People will talk

Just before we get to this month's blog, I've posted differently this month. I'm still getting openings of this blog page from last month's post, the blog about secure relationships. I suspect the reason for this is word-of-mouth recommendations from readers. So I've re-posted last month's blog further down this page in case people are still looking for it. After all ... 

People will talk...

Yes, people will talk.
    And sometimes that’s a problem.

There, I’ll let that sit for a while, let you ponder …
 … Okay, that’s not what I meant.
     
Recently I’ve added noise-cancelling (or should I say voice-cancelling?) headphones to my audio equipment at the coffeeshop. The reason? Well, at times, coffeeshops are awash with voices. Typically those voices are banal, sometimes intimate, occasionally boisterous, and usually comfortably companionable. 
    Unfortunately, my forty years in the psychotherapy room resulted in an occupational hazard: I’m overly sensitive to nuances within the human voice. The non-linguistic elements of my clients’ speech gave me clues as to their emotional state. It wasn’t a checklist sort of thing ruling out mental health symptoms, it was more about red flags and opened doors. 
    Furthermore, as a result of repeatedly and carefully attending to the human voice for all those years, my brain changed.
    Scientists have researched differences in the brains of virtuoso violinists arising from years of practice and performance. It turns out that the human brain changes in response to the way it is used, particularly in the development of regions of the brain that are exercised by repetitive, and finely controlled behaviours. In providing psychotherapy for so long I engaged in repetitive activities specific to my work. Decoding the auditory nuances in human voice inflection was a tool of my trade.
    So, when conversation happens in the coffeeshop, can you guess where my brain goes? Not into the emotions I’d cultured in the songs when I created them but a-wandering into the conversation threads of the coffeeshop, trying to figure out where that crackle of stress or the bounce of animation was coming from. 
    Psychotherapy is a dance of reading the subjective experience of the client (thoughts and emotions) and responding constructively and compassionately as guided by the therapist’s own subjective experience within the dialogue. If I was good at it the client felt understood and respected, the session would flow organically, new connections and understanding would arise. Sometimes I had to intervene if the client’s thought process and emotional entanglements became unproductive or treacherous. At that point I’d take the lead in that dance, getting it back on a track of greater self-awareness and intentionality.
    The notion of a psychologist knowing what the other person is thinking is really a myth. However, a psychologist can get a pretty good idea what the other person is feeling. Finding the emotional nuance under the spoken word was vital in doing so.      
    So, back to those voice-cancelling headphones … they’re there to help this aging (aged?) brain of mine focus on playing my music so it can express the emotions I’d created into it, to help me to not get lost in the out-there of the coffeeshop.
    Oh, and I have to keep my head down looking at the keys, or even play with my eyes closed, because the body language of the coffee shop patrons can do it to me also.


This occupational hazard of my career as a psychologist has set me in good stead for another part of my creative life. 
    As an author I seek feedback on my fiction. Beta-readers, paid editors and contest administrators help me to know what works and what doesn’t. One of the consistencies in the feedback I’ve received is that the dialogue of my characters rings true. 
    I have to be honest here. That’s not me being a skillful writer, it’s just me listening carefully to what the characters inside my head are saying, getting their words into text so my readers can listen in too. But it’s not just a matter of taking dictation. Keenly attending to the nuance of how the characters speak helps me to know their unique personalities. 
    Alas as an author, I can’t include vocal nuances into the written text (the fiction writer within me sighs audibly at the thought). I need to enable the reader to do that for themselves. What separates the skill and satisfaction of reading from watching tv or listening to audiobooks is this creative, imaginative task of the reader: breathing human presence into the written words of dialogue on the page.
    I can give hints in the dialogue attributions and in the descriptions of body language. However, the author’s fundamental tool is to create the character’s personality through the plot so the reader can import that personality into dialogue. 
    Let’s run a little thought experiment on this. I think you’ll find it amusing. Apparently there’s a new digital app that reads novels aloud. As the listener you can choose amongst synthesized famous voices to be the reader. I assume it’s the magic (or perversity?) of AI that makes it all possible. Just for fun, let’s apply the personalities of some famous voices into some odd places.
    Consider the fit of Barack Obama’s voice reading The Godfather. Conversely think of Donald Trump reading (I recognize that’s a bit of a stretch) books like Bambi or Anne of Green Gables. Perhaps we could select Sylvester Stalone to read Jane Austen or The Art of Zen. I almost want to download that app and pay for those books to be read in those voices, just for the experience!
    As I ran that little thought experiment did you import the character behind the voice? Did it sound totally absurd given the likely content of the text? Did you smile at the thought?

Indeed the human voice is much more than just a string of words. It reveals the speaker’s personality and it shares the speaker’s felt emotion. That’s what propels my mind off my piano bench into a conversation across the coffeeshop to figure out that stress, that animation, that misery, that joy, that unique personality sitting over there. Not to hear the words, but to experience the person behind the voice.
    Perhaps you have a coffeeshop where you can hear live original music, a place where you can catch the emotion and personal meaning created into the songs by the musician. But be aware while you’re there that people will talk. That’s the other thing a coffeeshop is for.
        
