April 05, 2020

The Waves Crash on the Shore and the Boat Alike

April 05, 2020/ James Cole Abrams Therapy/ James Abrams

The therapeutic relationship is unique: a one-sided-yet-authentic relationship which places the good of the client at the center of the work. By keeping ourselves out of the relationship while inviting all of our client into it, we therapists create a non-judgmental space where our clients can show the parts of themselves that they hide to the rest of the world. It is an intense experience, as we explore the most emotionally difficult parts of our clients’ lives while holding our own emotional ground. It’s a bit like the relationship between a lighthouse and a ship - we’re both in the same storm, but only one of us is lost at sea.

February 07, 2020

History Schmistory

February 07, 2020/ James Cole Abrams Therapy/ James Abrams

From its very invention, therapy has been inextricably intertwined with personal history. Freud began with a technique of free association designed to elicit hidden feelings his patients had towards their parents. Though his writings are extensive, his basic theory is very graspable: people are ashamed and afraid of how they feel about their parents, so they’ll go to great, often destructive lengths to hide it. By this tenet, the next step writes itself; If you can get patients to say their secrets out loud, they’ll be cured of the burden of carrying them. It made sense at the time. So much sense, in fact, that it has been carried forward to this day. But is it right?

June 27, 2016

Resistance is Fertile

June 27, 2016/ James Abrams

One of the biggest questions in modern therapy is how to most-effectively work with what’s known as a “resistant” client. The idea of resistance is a simple one that belies a complex reality: some clients wont respond well to what the therapist is doing, and progress will be slow or nonexistent. It’s a little hard for me to write about any of this - resistance, progress - without throwing quotes on every other word, but since that looks awful in print please assume I view all of this askance. It’s worth noting that the question of resistance is a question that has only shown up in the modern era of therapy; Freud and the analytic gang not only weren’t worried about “resistance”, they didn’t have even have a concept of it. Why is that?

June 12, 2016

How to Keep Your Heart Beating

June 12, 2016/ James Abrams

Before I went to sleep last night I reminded myself that I had a blog to write, and ran through the general outline of my idea for this week. I woke up, enjoyed some breakfast, sat in the sun for a bit, and checked facebook. Suddenly I didn’t have a plan anymore - my calendar was immediately and coldly cleared, as my hopes for the day were suddenly pulled and distorted into the black hole of tragedy. Lucky as I am to not know anyone personally involved in the shooting at Pulse, I can’t keep the pain of such a horror from entering my chest. This is the reality of tragedy, that it is impersonal in its ability to cross boundaries, insatiable in its ability to demand attention, and implacable in its ability to cause pain...

June 05, 2016

Path of the Snake

June 05, 2016/ James Abrams

I have a friend who recently dropped out of a grad school he had been wanting to attend for years, and which I thought he was a perfect match for. It was a program in somatic therapy, and he is a person who is naturally in tune with himself and always expressing himself through movement and dance. When he told me he was dropping out, I couldn’t believe it - it was like The Flash quitting the track team. We got to talking, and he told me the reason he was leaving the program was that it was too hard. He said he loved the focus on dance and movement therapy, but that the pressure to turn inwritten papers every couple weeks was just too much. He wondered what was even the point of all this writing when the focus should have been on somatic awareness, and he left...