What comes first— interrelatedness or people relating?

If the body can be regarded as a language then a relationship between two people is like the relationship between words of a sentence. Sentences emerge from the awareness of the author, they do not cause each other. All the words fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. We do not look at the words in a sentenec and try to relate them together. Instead we try to see the already existing relationship that exists between them, that the author intended or meant, and that, indeed, the very words are a manifestation of. Relationships are not static things but dynamic states of activity — relating. It is not that the world is made up of things including people who then relate to each other in various ways. Ways of relating are ‘morphic fields’ or psychical shapes which are then ‘filled out’ in the form of the people or objects or events we perceive. This is the case whether we are talking about one person ‘abusing’ another or two people planning to go out for the evening.

Two things flow from this re-orientation of our thinking. Firstly, if it is ways of relating that emerge from and within fields of interrelatedness manifesting as, say, two people, then these two person’s actions fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. They are like two sides of a coin or the outside and inside surfaces of a sphere — they mutually define each other. They are twin aspects of a mutual boundary relation. They look like they are separate and distinct pieces in a relation (which leads to the whole scientific ‘thing’). But they are actually inseparable but distinct elements OF a relation.

Secondly, if all events emerge from and within fields of interrelatedness, then science’s description of reality and, thus, our commonsense way of looking at reality has to be turned on its head. Science believes that consciousness (fields of awareness) emerge somehow from a non aware universe of dead matter. Awareness somehow emerges from the brain. Science and commonsense takes for granted that ways of relating are a product of the interaction between things. Two people meet and form a relationship. Two great hunks of matter attract each other and we end up with a planet revolving around a sun.

Thus science is led to believe that relationships are ‘caused’ by interactions between material objects. 2 billiard balls hit each other at a certain angle and this collision ‘causes’ both to go off in certain directions. Someone is assassinated and this ‘causes’ a world war. A man beats up his young son on a regular basis and this action ‘causes’ him to suffer from long term depression, feelings of inferiority and self harming behaviour years later.

We have to reverse this. Consciousness did not emerge from dead matter. Awareness is not a product of the brain. The brain does not produce dreams. Ways of relating are states of awareness or being. If I am ‘down’, this mood is a whole way of relating to the world. States of awareness do not emerge from the body nor are they caused by people ‘banging’ together like billiard balls.

Consider a common scenario. X and Y decide to go out for the night. They leave the house together and walk to the car. X suddenly realises that Y has gone back inside for something, which is a common occurrence. X gets in the car and, waiting, begins to feel irritated and impatient. Finally Y arrives and gets in the car. X tries not to but says something in a slightly ‘snappy’ tone of voice. Y tries to brush it off but mulls over it for the rest of the night and wakes up next morning ‘depressed’. Now surely X has caused Y to feel depressed with the snappy comment; surely X’s action has caused Y’s state of awareness and thus their way of relating to the world. According to phenomenology, the situation must be reversed. In the first place the couple’s state of relatedness, their connection, the level of intimacy is manifested in the behaviour and actions of the two people. And not only this for their actions are inseparable but distinct — that is, X being snappy and Y ‘stewing’ on it are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Both person’s actions are a manifestation of their already existing way of relating. That X could snap at Y and Y could stew on it are both reflective of their way of relating, not the other way around. All of our actions, including our thoughts and feelings emerge from a prior state of interrelatedness. Events do not cause us to think and feel what we do, or to perform whatever actions we do. That is a linear action-reaction way of looking at the world. It is like saying that the shape of one piece of a jigsaw puzzle is caused by another shape. Both shapes are a manifestation of the ‘field of interrelatedness’ — the jigsaw puzzle picture.

If a man physically abuses his son, this does not cause him to feel depressed. It does not cause him to believe (that is, get the meaning of) that he is worthless or life is meaningless. The prior state of their interrelatedness was made manifest in the violent relationship between them. To conclude, believing that events can cause us to think or mean anything is equivalent to believing that words in a sentence cause each other or the shape of one jigsaw puzzle piece causes another.

Clients come to counselling because they are in pain. Their feeling states hurt them, they can’t bear them, they don’t feel themselves.

