PRESENCE
By Dr. Johnathon Neda, Orange County Mindfulness-Based Therapist and Psychologist in Costa Mesa-Newport Beach.
What is Therapeutic Presence about?
Therapeutic Attunement or Presence is the cornerstone to depth-oriented psychotherapy.
Grasping the Inner Terrain
Having 23 techniques to use with a client is not therapy and it isn’t very helpful to have that kind of agenda, it seems to me. The therapist-technician or interventionist can perform all sorts of techniques and appear competent while never actually gaining a real sense of the inner terrain of their client’s heart. In this way, many mainstream approaches fail to make that deeper level, heart-to-heart connection.
In good psychotherapy, we are there with and for others. The idea of truly being present with the client is paramount; I can’t overemphasize that. Being in the context of presence can be one of the most life-changing experiences you’ll ever have. It can be very powerful to be deeply heard and to have someone empathically understand the world, as you perceive it. That’s what a depth-oriented perspective has to offer—it’s an attempt at understanding someone else’s point of view from a cognitive, emotional, spiritual, and cultural perspective.
Therapeutic Listening
A good listener gets to the essences of the other person’s struggle—to what they deeply want and at the same time what interrupts the pursuit of that. This can be especially challenging for those of us who unwittingly limit ourselves to the knowledge of what we really want. The mutually dependent and reciprocal interplay between the therapist and client delimits the therapeutic exploration to the key theme(s) relevant to the client’s main concern. Although a deeper level of contact between a therapist and client can’t be forced, we can set up an atmosphere in which a field of common resonance is more likely to occur, naturally.
What is Presence?
Presence is a multi-level deployment of attentive energy. At each conversational turn, presence attunes the therapist and client to what’s being called for in the field of the therapeutic moment. The nuanced attention of presence includes a respect for complexity and acknowledges the depth of subjectivity. It is a nearness of relation that helps draw the client out from within.
For example, a common purpose of the initial session is typically to get a good feeling for what brings the client into therapy. In the beginning visit, clients often drop the puzzle on the floor. From that point on, it’s as if we’re putting together a puzzle and we generally start at the corners (i.e., the background) and move towards the front and center.
The Shape of Your Struggle
Gradually, therapeutic presence creates the backdrop onto which the client comes forward. Presence portrays the background so that the figurative shape of the client’s struggle emerges. Within the surrounding ambiance of presence, your actual but not apparent inner struggle is made increasingly clear, especially as we call our deep attention to it.
Personal and interpersonal (relational) presence is the cornerstone of depth therapy. At each step of the way, presence helps us to come closer to ourselves—further discovering the value of what really matters to us and moving closer to pursuing those things. This has a strong organizing effect on one’s state of mind.
Therapeutic presence aims to enhance the human capacity to live freely the life that is one’s own. It sets out to liberate people from the inner chains that confine them to stagnant situations. It helps mobilize a person to expand and become more fluid between what is necessary and what is possible.
Presence is our North Star
Being in the context of presence helps us pursue our healing more fully. It helps us to see our way between what we really want and what deeply holds us back. It’s in that struggle that people find their freedom (including their limits) and experience liberation. Rediscovering our innate freedom to span across the scope of our possibilities and limitations helps us guide our lives towards the things that really matter to us.
Presence is a main component of psychological therapy in that it provides a grounding element. Analogous to electrical engineering, grounding (presence) provides a common reference point—an alternative pathway back to the ground where we can return to in case there’s a dangerous excess of energy. In this way, presence acts as a compass and helps us to re-orient when our level of empowerment around our own healing is thwarted. It’s our North Star when we’ve fallen through the floor and lost touch with our firm sense of groundedness.
The Center and the Margin
Being in the context of presence enables a person to experience (e.g., inhabit) and widen their sense of possibility as they confront and cope with the challenges that life throws to us.
Again, presence allows therapist and client to know what’s really important and worth pursuing to the client (at the deeper level). Presence is being at the center and the margin. Presence provides the most fertile therapeutic ground for life-altering change. The provision of this attitudinal and emotionally corrective stance has profound implications for mental health and particularly for the focus of therapy.
Panoramic Understanding
The process of presencing requires an astute clinical sensitivity that intuitively and thoroughly grasps the significant facets of the client’s world. Even more, the therapist is empathically attuned enough to sing the song of their client’s heart back to them when they’ve forgotten the words or when they’re in a fog and need to be reminded of their coherent narrative. This type of panoramic understanding promotes optimal living as it reminds clients where to point their feet when they’ve lost sight of the bigger picture of their life trajectory. As a result of a successful course of therapy, clients often report experiencing a larger sense of themselves and therefore, life feels larger. Why is presence important? In short, the vital energy of (grounding) presence helps us inhabit our lives more fully.
