When unthinkable events happen, your work as a practitioner becomes so much more crucial.
And lately, it feels like we have been witnessing one unthinkable tragedy after another.
As we grieve and process these events ourselves, we are simultaneously helping clients navigate the grief, disillusionment, and even hopelessness they may feel in the wake of tragedies. For some clients, these events may retrigger unresolved trauma.
In the video below, Usha Tummala-Narra, PhD shares how she works with clients who are feeling disillusioned to help them move toward hope.
Have a look.
So for example, feeling disillusioned with someone in your family or a friend can be very painful, but it can also allow you to see some imperfections which may be a part of moving towards a more real or authentic understanding of a relationship with that person. So that sometimes if we stay sort of mystified and we don’t know more fully what’s happening for a person or what a person is like, then we sort of remain in the dark, so to speak, around the authentic part of a relationship. So I try to make that distinction around disillusionment and hopelessness with my clients.
One of the things that I have found really interesting about disillusionment in our recent times is how sometimes there’s our hopefulness about the world around us can lead us to also deny certain realities about the world. There’s a way, for example, when I think about the Me Too movement, there was a large collective denial of violence against women and girls and sexual violence more broadly. And what Me Too did was it shook all of that up, it broke the denial. And in some ways we can say, well, that was disillusioning to think that we haven’t made as much progress in this area as we thought. And yet, breaking through that denial allows us to kind of see that there is work to be done, but in the process of being disillusioned, we’re also connecting with other people. And through that collective movement, there can be positive change and hope for the future.
And the fact that people are courageous enough to speak out allows me to potentially speak out as well or allows me to connect with both the pain of it, the pain of violence, but also it allows me to see that there could be change that comes by being a part of this greater movement or a part of speaking out and facing that reality. So there’s a way in which disillusionment, I think, can certainly involve pain and despair, but it can certainly lead to an awakening of a sort to do something differently, to engage in action, to engage in behaviors that lead us to a better place ultimately. So there’s the short term despair and a long term goal of moving towards a better place, moving towards safety, a sense of belonging and affirmation of oneself.
I appreciated the distinction Usha made between disillusionment and hopelessness, and how the former can help clients begin to see themselves and the world in new ways.
But now I’d like to hear from you. What how do you work with clients who feel overwhelmed or disillusioned by world events? Let us know in the comments below.
Barbara. Oppressions are not “internalized”, they are inflicted. Like bullets. Nobody would ever say someone was killed because they internalized a bullet.
THANKYOU!!!!!
As I have been reading emails over the last two years from this group of therapists I’ve been appreciating many of the talks and very much appreciated Uma regarding disillusionment as well as times of overwhelming Day today news. In April my husband and I received the disastrous news about the sudden death of our only granddaughter lived near her family in San Diego, and whom we visited ever since her birth 32 years ago. We are living in Delray Florida as of three years ago after raising our three children for 60 years in Massachusetts. I will be meeting with a group here in Boynton Beach Florida on Wednesday, May 10 in order to explore the process of grieving and ability to accept this time of change. As a graduate of Lesley College over 35 years ago at the age of 46 I have worked with my own capacities for being present and working with others also in arts related Settings. The work of your institute has been most enlightening and also has expanded my explorations and change.
I have worked with war victims in Colombia for a while in a short therapy model (because that was the extent of the commitment we could get from our clients). To address the loss of hope, we included as part of the protocol for our clients to invite them to think of which actions could they engage with to contribute to changing the conditions in which we live in Colombia, which could be to be closer to their families or creative, spiritual, social or political engagement.
Jules Suescún-Gómez
I resonate with the importance of honouring here nd now pain of disillutionment, loss of trust in life s preciousness in pain.
I also open in the moment to the reality in being present to ‘ both and ‘ looking to ordinary moments of kindness in each day, and many social activists ‘peope looking to cultivate awareness of organisation such as, Me Too, Lives Matter, Thich Naht Hanh s Plum Village… Ghandi, nd young peoples programs…
It can be challenging to hold wider perspective post Covid-19 aftermath.. 🙏🌻
This distinction is most helpful. I too offer time to dwell on and to feel whatever comes up in disillusionment, to spend time there, identify what it is, name it, honour this opportunity to bring it into the open and to talk about it, find it in their body, notice what happens for them during these times (there will be more). Then, not so much talk of hope, as identifying personal spheres of influence and control, making new choices from this awareness and moving into action.
I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, says the Lord. Anyone who comes to me will have the light of Life.
Thank you.This is a very necessary conversation. Most News information is regulated by corporations and driven by fear.
