not matter how this happens, only that it happens.

Armed with this definition, one might see how language can be a sense.  We put out words; we get them back; we interactively modify our language network until our world makes more sense to us and is manageable by us.

AN APPLICATION TO THERAPY

Applied to counselling and psychotherapy, this way of conceptualising language brings into sharp focus how the process works.  After all, they are fond of naming themselves the talking therapies, without attempting to deal, in depth, with how therapeutic change happens via language.  All sorts of concepts such as empathy are evaluated and tested; but we are substantially missing an explanation in terms of language itself.  Or rather, our explanations never really put language at the centre of things.

Here is an example of how talking therapy could be understood in linguistic terms:

1. A client suffers because their language network cannot explain their world to them.  They are frustrated, and often tell themselves stories which catch some of what is going on.  But these stories are often partial, both in the sense of part-explanatory, and in the sense of biased.

2. A client exposes themselves to an external foil, a therapist who can work with them to develop their narrative powers.  They learn to express their experience using new language which gives them a better explanation of the world around them.  'Better', in this sense, means 'more manageable', just as the deaf person who can suddenly hear quickly develops 'better' hearing assumptions and filters.

3. A client leaves therapy with a better linguistic sense of their world.  In other words, the words they put out, the words they get back, and their adapted linguistic structure, are more in harmony with each other.

4. This has an effect both on a person's relationship with themselves (their self-talk is better); and also on a person's relationship with others (they negotiate with others better).

HOW THESE IDEAS CAME ABOUT

I developed these ideas as part of my post-graduate studies.  It seemed to me that therapeutic literature didn't deal very well with language in therapy.  It put it on the periphery, and didn't make it central.  This was OK for some clients - existing concepts were sufficient to explain the process reasonably.  But there seemed to be a more general underlying process, in terms of the client's narrative ability, which cut across many therapeutic sects.  It seemed to me to give a better explanation of the improvements people make.  It is not that empathy and love etc don't exist.  Of course they do, and they are important.  But it is perhaps our linguistic sense, in the widest understanding of the word (including signs, symbols, gestures, furniture positioning etc) that is central to the process by which we find healing through understanding.

Writing that poem...

Smell is an ancient sense,

older than words

...reminded me of that research.  It wasn't very well received at the time.  I was told to ground my work in existing counselling theory.  I was told that a narrative approach was all very well, but it wasn't consistent with person-centred counselling.  I disagreed.   I think that person-centred counselling is the use of language, in its widest sense, to come to a new interactive understanding of the self and others.  And, the more I think about it, the more I see language as a sense in itself.

USING WORDS

So, next time you use words, imagine yourself emitting sensory signals, with the expectation of receiving signals back.  Don't think of it as a logical venture, but as an exploration, a building of a better picture of your world.  Let yourself build a language for yourself, a way of understanding, that works for you.  You will know when it works because, like that deaf person calibrating their new hearing sense, your linguistic sense will better comprehend the world you live in.

SUMMARY

Think of a sense as being a means of putting out signals, getting back signals, and modifying your understanding.  Through your life, you learn to tell stories, and you hear stories back.  You can judge how well these stories meld into a clear understanding, by noticing how much you suffer.  The less clear your understanding is, the more you will suffer.  Talking therapy can help you to negotiate a new story, one which better explains, and is better calibrated to, your world.  Your relationship with yourself and others might improve.

How you use symbols, whether they be words, or signs, matters.  I hope I have argued a case, even, for your language being a sixth sense!

THE THERAPEUTIC VALUE OF POETRY

Photo by Trust "Tru" Katsande on Unsplash

Poetry is a funny thing.  It is merely a collection of words on paper (or stone, or spoken through the air).  But its value is disproportionate to its apparent modesty.

LIKE JEWELLERY

Perhaps its true therapeutic value lies in its density.  By density, I mean the way it manages to compress whole networks of meaning into one small space.  An analogy I often use is jewellery-making.  An expert jewellery-maker will think about their craft; plan their design; and ensure that there is no wasteage in the way the item expresses itself and fulfils its function.  In the same way, the writer of a poem thinks about the form, the arrangement of their words; will take care over their order and pacing; and try to make sure that their poem expresses, economically and richly, the experience they are sharing.

