While learning more about neuroplasticity and brain health(also mental health)each day, I often observed uncanny behavioral patterns amongst humans as well as humans and animals. Though what happened that day, set a gauge to all others.
I was hooked on reading John Bowlby’s attachment theory, researching all it’s nooks as recently I had come across a client, who was finding it extremely hard to move on from her ex boyfriend. So much so that she had lost the basic premise of eating on time and sleeping on time.(No, she wasn’t depressed)
I had been seeing her for the last two months and the only willing improvement in her was her judicious visit to our sessions. I thought of recommending her to a psychiatrist, but I knew from her intelligence tests that she had an optimal brain health. Though she was only in her early twenties, so I figured she hadn’t had a fully developed pre-frontal cortex and hence the issue.
This is the thing about us therapists. We diagnose our clients so well according to all our knowledge, but each time we go for providing them with tools, they either don’t respond, or they purposefully reject the whole point. Over the span of the last two months, I had tried all the treatment and psycho-analogy theories with her, but she wasn’t just responding. Once, she even slept while I was talking to her about dissociation. (Yeah the irony makes me laugh!)
So when I knew that she wasn’t at her best to receive, I turned to lighter topics with her, like what does she like to cook or what is it that she finds extremely funny. While in the sessions I worked on making her lighter on the mood, I worked hard in my room to study her patterns, so I could help her recognize what set of pre-conceived beliefs and views were holding her back from letting go. Being fairly a new therapist and the dire need of me to help until it hurts and just a bit more than that, made me go really deep in observing behaviors(of people, animals, objects, almost everything). During our sessions, when I used to see her cry in pain, my heart used to swallow a big chunk of “I want to help her out of this”.
One such day when I was absorbed in research on my desk, I heard two-three dogs barking really badly in the front yard. They were barking as if one of them had died. When I opened my window to see what had happened, I saw a pup had gotten stuck in a pit and he was crying for help. All the other dogs had surrounded the pit but nobody was able to aid.
The pup’s mother was crying for help as well. She was continuously wooing like a wolf for help from other dogs. In intervals, she was also licking the pup’s face, who in turn was only able to reach his mother by his mouth with the longest of stretch between his legs.
I rushed out to help the little one. He was already very scared and he was crying. I could see tears in his eyes. I leaned forward to comfort him but he seemed too scared to let anyone touch him. I could relate with this. I had been dating a fearful partner for about a year now and I knew how fear could make people abandon the comfort and help they needed to get out of their pit.(Thanks Bowlby!)
So I thought maybe I could lure him to like me and accept me in his shell, so I ran inside to get a packet full of biscuits for him. I leaned forward to feed him a biscuit, which he smelled at first but then pulled back, fearing that I’d hurt him. I leaned a bit more forward, to which he retaliated showing me his teeth. I was almost on the verge of crossing his boundary(but to help him).
Seeing that he really could use some glucose rather than comfort, I decided to throw the biscuit in the pit so that he could pick it up by himself. After feeding him five of them, I tried touching his mane again, but he got even more scared.
Humans as well, behaved in the same way. They would maintain their boundary of fear and hurt to the level of survival. They’d feel safe as long as their needs of food, water shelter are met. But as soon as someone tried comforting their emotional survival, they’d pull back or react really badly.
I made a quick mental note that talking about lighter topics in the session is only like throwing biscuits to the pup. It hardly comforted the real pain. It hardly solved the issue.
The pup’s mother was looking at me with compassion and plea. I called her out and she willingly walked in my arms. I comforted her well and I thought maybe seeing me touching and comforting the mother, the pup would allow me to touch him too. But that didn’t happen.
I could see how my presence itself was making the pup scared. He was feeling as if I was pushing through the doors to get to him.
Even when I had tried comforting my fearful partner, he would either react very badly or avoid me altogether. And seeing myself in the position of wanting to help, I could see that my presence in itself was taken as a threat.
I knew that I had to help because I couldn’t see that pup crying in the pit and the other dogs shouting like wolfs for the whole day. But I also knew that touching the pup and carrying it in my arms out of the pit was not possible as well.
I knew my client needed help because I couldn’t see her ruining her health, her life. But I also knew that talking directly about her patterns wasn’t going to help her either.
So I sat there for two minutes, looking at the poor pup and thinking what could possibly be done. I thought of an idea. I went inside the house again and brought a stool to keep in the pit, so that the pup could climb on it step by step.
When I kept the stool in the pit, the pup was confused. He was already in such a small space, he didn’t understand why I was making it even more smaller for him. I threw biscuits on the stool so that I could convey to him that he needs to climb on the stool.
Though the biscuit seemed so important to him that he climbed up the stool, ate the biscuit and went down in the pit again.