In the causal model of illness, the locus of discomfort is understood to be purely within the client’s body. They have something wrong with their bio-psycho-machinery and this disease process manifests in certain behaviours and symptoms. For example, if a person has a broken leg they will probably limp. If a person has a certain brain disorder (psychotic illness), they might tell you about voices in their head or seeing things. In this model, the therapist observes the behaviours and symptoms, classifies them into groups, compares them with a known array of symptoms and makes a diagnosis. Then, based on this, a treatment plan is constructed. In this way of thinking about illness, the therapist merely observes the patient as if they are completely separate from them. Nothing the therapist thinks, feels or believes has any effect on the creation of the limp or the voices or the beliefs. This way of looking at the world takes it for granted that reality is made up of separate, isolated objects with a boundary around each object thus confining its identity to a ‘something’ (an ego, genetic structure or ‘nut’ of awareness) within the confines of that boundary. Being separate from each other, the objects in this way of thinking can only communicate by sending signals across space to each other about themselves and the way they see the world. In this model the therapist is focused on the content of what the patient is talking about. Relationship is something that is tacked on at the end. This object and that object ‘form’ a relationship, which is understood to be a separate thing to the objects themselves, thus we now have three things, the two objects and the relationship.

In opposition to the causal model which has dominated thinking in the Western world for hundreds of years, is the ‘inner relationship’ model which arises from a whole new paradigm being manifested in many different systems of thinking at different stages of maturity — ‘field’ phenomenology, anthroposophy, zen buddhism, quantum physics, New Age theories, linguistics, chaos theory etc. This model talks about human beings in terms of ‘waves’ of conscious energy rather than solid particles or bodies. Being waves, human beings ‘overlap’ with each other and everything else. They share a common ‘space’ of interaction, in a way analogous to how the atoms of hydrogen and oxygen ‘share’ electrons or ‘energy levels’ to form chemical bonds and thus an entirely new ‘relationship’ or compound called water. Human beings are always and everywhere in relationship, with themselves, other people and the world. There is no such thing as THE human subject, aware of THE object, as if they are two separated things. Human beings are always elements of a relationship, always connected with reality through bonds of feeling. When those bonds feel dissonant to us, we experience that as a sense of dis-ease. If we cannot bear this sense of dis-ease and seek to change it or get rid of it rather than embody and feel it, we are likely to create a disease.

With human beings it is ‘feeling states’ that are the ‘psychic electrons’ we share with each other in a bonding process that is the very medium of connection. Feelings are not ‘things’ that we ‘have’ inside us, not internal ‘objects’, but the very ‘wavelengths of attunement’ that unite us. They are verbs not nouns. We actively feel a cat’s fur and transmit love to the cat at the same time. When we feel someone’s anger we actively interact with their feeling in a sensuous inward touching. Feelings are not things inside us to be expressed, discharged, explored, evacuated, controlled, managed, repressed, etc. They are ‘waves’ of feeling flowing between a person and their inner self, between the person and other people or between the person and the world. For example, if I say to a group of people, ‘fingernails scraping down a blackboard’, each person internally ‘shudders’ or ‘cringes’ as they get a felt sense of this experience. In that moment, there are not separate experiences of ‘fingernails down a blackboard’, but one shared experience with many faces, uniting us all in relationship, in a ‘bonding’ process — we are all on the same wavelength! It is as if a ‘wave’ of feeling sweeps through all the people uniting them in that moment, analogous to a Mexican wave travelling through a soccer crowd around a stadium.

