Relational fit, with a therapist

It’s long been pushed that the “fit” with a therapist is of high importance when choosing a therapist/counsellor/mental health professional. 

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It’s a very common rhetoric that benefits the skills of what is often described as ‘the people pleaser’ parts of the human psyche. Another common thing therapists are described as is “the wounded healer”. These both can be difficult and uncomfortable things to acknowledge and maintain a healthy or differentiated relational position with, rendering these positions both to be therapeutically useful and tricky terrain to navigate. 
Of course, these vary from person to person and between gender roles. 

It could be argued that the systemic position of irreverence would be a useful application in this context. Irreverence means to not hold anything with too much attachment. That includes theories, emotions, hypotheses, thinking, and culturalised norms. Irreverence is the voice of differentiation that assists in holding a relational position. 

The model of “fit” that’s generally pushed onto people has never felt right to me as a humanist and systemic therapist. I believe this generalised idea of relational fit is of a more traditional school of thinking (maybe psychodynamically led), and I’ve often found myself in awkward arguments about it - argument can be useful to recognise the multiplicity of mind/s, and I do acknowledge and greatly value that healing largely happens in relationship, dialogue, and communicative exchanges where the gravitational pull of relational intimacy beckons towards facing our wounds. 


What are we doing when seeking a “relational fit”? 

Are we seeking comfort and avoidance of difficulty or the courage and compassion to face, be with, and heal the internal difficulties that we’ve learned to avoid?

Avoid <———> Embrace 

I’ve witnessed many therapists argue and even make vlog videos that push towards getting the right therapist is the same as dating to find the perfect partner. 

How does this not add the pressure of utopian idealism to the mix? Also, a pressure of perfectionism and unrealism. 

Let’s be clear: Therapy is not dating!

And, let’s not deny relational experiences are useful to assist the witnessing and knowing of context. 

As a relationship therapist, I often hear within intimate conversations about people, in a relationship or moving into another relationship, and yet again the same things happen - another one! That thing again! “Here we are again”, people exclaim!

You don’t have to go to therapy to realise this, and reoccurring patterns are not bound to dating.

Seeking a relational fit, to degrees of enough or the perfect fit is an elusive and tricky task, and to preoccupy ourselves with it may further distort what could, otherwise, take place.

Why add more complications, in attempts to avoid the complications of feeling something you fear feeling, again?

People generally know this and still continue to do it. Thinking is one thing and emotional systems have power and communication ideas of their own. 

When people seek a relational fit, are we not seeking relational safety? If so, this is a strong and valid point, though the kind of safety sought is usually what is already known, emoted, and operated from - people hold prejudices and even delusions toward it - also, phobias that coercively control their actions to maintain this. Your system is already doing its best to keep you safe from socially embodied emotional positions, anxious fears, others' prejudices, and for too many of us, being shamed or mistreated, too often due to misunderstanding. So, people generally seek what they already are, and that allows them to feel safe or let’s say “familiar”, even when it’s actually not what they want, invite, or need.  

It’s possible to feel safe when it’s not, and it’s possible to not feel safe when it actually is safe.

The problem is that this emotional construction continues to invite “more of the same” and that generates an impasse or stuckness, and that, in turn, generates more gravity for these problematic relational ruts to continue - a bind.

“These are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it.

Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.””

~Mere Christian, bk I, ch. I

Throughout my lifelong process of personal therapy and training as a therapist, and being a therapist for about a decade and a half, I’ve engaged a wide range of therapists and approaches to therapy. 

I used to make this “more of the same” mistake, and can still do so - it’s too easy for its safety deceptions to catch us out… It's like they’ve moved with invisibility cloaks at times. I’m definitely not perfect, I don’t know all, and am not immune to mistakes, but I am continually learning to be with emotional stuff I’ve not yet learned to, as a limited human being dealing with an endless pit of history and possibilities. This is all mostly useful and to assist toward the changes I need to move through life or to put the breaks on change, to be with, especially when feeling overwhelmed.

To be here in the now - a place of calm existence - the space between.

When facing a cauldron of emotion, we best not try to eat the whole soup at once, but serve in smaller portions - bit by bit.  

That being said, I’m a very intuitive person, and that’s also a part of what helps me be an effective therapist. In my journey, I’ve chosen therapists I liked the look of, ideas I favoured, latest trends of therapy, they must be the best, older and wiser, followed certain feelings or emotions, and then, a shift occurred and I engaged the therapists that I held the most phobic reactions towards. The ones that I thought were safe didn’t really work!

What and why? I can remember thinking “What could be enough and actually be effective?” I can now, years later, honestly say they did all help in a useful way. Yes, they actually did, even the ones I thought or felt didn’t at that time. All the micro changes I had hardly noticed led to a significant change (a mass of virtuosity) - pre-micro changes manifested significant change.

Looking back in reflection, I can see how this contextual view differentiated and allowed more inner space for emotion. The therapists I was most phobic towards helped more, in a funny way…. How? Because that helped me really face my fears, phobias, and delusions. As Carl Jung argued, “where your fear is, is the task”. This positioned me so that I had to find new resources, invite different qualities, and make a real felt change, and it’s by no means complete. This action also keeps the therapist actively engaged and alert to their tools.

