Remote connection and communion: One psychotherapist’s experience of learning during the pandemic

by Maria Moran

“The failure to communicate is frustration. The failure to commune is despair.”

 (Finley, 1978: 92)

Over the past year our style of connection and our sense of disconnection has been tried and tested on every front. The Covid pandemic, by its nature, has rendered everyday life difficult for all of us but for many, their lives were filled with deep fear, great suffering and loss. As psychotherapists, besides the trials of life in a pandemic, we have been challenged professionally to find new ways of sustaining our connection with our clients in order to facilitate their work. The focus for this paper is to share my journey over the past year as I adjusted to the necessary changes that had to be made in order to facilitate my clients. I will share some experiences and reflections on the challenges this year has offered me and how this experience may open new horizons post-pandemic.

Connection

As psychotherapists, particularly within the humanistic and integrative ethos, the quality of our work is dependent on the depth of connection we can make with our clients. It is my belief that this deep connection, for so many troubled people, offers a sense of acceptance that can help overcome the damage of wounded hearts and minds. The basic human need to have our personal story witnessed by another is paramount for the healing process, and in our work it is vital that we strive to offer that sacred space for our clients. One of the essential properties for good connection depends on the quality of our ‘presence’ in the therapy room. Here we have all our senses available to us and as communication depends not just on what we say (in fact this is deemed to be a very small percentage of the message we relay) but largely on our body language, the surroundings we offer and the provision of good clear boundaries etc., are important. So what happened when we went ‘remote’? I will attempt to describe my experience of the past year and what I am learning about the process of psychotherapy through it.

Remote psychotherapy

Last March, because of the dangers of Covid, and like so many others, I began to offer my services over the telephone or using video calls. Probably because of the remoteness of my location, most people opted for telephone sessions, as reliable internet connection (despite all the advertisement to the contrary) has not arrived in some rural settings yet. I will speak therefore of my experience of how I managed to navigate from live sessions (with all the human senses available to me and my client), to remote work where we were connecting bereft of sight, touch (so strange not to welcome anyone without being able to look into their eyes and shake their hand), smell and lastly taste (which to my mind was the only sense that didn’t seem to offer a challenge as such). In other words, I felt enormously deprived of the energetic contact I had grown to expect in my workplace.

I remember how I moved into this way of functioning professionally with reservations and misgivings. I imagine that the tension in my own body as I leaned into the phone in an attempt to be more present to my client, added to the exhaustion I felt at the end of each day. My whole being took some time to traverse this new territory and to learn to accept that it is possible to do good work under these conditions. With time and experience of this way of working, I now trust that the depth of work does not need to be compromised for most of my clients, (although I believe that a certain number of clients would do better in live sessions).

Initially, especially with clients I had never met previously, I felt a sense of disempowerment within my being (similar to the experience of attempting to read a document without the use of my spectacles). I was conscious of my reliance on picking up the physical energy and body language of my client in the room. These were the well tested dependable tools I used as a way and means of understanding my client and what lay hidden between the words and in the physical space between us. I have always listened to my own body language and that of my client during face-to-face sessions and I saw the energetic space between us as a deep well of understanding and insight which, when gently stirred, has the ability to rouse the spirit of adventure and risk-taking within both of us. This had become such an intuitive and trusted way of connecting in my work, I was taken aback by its absence. For some weeks, the perceived lack of this space in remote work was a distraction for me and added to my exhaustion as I tried harder. I sometimes felt clumsy and disoriented.

Something new

Gradually, as I accepted that this remote way of working was different, I relaxed a bit and found myself being prompted inwardly with ideas, images and symbols of possible interventions that I didn’t really trust in this arena. I wondered at the value or consequences of sharing these random promptings with my client but unlike the face-to-face encounter, when I had an energetic insight, now I doubted the validity of sharing this ‘inspiration’ – what was its source?

