At the end of the day, I sat in silence and reflected about my day as I always do. One session in particular stood out to me. When I asked the client what they were hoping to get out of the session, they said internal peace.
This isn’t an uncommon response from clients who come to see me. What made the session stand out for me is that this individual didn’t come to discuss the external world; they came looking to explore their own internal landscape and were looking for a pathway to fully accept who they are and the way that they move through the world. While this is always the place where I land with clients, some take longer than others to get there. Most clients start by discussing the external landscape of their reality before they are ready to explore their internal landscape. I often use their external landscape as a pathway into their internal landscape, as the real work is internal. The external world is simply a mirror of our internal landscape.
This client started in the internal landscape, which made the process simple and easy. They had spent their life feeling like they didn’t belong. They had lived a really beautiful and authentic life, but they had secluded themselves and didn’t share with others about one aspect of their life, an important expression of who they are.
By the end of the session, they had landed in inner peace. They didn’t need other people to accept this aspect of them, they simply needed to accept this aspect of themselves. The inability to belong in community was driven by an inability to belong inside of themselves. I watched the moment that they allowed belonging inside of themselves, and it felt like I was watching it in slow motion, almost as if time had slowed down just so that I got to soak up every second of witnessing this individual in their process.
At the end of the session, I asked them how they were feeling. As I looked into their eyes, tears welled up and began to flow down their cheeks as they whispered, “Peaceful, thank you for that.” I smiled gently back at them, knowing that it wasn’t me at all that had done this; I had just held a safe, nonjudgmental space for them to do this work themselves.