Rupture and Repair
It is vital for the success of psychotherapy that the therapist and client are able to establish a good, strong and trusting relationship together. This is the foundation on which all good psychotherapy is built. However, it would be wrong to expect that a good and successful psychotherapy would be without times of rupture, misunderstandings or conflict. Therapists are human and mistakes will happen, whether because tiredness on a particular day means they cannot be as attentive or attuned as usual, or because some personal blind spot means they are not able to appreciate fully something important about client, or because in a thoughtless moment they inadvertently say something hurtful.
Such incidents and ruptures are inevitable. They are part of life, just as they are part of therapy. What is important, vital and even therapeutic, is how they are dealt with.
It is challenging then, for both involved, if at such moments a client can take the brave step of communicating their dissatisfaction to the therapist. The therapist may be overcome with shame at their failure, they may feel defensive and want to explain and justify themselves, or they may feel hurt by what they are being accused of and want to attack back and blame the client. What is vital is that the needs and experience of the client remain central. The therapist needs to be able to set aside, at least temporarily, their own feelings and work to understand and empathise with the experience of the client. They need to take seriously the anger and hurt that the client is bringing.
Sometimes therapists can jump too quickly to explaining the hurt by pointing to previous experiences in the client’s relational history. They might say something like, “I understand that you were hurt by what I said, but in fact I meant no criticism by it, and I wonder if it is your past experiences with your critical father that mean you were particularly hurt by what I said.” While in an important way this might be true, it ignores the very real rupture in the current relationship. Accepting the truth of the client’s current experience, and responding to it, is an important part of the repair process. It can also allow more space and trust to open up in the relationship, which in turn can allow the client themselves to see more clearly the original wounding experience with significant others that might have left them with this particular ‘inner furniture’, why it this particular behaviour that hurt and upset them so much.
If handled well, such experiences can be powerful validating and healing experiences for clients. They learn their feelings are important and worth taking seriously. They also learn that relationships can survive and grow and even become stronger through the process of rupture and repair, that hurts can be named, talked about, and understood.
They learn that they matter and their hurt feelings matter, and so these feelings become a little easier to be with and a little less shameful to have.