In this model the locus of discomfort is within the client’s relationship with themself, with other people and/or the world. The person has no ‘illness,’ there is nothing wrong with their bio-machinery. The problem lies in the between-ness within their relationships with themself and others. Human beings are always and everywhere in relationship, with themselves, others and the world. This way of looking at the world takes it for granted that reality is made up of relationships, first and foremost, with ‘separate, isolated objects with a boundary around each’ being elements of those relationships, secondary constructions. Identity flows from relationships and isn’t a ‘something’ within our bodies. Since objects in this way of thinking were never separate from each other in the first place, they already are inwardly connected together, and are communicating constantly and ‘silently’ through these invisible cords of connection (in sci-fi, this is pictured as communicating through (not across) space, via ‘worm holes’). In this model the therapist is focused on the process of what is happening, the inner relationship between the client and themself, client and therapist and client and the world. Human beings are always in relationship, always connected with reality through bonds of feeling. Since the locus of discomfort is in the between-ness, when a client enters your space, ‘their’ problem manifests right there, in the relationship that unfolds (as do yours!!). Rather than observe the client as if they are a thing with the problem inside them, the therapist makes the shift to ‘observe’ the relationship between them and the client, within which the ‘problem’ is made manifest. That is, the therapist is not separate from the client in this model. Everything the therapist thinks, feels or believes has an effect on the client’s internal feeling state and vice versa, because all that we both are is constantly and silently communicating.

There are countless psychotherapies and methods of counselling that have been used by people for many years. All these various therapists have been successful, more or less, with some clients and unsuccessful with others. If all of them have been successful in some way, then surely there must be something common in what every therapist is ‘doing’ that is the ‘magic’ ingredient in helping people change. The only common ingredient in all counselling and therapy is ‘relationship, relationship’, not anything particular about any therapy. What heals people is the relationship between therapist and client, not any therapeutic techniques or ways of intervening. It is not information, insight, expression of feelings, working through grief, anger management etc that helps clients change and be better at relating with themself and other people. Quite the opposite. As the relationship between therapist and client is deepened, broadened, made more meaningful and intimate, clients connect with their deepest sense of self and get better at understanding and embodying themselves, manifesting this in an increased ability to ‘express’ their feelings, ‘manage’ their anger etc.

The aim of counselling is to help the client find meaning in life’s events and gain a sense of inward connectedness or relatedness to themself, other people and the world. This is achieved through deepening, broadening, enriching and making more intimate the relationship between you and the client. It means being fully there with that person, being as connected as you can be with your deep, inner self. It means fully embodying in your face and eyes all that you feel and sense inwardly and ‘radiating’ that to the client, while completely receiving all that the client is radiating to you. It means sharing the client’s burden, taking it on willingly. It means not interviewing the client, not taking notes while you are talking, not thinking about what you are going to say next, not managing situations etc. It means relating to clients with the same respect, compassion and desire to help as you do with your lover, infant child or best friend!

It means getting on the same wavelength as the client. If the client brings up a ‘problem’ with being ‘unaffectionate’ or ‘cold’, say, this is not an internal ‘thing’ that the client ‘has’ inside them, but a possible ‘bond’ of connectedness if you can identify the ‘same’ feeling state within you. Then it becomes a shared experience between you. Through this experience you will be ‘sending’ a message to the client silently that the so-called ‘problem’ of being unaffectionate or cold is not a personal and private problem the client has within them, but a public and completely human problem — one aspect of being a human being — that it is completely natural and normal, albeit painful at times. It becomes a human challenge not a personal problem, a challenge that countless humans have struggled with since the beginning of time. Through this whole process of ‘normalising’ the problem, the client is able to clarify whether it really is a problem, or whether they just thought it should be a problem because they have been told it is by friends or society. That is, one doesn’t need to be ‘warm’ or ‘affectionate’ in order to fulfil oneself in life. However, if the client wants to become a warmer or more affectionate person, then they are more likely to achieve this in counselling if they understand this as a general human relationship problem and not something personal they are doing wrong.

Each person in a relationship is inwardly ‘radiating’ their silent thoughts, feelings, expectations and beliefs to the other, while receiving the other’s through the ‘wormholes’ of inner space. At the same time we are radiating our responses to the other’s silent communications. So each person is simultaneously reflecting and responding to the other’s looks on their faces and in their eyes, tones of voice, shades of expression etc, all completely silently and ‘unconsciously’ at a soul or inward level. This is sometimes crudely referred to as ‘body language’ but it is something much more sophisticated and complicated than that. It is the actual stuff of communication. The purely materialist, causal model and the schools of body language implicitly believe that verbal communication is the most direct form of expression and body language is a supplement to this. A ‘spiritual’ way of looking at human beings sees the situation in reverse. It is actually the silent communication that is the most direct because it reveals the ‘deep down truths’ of an individual, while speech is ‘indirect’ in that it can represent what we think we should be like.

