HEALING AND GROWTH
The term psychotherapy implies a kind of healing. It points to a reduction in unnecessary emotional pain and a return to growth. Psychological growth can continue throughout life. Never too late.
Healing doesn't mean suffering disappears. It means suffering no longer defines us or prevents us from growing. And healing, like problems, makes sense. Which is to say, healing follows a natural path.
The therapist does not manufacture health in the patient. He does not tell me who I am or how I should live. He does not grow the patient. In this regard, it is much better if the therapist doesn’t “know” too much. If you find yourself with a therapist who knows too much about how you should be living your life, run like hell.
A good therapist creates conditions in which something already inherent can resume. He does not take away the patient’s symptoms. Symptoms developed as a way of managing something difficult, and they fall away when no longer needed.
Growth occurs against a backdrop of normal suffering—the wounds, losses, fears, heartbreaks, and illnesses that are features of each person’s life.
We recognize growth as a sense of something opening, widening, lightening, deepening. We might experience growth as a pleasurable sense of being at home, even while simultaneously being acutely aware of pain, past and present. We might find ourselves feeling more whole and stronger, more free to withdraw or to meet others in a serious or a playful way, as we wish.