EXPRESSING EMOTIONS

The words we have for emotions are quite poor in themselves.  Psychologists have even tried to reduce human character to six key words.  This tendency of the caring professions to reduce emotion to a few key words can be quite distressing to clients.  It can create a disjoin between what someone knows they feel, and the words they seem to have available to express whats inside.  'I'm anxious', or 'I'm depressed' doesn't seem to cut it sometimes.  It's great when you need a diagnosis, or a quick way of categorising where you are and what help you might need.  But as a rich expression of experience, these words are lacking.  And it's made worse by the diagnostic manuals' insistence on reducing these key words to a set of predefined symptoms, which usually have to be miraculously felt for six months, or a year, or some equally improbable and artificial time span.

EXPRESSING DEPTH OF EMOTION

Again, the caring professions often rely on the emission of tears in order to be able to say that subtlety of emotion is being expressed.  Trainees talk of 'breakthrough moments', but sometimes don't realise they are merely taking the moment a client cries as an indication of depth of feeling.  This is great, and often true.  But it ignores the fact that, for many clients, tears are not the most subtle expression of what's inside.  The clues to their depth of experience are differently expressed, perhaps in a turn of phrase, perhaps in a movement of the hand.  To limit depth to crying is absurd.

THE OPPORTUNITY OF POETRY

Poetry is attentive.  There is an understanding between writer and reader/listener that attention has been paid to its production, and attention is being paid to its communication.  Poetry is 'the communication of special words in a special form', if you like.  As such, for the person-centred practitioner, there is already, in the transaction, a version of the three most famous, so-called 'core' conditions, positive regard, empathy and congruence.  Poetry as a transaction relies on positive regard for its successful communication; it seeks to understand, and so empathy is in its bones; and it seeks truth in a situation, and therefore congruence is its meat.

Poetry offer us an opportunity to communicate with one another at great depth.  What is more, in terms of time, poetry works differently to normal conversation.  Because it is produced in such a dense way, and written down or memorised, it acts as a lasting record of what is felt about an experience.  Communicants can return to it again and again for strength or exploration, and parts of poems can become iconic in the memory, landmarks on the emotional landscape if you like.

HOW POETRY MIGHT WORK IN THERAPY

There are already many practitioners who use poetry in one way or another.  Some of the key ways in which it can work are:

• A client can introduce a therapist to poems that mean a lot to them.  The bringing of a poem, or any meaningful piece of art, becomes a kind of gift, received by the therapist, and part of the sharing relationship.  The client can learn a lot about whether to trust the therapist by watching how the therapist handles the introduction of such an object.  It offers a third thing in the room, which can acts as a structure around which empathy can be gently offered, and join exploration can happen.
• A therapist can encourage a client to write some poetry of their own.  This encourages a form of self-exploration in expression akin to meditation or yoga.  The client is daring to stop and listen to themselves, and then to choose a mindful action which matches or expressed what is going on for them.  Poetry in this sense is an intimate act, and can help a client to develop the ability to communicate and self-extend in other social situations.  The therapist can, by unconditionally accepting the poetry, and taking an interest, demonstrate to the client that they matter, and that what they have to say matters.
• A therapist and client can work on poems together.  The client may be afraid of more direct forms of interaction, and working together on a poem, perhaps one the client has drafted, can help the client to learn interactions through an indirect medium.  The two people are focused on a third thing, which enables some clients to communicate what they find it hard to communicate face-to-face.  Furthermore, it is an analogy of many therapeutic interactions: the client offers an expression of self; the therapist offers understanding and clarification; both work together to hone and manage the joint expression of what is happening until a new reality is found, or at least a new way of seeing, for both parties.

