I’ve Been Lying All Along

I’ve told clients that you cannot hold two opposing feelings at the same time. I’ve used that idea to help them understand that a painful emotion doesn’t have to consume them, that there is room for something else to enter their experience.

There was a reason I taught it that way. When you’re deep in distress, it can feel as though the emotion has taken over the entire landscape. Whatever else exists in your life becomes difficult to access. The idea of bringing forward a contrasting feeling offers a possibility: what you feel right now can change. You have some capacity to influence your experience, even when you cannot immediately change the circumstances surrounding it.

That was what I wanted clients to understand. They weren’t helpless inside a feeling, sentenced to remain there until it decided to release them. But in explaining that possibility, I made an absolute claim that didn’t leave enough room for the complexity of being human.

Then I found myself preparing to say goodbye to many clients preparing for a year’s end, and I realized I might need to have a word with myself.

I am joyful. They’re doing well. They’re ready. This is what we worked toward, and I have no desire to keep them in therapy when they’re ready to practice the skills and do life without me. I am also very sad, and the joy isn’t doing a damn thing to make that sadness disappear. Both are here, comfortably disproving something I’ve said with considerable confidence.

So, “lying” might be an unfair accusation. I believed what I was saying. But when your own experience contradicts what you teach, you owe it more than a convenient explanation. What I had blurred was the distinction between shifting an emotional state and holding a complex emotional experience. Finding something funny during a difficult day can interrupt distress. Feeling hopeful can change how we experience uncertainty. Neither requires that every trace of sadness or fear disappear. An emotion can lose its grip on the whole experience while remaining part of it.

Sometimes the contrasting feelings arise from the very same event. I’m elated because my clients are ready to leave, and I’m sad because their leaving means saying goodbye to people I care about. Their progress and the ending of our time together are both real. Each feeling makes sense in relation to what is happening.

I still believe what I wanted clients to understand: a painful feeling doesn’t have to consume you. I need to be more accurate about how I teach it. Making room for joy doesn’t mean sadness has to vacate the premises, and feeling sad while something good is happening doesn’t mean you’ve failed to appreciate it.

The best way I can describe this work is through books. When I read a book, I invest in a life of characters. I care about what happens to the person whose story I’ve entered. I want to see what they do with what they’ve learned, whether they find their footing, and how the relationships and decisions that once seemed impossible unfold. When a character has struggled for hundreds of pages, I don’t suddenly lose interest when life begins to improve. I want to see what becomes possible for them. Therapy carries some of that same investment, except the person is real and I don’t get to read the ending.

I enter a story already in progress. There are years before me, people I will know only through someone else’s telling, and experiences we may never discuss. For a period of time, I get to accompany this person closely. We examine what has happened, what it has come to mean, and what they want to do next. I become familiar with the places where they get stuck and the things they struggle to say. I get to witness changes that might be invisible to someone who doesn’t know what it took to make them.

Of course I become invested. I care about the person living that story. I hope I’m a chapter in their book. I would be happy with a sentence. Honestly, I’d take a word, provided it was a useful one. Whatever space I occupy, I hope something from our work goes with them into the pages I’ll never see.

That’s the hard part. Their story continues, and my knowledge of it ends. I don’t get to know how life unfolds five years from now or whether something we discussed becomes meaningful in a way neither of us anticipated. I may never know whether they take the chance they once couldn’t imagine taking, how their relationships develop, or what an ordinary Tuesday feels like when the distress that brought them to my office no longer organizes their life.

You reach a point where you have every reason to believe they can continue, and you close the book while they’re still writing it. The investment is left there, without knowing.

I care deeply about my clients. I understand the boundaries of the relationship, and I understand that caring for someone doesn’t entitle me to continued access to their life. I can understand all of that and still feel the loss when our time together ends. Professional understanding has never made me immune to being a person.

This work can be incredibly lonely. I know people closely while much of who I am remains outside the room. That arrangement has a purpose, and I respect it. Yet a goodbye can remind me how often I am seen through what I provide. Who I am certainly shapes that work: my thoughtfulness, my directness, my humor, and the care I bring into the room. But being valued for what I bring to someone’s life is different from being known in the fullness of my own. That is the odd ache to name in the clinical relationship, it matters deeply and is meant to remain unequal. I can know what someone fears, what they regret, and what they hope will become possible. They can experience my care without knowing much about the person who goes home after the last session. I chose a profession with those boundaries. Choosing it doesn’t make the loneliness imaginary.

There is no expectation that clients should resolve that loneliness. Their readiness to leave is something to celebrate, and my feelings about the ending are mine to carry. Still, I think there should be room to speak honestly about what these goodbyes cost, even when everything has gone well. An ending can be appropriate, timely, and wanted, and still cause sadness.

With so many goodbyes close together, I’m feeling that cost. I know they’re ready. I’m proud of the work they’ve done, and I will miss them. Knowing that our work is complete answers the question of whether we should continue. It doesn’t answer the very human wish to know what happens next.

Which brings me back to what I’ve been telling people. If I can be this joyful and this sad at the same time, then I need a more accurate explanation. A feeling doesn’t have to leave before another one can arrive. My sadness can occupy part of this experience without taking away my happiness for them, and my happiness doesn’t require me to pretend the goodbye is easy. And to go further, my joy wouldn’t be as full if I didn’t also embrace the sadness, together they remind of the magnitude of this work, the honor to do it, and the gratitude to help write at least a few words in their life story.