Healing and Hypnotherapy Volume 5, Issue -3, 1 September 2020 | Page 21
“We must accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can; everything, even
the unprecedented, must be possible within it... Some people only come to
know one corner of their room.” [6]
“...we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the
most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience.” [7]
“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to
see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that
frightens us is, in its deepest essence something helpless that wants our
love.” [8]
“Don’t search for the answers, which would not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live
everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the
future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the
answer.” [9]
“Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each
embryo of a
feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable,
the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own understanding, and with
deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born...”
I have used all of the above as direct suggestions or as inspiration for
imagery in therapy.
When Nothing Else Works – Throw Poetry at Them
The act of writing poetry is an attempt to put into words that which the poet
finds inexpressible. When it is successful, the act of reading or hearing it
can create a similar, unsayable experience—an experience that is beyond
logic, that bypasses the critical mind and, as Kafka so poetically suggests,
can “smash the frozen sea within us.”
While it is easy to assume that poetry is only for a certain type of client, this
belief could create missed opportunities. Poetry can have the most
profound effect on the clients you wouldn’t expect. Of course, not everyone
loves poetry. Some people will tell you they hate it. These people usually
had a bad experience in school where they had to read medieval poetry and
then analyse it. Most people are pleasantly surprised when exposed to
contemporary poetry on a subject that interests them.