Non-Violence in TherapySustaining Energy in a Helping Profession Donna Martin has been practising and teaching yoga since the late sixties. She is a charter member of the IAYT - International Association of Yoga Therapists - and assistant editor of that association's Journal. She has an M.A. in counselling and is a certified Hakomi therapist. In addition to her private practice as a bodymind therapist, Donna works as an alcohol and drug addiction counsellor. She also offers retreats and workshops for therapists in the U.S. and Canada, including Loving Presence: Therapy as a Spiritual Practice (with Ron Kurtz), Sustaining Energy in a Helping Profession, A Bodymind Approach to Trauma, and Remembering Wholeness: a 5-month Bodymind Therapy Training. She can be reached at (604) 374-2514, or 1-800-667-4550. Donna's articles, while written in the context of therapy, nonetheless contain serious food for thought for Life Skills coaches. Non-Violence in TherapyIt is no coincidence that men and women who were abused physically or emotionally as children are frequently drawn into abusive relationships as adults. These can include personal relationships, work relationships, relationships with abusive substances such as drugs or alcohol, and even "therapeutic" relationships. It is not so much the use of any particular method that makes therapy abusive, but rather the way it is practised. The therapist who disrespects or violates a client's boundaries - even in the name of healing - can cause as much suffering as a parent who abuses in the name of love. It seems that an intuitive healing instinct may draw us into a potentially painful scenario which is a repetition of our early history. This offers us the opportunity to respond creatively and to be empowered rather than victimized as a child would have been. Part of the result of childhood abuse at the hands of parents is that decisions are made unconsciously - decisions like, "It's all my fault", "I can't do anything right", "I'm not good enough", "I'm not lovable (or I'm not lovable unless...)", "There's something wrong with me", or "It's not safe for me to express my feelings or ask for what I need". It is these decisions that continue to affect our lives as adults. Unfortunately, a history of unresolved abuse can program a person for continued abuse as an adult, due to an expectation of abuse in relationships, an increased tolerance level, inappropriate boundaries, difficulty recognizing what constitutes abuse, and an unconscious association of abuse with love. Violence, or abuse, in therapy may be quite subtle, as Ron Kurtz points out in his Hakomi Method of Body-centered Psychotherapy. My training in both Hakomi and yoga has given me an appreciation of the need for non-violent therapy to break the cycle of abuse for many clients and re-establish the healthy boundaries that go along with healthy self-esteem. (The yoga principle of non-violence is called "ahimsa" in Sanskrit.) Let's agree that the obvious forms of abuse in therapy (including verbal and sexual abuse) are totally unacceptable. Now we can address the less obvious ways that therapy can be abusive, including when:
(I have heard actual reports of all of these behaviors over the years.) Non-violence in therapy honours the inner wisdom of each client and respects the person as the ultimate authority on his/her healing process. "Non-violence is born of an attitude of acceptance and an active attention to the way events naturally unfold." (Ron Kurtz) Without this attitude, emotions may well be brought up to the surface and expressed with only, at best, a temporary feeling of relief. Physical or emotional release is of limited value without the true healing that is based on personal empowerment, release from limiting beliefs, and healthy self-esteem. I often quote Richard Bach from his book, Illusions: "Learning is finding out what you already know, doing is demonstrating that you know it, and teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you." It is only when teachers, parents, therapists, and other helpers and healers really accept that all healing comes from within, and that the most we can really do is be present for others, as for ourselves, with a quality of non-judgmental awareness, only then will boundary violations, abuse, and even neglect and abandonment shift to let something else (loving presence... compassion) enter into the relationship. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Body-centered Psychotherapy: the Hakomi Method, LifeRhythm, Mendocino, CA 1990. Grace Unfolding, Ron Kurtz and Greg Johanson, Bell Tower, New York, 1991. Illusions, Richard Bach, Delacorte Press, 1977 (also available in paperback) Remembering Wholeness, Donna Martin, Cardinal Publications, Kamloops, B.C., 1995. Sustaining Energy in a Helping Profession...requires that the therapist: ... is difficult if the therapist:
intensity - low tolerance for boredom; |
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