“We are all concerned with the idea of change…”I should be like this” and so on and so on. What happens is that the idea of deliberate change never, never, never functions. As soon as you say, “I want to change” - a counterforce is created that prevents you from change. Changes are taking place by themselves. If you go deeper into what you are, if you accept what is there, then a change automatically occurs by itself. This is the paradox of change.”

Frederick S. Perls

Try as we might, life’s absurdities are not problems to be rid of nor are our contradictions meant to be done away with. We can work with our reality or we can work against it.

Many of us live in a world of appearances, amputating ourselves here and there to fit into our various masks. Masks can be most helpful in navigating the world, as long as we remember it is not the mask that makes us lovable, otherwise they become our prison. We spend a lot of energy on these appearances, or who-we-wish-to-be, a perpetual self-improvement project while not nearly enough energy is invested into getting to know who we really are.

“Where there is great love there are always miracles. Miracles rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming to us from far off, but on our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what there is about us always.”

Willa Cather

Meeting ourselves is a lifelong journey. Finding the ability to see through all our disguises takes time and willingness and support. For some, individual therapy or couples therapy plays that supporting role. It is also not unusual at all for the therapy work to have starts and stops and long hiatuses - this revealing of the self is, after all, not usually something we can do in a hurry.

“…it had never occurred to him that what was great was not always cast in a form that was beautiful.”

Jens Peter Jacobsen, Niels Lyhne

Deep inner work is often liberating and destabilizing. Perhaps these forces are inextricably linked like night and day.

Entering into a therapeutic relationship where together patient and therapist navigate the inner landscape of a mind can be the most worth-it of ventures. Alone, we have many blind spots. Together with a trusted witness, those blind spots may be revealed. The therapy relationship is an utterly unique one. It is there when you forge ahead, it is there when nothing seems to be happening. It is there when seeds sprout and there when the rewards aren’t yet apparent. It is a resource and guide when, to your own bewilderment, you keep making the same “mistakes” over and over and over again.

With the right therapist-patient fit, it is truly the temenos space where everyday conventional rules are not nearly as important as the finding of one’s true self.