As I became more familiar with these ‘promptings’ and the frequency of them increased, I found myself arriving at a place where, very tentatively at first, I dared to trust them or at least to risk using them. These inward nudges led me to enquire about something that wasn’t clearly connected to what my client was speaking about but the intervention did bring the work on a very useful and interesting diversion; (similar to my felt sense of non-verbal communication within a face-to-face session but not the same). At first, I may have wondered with my client in such a subtle way that it was too faint to be heard. But as my confidence increased, I became a little braver and discovered a sense of connectivity and sometimes communion that was emerging. These interventions were not by any means earthshattering but had a quality of offering the client another path to explore which bore much fruit. For example, a client who was struggling to find a focus for her work for some weeks, on this particular day was very subdued. When I asked her gently what was happening for her, she just said “I’m blank”; a question came into my mind at that moment straight out of the blue and I didn’t understand its significance but I decided to risk asking her; her response brought her to life and she now discovered what was important for her to explore and this yielded a rich harvest.

Of course, occurrences such as these don’t occur at every session, but the incidence of these promptings feels significant. The nature of these interventions, while similar to the body sensations I attend to when in the same room with my client, are experienced differently in the remote situation. It is more a silent but audible prompt that has nothing to do with me but somehow it is found useful for the client. It feels as if the energetic communication is able to cross the divide during these remote sessions in a way I never expected. It is something that I watch for very carefully during my sessions now and while I am still not able to articulate how this compensation of physical presence is being bridged, my sense is that it is spiritual in nature.

Human connecting

I have always been interested in and reflective of the varied ways we have of connecting, attaching, bonding (and indeed distancing) one with another as human beings, whether individually or in groups, big or small. I had been working as a psychotherapist for some years before I first took up the study of theology in a serious way. Believe me, the necessity to keep those worlds separate as I moved between the two disciplines was quite a chore at the time. In my experience there seemed to be a distance between followers of these two disciplines based on suspicion and fear. What I discovered during my studies was that the same wisdom was spoken in both disciplines, just using different languages.

Ancestral connection

One area of exploration I engaged in was on the nature of our relationship with our ancestors. I explored this through psychotherapeutic and spiritual understandings using a Christian lens. Ancestral healing looks at how the energy of unfinished business of the ancestors is handed down through the generations, deeply impacting the lives of the present generation. The work of ancestral healing is to address these issues, whether they be issues of injustice perpetrated on the person(s) concerned or suffered by them. When a member of the family line steps forward to deal with the issue, even if it took place many generations before, the energy is cleared and healing happens for all the family (whether they are aware or not that the brave family member has taken on this work for the family). Of course, this is a phenomenon that has been observed world over since time immemorial and is an integral part of many traditional cultures and belief systems. I was reminded of this study as I pondered on the question of connection and remembered how easily the psychotherapeutic and Christian understandings spoke to each other, albeit in different languages. I feel this previous area of exploration speaks to the current topic of this article and with this in mind, I will offer a few thoughts through the mystical lens.

Mystical connection

From a spiritual perspective I will draw in the teachings of a well-known mystic of the last century called Thomas Merton. James Finlay, in his book entitled Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, offers a perspective of Merton’s understanding of the difference between communication and communion as two fundamentally different modes of knowing:

Communication is logical, quantitative and practical in its application. It is a linear form of human intercourse in which each piece of information is given one at a time and leads up to some particular conclusion. Mathematics is the language par excellence of communication. And computers are the champions of mathematical language. Computers are able to communicate vast quantities of usable, verifiable data that is unaffected by subjective thought and feeling. We could not live without this one-dimensional mode of knowing. But, of itself, it lacks the power to convey the deepest hopes and yearnings of human existence.

(Finley, 1978: 91)

These “deepest hopes and yearnings of human existence”, when not met in the lives of our clients, often become a source of unhappiness and the focus of our work in the psychotherapeutic setting.

