Where do old wounds go to heal? The struggle between awareness and change in therapy
Going for therapy is petrifying. Going for therapy is nerve-wracking. Going for therapy is painful. Therapy is relieving, liberating, and empowering. A lot happened in the year that passed by, leaving some wounded and others dumbfounded. In 2021, I graduated with a Master’s in Counselling Psychology- marking my first year as a Counselling Psychologist. I started a research project in Media Psychology at Zurich, Switzerland. I found comfort in friendships, let go of some, and came around to considering that a romantic relationship may just be good for me, instead of being too good to be true. I got my first job, first pay check, took a first unsupervised all-girls’ trip, stood up to an authority figure, and learned to identify anxiety from pain. In 2021, the psychologist visited the therapist.
During my training as a counsellor, I came across a client who reminded me of myself. In fact, in retrospect, the more I remember her, the more she resembles me. The first time she cried in therapy, a soft apology followed a softer sob. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “You do not have to be sorry for feeling things!” I quickly responded- because why should she be! If it happened today, I would have been quiet. You see, she was not apologizing because she was guilty; she was apologizing because she had never experienced the freedom to express sadness, anger, frustration, or fear without having to face consequences. She had learned to diffuse anger with rueful apologies, disagreement with laughter, and offense with shame.
During the same time, I had come across a theory, rioting and untested to my knowledge of emotions, about memories. In Emotion Focused Therapy, emotions are like the after-bloom of somber, sanitary pellets of rain or the skeletal remnants of shriveled life after a storm. In simple language, how we feel about something is telling of what we desire, and need. During major life events- losing a parent, spouse, or a child, being abused, surviving an accident- the emotional turmoil is tremendous. However, between the event and memory formation, there is a critical period when it can be disrupted- not the experience itself, but how we process what happened to us. Earlier, research suggested that once this critical period is over, it can be modified or inhibited, but not eliminated. And the more arousing the situation, the more it will be remembered. Like stacked rings inside the bark of a tree, these experiences constitute the architecture of our emotional world. So when confrontation with authority is extremely unnerving, our brains might be replaying memories of disapproval from a parent figure as a child. And when a friend does not recognize you in public, warning bells alert you of social rejection. This is how memories consolidate.
However, new research suggests that the said critical period is not an isolated occurrence. Yes, the first time we process something horrible, the memory is in its most nascent form- easily malleable like a sheet of gold. But every time we recall what happened, there is another window of time during which this memory can be reshaped, remolded, reframed, and hopefully relived. That confrontation with authority may yield an authentic apology from your professor. Your friend may turn around to get a better look at you, mouthing a large-hearted greeting. Dear reader, the reality of this ‘reconsolidation’ suggests that you are no longer a powerless child facing powerful adults- so why should your memories convince you otherwise?
Seems simple and straightforward, right? But are you and I willing to put our hearts on the line and risk that confrontation? Are we willing to consider that your friend may have simply not paid attention to where she was looking? After all, our negative thoughts, painful and damning as they might be, have protected us when better sense has not. Avoiding a social event because you concluded that people are not interested in your company saved you from the agonizing possibility of it being true. Breaking up with your partner because you assumed that their busy schedule was a cover-up for disinterest saved you from horror of rejection- you called dibs before they do! Smiling at your boss when they dismissed your idea saved you from probable reprimand. Ignoring your friend’s subtle boundary violations saved you from losing love. I’m writing none of the above with satire or irony- I mean it; you found a way to survive, and you held on to it like grim death (this I say ironically, yes).
This brings me to two major arches of this article. Allow me to break them down into comprehensible discourses. For starters, awareness of problematic and self-jeopardizing behavior, triumphant as it is, also stinks like the putrid aftermath of rotting milk. Everyone starts therapy at a subjective, unique stage of their psychological health and awareness. Some clients come for therapy because they’ve been sent by their friends/spouse/parents. Some come because the psychological pain becomes unbearable. Still others may come because it is the last door they have the energy to knock on, before giving up. I went to therapy the day I realized that a falling out with a close friend had triggered a response so strong that even with a tear-streaked face, I was unable to figure out why the tragedy had seemed catastrophic. I was not unfamiliar with the anxiety of losing love. But blame it on my age, or years of self-work resulting from studying psychology, this time I was not blind to the disproportionateness of my reaction. It is not like I had not lost relationships in the past. Friends had not reciprocated my affection, or betrayed my trust. Boyfriends had thoughtlessly violated personal boundaries, and I’d been scared to express my anguish and walk away. I feared that they might leave. In the third session, my therapist gave me a curious smile, docked her head to one side, and asked me a simple question- and what happens if they leave?
It felt like someone flung a frying pan at my face, and I was knocked out. I hated it. I hated finally facing the question- the answer to which I’d been scared of all my life.
Does that ever happen to you? You fear the answer to a question that you haven’t even dared to ask yourself? What if they don’t love you? What if they are cheating on you? What if it is a tumor? What if this ends? What if there’s war tomorrow? What if you don’t survive? What if…and it can go on and on.
