Martin Halifax’s contribution ‘Is therapy for all of us?’ (Therapy Today, May 2009) offered me food for thought and provoked strong feelings in me. I offer two responses.

The first is a response to his consideration of whether trainee counsellors may choose to leave ‘some stones unturned’, as he puts it. I find my answer to this question in words used by Brian Thorne in the same issue, ‘Counselling and therapy are about relationship, about depth, about extraordinary intimacy.’ These last two words, ‘extraordinary intimacy’ capture it for me. As a counsellor, I believe that I have to be ready to go beyond the ordinary, and for that reason I take the stance that it is my professional duty not to leave too many stones unturned and to address any potential blocks to intimacy that may exist within me. This is a stance I adopted early in my training and one I continue to uphold. I feel it is my professional duty to be as ready as I can to relate to whoever comes to my door, with whatever intimacies they may choose to share. Martin refers to ‘the First World War ethos: how can I expect others to go over the top if I am not prepared to do so myself?’ Although these words have a sense of ‘ask not of others what you would not ask of yourself’, I would focus on the idea that if my client chooses to go over the top, then my role is to be as prepared as I can to be alongside them all of the way.

The second way in which I’d like to respond is to share my personal experience. Martin reflects how Heidegger apparently thought Aristotle ‘somewhat shallow’ in his maybe finding balance between what might be seen as soul-searching introspection and other activities in life. For many years I thought I held to Socrates’ view that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’ as I happily breezed through my first career – being a comfortable, contented, happily married, well travelled, well paid computer consultant to the aerospace business, happy to risk his life by indulging in extreme sports. My move into counselling showed me what level of blissful ignorance I had been living in. In particular, what started as the sometimes-hated PD (personal development) groups on my diploma course, moved on to become the encounter group work I am now passionate about (see www.PCAN.info for example). Turning stones has been deeply uncomfortable at times, yet such discomfort has allowed me to find out more about who I am and why I am alive. More than this, there is richness to my life that I had never even conceived possible in my state of blissful ignorance.

For me then, these personal experiences both fuel me to dare to turn stones and look at what is underneath, to take existential risks and question what it truly is to be alive. The first is what I feel to be part of my professional duty, the second, to ensure that I am living my life more to the full, to bringing whatever level of ‘extraordinary intimacy’ may be welcome into my everyday relationships – to aspire to a greater level of person-centred being. As Brian Thorne wrote in his landmark piece on tenderness, ‘Life is good and life is impossible, long live life.’¹

Mark Harrison
MBACP

1. Thorne B. Person-centred counselling: therapeutic and spiritual dimensions. London: Whurr Publishers; 1991.