I think this all stemmed from starting to respect the possibility that I had a problem with my own emotional stability.
I had worked with complicated cases in my psychotherapy practice but I hadn’t quite seen the way in which I myself was complicated.
When I was training, I remember being caught on a particular question which was this? Am I stable enough to be a psychotherapist?
I would go over this in my sessions in psychoanalysis but never really know how to look at it in a way that helped. In a psychoanalytic psychotherapy you can ask a question like this without really getting a reply because the therapy is aimed providing a space for you to work on these things yourself and while that’s helpful in all kinds of ways, I think there are situations where actually a patient needs more information. The problem was I was a bit intimidated, shamed perhaps, and scared of the question.
I was scared of the possibility that I might be somehow psychologically injured. As I say, I think I was ashamed of it. That is in itself a big problem, shame, because, I think particularly if you’re going to be a psychotherapist, you have to have a relationship with your own shame. As any psychotherapist knows, whatever the successes of our work, there are a long list of our therapeutic relationships that didn’t go so well. A psychotherapist has to come to terms with their failures, limitations and shame.
Then many years after I had finished training and had an established practice, I was working with a client who decided to see a psychiatrist to test out the question of whether they suffered from borderline personality disorder. I think I felt that though they might be given that diagnosis the problems they had all related to things they had lived through. I wasn’t sure if the diagnosis was necessary. Psychotherapists don’t give diagnoses, you need a psychiatrist for that.
The diagnosis that came back from the psychiatrist confirmed that the client had borderline personality disorder. Apparently he said there was ‘no doubt at all’.
This was very powerful information for the patient, but I was aware it was powerful information for me. Because I thought, well if you’ve got borderline personality disorder, then I must have some of that myself.
I think it was from that point that I started to look at the possibility of my own emotional instability differently.
To my surprise, the thing that happened when I started to do that, although I had to acknowledge a personal sense of anxiety and shame, was that my emotional life started to improve and become more stable.
When you acknowledge these kinds of problems with emotional stability in yourself in this way, you create more space to work on and think about them.
In therapy we think of this is analytic space, a space in which you can be in a problem while reflecting on it at the same time. You create useable mental space and time for yourself. Instead of being caught up in endless unpredictable reactive cycles, you can think.
Acknowledging emotional stability has had that effect on me, it has given me more mental space. And what that means is that as soon as I start to get caught up in something that might aggravate me, set some kind of nerves jangling, some old reactive pattern, I remember to check back into my own emotional stability and that gives me space in which I can react differently. I have more room, more time, so more options, more choices. I have a choice and that’s very powerful.
And it didn’t stop there, because the more I’ve tuned into questions about my emotional stability the more stable my life has been.
Because now if something starts to aggravate me it has become automatic for me to remember two little words ‘emotional stability’. when I say these to myself I stop being caught up in dramas that would otherwise drain me of energy, upset my day, my sleep, the rest of the week.
Try it for yourself, just remember to say two little words ‘emotional stability’. Use them like a mantra. Say them when you brush your teeth, in the morning and before bed. It’s like an incantation, a personal spell, a magic trick. It’s helped me to stay focused and calm.
Now, whenever the opportunity arises, I always check my clients relationship with their emotional stability and I will offer steps and strategies to help them work on it.
Try these ideas for yourself and let me know what you think.
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Having the chance to speak in a confidential setting is often the key to developing a clearer understanding of what might be behind our experiences of emotional instability. It may provide the space to understand more about how experience may have shaped us in ways that we haven’t fully acknowledged.
By giving yourself a safe space to look at these things you may start to discover a greater sense of possibilities, and this may be the beginning of developing a greater sense of understanding how to relate to yourself and others, how to start living more fully again, and how to start to have healthy relationships with yourself and other people.
The chance to reflect on ourselves, our feelings and experience can be powerful and transformative. Out of this, you may be able to develop a clearer understanding of how you and your sense of your problems have developed, and what you can change.
I have been working with people on issues like this for more than twenty-five years. My work is built around helping people to develop greater insight into who we are, and how we live.
Contact me to arrange a free telephone consultation to discuss how my approach might help you.
Email: toby@tobyingham.com
