Whatever many of my clients’ presenting issues were it seemed to me that they often had one overriding need: the need for their voice to be heard. Not just listened to but heard; fully. Which might sound blindingly obvious given the nature of the counselling room? But that voice is often hidden underneath the words. Sometimes that voice has never been heard and sometimes that voice can’t be expressed in words alone. I suppose what I’m referring to is actually not our voice but our ‘self, our ‘true’ self, the self that sometimes gets lost in the maze of messages heard throughout our lives: the judgements felt, the self-talk generated by who knows what, the ‘shoulds’ and the ‘shouldn’t’s’ whispering in our ear, harking back to some long-forgotten childhood influence? It’s not always easy to untangle that knotted up ball of string, but when our voice is heard, when we make contact with a kindred soul and that lightning rod flashes, whether the distance is 2 metres or a thousand miles, the sensation is wonderful. I used the word ‘we’, which is contravening my own code of conduct (it’s so much safer writing in the third person plural!) What I mean is that today ‘I’ made such contact and felt the heat of the lightning rod, and felt heard. Have you ever felt fully ‘heard’?
May
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