Learning how to move

Baby girl sits about 10 feet away from me and screams. She reaches and points and uses everything in her pre-linguistic communication arsenal to get her message across. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to stay in this position. There is something or someone over there that I want.” As her mom, I want nothing more than to swoop in and pick her up “solve the problem.” I want to take her where she wants to go, move her to a different position or circumstance, and being into reach whatever she is currently seeking. Sometimes, I feel like I am being cold or uncaring by not moving her.

I feel this way as a therapist sometimes too. Sitting across from people who are suffering or stuck or lonely. They don’t want to be where they are – that’s why they are in my office. Their position or way of being in the world has become uncomfortable or untenable, or they can see something good just outside of their reach and they want to get to it. It is so hard for me to not want to grab them up in my empathetic arms and to try and guide them somewhere new…but that’s not my job, and for me to do so would not be serving or empowering them. I let them feel what they are feeling, explore what it is that they are missing or wanting, wonder and discover what it is that keeps them stuck, and support them in the process. I get curious, though, if I don’t feel like I am “doing enough,” for them. Sometimes, I think clients (and probably baby girl) think this too, and wish that I would just fix it already.

This, however, is not how therapy works. Baby girl’s physical therapist pushes her and challenges her, and because she is a baby, she cries. Being in positions she is not used to, moving in new directions, and using her body in a different way is uncomfortable for a while. The therapist, however, reminded me this week that her biggest struggle is remembering that she can move. She has done a lot of work and she is so strong. The muscles are there, and toned, and they know how to do it- she just forgets that she knows how to move…and so I stay where I am when she cries, and I get down towards the floor and encourage her to come. I clap and cheer as she starts to take some tentative crawling steps forward, and I get to enjoy her smiles and glee as she realizes that she was able to propel herself.

This is true in psychotherapy as well, my friends. It’s not my job to pick my clients up and move them, it is my job to encourage them and remind them that they can move. We can talk about how to move, plan for movement, strengthen muscles and try out new positions, but the goal is not for them to get from point A to point B, but rather for them to learn how to move when they want to. It would be so disempowering for me to try and do the work for them, and it may even communicate that I don’t believe they can do it – that I don’t know they can move or trust that they have what it takes.

Sometimes we just need to be reminded that we can move. To friends like me working through stuff in their own therapy, I hope you have a clinician who cheers you on and helps you to remember that you have agency. To my friends who are feeling stuck or hurting or out of reach from the thing that they desperately want to hold on to, I hope that you find someone to scream yay as you take each little tiny baby step. To those who experience this with friends and family, who you want to pick up and move or fix or remove their suffering…maybe let’s think together about how we can instead help our loved ones find their own strength and remind them they have what it takes to keep moving