Of communion Merton says:

It is something that the deepest ground of our being cries out for, and it is something for which a lifetime of striving would not be enough. In the Book of Acts [8:28-40]we read of the eunuch riding along in his carriage reading the Book of Isaiah. He is approached by Philip, who asks him if he understands what he is reading. The eunuch responds by saying, “How can I, unless some man shows me?” Philip climbs into the carriage, speaks to him, and the eunuch finds not information but communion with God. He responds not by taking notes but by going down into the water to be baptized. Philip’s words came to the eunuch not in the form of information but as symbols evoking an encounter with God. Religious language may not be logical, but it is always symbolic. It is always a symbol, a promise of the communion the disciple longs to discover. The purpose of the symbol is not to convey information but to open unknown depths of awareness enabling the disciple to come upon his own center, his own ontological roots in a mystery of being that transcends his individual ego.

The words themselves evoke occasions of this communion, which is a mode of knowing not wholly available to what can be communicated in quantitative, verifiable terms. Words are to communion what the sky is to the stars. The sky does not own the stars, nor contain them like coins held securely in a pouch. Rather the sky is the matrix in which the stars appear…

(Finley, 1978: 92-93)

These profound moments that we are privileged to witness as we sit with our clients, those ‘Philip’ moments, are the moments of communion, the source of which come through us but not of us. In my early practice, although I always made space for the spiritual experience, it was not something that I spoke about openly. Probably the idea of spirituality and religion were too intertwined in the Irish context at the time and it felt like dangerous terrain. I do not believe that I am alone in our profession in feeling this reticence when it comes to sharing spiritual experience with another during our work. I wonder why this may be?

Psychotherapeutic connection

Moving from mystical to psychological language, let us draw on voices from our own profession. Carl Rogers and Brian Thorne were two voices that impressed me deeply during my training years in psychotherapy and their recognition of the relationship as being an essential element in the quality of interaction that occurs between the two parties impressed me hugely. I will quote an excerpt of Brian Thorne’s journey of discovering the importance of the gift of ‘tenderness’, as he termed his sense of deep interrelatedness of the human spirit and its facilitation of the psychotherapeutic journey. His courage, as expressed below, encouraged me to explore this aspect of our work:

One day, however, for I know not what reason, I decided to throw such caution to the winds. I suppose at some level I reminded myself that I was not a counsellor in the analytic tradition but someone who believed in the fundamental trustworthiness of human beings and that this category included myself. I knew that I was an experienced responsible counsellor and that I was committed to my client’s wellbeing. My own congruence - the outcome of the discipline of my chosen therapeutic approach - was revealing to me a strong sense of being intimately involved in a profound level with someone with whom I apparently had little in common. I decided to trust that feeling, however mysterious or inexplicable and to hold onto it rather than to dismiss it or treat it with the usual circumspection. The result of that decision has been far-reaching, for I discovered that my trust in this sense of profound interrelatedness (and it usually happens unpredictably) gives access to a world which seems outside of space and time and where it is possible for both my client and me to relate without fear and with astonishing clarity of perception…. It is clear to me now that the decision to trust the feeling of interrelatedness was the first step towards a willingness on my part to acknowledge my spiritual experience of reality. (Thorne, 1999: 38)

While Thorne wrote these words back in the last century, it is still an area of exploration in the present time. Very recently, I came across an article in the Journal of the American Psychological Association (2020). I will quote:

Abstract: The importance of relational processes during psychotherapy and psychoanalysis has long been emphasized. Theoretical and empirical investigations have focused mostly on episodes in which the therapeutic relationship is taken over by transference, leads to enactments, or suffers ruptures, and much less on understanding the role of positive relational episodes in the change process during psychotherapy. Episodes of the latter type, conceptualized as Authentic Relational Moments (ARMs), are core experiences in the patient’s implicit relational learning in psychotherapy.

