I begin every therapy session with a new client, believing I know nothing – which of course I don’t in reality, not about the person sitting in front of me. Perhaps we’ve exchanged a few emails, maybe I’ve seen the answers to our suitability questions, maybe I wonder about their trainers, their bike bag, the fact they only have one earring on, but really I know nothing.
So I begin by following my curiosity, the things I am feeling in the moment, the things I wonder about. I ask for clarity, I ask questions, A LOT of questions and there begins a slow step towards each other. I know nothing about you, but I’m here to learn and understand and once I understand some of you, perhaps I can use what I’ve known before both personally, professionally and analytically, to direct our work. But if I began believing I knew more or that I had the answers, the knowledge or the power, then the work we’d create would be based on me and not them. So I surrender to the very real possibility that the very best I can do, the very best we can hope for is that I can be with them, in whatever it is they are going through at any given moment. In order to do that I have to begin vulnerable, surrendering to the limits but also the magic of what it means to be human. What I have found this does is allow me to be present. Being present – really present – is what a life well lived really calls for.
What I have come to recognise more clearly over more than two decades of practicing are the beautiful moments I get to witness. Clients’ ‘becoming’ moments where they are able to be absolutely present in their lives, this might happen right in front of me in the session or they bring vignettes of life back to therapy. They see/feel people, relationships, situations, themselves with total clarity; the constant hum of worry, anxiety and fear is suspended and they really are present for the knobbly hands of their nan who has grafted for years, or the tiny drawing on their best new notebook that their son thought was helpful. They feel the painful paradox of life and death in its full power. Most of our mental health struggles have some echo of our desire to avoid this. Because when we allow ourselves to feel the full beauty and magnitude of life, we also understand its fragility.
We are all of us trundling our way to death’s door, but it’s in the moments we allow ourselves to be fully present for living, while understanding we are also dying, that really permeate our experiences vibrantly. Therapy can do that for us, it can cut through the noise, it creates space for that cut through to happen more often in life both inside and outside the therapy room.
When I heard the news about the death of Coppafeel founder Kris Halleng – having been close to the brand as a partner offering their team well being support and the launch of our new campaign Not Suitable For Work, a series of programs that support employers to do better where they need to do better, educating on how to REALLY support in the stuff that impacts their people – it felt important that our first topic this month was ‘living with a diagnosis’. We’ve shared some profound webinars and talks on the subject, but when I was asked to write about it in this post, the first place I went to (surprise, surprise) was ‘ooossshhh I know nothing on this subject, how can I write on that? I’d be trespassing’.
So I got curious, I touched based with people I know living with a diagnosis and then we reached out to our community with these questions:
1.In what ways has your diagnosis impacted the way you live?
2.If you could go back and tell your younger self something what would it be and why?
3.What things/places/people have brought you the most comfort post your diagnosis?
4.In what ways have you been able to feel the most love from others post your diagnosis?
5.What have you found most unhelpful post-diagnosis?
6.If you could leave a note that everyone would read into the future with one piece of advice what would it be?
Heart-stopping, beautiful, answers. The constant theme throughout all of them, was the call for presence that the diagnosis had afforded them. This shows up in different ways for different people but the overarching theme is that being told, cold in the face that your life is at risk, that your life is going to fundamentally change from here on in, draws us to the clarity of our lives. It asks us to surrender to our vulnerability and be here now. It makes me think of something someone said to me years ago that’s never left:
“Every time you leave someone, even for an hour, imagine it’s the last time you’ll see them.”
While this is obviously quite morbid, it offers the same cut through to presence. So while this notebook post is supposed to be sharing ways to help you live with a diagnosis, I don’t feel qualified to write on that, what I can do is to make the suggestion for us all to live with more presence, create space to just be, because this is where we really live, the rest is just surviving. I’ve seen it work in therapy and I’ve seen it work in life.
Here are some of the nuggets people shared in our social poll:
- Be open to love
- Surrender to the beauty and terror of life
- Be open to asking for help
- Let people love you
- Let people help you
- Eat marmite on toast that your dad brings you
- Say what you need to say when you need to say it
- Worry less
- Say ‘yes’ more
- Don’t hope for more life, hope for more living in the life you have
- Feel it all, it’s a sign you are really here
- Take more moments to stop
- It’s ok to be afraid, but don’t let it drown out all the important stuff
We’ve been chatting on our socials about glimmers – the slithers of light and joy that get in when we are able to just be. Glimmers take presence, they need us to be accountable to show up for ourselves to appear, we need to cultivate them, you deserves so many glimmers, we’ve shared some of our August ones here, we would love you to tag us in some of yours.
Jodie x
