Grace at our limits

The journey of my first year training as a counsellor.

Photo by eduard on Unsplash

This piece refers to counselling training sessions that were conducted under the agreement of confidentiality. I mention this to explain why it might be more about me and less about the other people on my course than I would like it to be! Here, I will be redacting them and their stories to respect the confidentiality of our sessions together.

Also, this piece deals with abuse and trauma at some length so just a heads up that this will be a very heavy one.

Bring something real

It was session three of the Counselling Skills course and we were doing what we did every week: triads.

Triads are what they sound like, a triangular group of three members, a counsellor, a client and an observer. From week one, we were in triads.

Every week, we were expected to bring something real (but not too real) to share, so that someone could counsel us about it. Afterwards, the observer would give feedback on the session, then we would rotate roles and go again. This is how we train, largely by just doing it.

The triad in our third session was a turning point for me.

Sometimes you like a stranger for no obvious reason. Thrown into this group of strangers, I spotted one fellow trainee counsellor that I just liked. That session, I asked him what he wanted to talk about.

You never know what will happen next when you ask that question in that context. I have seen it prompt some unexpected things from some very normal-looking people.

On this day, it was grief. Bereavement. But guilt too, about not having cared well enough for the family member who had passed. So grief and guilt.

Well, this turned out to be too much for me. I felt myself becoming moved. This would have been difficult enough content to work with, but it was made even harder by the fact that I liked this person. I could feel in my body that the session had become ‘heavy’. How was I going to make the session work if I was already moved? I could tangibly feel the edge of my limits.

Instinctively, I suppressed my feelings and went clinical. I asked the best questions that I could. It was a really hard session for me. I felt like I was hearing a good person beat themselves up. I continued to suppress and kept it moving.

As the clock behind them drew our session to a close, I relaxed internally. And it struck me - I hadn’t even offered a ‘sorry for your loss.’ I squeezed this in and we spent the ‘post-game’ chat largely unpacking that. What had happened? What do you do when you become moved? Can you develop a capacity for this? Can your limits change?

Ask for the grace

On the way home, the session played on my mind. I walked, thought and eventually prayed. For the first time, I really connected the practise of my Catholic Christian faith with the practise of counselling training and something clicked.

Here I was sensing my limits and, as a Christian, my human limits are always a reminder to lean into and ask for God’s grace. 

For me, the idea of asking for grace has been really shaped by what’s referred to as Ignatian Spirituality.

Since November of 2020, the second UK lockdown, I have had monthly spiritual direction. Spiritual direction is basically a one-way conversion in which someone helps you to identify where God is at work in your life. It has kept me massively grounded. It has always been on Zoom and, in my previous flat, it was always from my kitchen. Being on the receiving end of someone’s total attention like that was life changing for me and was the beginning of my journey towards counselling training.

My director uses the Ignatian model of spiritual direction, inspired by the works of St Ignatius of Loyola. Asking for specific graces is something that St Ignatius encourages.

‘ … Ignatius tells us that before we even begin to pray we should “Ask God our Lord for what I want and desire.” This is asking God for a grace … Grace is always free gift from God and can manifest in many forms.

… Grace—certainly in Ignatius’ terms—are typically things that can be affectively felt … You can’t ask for the “grace of a job promotion” but you can ask for the grace of a deeper appreciation for your work or vocation. Those kinds of graces can be felt internally.’ Andy Otto, ‘God in All Things’

So, when my life gets hard, when I can feel my limits, I ask for the specific grace to get through. Usually, this has been me asking for the grace to have life’s harder conversations. It has helped me in the gnarly times. 

And so, it clicked. This work that I felt called to was taking me to new emotional limits and I needed to ask for the grace to do it well.

Around this time, I took the question of, ‘What do you do when you become moved?’ to a wise therapist friend. She said that in that moment of being moved your body actually needs to be comforted - you basically need a hug. It’s emotional and it’s embodied, your body is feeling the heaviness. She had taken to resting a hand on her chest and acknowledging the heaviness with her clients.

I don’t do quite that, but I developed something close: I reach for my rosary and hold it. The rosary is a string of Catholic prayer beads that are counted in a meditative form of prayer. My family would pray it every night together after dinner. Now, often in the pocket of my jeans, I can reach for my rosary in the same way that I would my phone or wallet. It has the effect of embodying the act of asking for grace as soon as I’ve become aware that I am up against my limits. Very Catholic I know, but for me, this works.

The Hidden Epidemic

Alongside my training I read Dr Bessel Van Der Kolk’s, ‘The Body Keeps The Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma’.

It took me four months to read it. I had to put it down a lot. I often winced while reading. The details of the book’s case studies are just harrowing. I began to notice that reading them had the same effect on me that heavy triad sessions did, except that these case studies were dealing in the worst true stories I had ever read. It brought me up against my emotional limits again and it was draining. And yet, the same part of me that is drawn to helping others in counselling work was drawn to continue reading. It felt like interfacing, in an albeit distanced way, with immense suffering.

Two things have really remained with me from it.

Firstly, it gave me an understanding of what is referred to as Complex PTSD and secondly, it exposed me to the sheer scale of abuse.

Much of the book covers PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a disorder caused by a traumatic event. It causes memory to malfunction so that, instead of traumatic memories becoming integrated and stored normally, they are relived as flashbacks and nightmares.

