It may sound odd to say, since embracing and facilitating change is what counseling is all about, but I find I’m still inspired and a little bit in awe of it when a person makes a profound change.
I was having a final ending session with someone this week and I was struck by the fact that this person was different than the one I’d met some months before. To be honest I couldn’t say what part, if any, her counseling sessions played. What I do know is that it was her change, she was responsible. She worked very hard and successfully developed a response of curiosity to herself and her emotions that previously shut things down.
What’s most inspiring, I think, is not just seeing the relief from some unpleasant habit, but seeing a person’s rock hard assumption that “this is just the way things are” dissolve in a new and more fluid understanding. It is movement towards actually living more moment to moment, when we see the reality of just how fluid things really are, how change is actually the one true constant. But to our normal, walking around, worldly selves, that prospect is frankly so terrifying, we’d rather believe in the permanency of our personalities and all the troubles that brings than face the implications of the truth of change.
When conditions are right, though, and we see past that apparent solidity, wow. Human beings are so cool.