On Companioning

Let’s start on the piano bench at the coffee shop. 
    Watching a family in the comfortable chairs in front of the piano, my attention is taken by a very careful seven-year old boy. He’s eating his dish of chocolate ice cream, deliberately scooping off the sprinkles and Smarties. Eventually, he hands the dish over to his father to finish. Then he sits quietly. When I ask his parents if he’d like to come up to the piano with me they let me know he’s taking piano lessons. With very quiet confidence he comes. We tune match together on the keyboard and then he says he’d like to play Hot Cross Buns. I google it to get the tune in my head to get him started. He plays very well. Another coffee shop customer gets out her phone to video our connection there on the piano bench.
    This blog is about a very human sort of connection I'm calling companioning. For a scant few minutes that seven-year old boy and I were musical companions. It felt deeply enriching for me. 
    It’s easy to think of relationships in terms of family, friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. We cherish our long-term committed relationships supporting each other through the vagaries of life (my spouse and I will soon celebrate our 51st Anniversary). But this blog is about that different sort of relationship, companioning.

In addition to my time on the piano bench, I’m delighted to have a reading buddy.
    We decide together on the books we’re going to read and then read in parallel with each other. Text messaging and video calls include conversations about the books. He previews my reviews before I publish them. My reading buddy and I have different educational and professional backgrounds. This deepens our understanding of what we’re reading. In selecting books, we choose according to each other’s interest. 
    Having a reading buddy is another example of companioning. While we have a friendship in addition to our reading together, the discipline and deliberation in the companion reading has enriched both of us. It provides a structure that keeps our connection strong and eager for what we might read ourselves into next. 

A few years ago I watched a young person drop off her resume at the coffee shop where I was playing. As we got to know each other I found out she was studying psychology at the local university and hoped to make a career in it. Before long she was sharing what she was excited about learning in class and I was sharing what it was like to work as a psychologist.
    For the last three years we’ve companioned together. A cherished friendship has developed but largely the focus has been on her journey through academic psychology and the development of her critical thinking skills. Walking along beside her I got a sense of how the science of my field has developed and she has gotten a sense of what it’s like to apply the things she’s learning to the practical work of a psychologist. 
    Throughout this companioning her studies have been our touchstone, much like the plunking away on the keyboard with the seven year-old and the reading together with my buddy. 

Yes, companioning is a word, the verb form of the noun companion. I checked a few dictionaries but the definitions there are not as specific as the way I’m using the word here. I propose that companioning involves a deliberate coming alongside another person, typically focused on sharing a particular task or part of life’s journey. For it to be effective it needs to be founded on respect for the autonomy of each other, not trying to have power over or exploit the good will of the other person. It is open-ended but deliberately focused. 

For four decades I provided psychotherapy to those suffering with overwhelming negative emotions and seemingly unsolvable life situations. To do so, my profession equipped me with disciplines of critical thought, protocols of assessment and intervention, and the ethics of proper conduct. Professional psychology prides itself on its objectivity, considering only an understanding of the human condition that could be demonstrated through research that generates statistics for numerical analysis. Our thinking was always linear. In the clinical office we were to turn our client’s subjective experiences into objectifiable symptoms and diagnosis, and then apply research-proven interventions. The field dogmatically asserted that these were the things, the only things, that could yield valid knowledge and help in the professional practice.
    And yet I believe the most powerful element of the psychotherapy room was our companioning, the coming alongside of someone facing the tasks of life with the intention of promoting their autonomy and wellbeing. While I paid attention to the way my profession required me to work, I didn’t do just that. Another element was vital to help my clients move forward, the intentional and careful companioning with them in the midst of their struggle. 
    I suspect that long before Freud and Skinner set us thinking about personality and behaviour, companioning existed. Gurus, mentors, elders came alongside of people who would benefit from personal support. A farmer, fisher, or logger would see another struggling with a task and come alongside to help. They would do so wisely so that the struggling one would not feel diminished or inadequate for needing help, just that they faced a task that happened to be too much for them at the time. 
    One poignant experience of companioning occurred for me in the veterinarian’s office where I sat with my elderly and ill dog as she was euthanized. Of course, I was a companion to her in those last moments of her life, but a wise and sensitive veterinarian was a companion to me, sitting with me through the procedure, honouring the wonderful dog that Marly had been and the emotions I would pass through. 
    I believe the capacity for companioning is deeply wired into the DNA of what it means to be human. There are many personal rewards in companioning with another, but that’s not the reason we do it. We do it because we believe in the worth of the other and the value of their task or time of life.