It’s known that transference in psychodynamic ideas are emotionally embodied attempts to keep us safe from the past, with the past also directing us. It’s nothing new, and in systems thinking there are many ideas. One is ‘schismogenesis’ - too much or too little difference, too quickly, makes for a relational break - idealised severance as a solution to not experience the human experience. 

The attempted solution can maintain the problem, and it comes to the point where we can either reject the relationship or reject the problem with a different or previously unknown solution - a courageous voyage into mystery may be required. 

‘Courageous Dialogue’ may be required.

However, therapy is largely about finding the inner resources that have been out of reach, feeling the natural comfort, to benefiting from emotional acceptance which also becomes a practice for relational acceptance and possibilities. 

An image of a suit, tie, boots, ugly face, posh clothes, car, desk, dreadlocks, guru status, or any other walk or presentation of life is not what will dissolve the taunts, or deliver ‘the you that’s immune' to trauma. It’s the psychology of change and something outside of what is normal to your thinking, beliefs, social input and embodied histories that will make useful change, because the old socialisation is what makes and maintains your current position and felt experiences.

Something is missing within the ingredients and you continue to crave the difference that makes the difference. That may be a part of you that has been suppressed, a social thing maintains rejection, or you have somehow learned to maintain that position as helpful even though it now has no need to, or has become a sticky or rigid problem.


What does all of this mean?

The relational fit is not so important as previously thought in therapy. 

It’s recently been identified that the highest context of therapy is, unsurprisingly the client and what the client brings to therapy.

The relationship and its fit is now argued to be half as important as the client and what they bring to therapy.

A part of me is astonished at this new finding because as a humanist and systemic-centred therapist, this is exactly how I was mentored, to follow the client (not lead), so this makes a relational fit in its own right, right?

A clear way or a paradox of what is to follow?

The client and what is going on for them is twice as important as the relationship with their therapist, according to the current and new findings of research.

Let’s do as I know and follow the clients needs. 

Furthermore, this new research shows that what people or you don’t know is even more effective, for therapeutic effect, when these qualities are integrated into the therapy. Another reason to journey into the mysterious….

What don’t we know that’d be useful? 

The above, is how the practice of internal family systems therapy (IFS) works, another mindful approach from the systemic therapies camp. 

Let’s be real here, a therapist is unlikely to be your friend in life outside of therapy, although most are friendly. Friends generally support and that supports the status quo. Therapy is not about finding someone that is skilled at being likeable, or simply there to please or do as instructed, or support the problem-bound usual - that is a familiar narrative - that usually gets us into all sorts of problematic relational issues with charismatic deceptions, intended or otherwise.

Therapy isn’t about making deceptions for comfort, it’s more about undoing them, to liberate from their embodiments and introjected burdening, uncomfortable or harmful nature  - which requires a different type of approach to the usual relational safety that is believed or has become, I’ll say it again, “familiar”. 

Therapy is about embracing difference and the qualities of change to benefit and transform the agency of the individual or individuals in a relational system - the relational system being an individual, in its own right. 

Therapy helps people to be with the internal human experiences that have been made to be difficult to feel rather than avoid them. This can be made easier internally by clearing blockages to the closer nature of the person. Sometimes, that means finding a clear path to avoid harmful stuff in the environment, with newfound clarity and qualities.

This all argues, with the new research findings that:

  • You and what you bring to therapy are more important than the relationship with the therapist. 
  • Relational fit has been thought to be important and probably is. Relational fit holds meaning and value, but also probably it is less important or effective, for therapy, than we generally or previously have been led to believe.

Will we take this on board? I don’t know… Can we consider this new finding may actually improve the relational fit in a more realistic nature? It may benefit to consider what is more important – maintaining the problem by having to feel the ‘familiar’ kind of safety, or making a change to embrace the discomforts of the human condition.


Sources

  • Adapted from Norcross, J. C., & Lambert, M. J. (2019). Evidence-based psychotherapy relationship: The third task force. In J. C. Norcross & B. E. Wampold (Eds.).
  • Psychotherapy relationships that work (3rd ed., Vol. 1). Oxford University.
  • Steps to an Ecology of Mind, (2000/04/15), Gregory Bateson, The University of Chicago Press.
  • You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For: R.C Schwartz (2023).
  • No Bad Parts R.C Schwartz (2021).
  • Intimacy from the Inside Out: Toni Herbine-Blank, Donna M. Kerpalman, Martha Sweezy, (2016).
  • Self-led: Seth Kopald 
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The views expressed in this article are those of the author. All articles published on Counselling Directory are reviewed by our editorial team.

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Bristol BS2 & Bradford-On-Avon BA15
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Written by Martin Linton
IFS Therapy & Systemic Practice, for Individuals & Couples.
location_on Bristol BS2 & Bradford-On-Avon BA15
My work is with individuals and couples from a Systemically-centred practice, I’m also fully trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Intimacy from the Inside Out (IFIO) - ‘Partswork’ or contextual approaches to psychotherapy & my passion is heal...
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