Language in Psychotherapy

Language in Psychotherapy

I am head over heels for language, because it is this that opens the door for psychotherapy. For each session, it’s the vehicle we climb in. Speaking and listening is how we understand each other. If we’re to transform and evolve, we must manifest our inner worlds in language. This need not be to another person, it need not spoken aloud, not communicated in the traditional sense. But everyone must somehow render it more comprehensible, even if it’s to ourselves.

Language is intrinsic to therapy. Psychotherapy usually works by conveying our worlds to another, most of it via words, no matter the language.  In one of my favorite books, Martin Buber’s I and Thou, he speaks of “bold swinging” into the life of the other—it’s the act of fully engaging with another person. This is similar to Eckhart Tolle’s notion of ‘being in the now.’ Buber talked about humans “swinging between each other,” the “Thou” is relating to another person without bounds, with no condition, and no imposition of self, no projection. Simply an open curiosity to know and understand deeply the others’ reality. This is where, as Martin Heidegger frames it, we use  “languaging.” It’s the gift we use to probe another.

For each client, I use a different language. Each person over their lifetime,  has his/her narrative and history,  culled an encyclopedic wealth of words, phrases, sentences, entire books of their lived reality. Their chosen expressions are not random and not accidental. Each person has good reasons why they‘ve chosen their linguistic lens. It’s my job to understand my clients’ lens better. The gold is in these details.

No matter if it’s the first session or the hundredth, I’m exhilarated at the prospect of discovering the person sitting in front of me, a wondrous  sense of who I’m about to discover. Language is about searching for the other, meeting them where they are, and over time, to push that envelope in the direction they want to go. Each encounter with a client is different: an active, bold way of listening and guiding … sometimes a relaxed, passive way of reflecting without stretching the content. At other times, it’s a combination of both with just a bit of elasticity. It’s heady, powerful, beautiful to see my clients feel like I grok their content, that I can imagine and sense them, meet them on that plane—and feed it back to them in a perfect arc of understanding. Every human is hungry for this, and  I don’t underestimate its healing power. I’ve never had a client say to me, “You understand me too much.”

Another type of language is resonant listening and mirroring: mentally filling in precisely and exactly with pristine understanding what the client is thinking, where I find myself thinking it seconds before they voice it. Many of you have likely experienced this with your family and close friends, e.g. you silently or out loud complete the others’ sentences. This is interpersonal resonance. Add to this the type of mirroring the client needs and what do we have? Healing. Evolution. Transformation. Problem-solving.

We know languages have regional dialects, but I love that we also have emotional dialects: shades of time and space within an emotion. For example, non-verbal utterances, sounds to organically convey a felt sense requires me to more closely follow the thread of the story. I love uncovering this, rendering it better formed, coaxing it out and helping the person see it. While working together over time, we develop a history of working through tough times, and in so doing,  develop a mutual language. This is common—it happens all the time between people, but here, it happens in the context of therapy. And I hone this resonance to what/how clients want therapy to serve them.

By acknowledging sentences, I hope to make understandable what the client has long felt misunderstood about. For example, if a client shares something they might be apprehensive about sharing, and if I ask, “Why?” I’m putting the client in the position of justifying, legitimizing and defending their reality. This is not why they’re in therapy. The psychiatry researcher, Leston Havens, speaks eloquently in his work on psycholinguistics. Extending, bridging, and translating statements all help to move the needle a tad more for the client, to pull out a little more, to bring what’s in the dark to a ray of light.

This is what lights a fire under me. How to ‘know,’ my clients, how to ‘understand,’ how can I help them feel I ‘get them,’ not the landscape of their lives, but the inner world they live in—their invisible “inscape.” Going on this quest with them and setting out on a journey, completely unique to them, this is joy. Each person is inimitable and their language captures their spirit.

I don’t want to hold up language as the ultimate. It’s not. It’s a means to an end, a greater good: to make better quality of life, to feel happier, more fulfilled, less symptomatic, less suffering … whatever the client identifies—and in whichever way they speak of it. With language, we’re  building an emotional bridge, living in the moment by being attuned with the client. Upon these, a foundation for transformation happens. All humans seek acknowledgment. It’s the easiest, most seamless, effortless thing for me to give to my clients: I admire and applaud their courage, determination, perseverance to want to change. To seek out therapy and to be ballsy enough to stick with it, no matter how hard. This is the stuff of a life well lived and I am here to be in their space/time.