The Heart in Therapy: Navigating Real Feelings within Professional Boundaries

The relationship between therapist and client exists in such a unique emotional, intellectual and energetic space. It's not friendship, yet feels so deeply human. Not love of the kind you experience with friends and family, but a kind of love, it can be. It is a relationship that often touches and impacts - both who sit within it. These genuine feelings are what I refer to as The Heart in Therapy.

One of the most poignant aspects of the therapeutic relationship is that there can be a tension between the depth of authentic connection and the constraints of the professional boundaries that hold it.

There can be very human moments of wishing the connection could exist 'out there', as friendship. Yet, it is this very limitation and the absence of 'normal' social agendas and complexities, that preserves the healing nature of the therapeutic space.

The heart in therapy refers to what therapists may define as the genuine joy at their client's breakthroughs; the protective care for them in their difficulties; the unwavering belief they hold for their capacity to overcome and grow; and feeling moved bearing witness to their courage and resilience.

Even more profoundly, it is a relationship both therapist and client enter into with full awareness it will end. In this way, it offers a unique opportunity to develop the courage to engage openly and vulnerably, despite the impermanent nature of the bond.

This learning extends far beyond the therapeutic relationship and provides a practice ground for experiencing the truth present in all relationships, that of inevitable loss. 

~ In the therapeutic relationship we are invited to experience depth without clinging ~

The concept of 'mujo' from Zen Buddhism captures this beautifully, reminding us that limitations provide us with experiences of freedom; that liberation comes not from escaping constraints or the boundaries we must exist within, rather, from fully inhabiting them.