Healing in Their Own Way

I admit that most personality assessments show I score high on the need for organization and structure. Over the years this has helped me in the counseling field but in other ways it has hindered me. Sometimes I want to plan a client’s stages of recovery in a way that would fit some perfect model. After all this seems to line up with what most books would recommend. These books often recommend taking clients through the stages of grief and loss as a basic framework. I realize I may be simplifying what many of these books and group manuals suggest, but many fall back on the basic tenants of grief and loss work and the stages that are involved in that.

I have worked in the addiction field since 2003, and I have developed a very structured program for the identified addict, the spouse and the marriage. This program often lasts for one full year. The program has been highly successful over the years and many clients report outcomes that were transformational. My need for organization and structure as it relates to this program has been very beneficial. There are other times, it seems like my need for a step by step healing process, gets in the way of allowing a client to heal in their own way.

I was recently working with a woman who had an abortion as a teenager with her now husband. I had a sense that she came to counseling to me because she knew that was one of the areas I specialized in. We had briefly gone over the abortion experience on the intake form, but in my mind, there were other major issues that she needed to work on first prior to working on the abortion issue in counseling. One day she came into counseling and reported that her and her husband were beginning to talk about the abortion experience that they had years ago for the first time. She also began to report that they felt closer than they ever did before as a couple. I was surprised to hear this. The structured part of me as a therapist thought, that it may be the wrong time and it was not what I had planned. I was thinking all these things in my head as my client sat before me. In that moment I thought to myself, she began healing in her own way, without me suggesting a structured program or a support group based on a book format etc. There was something powerful that happened by her starting the counseling process alone that gave her permission to start healing with her husband in their own way.

I wonder as clinicians how many times, we get in the way of our clients “healing in their own way”. We think we know better. We think they should follow our set programs, and when they don’t we have a reaction or resistance. I believe there are millions of men and women who have experienced an abortion decision in their life that may need permission to begin healing in their own way. It can be as simple as a client being first validated for what they have experienced and later being given permission to start healing in their own way.

I am thankful for the structured personality that I have because it works well for me to create programs that transform lives. I am also grateful for these small lessons I can learn from my clients about healing in their own way and in their own timing.