This provides us with the true ‘key’ to the secret or magic of counselling and change, the common ingredient to all psychotherapies — inner connectedness and inner relatedness. You, the counsellor, are continually inwardly radiating all your thoughts, values, beliefs, expectations to the client, receiving theirs and radiating as well your responses to their thoughts and feelings, and you cannot do otherwise. If you try and cover this up, THAT cover up will be radiated. Our inward feelings and thoughts are the very medium of connection, the bond that unites us. Being the bridge that connects, any slightest internal ‘movement’ of awareness in us is felt by the client and vice versa. So-called observation is actually interaction. Observation changes what is observed and the counsellor can take advantage of this to change the nature of the bridge and thus affect or influence the client’s inner being. For example, if a man ‘has’ a ‘problem’ with anger and regards it as a ‘bad’ thing, and you, the counsellor, also inwardly regard anger as a bad thing, then this resonance will be manifest in a common bridge between you, you will be subtly reinforcing the client’s problem, even if verbally, you are trying to encourage him to express his anger. But if you inwardly believe that the expression of anger is completely natural and healthy, then this feeling state connects with theirs and the ‘bridge’ between you is a ‘composite’ of both and changes the client from within. Since your feelings and their feelings are the ‘electrons’ in the shared bond between you, your ‘peaceful and accepting’ attitude to anger will interact with theirs. They might experience this by feeling inwardly accepted by you, understood by you and be in a more receptive position to receive what you have to offer on a verbal level.

Just as when you are relating to your children or lovers, it is your character, your whole bearing and manner as a therapist that makes change happen. These are the secret ingredients in any successful relationship, how we look at each other, how we listen and attend, how we respond to each other and how we reflect back to each other what we see and hear with our demeanour. We do not manage our loved ones or friends, interview them, take a history, assess their problems, make a diagnosis, construct a management plan, review their progress and discharge them from our care. We simply relate as deeply as we can and everything else falls into place.

Clients come to counselling to see YOU. They do not go to receive some cognitive behavioural therapy, family therapy, narrative therapy. They go to counselling to be received by YOU. Therapies are interchangeble, therapists are not. They do not attend counselling to see anyone who is competent, they come to see somebody — YOU.

the wood and the trees — the relationship, stupid!

In the inner relationship model, the therapist is not asking questions like, "What is the problem with this person?" "What are they doing wrong?" "What feelings are they repressing?" Instead the therapist is constantly trying to ‘feel out’ and sense "What is the nature of this person’s relationship with themself and other people?" The focus is on the relationship the client has with themself and between therapist and client. What the client says is regarded as a ‘portal’ or gateway to the relationship, it is not the focus of ‘problem solving’. The therapist is constantly asking him/herself, "What are the obstacles between us that are preventing intimacy and understanding?"

When a client says that the problem is anger and they want to learn to control it because they lose their temper and abuse people, of course this is a ‘problem’ and needs to be changed. That is not at issue. What is at issue is the way to go about this. Where we focus. For when a client says that they have a problem with anger, what they mean of course is that they lack a sense of connectedness, they have a problem in their relationship with themselves, other people or the world, manifesting this in outbursts of rage or violence etc. For example, they can get angry with themselves when they ‘fail’ and punish themselves by ‘self destructing’.

When a client says that they have problems with ‘managing my finances because I gamble it all away or spend it on alcohol’ etc, they are really saying that they feel a sense of disconnection, they have a problem with their relationships and manifest it in spending money to feel ‘good’.

When a client says that they use drugs and should stop, they actually are feeling cut off from themselves, they have relationship problems and they deal with the painful feelings by anaesthetising themselves.

When a client says that they were abused by a parent when they were young, they are actually telling you that in the present, they feel a deep sense of constantly ‘being abused’ and like anyone in this society put it down to something in the past.

If you focus on the anger, the money problems, drugs and alcohol or the cause being in the past, you are missing the point. They are the symptoms not the problem. They are the client’s attempted solution to the lack of inner connectedness (that any animal feels as its birthright), and fulfilment in their relationships. The words, the content of what the client says, is always an indication of the nature of their relationship with themself and others.