HOW IT WORKS IN PRACTICE

In my therapeutic practice, I have had the privilege to experience, several times, the introduction of literary influence by the client.  Not always, but often, it has had the following three stages:

1. The client tentatively introduces into the room a book, a story, a poem, or a picture.
2. The therapist receives the offering, listens carefully, and communication begins about what the object might mean.
3. The interaction is used by the client as a kind of test of the therapist's authenticity.  If the object is dismissed or somehow belittled, then the client knows not to trust the therapist.
4. A new understanding is reached by both parties about the client, and usually about the relationship in the room.  A great sense of appreciation often results, a kind of indescribable gratitude that such sharing has been possible.
5. The art work becomes iconic in terms of the therapy, either for the client, or the therapist, or both.  It is useable as a reference point, a lasting reminder of a shared experience and a new understanding.

SUMMARY

I am encouraging you to consider introducing appreciation of written poetry into therapy.  In particular, I am suggesting that encouraging a client who wants to, to write some poetry of their own, can enhance the therapeutic experience, and provide several advantages that are quite hard to get any other way.

I have explored the reasons for this.  How poetry is carefully designed like jewellery around our experiences.  How it offers greater depth of description of emotion, beyond our poor few official words for feelings.  And finally, how it offers a new comminucation experience between two people, which, if appropriately valued, can build great trust and understanding.

DOES TALKING HELP?

Many people are suspicious of the talking therapies.  Some mock the standard therapist's phrase 'And how does that make you feel?'  Counsellors are sometimes derided for offering their services to healthy people in difficult situations; some say that people should just be strong and get on with life, that we are all going soft.  

They have a point.  It can be quite annoying to sit with a counsellor or therapist who adopts an over-precious voice, a patronising tone, and an automatic manner.  Some therapists do seem to think that counselling can be done by numbers; that, as long as they enforce clear boundaries, do nothing unexpected, and say 'I'm afraid that's all we've got time for this week', their job is done.  That stereotype is alive and well, and often thoroughly respected.  It is sometimes born of the need to make an artificial profession out of  something humans have been doing for thousands of years: talking with, and being with, each other in a healthy way.

DISCLOSURE

Even so, there are great benefits in having a profession dedicated to talking (counselling and psychotherapy are often, rightly or wrongly, nicknamed the talking therapies).  Some people have deep secrets that they need to disclose, and that requires trust.  An easy way to create basic trust is to create a profession with rules of confidentiality.  A therapist is likely to keep your secrets, where a friend may not be.  A therapist will generally not be part of your usual social groups, and so is less likely to disrupt your position and comfort in the community with what they know.

KNOWING YOU

Many therapies limit initial intervention to six sessions, often through resource limitations.  It's debatable whether this is long enough to get to know a person in depth, and one limitation of talking therapies is that it is pot luck whether you get a therapist who is caring and understanding enough to get to know you within a shortish space of time.  Also, backgrounds differ, and if your character or environment has differed greatly from the therapist's, you may find yourself battling to be heard through their prejudices.  A good therapist should have some kind of supervision, which is designed to make them self-reflexive and keep them unprejudiced... but there are no guarantees.  Sometimes therapist and supervisor will together create a myth about you which you can't shake, because you're not privy to their conversations.  So while talking may help, it is worth investing in a therapeutic relationship over time, so that you can get to know each other.  After all, friendships work that way: good relationships often need time, ups and downs, and hard work, to be fruitful in the long term.

COUNSELLING V FRIENDSHIP

I believe that a therapeutic relationship is a human relationship like any other, and need not be put in a separate box.  However, it usually has a particular character, borne of the fact that the understanding is that counsellor A is there to help person B, not the other way round.  In other words, therapeutic relationships are deliberately one-sided, so that a person in need of help can receive it from a person prepared to offer it.

That said, different therapists have different approaches to.. well... approachability.  I have known some who believe that the therapist is there not to be a friend, but to perform a different kind of interaction: some think it's a bit like surgery, a clinical operation; some think that to be too friendly gets in the way of some types of relationship that it may be necessary for the client to work through... there are almost as many types of therapist as there are types of relationship.