However, if you experience trauma in your early life, in your childhood, your brain is not yet fully developed and it responds very differently. In his study, Van Der Kolk found that:

‘To some degree their [victims of child abuse] problems do overlap with those of combat soldiers, but they are also very different in that their childhood trauma has prevented them from developing some of the mental capacities that adult soldiers possessed before their traumas occurred. There were clear differences between these groups’. p142

This led to the creation of what is now referred to as ‘Complex PTSD’, a cluster of symptoms distinct from PTSD. Van Der Kolk goes on to describe how traumatic experience in early life shapes someone’s ‘inner map’ of life.

‘As children … If our parents or grandparents keep telling us we're the cutest, most delicious thing in the world, we don't question their judgment … And deep down, no matter what else we learn about ourselves, we will carry that sense with us: that we are basically adorable. As a result, if we later hook up with somebody who treats us badly, we will be outraged. It won't feel right: It's not familiar; it's not like home. But if we are abused or ignored in childhood, or grow up in a family where sexuality is treated with disgust, our inner map contains a different message. Our sense of our self is marked by contempt and humiliation, and we are more likely to … fail to protest if we are mistreated.’ p127

This really stayed with me, that if we grow up in a loving family, we will know how to seek healthy love in future relationships - it will ‘feel like home’. However, if those who care for us harm us as children, our image of love will be deeply distorted before we are fully developed and confused. In this case, we won’t see the red flags in later relationships, or more accurately, red flag behaviours will be what ‘feels like home’.

The second thing the book really taught me was the sheer scale of abuse. Van Der Kolk calls it ‘the hidden epidemic’ and he tells the story of its discovery through the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study. This study was a joint collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Kaiser Permanente which surveyed 17,421 people about childhood events.

It found that in their childhoods:

• 1 in 10 had been verbally abused (sworn at or insulted) often by their parent/caregiver.

• 1 in 4 were often physically abused (pushed, grabbed, slapped) by their parent/caregiver.

• 28% of women and 16% of men had been sexually abused by an adult/someone 5 years older than them.

• 1 in 8 had witnessed their mother being physically abused.

Only one-third of the respondents reported no adverse childhood experiences.

Van Der Kolk writes, ‘The first time I heard Robert Anda present the results of the ACE study, he could not hold back his tears … when the ACE study data started to appear on his computer screen, he realized that they had stumbled upon the gravest and most costly public-health issue in the United States: child abuse.’ p148

Growing in love

It is hard for me to imagine growing up with abusive parents. My childhood was so much fun and I am friends with all my siblings and both of my parents. But from many rounds of triads and from my friendships, I know that that is far from the norm.

This has been one of the tests of my ability to empathise, which is to understand the world of the other. I have to stretch my understanding to enter into a world in which parents are not loving but harmful and where abuse is what ‘feels like home’.

In the year of training, I went on to counsel people who had had traumatic childhoods and I could hear in their words some of the stories from ‘The Body Keeps The Score’. This took me to my limits again but I noticed that they had definitely grown. I had spent time in the stories of abuse now and I could be present to them and not becoming overwhelmed or burry my feelings. This was a long way from the first triad that had moved me like that.

That tangible change has been the journey of the year. Not really learning theories, but feeling my own limitations moving and my capacities growing, creating space for the suffering of others, as I prayed for the grace to enable that to happen.

Towards the end of the year, I wrote this poem to get the feelings down.

The Heart Fire

I feel the heart fire

listening to her tell me

about the mother who abused her

who she is expected to care for.

I am drawn here

to the looking glass of suffering

where we observe it together 

under the cold fluorescents.

I grab my rosary,

my earth wire,

to hold something, 

to be held.

I don’t hold her,

that is beyond me.

I ask for grace to flow through me

and together we lean in.

And this I must walk under your deciduous trees,

to remember that your creation is good,

to be rained on and birdsonged,

to slowly be called back. 

It takes something of me to do this

but I feel the heart fire

and this is where

I am supposed to be.

In all this talk of limits, I want to end with part of an email from my sister. I have a unique big sister -  she is a contemplative nun, which means that she is well-studied in philosophy and theology and that she prays a lot. She said something to me in an email years ago which has always stayed with me.

‘All our capacities/faculties are understood/defined by their object. So, for our spirit it is the good we love (capacity to love) and the reality/truth we know (capacity to know). 

As our spirit is immaterial it is not limited by time/space, it can always go further in love and knowledge. Right till the day we die we can be growing spiritually, loving more and knowing more! So great to know this! Everyday we can grow in our spirit.’

That seems like the right place to land, on our capacity to grow in love.

The phrase, ‘Unconditional Positive Regard’ is used a lot in the therapy world and it always makes me chuckle a bit. It’s like they weren’t allowed to say love so they had to cook up that phrase. And maybe that’s fair enough. In English, we use love to say we love cake, our pets and our romantic partners, so the language is a bit broken. But I feel like it’s just therapy speak for real love, Greek agape love - selfless, unconditional and sacrificial love - Jesus love, the kind of love that heals.

We have to hold on to the fact that our ability to grow in love is not limited. We can grow in it every day until the day we die and the world that we are living in needs us to. Let’s.