(This is the 1st in a series.)
I'd like to talk about the subject of therapy a little. What follows is, indeed, an oversimplification of good therapy and thus in that sense a distortion of it. And yet, apparently, even oversimplifications have a place in this universe at times.
I had the privilege when I was in my early 20's to come across a real genius of a therapist, Jonas Cohler. He was my therapist for about a year as I recall, and he made an enormous difference, just crucial. He showed me just how valuable therapy can be.
At the time I was so anxious and so rejecting of myself that I would go into a clothing store, buy an entire set of clothes, wear them for a few days and then decide that they weren't right and throw them away.
It's easy to look back now and see that I was rejecting myself and using the clothes as a metaphor. I was so self-hating that every few days I would decide I would need a make-over and go out and buy some more clothes and go through the cycle all over again.
Jonas combined brilliance and extensive training with compassion. I've come to see that no therapy is going to be really helpful unless the client or patient comes to feel that the therapist fundamentally values them as a person, that the therapist sees through the layers of nonsense to the core underneath and feels compassion and appreciation for their client. Jonas did that, and I thank him for it.
He really saved my life. I was so unhappy that I was basically suicidal most of my childhood and into my 20's. In Jonas' office, I spent most of my time crying, crying out my unhappiness and desperation.
He would listen deeply, with great patience, and then like a great loving mechanic, would reach in and ask a little question or make a gentle observation and I'd plunge into the truth of my unhappiness and be able to really feel it.
And the very feeling of the depths of it, the feeling of the deep truth of my unhappiness, allowed me, paradoxically, to begin to lift from it. I would often leave his office in a state of quiet joy at having been able to see and feel and heal myself so deeply.
When Jonas Cohler and I parted, I was still neurotic on many levels but something very key had shifted: I now basically wanted to live instead of basically wanting to die, and I basically wanted to help instead of basically wanting to destroy.
That's how valuable good therapy can be.
(This is the end of Part 1. Go to Part 2.)
—jim sloman, 10.17.06
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