Psychotherapy requires listening with empathy

Psychotherapists are not psychics.

However, while ESP is not our thing, to provide value to those we purport to serve, therapists must border on being mind readers.

This requires being intensely present and fully mindful of the client, while simultaneously tuned into one’s own intuitions. It’s a bit like having one eye looking out and the other peering in.

Unbalanced in either direction, and the empathic impact of therapy, which is considerable, mostly disappears.

Psychotherapy’s version of mind reading requires deep listening, engaged presence and a phenomenon called “grokking.” This term, from science fiction, means “understand intuitively and with empathy.”

This is one reason why some therapists briefly meditate before each session, a practice I have embraced for some time. If we dart from client to client, dragging each successive interaction’s emotional baggage into the next one, we cannot “grok” the person in our presence (where our version of mind reading kicks in).

What’s more, there is another advantage to meditative segues between clients. Not only does it reset one’s mind for the next interaction, but it also provides that sometimes elusive access to one’s intuition.

It can feel like an odd business. For example, while fully engaged with a client rather than my own thoughts and feelings, an image, metaphor, quotation, symbol, movie scene, book passage or adage will suddenly pop into my consciousness.

These intuitions emerge in response to my felt-sense of the client. Usually, I am not consciously looking for something to offer. But, by interacting with her or him in a deep way, it simply emerges in my awareness.

That’s as best I can describe the difference between a psychic connection and a psychotherapeutic one.

Regardless, a deep connection, both with the client and with one’s self, is the secret sauce that promotes insight, healing and change. When that type of bond is absent, the value of the process quickly evaporates.

Sure, in therapy, there may be some benefit in simply sharing one’s story or receiving a dollop of pragmatic advice. But when emotionally wounded or distraught, that’s rarely enough — grokking becomes necessary.

Psychotherapy is less about tinkering and more about deep connection.

We may not read minds, but we do become intimately acquainted with them.

Philip Chard is a psychotherapist, author and trainer. Email Chard at outofmymind@philipchard.com or visit philipchard.com.