our subtle scripts
A parent stands at the door to the art therapy room looking on as their fully adult child takes off their coat and hangs it up.
“they’ve never done that before, how did you get them to do that?” they say
“well, they just come into the room each week and …”
“they always wait for me to take it off and hang it up. They can’t do it themselves”
They turn and look at me with a face of sorrow and confusion. They appear to be shaking. They look so very alone. They walk slowly to the waiting area, and sit quietly holding their handbag close to their lap.
I consider what my client might be saying to their parent, or to me by this subtle yet apparently profound difference in behaviour; one for home, one for the therapy room. I am pleased that my client has found a way of communicating, but mixed with a sadness for the parent who has carefully brought up a child with a disability only now to see them act with the subtlest of statements of independence, or perhaps ambivalence.
This reminds me of clients who bring books with them to sessions. The books can be factual, intellectual even, yet carried by someone with an intellectual disability. One client talked about how books bring them comfort. For me they have felt like another person in the therapy room, someone else muscling in on the space. They feel less transitional objects and more part of a learnt behaviour; or rather an implicit action or defense learnt over years since childhood, a role played out to help mediate the difficulty of attachments and inter-relationships, and even boredom. Gradually over months during treatment the books disappear until one day they stay at home, the client appearing able to be present by themselves.
Communicating how we feel and what we want is so utterly complex, subtle and often beyond words, sometimes nothing more than relying on a learnt script or action that we play out; a sense of what happens.
I muse on this as I meet a new client. I have my work bag with me. I don’t need my bag. I don’t need my phone, or wallet, or diary, or headache tablets, or the mass of unread research papers that live in the bag all dog-eared and desiccating over time. I don’t need any of this, but I do need to be present to my new client. Why the bag? What is it doing there? What am I telling my client or their support staff by having this thing attached to my side? What role am I playing out?
I decide to leave my bag in a corner of the room and move closer sitting just in front of them. They give me a cursory glance, I nervously smile and say ‘hello’. I put my hand to my side, searching for my bag, needing to touch it, only to find it gone. It’s OK, I tell myself. It’ll be OK, we’re all OK.
