Easy on Me
From Across the Couch: Stories about Therapy
At home, in the basement, I was exercising one evening after a hard day. My wife, Heather, had come down to hang out and talk with me for a few minutes. She wanted to show me a particular segment of American Idol. It’s not my favorite, but I can tolerate it if it means that Heather will stay in “the dungeon” with me a little longer. “You’ll like this one,” she said. Usually she’s right about these things, and this time she was spot on. An aspiring Idol named Nick Connors was tackling Adele’s “Easy On Me.”
I’m a sucker for this song. As I listened to his rendition, I felt a swell of emotion coming up, but it wasn’t the normal, mild emotional sweetness I usually from Adele. This was deeper. Raw. Maybe it was my masculine instinct (we typically aren’t rewarded for emotion) or perhaps it was some sense that I needed to figure this emotion out on my own, but I held the emotion in, not letting Heather see that the music was affecting me. I could sense sadness and sorrow in my body, and something more than that. My emotions were related to my own experience of the song, but also connected to something deeper, an undercurrent stronger than I was expecting.
After a few minutes, the clip ended, and a few more minutes later Heather went upstairs. Usually, I would want her to stay, but I was a little relieved by the solitude, know I needed to figure out what was going on.
I pulled up Adele’s version on YouTube. I allowed the song to play and my emotions to rise back up. The swell rose quickly in my chest. The sorrow and sadness returned, and something else came up along with it. My mind floated back to my toughest clients of the day - a couple dealing with the impact of the husband’s childhood trauma as it rolled out in their relationship. I recalled the look on my client’s face as he recalled the terror he felt when his stepfather was in a brutal, violent rage. A small child is helpless to protect himself or his family in the face of such violent destruction, and I felt that helplessness and terror, there in my own basement, music in the background.
I let it come. I allowed my body to feel and expel those overwhelming emotions. I had taken on, taken in, the trauma recalled in session and had held it until this moment. A child’s body isn’t supposed to hold all that terror for a lifetime, and my body also wasn’t supposed to carry it indefinitely.
In trauma work, I often can’t allow myself to fully experience or process my response to client horror in that moment with the client. My clients need me to provide strength, stability, calm, and comfort when they are at the end of their own resources. I have to regulate myself. But I also have to deal with that experience at some point. I can’t just take it and forget it.
Newton’s 3rd Law states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. No energy is expelled, consumed, or absorbed without a resultant consequential activity. I think there is something like an equivalent law in the world of emotion as well. No emotion can be simply stuffed, buried, or absorbed without some consequential response. We bear it in our bodies. It comes out directed at another person or ourselves. It manifests as depression, or we use certain practices or behaviors to cope with it. At some point, the emotion will manifest.
After a few moments, my sobs subsided. The terror and sorrow became a memory no longer felt. I was able to move back into calm and peace, and I knew my body had processed that emotion that I carried home from the office.
My clients usually don’t have such an easy time with catharsis or expelling their stored emotion. They often have such overwhelming terror, sorrow, fear, pain, and loss that it takes more intentional and intense methods to help them. In trauma work, we don’t carry all our clients’ burdens, but their stories do affect us. We won’t be capable of doing such work for very long if we don’t take the time to take care of ourselves.
Best everyone,
Chris
Christopher A. Cook, PhD, LCMHC
chris@renewedhopecounseling.net
*All editions of “Across the Couch: Stories about Therapy” that contain client information do so at the consent of the client.
Announcements:
Renewed Hope Counseling will be offering a couple of groups this Spring/Summer
We are working to offer a Yoga Trauma Recovery Group starting in May. Contact me (chris@renewedhopecounseling.net) for details or interest. This group will be limited to 12 participants.
We will be offering a Trauma Recovery Group on Tuesdays, 12:15-1:45pm, from July 9 to September 10. See the flyer here for details:
If you or anyone you know is looking for a safe, empathetic space for you to explore your emotions, recover from past traumas, or manage anxiety or depression, Renewed Hope Counseling has counselors who have a few openings. Here’s our team.
Brittney Long, LCMHCA
Chris Cook, PhD, LCMHC
