still quiet thoughts
In the stillness of the therapy room every noise around us becomes so loud; kids crying in the waiting area; the anger management group in the next room slamming their door; a man in the corridor on a mobile phone talking about his financial difficulties and assuring the person on the other end “it will be OK”.
In this semi quiet my thoughts fly around, spinning in my head and indeed in the therapy room like snow flakes caught silently in a Winter storm, all bright, attractive, floating and then massing into layers of depth as they fall. Layers that can flow into overwhelming emotions. Silence is not easy. Holding onto ourselves, whilst holding our clients is the work of such small transactional moments.
I look down at my brown brogue shoes, neatly tied, the cosy wool of my socks and the easy comfortable trousers upon which I rest my lightly clasped hands. My shoulders lean forward slightly and then I push them back at the slightest tension. My client looks at me briefly and then looks away at a dark corner of the room. Then they look at the clock beyond my head. I catch their eye, briefly distracting their thoughts as they pass through my body and back again.
There are times for me when clinical supervision is not enough, when only a quiet solitary walk along the crashing waves of a shore can give me the reflective space I need; I bounce thoughts out to the almighty sea and they return to me, the same thoughts but somehow different, lighter, less jumbled.
This reminds me of the adage in mindfulness that ‘we are not our thoughts’. Our thoughts are mere moments, ideas that flow in and flow out and do not make us who we are, they are just thoughts. Philosopher René Descartes has been much criticised for his declaration of “I think therefore I am” - recent practitioners in the field of therapeutic mindfulness have adapted this to a perhaps more helpful “I feel therefore I am” - thoughts are transient, whereas feelings are our full body/mind response. One mindfulness exercise I heard dictated by Jon Kabat-Zinn encourages us to consider a single thought, consciously observing it, like a cat sat in front of a mouse-hole, attentive to what emerges, then watching the thought as closely as possible. I try this now as I sit with my thoughts floating about me - that snow storm blown in hard that maybe rests on the ground for a few days but will always melt and be reclaimed by new thoughts, new movement, new growth.
We haven’t seen much snow in the lowlands of Scotland this year, unlike other parts of the world, but I’ve had more than my fair share of thoughts and emotions. My client looks up sensing my momentary distance and comments on the weather “it’s nice out today”. I think, but do not say, I do hope to see snow soon, so that I can experience the childlike joy of snowflakes flooding around me, overwhelming every other thought if only for a moment.
