{"id":115,"date":"2019-10-14T15:06:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-14T15:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adrianharris.org\/blog\/?p=115"},"modified":"2020-05-07T11:38:20","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T11:38:20","slug":"the-intuitive-therapist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianharris.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/14\/the-intuitive-therapist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Intuitive Therapist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you\u2019ve ever watched a filmed therapy session or heard Susie Orbach\u2019s In Therapy<\/em>, it might seem like there\u2019s not much going on. The client says something and then the therapist says something. What you can\u2019t sense, unless you\u2019ve been there, is the deeper process going on throughout the session. As a therapist I want to be 100% present in the moment and sensitive to every nuance of our complex interaction. I also want to be aware of everything the client has ever said to me, how they might be feeling and how I\u2019m feeling. I need to consider if, based on half a dozen theories of therapy, there\u2019s any pattern in all that. If there is<\/em> a significant pattern, I need to decide when and how to say so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was training to be a therapist I despaired of ever being able to process all that and<\/em> stay present with the client. I was so busy thinking about what they\u2019d just said that I kept missing something crucial! It seemed impossibly hard. And I was right; trying to consciously think through the complexity and depth of therapy is impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Most of the vast bulk of Uluru lies below ground<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d assumed that I had to think everything through consciously, but actually about 95% of our cognitive processing happens in the other than conscious mind (Thrift, 2000). I talk about this a lot in my PhD thesis on embodied knowing, but it took me a while to appreciate how this happens in therapy. In therapy \u2013 and in everyday life \u2013 my \u201cbody senses the whole situation\u201d (Gendlin, 1992). The wisdom of the body draws on sensory perceptions, emotions, memories, past experience and much more to decide what to do next. It\u2019s a massive understatement to say that \u201cyour body knows much that you don\u2019t know\u201d (Gendlin, 1981).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Malcolm Gladwell talks about this \u201cpower of thinking without thinking\u201d in Blink<\/em> (2005). The book is full of wonderful stories about people who know intuitively what\u2019s going on in very complex situations. There\u2019s the art expert who can unerringly sense a fake but can\u2019t tell you how, and a fire chief who\u2019s gut feeling saved his entire crew from disaster. In each case the ability to correctly intuit what to do emerges from a powerful embodied knowing that\u2019s been developed through training and experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a typical therapy session I\u2019m not constantly pondering what the client had just said: My focus is on staying present. Meanwhile my embodied mind \u2013 which has a huge range of input and a vast capacity to process that input \u2013 does the work. Drawing on this embodied wisdom is the essence of Focusing Orientated Therapy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n