Trusting the Process, Waiting in the Unknown

Caring for the Soul in Counselling:
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​Trusting the Process, Waiting in the Unknown

“Loss of mystery is the greatest poverty of our society.”
​– John O’Donohue

It is our nature, as humans, to make sense of the world around us based on the information and stimuli we receive. From this, we draw conclusions, solidify knowledge, make meaning. The scientific worldview, with which the medical model of psychology aligns is based on this—it is essentially a complex system of discovery and measurement designed to produce evidence, based on our innate desire to know.
 
As individuals, our drive to know is shuttered by our own experience of things—our memories, senses, ideas, thoughts, intellects, traumas, feelings—and we take these things to indicate the true nature of the external world. We are, perhaps, too quick to take this as evidence of the nature of ultimate reality. “It is with an enviable and amazing simplicity she attributes her own sensations to the unknown universe” (Underhill, 1911, p. 6).
 
Because of all of this, sitting and waiting in a place of not knowing can be challenging—excruciating for some. Many of the internal mechanisms we have spent our life developing are in defense of this—the fear of the unknown.

And yet, to get in touch with some of the more subtle—or hidden—aspects of our being—to learn what we do not know about ourselves—to attune ourselves to the still-small voice of our own soul—we must be willing to wait in the tension of not knowing, wait while the internal mechanisms that defend us against not knowing relax, unwind, reveal the hidden path forward.
 
Thus, much of the work of a soul-oriented psychotherapy involves waiting in the unknown (Green, 2020; Leijssen, 2009; Moore, 2021), rather than rushing to fix.
 
This is a capacity the soul-oriented therapist needs to develop—the ability to hold the tension of waiting in the unknown, like holding the door open until the client feels safe enough to enter. It’s easy for the therapist, who, like most humans, likely has some fear of ‘not knowing’, to be blinded by a need to solve the client’s problems, to cure them, to understand the situation completely—to give into the perception that they are the expert, the one who knows. But a soul-oriented therapist must train their own ability to not know—otherwise, therapy will be stuck on the surface, and room will not be made to hear from the depths of the soul (Moore, 2021).
 
To do this, we need a process-orientation to therapy, and we need to learn to trust that process. Instead of seizing control the therapist must remain in dialogue with the situation based on what emerges in the here and now of the therapy room (Green, 2020). This means we are pausing on what we think we know long enough for that which we do not know we know to emerge, and that is something that can only happen in the present moment. A process-orientation means we are attuning ourselves to that which is continually revealing itself in the present—we are keeping part of our attention on “less visible matters” (Moore, 2021, p. 9)
 
The poet John O’Donohue (2006) likens this process to dawn—night ending and day beginning at the same moment, an ending fading imperceptibly into a beginning. This is how imperceptibly change occurs inside of process—we cannot totally perceive the change as it occurs, we can only experience change via the before and the after.
 
It is in this dawn moment that a soul-oriented therapy wishes to dwell.
 
The soul-oriented therapist must similarly trust that the soul of the client knows what it needs. Trusting the soul in this work means trusting that it knows what we need to digest (Clarkson, 2021), and by trusting the process and waiting in the unknown, we give the soul space to communicate this to us. The soul-orientated therapist must believe that internally, within the client, something knows (Clarkson, 2021).
 
“At the heart of our work there will always be a sense of mystery, of the unknown-yet-present, a sense of wonder at Being. We are called to attend to that mystery” (Flintoff, 2015 p. 339)

References

Clarkson, B. (2021). Is it God who cures? A transpersonal perspective on script formation, the role of physis, and the “soul work” of the therapeutic process. Transactional Analysis Journal, 51(3), 317–330.

Flintoff, W. (1998). The quest for the heart of the work: An ontological approach to spirituality and psychotherapy/counseling. Psychodynamic Counseling, 4(3), 335-348. 

Green, D. (2020). Mortification meanderings: Contemplating “vulnerability with purpose” in arts therapy education. Arts in Psychotherapy, 68. N.PAG.
 
Leijssen, M. (2009). Psychotherapy as search and care for the soul. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 8(1), 18–32.
 
Moore, T. (2021). Soul therapy. HarperCollins.

O’Donohue, J. (2006). The therapist’s task. Psychology Networker. Symposium presented at Psychology Networker Symposium, Washington, DC.
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Underhill, E. (1911). Mysticism. Image Books Doubleday.