In working with clients who are in extreme difficulty, there are many societal ‘myths’, codes of behaviour and beliefs to avoid. There are supposed ‘right’ ways to live life and ‘wrong’ ways. If you accept any of them, then you will probably act to try and help the client solve these ‘problems’. This will distract you from the core of the client’s issues — their search for meaning and inner connectedness. What follows are some of the ‘myths’ that I have encountered, fallen victim to or seen through.

1. It is wrong to be angry. Anger is a bad thing. Anger leads to violence.
2. It is wrong to have ‘bad’ thoughts such as wanting to hurt someone, steal, have sex with a friend’s partner, blame God or others.
3. It is bad to be overweight, underweight, gamble, abuse drugs or alcohol, smoke cigarettes, eat meat.
4. One should be affectionate and warm with people.
5. You should have an active sex life.
6. People should be socially outgoing, not introverted or a loner. You must have some friends.
7. You should be relaxed, peaceful, calm, not stressed out. If you aren’t then it is a sign that you have done something wrong.
8. One should put the past behind them, forgive and forget, get on with life.
9. The cause of present events lies in the past, therefore you need to ‘work through’ past traumatic events to be happy in the present.
10. You should express your emotions, not bottle them up or repress them.
11. You should be able to put everything into words, clearly, directly and openly otherwise you are being indirect or manipulative.
12. It is bad to be self-destructive.
13. It is wrong not to want children.
14. It is wrong to like money or wealth, a nice house and nice clothes. It is bad to be materialistic.
15. It is wrong to get sick or be unhealthy. That is a sign that there is something wrong in your emotional or spiritual life. It is a sign of bad karma.
16. It is wrong to ‘throw tantrums’, feel sorry for yourself. You must not act out your feelings.
17. It is wrong to not want to work. Only by working can you be a productive member of society.
18. There is something wrong with you if you avoid relationships and closeness.
19. It is wrong to hurt peoples’ feelings. If you search long enough you will find a way to get through life without having to hurt anyone’s feelings.

We all know that we do not just communicate verbally but behaviourally. We all have communicated at times by ‘sulking’, ‘manipulating’ or ‘attention seeking’. This way of communicating is an attempt to get other people to feel our pain by showing them our distress, in actions not words. It says, ‘feel what I am feeling’. But the very pejorative sense in the way these behaviours are named reveals our society’s beliefs about direct and indirect communication. Our culture values speaking over listening, doing over being, direct as against indirect communication, verbal over behavioural communication, outward versus inward connectedness and relatedness. Thus we tend to ‘put down’ any communication that isn’t ‘straight’, clear, and to the point. Yet many children in our society are forced to find other ways to get their message over because the official ways are banned to them. Children who are abused are told in no uncertain way to be seen and not heard, to keep quiet about the abuse. Their own sense of shame or humiliation may compound their inability to talk about what has happened. But this doesn’t mean that they aren’t desperate to tell the world in another way! When some children are direct with their feelings with the people around them, they may have been brutalised for being so direct. Such children find other ways to embody who they are, in their behaviour rather than their words.

Such children can grow up to become people in severe difficulty. They become labelled as ‘difficult clients’ when they exhibit behaviours such as ‘attention seeking’, ‘manipulative’, ‘self harming’. It is assumed by our society that they could be direct — that is, verbal, but since they are ‘choosing’ to be indirect, they are not really genuinely in need, in some sense they are merely ‘acting out’, being dramatic or histrionic. In our culture, to be direct means to want help, to be indirect means that you merely want attention.

