Parli Italiano? Learning a a new language

I really should not be surprised about the links my mind comes up with. Links that are seemingly random but subsequently turn out to be far from random. 

What am I on about, you may ask?

Well, in brief, later this year I am fortunate enough to be going on holiday to Sicily. Rather than being the ignorant Brit abroad who expects everyone else to speak English, the one who seems to think that if they just repeat themselves more loudly in English the “stupid” foreigner will finally understand them, I feel it would be polite to at least try and learn some Italian. Full of a mixture of feelings (shame, inability, fear of ridicule, being the object of derision etc.) I have started studying with Duolingo. 

Amazingly, in the comfort of my own home, I am able to progress at a speed I am comfortable with. I am making slow but determined progress and am actually brave enough to want to try and speak Italian to a very select few others.

As a counsellor the parallels between learning this new language and the counselling journey any client undertakes seem to be very profound. Those parallels certainly resonate with the journey I started when I first went into counselling. Also when I started to train as a counsellor. A journey, I hasten to add, that is still ongoing.

Pre counselling I was very much like an ignorant Brit abroad who, in order to get their needs met, just raises their voice and blames the lucky person on the receiving end for not being smart enough to understand them. They are frustrated and the harder they try their needs are still not met. Like me, I suspect many are clients pre-therapy.

Not unusually perhaps, a friend or a kind stranger steps in and does their best to try and speak for them. Sometimes successfully and sometimes not. If the ignorant Brit gets what they want the situation is over. If they do not get their needs met then the scenario is repeated until the Brit either gives up and walks away frustrated, or somehow their need is met. Perhaps with a bit of miming or gesticulating, but their needs are met.

With the beginning of counselling, we can also feel shame, fear, inability, and fear of being the object of derision but we hope that there is a better way of being. Perhaps a close friend or family member suggests counselling. At first, we might recoil from the suggestion but our need is desperate enough to not allow us to dismiss the suggestion. So we began to seek out counsellors. 

Somehow in that mixture of different types of counsellors, counsellors speak, our own opinions of people who want counselling, and societal and cultural messages we struggle with. We may try a variety of methods before settling on counselling (self-help books, podcasts, the ear of a close friend etc.) and some are less than satisfactory - others not so much. Hopefully, we succeed and manage to find ourselves in our first counselling session. 

Here the parallels between counselling are apparent again. For perhaps the first time we experience someone who is willing to listen and to try and help, rather like the stranger who intervenes when we are speaking to someone who does not understand English.

We hear the new language being spoken and explained. Words we may never have known the meaning of (psychotherapy, autonomy, psychiatry, congruence, trauma, empathy ….) are used and explained. Not surprisingly we feel a bit shy, maybe embarrassed, but we also feel emboldened and perhaps willing to begin to look at this “new language”.

With learning a new language we learn new words and different ways of constructing our speech. So it is with counselling, that we are exposed to/offered new ways of looking at life and to find a chance to accept our feelings/thinking. We are given the space to explore them and experiment with these ways. If these new ways are found to be acceptable we begin to incorporate them into our lives. With the new language, we begin to see different or new meanings in our everyday words, perhaps. We can better appreciate different cultures and different values.

For me, the parallels go beyond this though. I can appreciate that I am changing, growing and becoming someone different. As is the case with learning a new language. Our neural networks adapt and grow, we become someone who used to not know how to speak a different language, and now we are someone who is learning to speak a different language.

With counselling, we can become greater than what we were. No longer burdened with the baggage of the past. Able to reconcile our present and accept it and thus realise the mental capacity to walk into a new, and unknown, future. 

So instead of having to rely on someone to interpret for us, we are able to speak for ourselves. This is something very empowering and when we are thus emboldened we gain confidence as well as proficiency. People open up to us, we are able to experience new friendships, conversations and new experiences.

With counselling, we are also able to gain new insights and new experiences, have new conversations, conduct ourselves in different ways, experience new friendships and experience old friendships in different, perhaps better ways. We can become more self-accepting. As we proceed on our counselling journeys we grow in confidence. The experiences that burden us can lessen, we can see opportunity in our lives rather than a continuous struggle to cope with the same negative thoughts and feelings every day. We are becoming what Carl Rogers describes as “fully autonomous beings”. Beings that are not stuck in the past, not rigid and not able to change. 

To finish up, whether we are learning a new language of the head and heart (counselling) or a new foreign language we can see the potential for a new and different us. As with every journey, it begins with the first step. We might need support and encouragement to start with but we all have the ability to grow, to change to become our best selves. 

I hope you enjoy your holidays - wherever they may be. Duolingo is waiting with today's lesson...