Good therapy helps you learn the difference between feeling better vs being better at feeling. We all want to feel better. Who wouldn’t? But that is a short sighted and short term goal. Ultimately the road to freedom and more ease is to become better at feeling. Along these lines I like what the Presence Process has to say about healing vs integrating: Healing implies the assumption that something is wrong and needs to be got rid of. It is a reaction to a difficulty.
Integration stems from the perspective that if something is happening it has validity, that it is an indication of something being out of balance. It contains insight for growth, in a manner that best serves the overall well-being of a person.
Therapy is referred to as a healing profession but from now on I’m going to think of it more as an integrating profession.
For those of who who have been clients of mine, you may recall that during our very first intake phone conversation I said that I operate on the premise that nobody is broken, nobody needs to be fixed and that the difficulties being experienced always make perfect sense.
And that’s where we begin: how does it all make sense? The path to understanding that is to become better at feeling.