DEPTH AND FLEXIBILITY OF RELATIONSHIP

However, I personally don't see why a counselling relationship shouldn't have many of the attributes of a friendship.  After all, the social skills and techniques that we use as collaborative  humans have evolved over a long time, and there is a lot of wisdom in them.  And friendships contain periodic problems and even enmity... so the whole range of human interaction could be available in a counselling relationship.  Obviously, a wise counsellor will flex their approach to the needs and limitations of the client.  But this, I think, is sometimes overplayed.  Many times, a client will find themselves flexing to apparent limitations in the counsellor... and unless the counsellor is prepared to invest in the relationship, with humility and openness, the client can spend their time effectively carrying the therapist through narrowly-focused sessions, because the counsellor is not showing themselves able to invest in a rich variety of interaction.

I'd use the analogy of a walk through a wood.  A narrow-band therapist will treat it like a guided tour, stick to the paths, and keep the relationship rather formal and inhibited.  A wide-band therapist will be able, if warranted, to allow the walk to become an exploration that includes bushes and undergrowth, and even climbing trees.

CHOOSING A RELATIONSHIP THAT WORKS

So, if you are going for counselling, take an interest in the counsellor's own unique approach to the relationship, and don't be afraid to ask them how they see counselling relationships.  They may be prepared to tell you a bit about their approach.  Though a warning here: I have met several therapists who are weirdly secretive with clients about their methods.  This, too, has its reasons: it may be that their method involves not telling the client their method!  but, in general, don't be afraid to quiz the therapist.  And if you feel uncomfortable, tell them, or change to another counsellor.

WHY SHOULD TALKING HELP?

Whether a friend or a counsellor, why does talking help?  A few reasons:

1. You can disclose things that have been bottling up.  This provides release.  For many clients, this is the main benefit: being able to give your 'shit', as it were, to someone who can take it!

2. You get a different perspective.  Many mental illnesses are exacerbated by loneliness and solitude.  Solitude often magnifies suffering, because all you have is your own mind to work with.  Talking enable you to borrow aspects of someone else's perspective for a while, and release yourself from the oppression of yours.  Or, more importantly, to gently explore your own perspective, but with some reflective help, in supportive company.

3. You have a foil to work things through.  Counselling relationships are often dyadic - in other words, one-to-one.  This is restrictive, but has some benefits.  For instance, the counsellor can hold a thought for you while you step up to another thought; or hold a feeling with you while you get used to it; a bit like using a ladder to climb.  A counsellor can remind you of things you have said that seem inconsistent, or unusual, or interesting.  Two heads are sometimes better than one.

4. You are in company.  If you are lonely or alone in some way, being in company can in itself be a benefit, and bring health.

5. You have a routine of sorts.  Usually, counselling has a routine and a rhythm to it.  If you meet weekly, it can help make your week bearable, because you know you are visiting a trusted person one every seven days.  It can become a little landmark in your schedule, and give you comfort.

6. You can escape your own network for a while.  If you are oppressed or abused in your domestic or work environment, then you have a chance to escape that, and be with someone different.  Many clients find this a distinct advantage, enabling them to get respite.

So there you go, a few reasons to try counselling if you want to.  Talking is something we've all been doing for thousands if not millions of years.  A healthy talking relationship can be a way of creating health in difficult circumstances.

Just make sure, though, that you use judgement in choosing a therapist who is right for you.  Go with your gut feel.  Sometimes it's worth persisting, but if you really feel you don't trust your therapist, don't be afraid to change to a different one.  That's what you'd do with friendships; therapeutic relationships can be similar.

SUMMARY

Talking therapies can be useful, especially if you need to disclose or work through something which it's harder to talk about with your usual social circle.  But make sure you feel the therapist is taking the trouble to get to know you, and that the relationship has enough 'bandwidth' for you to feel that it is rich, supportive and helpful.  Dig a bit to get to know your therapist's method.  Counselling is worth a try... but don't be afraid to change your counsellor if you feel that they have not earned your trust.