The truth is that I did not know what about a loved one leaving made me so anxious. Six months into therapy, I found myself sobbing at the answer. There’s a concept in cognitive development called object permanence. It is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be sensed; infants below 7–8 months of age do not have the concept.
Parallelly, we can talk about emotional permanence. Its existence depends on emotional experiences and becomes a part of a person’s autobiographical memory. People who do not have emotional permanence find it difficult to grasp the idea that just because support, love, care, and proximity is not consistently and predictably available, it does not follow that it has disappeared altogether. Turns out, I did not have the concept. And disappearance of love posed a grim possibility; if it occurs often, I’d be undeserving of it. Knowing this at 23 felt both like letting down a sack filled with rocks and gulping down a glass full of needles. It was liberating, empowering, overwhelming and full of shit (excuse the expression).
Awareness is an irreversible change, like a crease on a crisp sheet of paper. You can no longer go back to being in denial, and that means that the struggle has just begun. You can no longer rely on your older and tested defense mechanisms without being disappointed with yourself.
You cannot ‘just end it’ with your partner because that’s better than them ending it first; not without realizing why you’re doing it. You cannot roll back into a relationship that insulted you; not without feeling resentful. You cannot shut people out of your life because you’re scared of being hurt; not without wondering what would happen if you didn’t.
This brings me to the second and most crucial discourse of my article- what happens after awareness? (Regardless of whether you gain it in or outside therapy). According to Greenberg (the co-Founder of EFT), it is then paramount that you express- in any form or temper that seems to work for you. You express it with your actions, or inactions, speech, or silence. You actively express yourself in patterns that allow you to get involved with what you have just uncovered. For me, that meant pausing and acknowledging my feelings before reacting. Instead of immediately fawning, or cushioning my anger, I had to allow myself to take a step back. Once this is achieved, there is a need to regulate your emotions. To regulate means to tolerate what you’re feeling in the moment that you are feeling it. The deliberate ability to regulate emotions involves processes such as identifying and labelling emotions, accepting and tolerating them, the ability to calm oneself, the use of breathing, and shifting the attention. For me, this meant observing myself- almost from the gaze of a third person. Here, I was able to ask myself, “What is happening to me? What is clawing at me? What is uneasy for me?” This is supposedly followed by reflection. Here, we make sense of our emotions and try to assimilate it into the larger frame of narratives. That could involve knowing how your body reacts during anger as opposed to hurt as opposed to panic. For instance, I realized that my first reaction in anger is always a slight frown — almost immune from the recognition of an observer. That is followed by a heavy sigh to calm myself, and then a cacophony of negative feelings, which is where things would start getting confusing for me.
Lastly, and what brings me to pinnacle of my concluding argument is the idea of an anomalous memory- an emotional experience so much in contrast with what we’re used to that it stands out like a pool of water in sand. Greenberg ends with the ultimate implication of therapy- a corrective emotional experience. In therapy, it is possible to change an emotion by having a new experience that changes the meaning of an old feeling. Allow me to explain, imagine that in all your life, vulnerability has been met with mockery, shaming, and neglect. If you’re a man, perhaps you’ve even been bulldozed with the occasional ‘boys don’t cry’. So, the boy learned to grin, bear, and become a ‘man.’ That leaves us with the learning that every moment of vulnerability must be hidden, and even barricaded with anger. Over time, this consolidates to become a pattern- like memorizing the rhythm between pressing the clutch and changing gears.
And then, one day, something unusual happens. You cry, and no one is laughing at you, stealing awkward glances, or thinking less of you. You are empathized with, and given the rightful window to grieve, mourn, and express. This is what memory reconsolidation looks like- when an emotion is felt but it is no longer associated with past learning.
Memory reconsolidation creates pockets of opportunity to encounter new things. While you do not have to go all out, you can place your bets on trying. You can try to ask for help, you can try to socialize, you can allow yourself to sit with anger, and you can try to take a timeout instead of deciding what you want in the heat of the moment. Even as I state all of the above, I leave you with another thought- a rather depressing one, but honest. I have a bone to pick with theories in general. When they outline these stages of grieving, recuperating, emotional healing, and change, they forget to mention the most practical outcome of awareness.
They don’t tell you about the anticlimactic back and forth between glimpses of change, and old habits. They don’t tell you that once you’re aware of ‘why,’ and start making efforts to change, there will be successful ‘corrective experiences,’ and then there will be times when you tried and failed. When you disagreed vehemently and still could not make your point, or when you tried to control your anger and still lashed out, or when you reframed a negative thought after eating something you love but still felt guilty.
It is in these moments that you will realize that nothing in life moves in a linear direction- not relationships, not habits, not affection, not even the stream of blood in our veins. The ‘bingo’ moments will be followed by crests and troughs of the good and the bad. But I urge you to read the last two sentences again- nothing in life will move in a linear direction, and the bad will follow the good. The back and forth will continue contributing to the rings inside the bark of the tree that blooms with your memories — until you realize how many have amassed to since you started counting, and how far you have come from when you started walking.