​

Now a reprise of the blog from May 2025

​About Secure relationships

I was away for two weeks … without my piano! Within a few days upon returning home the songs of my repertoire came back. The secure relationships I’d nurtured between the harmonic structures and melody lines nestled in together like old friends.
      My vacation also gave me a break from work on the novel. Upon my return, the characters were still there but I saw them in a different light. The premise of the novel has always been on healing from trauma. Acts of respect, understanding and kindness contributed to that healing. What I noticed upon my return was that secure relationship, committed and assertive in maintaining connection, was even more fundamental to the healing of my central character.
      And so, returning to my creative passions, I find solace in reflection on secure relationships, much needed solace given the insecurity presently percolating around us as Canadians.
      As a nation, we’ve experienced a secure relationship being quickly destroyed. The political impetus in USA is no longer on being a supportive neighbour sharing mutual benefit. We’re now dealing with a bully fuelled by economic greed and imperialistic ambition. We don’t know what the future holds for the quality of life for our two countries, we hope eventually a solution can be found. However, given the disrespect and devaluation shown already, our relationship security has been shattered, probably irreparably.
      I learned a lot about secure relationship from my work as a psychologist. Actually, a lot about how it gets screwed up.
      I subscribed to a notion of psychotherapy that focused on the creation of context to facilitate the natural healing process within the mind of the client. I believed the mind was like the skin in its capacity to heal from trauma. 
      But healing works better if supported. Damaged skin needs protection from being torn open again allowing harmful bacteria to get in. Dressings need to be replaced and the wound cleaned out. Systemic support is needed to insure reserves for the internal processes of repair and fighting infection. 
      Recovery of the psyche through the provision of psychotherapy is much the same. Interpersonal and intrapsychic wounds need to be tended and emotional support provided to enhance the resiliency of the person harmed. The therapist needs to know the client really well to select modalities and timing, to find channels of support the client can accept. With taking that time and exercising that care, trust and security develops. Once these are in place healing can emerge, paced at a rate natural for the client.
      This fundamental notion of psychotherapy placed me at odds with the institutions of psychology and mental health: its scientists, regulators and managers. According to them, wellness comes not from within the client but from enacting intervention protocols onto the client, ones that have theoretical and research sanction. It was all about what we did, not what emerges in the client through a secure, sensitive and deeply knowing relationship. 
      For those scientists, regulators and health care managers it doesn’t matter which mental health professional dispenses the protocol, just that the protocol is dispensed.
      Two situations arose toward the end of my career in which clients arrived at their previous mental health agency to be told their therapist was no longer available and another was taking over. Moreover, for both of these clients, it happened repeatedly. Their subsequent therapists could access the documentation of diagnosis and treatment to continue the treatment protocol. However, the result was not further progress but distrust, disillusionment and anger. It took enormous courage for both of those clients to trust again as they entered therapy with me. Once they knew I would safeguard my relationship with them from interference or being externally truncated we were finally able to progress. 
      Secure relationship, even the capacity for those agencies to provide secure relationship, had been broken. The result was harm.
      I accept that skilled practice using proven techniques can be helpful. I was trained on many of those. My contention is that it’s not the only thing, and probably not the most important thing. However, my former profession elevates this one element as the critical component of treatment. Indeed, over the course of my career, it became the ideology of the profession. As an ideology it took on an ethos of unquestionability and irrefutably, hegemonic and confining.
      But ideology has the power to destroy. While ideology can give a sense of purpose, meaning and approaches to problems, it can also harm. Ideological adherence destroys an individual’s capacity to think independently and critically.
      Furthermore, ideology destroys secure relationships. Consider the consumers of social media political bias who become so adamant in their sense of outrage, personal rights and political correctness they alienate themselves from their family members. Consider the faith groups that shun or disfellowship family members through exercising their religious arrogance and petty piety. Healthy families thrive on intergenerational cohesion but dedication to an ideology can destroy those secure relationships.
      By narrowing perspective, ideology acts like horse-blinders. It blocks out contextual and contributing variables in addressing complex issues. For my former profession it devalued the essential human elements of compassion, wisdom, the capacity for sensitive intersubjectivity, creativity, gentleness, the nurturing of secure and supportive relationship, and the valuing of the client as a unique individual. In my practice, those were foundational to effective psychotherapy. 
      Humans are complex beings living in a complex world. Ideological reductionism can’t meet the demands of complexity. It doesn’t do it well in politics, in families nor in the delicate process of encouraging wellness within someone who is emotionally suffering. 
​
I recently saw where ideology can lead. I visited the Mauthausen Jewish Concentration Camp in Austria (you might want to google it, but be prepared for an account of the worst humanity has to offer). Viewing that camp was especially poignant given what is happening in a country that used to be our neighbour and now wants to be our possessor.

​Gosh, I need my piano, the solace I find there.