But this way of thinking misses the wood for the trees. In an episode of ‘Fawlty Towers’, Sybil is upset at the lack of feeling shown by Basil, and acts in certain ways to ‘point this out’, to make him feel guilty. Basil responds with one of those classic lines that not only endears this programme to its fans but reveals something illuminating about our culture. He says, "Do I detect the smell of burning martyr?" Here is summarised the whole essence of our ineffective ways of treating so-called difficult clients. Basil’s response is identical to the response of the system when it says that a client’s behaviour is attention-seeking, or manipulative or self-destructive etc. For such comments about Sybil’s behaviour (and that of clients) entirely misses the point about the obvious pain she is in. Of course Sybil couldn’t have been direct with her feelings to Basil for such ways of communicating simply don’t happen between them. They do not have a sense of inward connectedness any more, if they ever did. What else was she to do? She may not even have known exactly what her pain was about in order to communicate it directly. That is, when people are ‘acting out’ it is not a matter of either being direct or indirect. They could be ‘trying on their own feelings’ to get to know themselves better before verbalising them.

This is the situation that so-called difficult clients are in. They are in great pain, but don’t really know why or what it is about, let alone verbalise it clearly. How can they be ‘direct’ and say to someone, "I feel disconnected, lost, alien. I don’t feel safe, I can’t really tell you why I feel unsafe because, objectively, I have no reason to feel unsafe, but I do, and I want to be in hospital where I know I will feel safe." If they said that, it would get them nowhere, it would not be serious enough. Being ‘direct’ simply won’t get them anywhere because they don’t really know what their pain is about (if you have rarely or never experienced inward connectedness how can you put that lack into words?), so they communicate it ‘indirectly’ with their behaviour in an attempt to get people to feel their feelings, rather than have to tell them about their feelings. If they want to get into hospital, or be looked after by someone in order to feel safe, they will do something ‘dramatic’, like cut themselves or overdose in a desperate attempt to ‘get through’ to us, to make it clear to us how much they are in pain. In response the staff or the system in general feels manipulated and resists this, resents being a ‘tool’ of the client. Staff want to help, not be ‘controlled’ by clients. They cannot help but send out ‘hostile’ vibes to the client, who experiences this as rejection and believes that staff ‘just don’t get it’. So they ‘up’ their behaviour, magnify it, in order to get their message across (they might self harm in hospital), with the result that staff feel as though the client is ungrateful and unappreciative of all they are doing. At some stage the client will be ‘punished’ with discharge but told it is in their best interests because hospitalisation won’t help them.

Why are we so unable to see behaviour such as ‘self harm’ as a communication rather than just ‘self harm’ as if ‘self harm’ actually means anything? Why are we so unable to see beneath the surface behaviour to what it points at — the pain underneath? A famous Chinese proverb has it, ‘A finger points at the moon, the idiot looks at the finger’. Whenever a client in difficulty cuts themself and well meaning staff ask them why they did that, they are all staring at the finger rather than what the finger is pointing at. No wonder clients who are asked such questions feel like screaming at staff, "If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t be here!"

What is self harm? Why is it so bad that a person cuts themself? Why do we focus on it? What is so ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ about self-destructive behaviour? What is harmful about a young woman diagnosed as bulimic who vomits up her food? Let’s take a look at the example of anorexia bulimia, surely one of the most difficult of all so-called ‘difficult clients’. Compare it with a woman who is pregnant.

A woman who becomes pregnant knows that she is in for an uncomfortable time. She might vomit early in the day with morning sickness. She might ‘destroy’ her figure during the pregnancy and put on weight that she finds hard to remove after giving birth. Why aren’t these behaviours self-destructive examples of self harming? Because, we are told, pregnancy is a choice and is a means to an end — the birth of a child. The woman may indeed regret the loss of her figure but she might even get pregnant again. Surely this is self-destructive?

Finally the argument is raised that bulimia is a bad thing and must be stopped because it can be life threatening. But this argument is also fallacious. It wasn’t so long ago that pregnancy itself was a threat to life, both to the mother and the foetus. But this risk never stopped women from getting pregnant. No, there is nothing wrong or bad about any behaviour no matter how ‘bizarre’ it seems, when we understand its meaning. When we can see the context, we will be able to see how such self-destructive behaviour is always an example of the person doing the best they know how, considering their beliefs, attitudes and expectations at the time.

Self-destructive behaviour, cutting oneself, overdosing, punching walls, vomiting, drinking, ‘poor me’ etc are behavioural communications. Like the child throwing a tantrum, if they could have put it into words they would have. They can’t so they embody the message. If we don’t get it, we could at least stop blaming the client for being ‘indirect’.