Fear, doom and gloom with no solution will trigger us. Be aware of what information you take in. Are you being informed or triggered? Can you take action? give a donation? checkon a friend? find a community who is talking, connecting and doing something about this situation. We are the only species who can consciously self regulate, heart math, EFT, breath and movement, vagal release and regulation, etc. As a somatic practitioner I would listen and gently guide them in this direction, while monitoring their body language, breath, tensions, and releases. Then I would work with grounding, empowerment, and anchoring it in. Giving them tools to use between sessions to keep wiring this calm and or good flow.
I also believe instead of saying ‘be safe’ which I hear in closing conversations too much. how about be aware, be hopeful, be kind, be loving and courageous, BeLieve there are greater things.
Diane Cocoros
EB Energy Medicine, EFT Practitioner
Functional Lifestyle Wellness
Holistic Wellness and Movement
Science of Spirit
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I am not a therapist, but I so much like the distinction that you have made between being informed or being triggered. It opens the door to workable solutions. Thank you
I have found ‘the Work that Reconnects’ from Joanna Macy very helpful to reconnect to both the grief, fear and despair as well as the (active) hope, vision and empowerment. I have benefitted both personally from this work, as well as offering some elements of it to my clients has been helpful.
I present my clients with a mystical approach to change. I believe that we are not at an ending, though civilization does seem to be collapsing. I believe this is not an end but instead a profound transition from the world as we know it to something better- the inchoate upset feeling we may have inside- is it really despair or is there an excitement stirring ? The Ego wants stability, sameness, predicability, management of fear, while the Spirit inside us loves and actually wants change. We need to blow past old societal constructs to reach a better world, agreed… but consenting to that means authentically admitting that we may not know everything. To endure the growing shake-up, which is getting worse not better, we must practice humility and seek not the barking scared dog of our Ego, but a one-ness, the Spirit that connects us all.
YES! Beautifully expressed!
I understand wanting to reassure ourselves and our clients that something good is to come out of the multiple crises that we are experiencing globally. However I don’t believe that this is entirely ethical, as we don’t know what the future will hold. It seems to me crucial that we allow the despair and fear of our clients as well as ourselves, and find out how it can mobilise us in our lives. Perhaps to action, but perhaps to more inward work. Humility also means that we can’t know the future and what will happen to humanity.
Yes, I so agree with this..humility, witnessing and finding ways to move forward..
Finally, finally…therapists are addressing the massive collective denial of the planet’s crisis for survival. It is vital as healers we consider each client coming in with issues of anxiety, depression, anger, emotional dysregulation, as normal responses to a world out of control. I have been working in this area for many years and take the opportunity to educate carefully that we, as individuals, are not separate, but each a significant part of the cosmos. Greatly influenced by the work of Joanna Macy, I agree we hold and validate our despair as a healthy response to grief while exploring the ways to feel anchored and supported with connection to ourselves and others. It’s imperative that we name this collective dissociation while holding our capacity for joy.
II think the biggest obstacle to helping clients deal with disillusionment is that most therapists identify as middle-middle and upper middle class and are not political activists, working towards the changes that are needed in order to slow down the current rate of growing disillusionment. Most are also unwilling to recognize that much personal pain is political oppression internalized. I wonder what it would be like to begin a serious self-awareness movement on the part of therapists so that therapists could also present to and dialogue with clients about the structural impediments to mental health–like a society that does not guarantee a living wage and where white supremacy is not significantly challenged in its ordinary day-day-day operation, for instance. I think Usha Tummala-Narra is very helpful in that she does name her own disillusionment and takes seriously the legitimacy of the disillusionment of her clients, but I would also not underestimate the effect on many potential clients of her being a woman of color who is very beautiful and might be seen to represent the level at which the globe continues to flourish, despite its very real fragility. In other words, one might see her being as embodying hope. I don’t mean in any way to take away from her skill as a therapist–rather, the opposite in fact.
I have found that teaching reality (as presented in Janet Janoff-Bulman’s book “Shattered Assumptions”) from a love-based perspective seems to work in grounding those I help as it has for me. Perhaps this Buddhist proverb says it all. “Obstacles do not block the path; they are the path.”
John Vervaeke has said we are living in times of ‘crisis of meaning’ and ‘famine of wisdom’. Wisdom guides us out of crises. The despair of witnessing civilizational collapse in slow motion is a call for us to reach for deeper wisdom. There are wisdom traditions that have seen people through dark times of similar crises. No amount of reorganizing the mind or psyche will ease existential pain. The answer lies in the spirit.
YES!
I loved Usha’s ability to listen to the disillusionment in her clients to foster that sense of understanding of their pain. Also listening for the moments of hope they may also be experiencing, and to help them move towards connecting to something better and safe.
I liked her recognition that we need to get beyond glib responses to traumatic events. I too feel overwhelmed at times by the news. Sometimes I think the news personnel seem to me to also be struggling with this. I no longer see clients, am retired but retirement has been so very different in these times. I admire those doing therapy in this time. Quite a good talk and message. Thomas Low, Ph.D