– On Grief and Vulnerability in Nashville Counseling

Last Updated on October 4, 2024 by Chris Roberts

WONDROUS

By: Sarah Freligh

I’m driving home from school when the radio talk

turns to E. B. White, his birthday, and I exit 

the here and now of the freeway at rush hour,

travel back into the past, where my mother is reading

to my sister and me the part about Charlotte laying her eggs

and dying, and though this is the fifth time Charlotte

has died, my mother is crying again, and we’re laughing 

at her because we know nothing of loss and its sad math, 

how every subtraction is exponential, how each grief

multiplies the one preceding it, how the author tried 

seventeen times to record the words She died alone 

without crying, seventeen takes and a short walk during 

which he called himself ridiculous, a grown man crying

for a spider he’d spun out of the silk thread of invention-

wondrous how those words would come back and make

him cry, and, yes, wondrous to hear my mother’s voice 

ten years after the day she died-the catch, the rasp,

the gathering up before she could say to us, I’m OK.

                           – Sarah Freligh

COUNSELING AND GRIEF

By: Chris Roberts, MACP, LPC-MHSP (Masters of Arts in Counseling and Psychology.  Licensed Professional Counselor with Mental Health Service Provider designation) Two Trees Counseling Nashville.  Relational Psychodynamic Therapy Certified Therapist Trainer and Consultant.

This is a particularly moving and poignant poem about grief.  Especially in regards to the word “ridiculous.”  How often and sudden grief can feel ridiculous.  How often I hear clients in my office dismiss their vulnerability, their pain, their grief with the word “ridiculous.”  My hope is that when you read this poem, you can hear the sincerity in the word ridiculous, but also the subtle dismissiveness it always invites.  The author flirts with the word ridiculous here as a way to invite us to minimize the seriousness of the moment, to make sure we know that it can’t be this serious.  To make us aware, that she is aware, that driving down the road, daydreaming about her past, shouldn’t slap us in the chest with this type of seriousness and heartache.

And yet, it does.  Grief does.  And if we let it, our vulnerability does, too.  Very rarely can we conjure vulnerability.  At our best, the most we can do is catch it.  It’s a part of what makes vulnerability so exposing- it catches us off guard, without pretenses, without preparation.  Sure, there are moments and ways we can step into vulnerability in such a way that fosters it with intentionality and effort.  I’m not saying that is impossible.  But the very essence of vulnerability is Exposure.  It is an unguardedness that leaves us nervous and uncomfortable with the possibilities of response from another person.

VULNERABILITY AND THERAPY IN NASHVILLE, TN

Just like vulnerability usually sneaks up on us in unexpected ways, even the very act of therapy can’t force vulnerability to occur.  Individual therapy at Two Trees Counseling Nashville with Chris Roberts can set the stage for vulnerability to occur, and we will talk about the ways in which therapy is structured to help make this happen.  And yet, there is never a guarantee that it will happen.  Similar to the poems reflection of how driving down the road, on a regular day, after school, all of the sudden brings to mind such powerful memories and moments of grief and laughter and richness.

The therapist situates themselves in such a way to be attentive and attuned to the stories and memories and experiences of the client.  The client simply tells the stories or memories that come to mind while sitting in front of the individual therapist.  In this sense, there is nothing profound or complicated about the process.  But, the therapist is not simply listening and observing and taking account of the clients memories.  The therapist must get wrapped up in the stories.  The therapist must get lost in the memories.  The therapist must feel what is being communicated, and sometimes, feel beneath the stories into things that the client doesn’t even realize is available.

THE THERAPIST’S VULNERABILITY

In order for the client to truly feel “heard” or “gotten” or “known,” the therapist must allow themselves to be surprised, to be caught off guard with what the therapist is experiencing.  In this sense, the therapist must be just as vulnerable as the client.  Therapists, just like clients, have all these sophisticated ways of hiding and masking and being so prepared that they themselves (therapists) are not actually opened to be surprised and caught off guard by the experience of being with the client.  In some sense, the therapist may actually be the one who has to go first.  The one who must risk their vulnerability by saying the thing that comes to their mind that feels unprotected or unguarded.  By letting the unpredictability of the response from the client be the exposed place between the two of them.

HOW OFTEN DOES THIS HAPPEN IN A THERAPY SESSION?

I get asked this question often.  And perhaps with a bit of sobriety I typically respond, “not as often as I would like.”  But, through no fault of anyone’s actions. Which makes it even more sobering.  Life, in general, is like this, and so the therapy session mirrors life.  We do spend most of our lives grinding through the mundaneity of everyday life.  And there is nothing to do about this.  It is not bad.  Or good.  It simply is.  However, it is something that can be grieved.  The grief of our lack of connection that exists on a continual basis.  The grief of the distance between our longed-for state of connection with ourselves and others versus the reality of our lives.  And perhaps, ultimately, the sobering reality of how, even in therapy, we can’t create the emotional connection and vulnerability that we are so desperately seeking.

ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A THERAPIST IN NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE?   

If you are looking for a therapist in Nashville, or anywhere in the state of Tennessee, then Chris Roberts at Two Trees Counseling Nashville would love the opportunity to work with you.  Chris has over 15 years experience working with individuals in the areas of grief and vulnerability and loss and connection.  Chris has a few openings in the upcoming weeks and can be reached at chris@nashvillecounselor.net and (615) 800-9260.