(Békés & Hoffman, 2020: 1051)

The article goes on to speak of the core aspects of ARMs being authenticity, understanding and witnessing. “ARMs occur when the connection is especially strong and genuine between patient and therapist, allowing the dyad to arrive at a symbolic relational space where they connect deeply and authentically” (Békés & Hoffman, 2020: 1052). While this is an interesting description, the authors indicate their intention of researching this concept in an empirical study. (I feel doubtful that avenue will bear fruit if they are in the zone of subjective experience and communion.)

Image copyright William Pattengill 2021

Communion and personhood

“Listen with the ear of your heart” (Holzherr, 2016) was the instruction St Benedict gave to his monks back in the sixth century in the prologue to The Rule. “An intensive listening or careful hearing should correspond to this call. The heart must incline itself to that which is heard… a basic attitude of humility. …the rule is directed at the whole person, body and soul.” (Holzherr, 2016:10). This is the disposition and quality of listening required of us in order to enter our personhood. Human personhood is not the same as speaking of one’s personality. It is, rather, about speaking of one’s relationality. As human persons, we have the capacity for creativity and this requires that we engage with the faculty of our imagination as distinct from logical or cognitive thought. It might be really important to be careful not to exclude this possibility when sitting with our clients. The power and the use of symbols in our work is familiar to us all. Jung has left us an impressive legacy on the subject. But for now, I will give Merton the last word as he speaks of symbols and communion:

Traditionally, the value of the symbol is precisely in its apparent uselessness as a means of simple communication. It is ordered toward communion, not to communication. Because it is not an efficient mode of communicating information, the symbol can achieve a higher purpose of going beyond practicality and purpose, beyond cause and effect. Instead of establishing a new contact by a meeting of minds in the sharing of news, the symbol tells nothing new: it revives our awareness of what we already know, and deepens our awareness. What is ‘new’ in the symbol is the ever new discovery of a new depth and a new actuality in what is and always has been. . . . The function of the symbol is to manifest a union that already exists but is not fully realised. The symbol awakens awareness or restores it. Therefore it does not aim at communication but at communion. Communion is the awareness of participation in an ontological reality.

(Finley, 1978: 93)

Conclusion

Had I not been awake I would have missed it,

It came and went so unexpectedly

And almost it seemed dangerously,

Returning like an animal to the house,

A courier blast that there and then Lapsed ordinary. But not ever After. And not now.

(Heaney, 2011)

In our work as psychotherapists, the words or symbols that spontaneously emerge at times, the unbidden images, should we listen to their prompting, may be more important to share with our clients than we can imagine. To say I’m surprised to have realised a much deeper awareness of this communion through telephone work with clients is an understatement. I feel excited at the possibility of extending my service to reach potential clients who cannot reach me in our traditional setting of the therapy room. Having had this experience of telephone and video calls, I now feel more ready and confident to actively offer psychotherapy to those who are confined to their homes for various reasons but would like the opportunity of engaging at this level. I will now do so, confident that I can offer them all that I can offer my face-to-face clients. I hope this will be the case for many therapists moving forward.

Maria Moran is an accredited psychotherapist, supervisor, spiritual companion and group facilitator. She works in private practice in Wexford and is open to facilitating remote sessions if required. Maria can be contacted by mobile (087) 264 8577 or email mariapacmoran@yahoo.ie

References:

Békés, V., & Hoffman, L., (2020). The “Something More” Than Working Alliance:

Authentic Relational Moments. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 68(6).

Finley, J. (1978). Merton’s palace of nowhere. Ave Maria Press Inc.

Heaney, S. (2011) “If I had not been awake I would have missed it”. Human Chain. Faber & Faber.

Holzherr, G. (2016). The rule of Benedict: An invitation to the Christian life. Liturgical Press.

Rogers, C.R. (1961). A therapist’s view of psychotherapy. On becoming a person. Constable.

(C) IAHIP 2021 - INSIDE OUT 94 - SUMMER 2021