2 hours ago
2
Recently, my psychoanalyst annoyed me. She said something and I felt misunderstood, criticised – and that she was wrong. I wanted an apology. As we worked through this, as she listened to me and I listened to her, I gradually realised that she hadn’t meant exactly what I thought, and that I was the one who had misunderstood, who was being so critical. But why couldn’t she have made it easier for me to understand, phrased it like I would have done? She responded: “That isn’t what I thought.”
In that moment, something clicked. I felt the rush and the relief of sudden emotional clarity. I think this came from seeing that my psychoanalyst, by not apologising to appease my anger, by not taking an easy way out of the conflict, by persisting in offering me her honest thoughts about what was going on in my mind and by bearing my struggle to take them in, was giving me an extremely rare and precious experience. I felt an overwhelming and surprising surge of gratitude.
Years ago, for this newspaper, I wrote about the latest psychology research into gratitude, which had found it to be a self-help superfood, like a goji berry for emotional wellbeing. I experimented with keeping a gratitude diary, writing down what I felt grateful for each evening. It was an interesting exercise. What I discovered then – and what I’ve learned through experience since – is that if you try to “game” gratitude or any emotion in this way, treating it like an asset to be accumulated, it can only ever be a “nice feeling” – and a fleeting one.
Nice feelings have their place. But I don’t believe they help to build a better life. They are one part of the outcome of a fulfilling and meaningful life (along with lots of not-so-nice feelings). On their own they are not sufficient for precipitating internal change. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: what we all want is to feel better – but what we really need is to get better at feeling.
Because, as the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein realised, if we are lucky, gratitude can be more than a nice feeling. It can be part of a powerful, nourishing, developmental process, which helps us hold on to good experiences and relationships. In my sessions as a patient in psychoanalysis, and as a psychotherapist to patients, I have seen it be both a trigger for and an outcome of psychological growth. But it is not easy to get there – not as simple as writing a list. Before you can feel truly grateful you may have to feel envious, in need, and vulnerable, just as I did in my psychoanalysis session. You may need to develop the capacity to tolerate your hate and rage and despair and all sorts of feelings that are not nice. And of course, you have to have something to feel grateful for. For it to be a transformative experience, gratitude has to be spontaneous, it has to be real, and it has to grow inside a relationship with another person. That’s why I felt it so strongly when my psychoanalyst used her mind to help me understand mine: gratitude grows out of a link between minds.
I have been thinking about this over the last 20 months while writing this column for you every fortnight, because it has been an experience of making links. Making links within my own mind, from feelings to thoughts to theories I’ve learned in my psychotherapy training and experiences I’ve had both with patients, and as a patient. It has been a time for me of finding profound meaning in our everyday losses and loves, as well as in a jumper that shrank in the wash, in potty training, and in a perfectly cooked jacket potato.
And it has also been an experience of making links between our minds: I have felt so hopeful and heartened by the connections we’ve made through your messages, week after week, letting me know that my column has touched you or been useful. You’ve told me you’ve shared my work with family after the loss of a parent, after the loss of a child: this took the wind out of me. You’ve told me you’ve read my work and decided to go into therapy, to go travelling, to read more books. And some of you have sent me your own creative work – I’ve listened to your songs, looked at your art, read your articles and bought your books that have had me enthralled or in floods of tears (in a good way). I’ve also made friends. Every one of these links has felt like a gift, connections forged in a time in our society where it is so much easier, and there is so much opportunity and encouragement, to break them.
An important part of my treatment as a patient, and the treatment I offer to my patients, is somehow trying to find a home in our minds for the parts of us that seek to make links, to create and feel and come alive, and the parts of us that seek to break links, to destroy, to kill off feelings and ourselves. I wish it could be otherwise but I know a better life can only be built when we can each integrate all of these parts of ourselves.
Now this column is coming to an end – the next will be my last – and I am so grateful to have had this chance to make these connections with you all. I hope that we can all hold on to them. Research shows that the outcomes of psychodynamic psychotherapy improve over time after treatment has ended – patients feel more helped as more time passes, because the unconscious changes grow bigger and bigger, like ripples in a pond. I hope that the links we have made together can take root in our minds and, over time, continue to grow and nourish us, helping us to build better lives, not only for ourselves.