I was really laughing out on the innocence of the moment. And in moments I started crying as well. I could clearly see how difficult it must get for fearfully attached people to manage their survival and try to belong to someone even when they are too scared to leave their territory of known.
The pup didn’t seem to understand that the stool was kept for him to walk out of the pit. I tried throwing more biscuits on the stool and also on the ground above it, making a trail for him to follow, but he ate the biscuit that fit in his boundary and the farther one, he just abandoned.
I realised that the stool wasn’t very stable for him to climb. That he must still be feeling scared to put all his weight on an external object that seemed quite dicey.
That’s really how therapists are seen at first. A dicey person, on whom clients don’t want to rely on fully as they don’t want to trust the stability of their base.
I pulled out the stool and went inside to see for a more stable option for the pup. When nothing came to mind, I picked up a huge chair and placed it in the pit. Fortunately, the chair was quite stable and didn’t move as much. As before, I put biscuits on the chair for the pup to climb and eat.
He did the same thing again. He climbed up the chair, ate the biscuit and went down the pit again.
I suddenly got very self conscious.
I knew exactly why the pup was not coming out of the pit even when he knew he could.
My presence was making him fearful.
That’s the thing about us. We really want to help, but we also want to know if our help is working or not. We are very conscious if our help is understood or not and in that understanding we end up pushing(even just by waiting to see if they’ve understood).
I left the chair in the pit and I walked inside my house. I peeked from my window and the pup easily climbed the chair and walked out of the pit.
I learnt a very important lesson that day. Something that I didn’t understand at first.
To help someone, you have to learn to trust them first.
It may seem easy to say it like this and by trust I certainly don’t mean that we should trust all that they say or all that they believe. By trust I mean, that they also have an innate will to heal inside of them, that they can hear loud and clear, only if you let them hear it on their own.
We can provide them with thousands of tools for levels of exuberance and peace, but they won’t work when there’s a figure in front of them that is gauging their performance or their progress.
You see, the whole idea of fear arises from safety. When safety is threatened, people get fearful. That’s how the amygdala works. It won’t let you think if the fear is real, it would only react. And when there’s nobody to threaten them into their pits and they are provided with the tool to heal, they climb up by themselves with ease.
I realised that my client may get a bit uncomfortable when I explain to her how her childhood trauma had caused her to cling to her ex boyfriend and if I tell her she can heal it with simple awareness and self care practices. It would be her work after she goes home to really think about if the tools that I gave her worked!
I could clearly see why my fearful partner kept moving further away from me, even when I wasn’t doing anything but just being by his side, telling him that I was with him. My presence in itself felt like a ground for him to perform even though my intention was just to comfort.
There’s another very important aspect to this.
Someone will accept help only when they feel safe to do so.
Distrust is something that they are already dealing with inside of them since long. Someone gets fearful or reacts fearfully only when they have tried trusting someone before and have been let down(usually in their early childhood). So in the course of their lives, they have tried to be as self reliant as possible and they have made a belief that people won’t be there for them, when they need it(even when this is not true, as was my case with the pup, but because the pup thought that nobody really helps, he was unable to receive it).
When there was no tool to climb up, the pup got busy playing with a little lizard in the pit. For moments he forgot that he was stuck. It was only when he saw his mother out there that he realised he was stuck and he started crying.
Humans get busy playing with alcohol, smoking, ruthless sex and other escapes. For months they forget that they are stuck in a pit unless the need to belong somewhere shows its presence again.
I also noticed that the concept of “he is an adult now, he should understand” does not work with them.
When I was trying to comfort the pup with my English gibberish language, I saw myself calling him stupid when he couldn’t climb up the chair and come out. The whole logic of ‘here’s how to solve this, now do it’ didn’t work. I could have dismissed the whole scenario by calling the pup dumb. But that wouldn’t have made a difference to the situation.
There was a whole different fearful world for the pup right then and my simple logic from a safe space made no sense in that world.
We as therapists or even supporters as family members or friends, often forget this.
I see parents constantly keeping an eye on what their child is upto, if he is dealing with an issue, if they can help him in anyway. While I understand the concern behind this, the concern isn’t the topic of debate. Its really about who’s suffering and how to ease that. Its about providing the tools and then trusting the person to find his own way. Sometimes, we don’t have the tools that makes them feel safe to climb up and so more trust is needed in them. For allowing their frontal cortex to develop a mechanism to help them.
By trusting we are not just helping them, we are helping our species to evolve! That’s pretty incredible, isn’t it?
That little pup gave me profound insights for my therapy sessions and my personal life.
There’s a grace in letting people be who they are and trusting them to climb up from their pit. There’s beauty in the innocence of every trial and error we witness. There’s love that encompasses all!
Comments