If
you are a Massage therapist, you don’t need to be a qualified psychotherapist
to talk to your clients or find out why they are coming for a treatment. This
is perfectly within your legal ‘scope of practice’. Interestingly, by training
to become a psychotherapist I learned to say much, much less to my Massage
clients. I learned to let the touch really do the work. Of course this is a bit
of a ‘no brainer’ as the thing that is
most missing in this world is ‘a lot more touching’. You can get plenty of
‘psycho babble” at every coffee shop in the land, but getting powerful deep and
safe touch is a true rarity.
However,
even when dispensing healing touch in a touch starved society, I still need to
know just why my client is here. Eric Berne, the founder of Transactional
Analysis called this ‘asking the existential question’. He asked himself: “Why
is my client here and not having fun doing sex, drugs and rock and
roll?” He also asked himself: “Why am I here and not somewhere else,
having fun doing sex, drugs and rock and roll?” It was the sixties, after all.
You probably get the point.
If
the client has a tight shoulder, what difference will it make to their life if
it is alleviated? How important is it to them? What caused that structural
problem in the first place? They are made of soft tissue that is more affected
by energy, emotion and thoughts than any other substance on the planet. Do we
just ignore this fact? If they have a knee problem, what was happening
when they injured it? Were they under stress? Was life particularly hard at
that time and is it possible that their soft tissue hardened at the same time?
Is
any of this psychotherapy? Of course not - it is simple human interest. It is
also good healing, by going to the roots of a problem rather than endlessly and
tediously addressing the symptoms that will always keep appearing as long as
these root causes are not addressed. My analogy of ‘the shrunken suit’ should
explain this:
If
a client walks into the shop with a tear in the shoulder of their suit, a
tailor can build up a great income and lots of business by simply repairing the
tear. Because the suit has shrunk, that tailor is guaranteed return business as
other parts of the suit tear, year after year. The honest tailor asks how the
suit actually shrunk in the first place? Perhaps we have grown. Perhaps we went
out for a walk in the rain and left it damp for a while.The expert tailor says
“we need to stretch the suit, not keep fixing the tears that will keep
reappearing."
Are
such questions invasive? Well, if I turn up with a tight shoulder and I don’t
like being asked what the causes of this tight shoulder might have been, or how
much difference it would make to my life to have it fixed, then I will make
that very clear in my responses. I cannot help but show my discomfort or
irritation. A good therapist is a good educator who may then explain that they
need to ask these questions to properly help the client. Or a good therapist
will realise that the fear levels are so high right now, for the client, that
such questions are therapeutically counter productive.
Such
probing for the real reason why a client has come only becomes invasive
if it is done invasively. If you cannot tell the difference between a client
keen to share their story and one who is uncomfortable talking about herself,
then it is time to take up another profession. The art of all healing therapy
is to know when the time is right to invite the client to share more about
themselves and the right way to do it.
Knowing
the full story and identifying the correct treatment is at the heart of all
effective therapy.
I
once met a physiotherapist who had no training or qualifications in
psychotherapy, tell me how she no longer touched or did any physiotherapy with
her clients at all. She simply asked them what was going on at the time of
their injury. She said this speeded up the healing so much she found herself
unable to ‘do’ anything that was more effective, as a healer.
Some
of the most powerful Psychotherapy I have ever received or given has happened
in the silence of simple touch. Being ‘held’ or holding someone else can be the
most powerful psychotherapeutic transaction of them all, but only if it
addresses the real reason why that client came for treatment.
The
beauty of Massage is that clients turn up and simply pay to get powerful deep
and healing touch. Rather like ‘being held’.
Asking
the existential question is the only way to fully understand what I and my
client are actually doing on the planet at this particular time and in this
particular space. Once we know these basics, we can be much more effective,
whatever therapy we practice. Asking such
questions is how we care for another human being. It is also discovering the
essential causative factors of their symptomatic pains.
To
simply accept a tight shoulder as a structural problem is no better than
calling poverty “a shame” and carrying on regardless. These things all have
causes and history. Like Sherlock Holmes,we must trace each symptom back to its
historical cause, if we wish to be more than some kind of ‘Mr Fixit dullard’.
That is not healing touch. It is squashing human beings into a tiny ‘physical
only’ box.
Every
human deserves to be seen and heard and to be touched. Do you really know why
they have invested this money and this time in coming to see you? Do you dare
to ask the existential question? Is the pain really just physical?
Yeah
‘right’.
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