See Me Beautiful

How often have you said to someone, "you need to go for therapy," because you think their behaviour is not in synchrony with your preferred behaviours? Have you been a victim of forced therapy? Coalescive therapy feeds into the stereotypical view that therapy treats deviance; it is for behaviour modification and shaping people to fit into uniforms. If this view of therapy stands, therapy is concerned not with the evolution of a healthy self into the authentic being each person is called to be but in service to the oppressive homogeny.

What if therapy were about creating space where the timid soul of an individual can come out to play in the safety of another timid soul? Could therapy be a place to begin to see oneself for who one genuinely is, without the fear of secretly conforming to the agenda of the homogeny, the therapist, or the family? This article attempts to explore non-interventionist therapy informed by the principle of attending to the secret eternal beauty of being.

See me beautiful

Look for the best in me.

It's what I really am

And all I wanna be

It may take some time.

It may be hard to find

But see me, beautiful.

See me beautiful

Each and every day

Could you take a chance?

Could you find a way?

See me shining through

In everything I do

And see me beautiful.

I must admit that I have indicated to someone that they needed therapy. When I think about it, there were two influencing motivations for making the suggestion. The first was that the people concerned could have genuinely benefited from therapy as they were visibly on a self-destructive path. The second is that how the person in questions presents provokes discomfort in me. My inner intention might be self-regulation and utilising another's behavioural modification as the means. The silent belief is that my life would be better if they saw the world as I see it, if they behaved like me and if they were as informed as I am. Therapists can be recruited into such oppressive interventionist approaches, doing the bidding for the sponsors.

Therapists need to critically investigate their motivations for entering into a contract with a client and clarifying their client's positioning. In my case, my motivation for suggesting treatment to them was not how uncomfortable their behaviour made me feel. I did not have a plan of modifying their behaviour. I responded to their strife and struggle and hoped to find some respite and, by extension, growth. If the therapist is not clear about who they are entering into a contract with, the client or the sponsor or perhaps the system, therapy could perpetuate the systemic oppression experienced by the individual. Perhaps their presenting behaviour is an act of defiance to the oppression. Prospective clients could benefit from a compassionate disposition from a therapist that assumes that their behaviour is how they meet their environment as it interacts with them.

It is common practice in schools to refer children to therapy for misdemeanours. Families send some of their members to counselling for being different. It is like systems to gravitate towards an equilibrium. The system ostracises members threatening its system's balance after exhausting all possible attempts at hemming them in. Hemming in methods include referrals to therapy. I am not suggesting that we cannot actively refer people to counselling. I am quarrelling with uncritical motivations for doing so. Forcing a person into therapy, they are not ready for can be an oppressive act. Oppression, however well-intended, is a violent act. John O'Donohue is right when he suggests that we must not force others or ourselves to change by hammering life in any predetermined shape. "Rather, we need to practise a new art of attention to the inner rhythm of our days and live" (O'Donohue, 1997, p.83). When people are forced to undertake a growth programme, they can dissociate, disembody and self-attack. The pattern repeats itself, becoming self-loathsomeness.

I had had a few episodes in my life when I was on the brink of nervous breakdowns because I judged myself as not being good enough to fit into a system. I did not think I had enough skills, knowledge and attitudes to make a decent life. I could not trust my inner authority. I yielded to external power that appeared to know what was good for me, outsourcing the freedom to engage with my own life. I hammered my life into a defined shape for a long time, paying no attention to my inner rhythm. I worked hard at fitting in. I also piously thought such abdication set me apart as a selfless person, in line with the demands of the will of God. My obedience was to external authority as opposed to the power I carry within. I permitted the government to overrule and atrophy my sensibilities, conscience and liberty, and consent to become an agent of the powers-that-were. I believed that the forces were more experienced and knew better than I did what was good for me.

Quietly though, I sensed that something else inside me needed fuller exploration and expression. I knew that I needed to have a dialogue with my inner summons. I did not realise then that I was strong enough to engage with the system. I knew that I was a misfit. I did not listen to the call to misfitness. The more I sanitised my life, with more will and intellectual prowess, the more I alienated myself from my authentic self. I lived outside of myself, in the wilderness of my becoming. I was famished, and my existence was in the shadowlands. I could not see my secret beauty. I loathed myself. In desperation, I would seek out what would be a community that sees me as beautiful. Eventually, I came to my senses and realised that it was time to grow up. I had to leave things of youth behind and take responsibility for my life. Growing up means taking life by its scruff. As soon as I took my authority, my life began to feel purposeful. Endless possibilities and enthused me. I felt my hidden beauty enveloping the world around me.

Like most children, whose first impulse is to survive, I surrendered my agency. The surrender led to lingering inner conflict. I am older now with a strong enough ego to know that I can wrestle with the system from inner authority. If that cannot happen, I can choose another suitable and caring community that celebrates me. A suitable community helps one to avoid megalomania. The exercise of my inner authority in a caring growth community can lead to maturation. Healthy growth is when inner power and its truths are tested in a discerning environment. I have reasons to believe that many people struggle with such conflict, especially when uncritical religiosity comes into the fray. I will not discuss the impact of unhealthy religion on human development in this article, except to mention that one's image of God impacts how one sees the world and themselves in it.

Growing up is embracing inner authority and deconstructing any ideas and beliefs that limit one potential unfolding. Not many people have the agency to stay on the quest until it rings home. Keeping on the search implies that one has a good enough sense that they have original beauty. If beauty is mortalised early in life, one believes that there is something wrong with them for a long time. Most people live with quiet self-loathsomeness. Henry David Thoreau proclaimed that the mass of folks "lead lives of quiet desperation". He further indicates that desperation shows in perceived resignations. "Stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of humankind." How long can a person lead such a life of quiet desperation? The shadowlands can only drive one further into despair. How then can one live a meaningful life in the famine wilderness? Something else must enter into the self-community; beauty.

I spent six months working in a substance dependence and addiction centre. One day, I introduced Red Grammer's "See me beautiful". I had the lyrics printed on a page and the song on the speakers. I played it a few times before inviting the group in attendance to reflect on the music and the words. The silence when the music stopped was followed by sobs and outright wailing from some group members. One of the members said amid sobs that they had never seen themselves as beautiful. It was the first time they heard anyone suggesting that they were lovely. The disappointments wrought by their addiction concretised their self-hatred. The participants seemed caught in a vicious circle of the ugly self, the shadowlands without inner authority. They might have outsourced their authority to external power, the substance of addiction. Gravitating towards numbing painful existence becomes a lasting loop of self-loathsomeness and disembodiment. The ugly lives in the dissociated shadows of numbed potential. The fire that wants to burn is continually smouldered by rejection, betrayal and hurt. What to do then, when the ugly is what I experience of myself? I might succumb to the promise of temporal relief from the hurt and pain.

When a person who experiences many oppressive interventions enters therapy, as tends to be the case for people entering rehabilitation programmes, the therapist needs to take a non-interventionist stance. A non-interventionist perspective emphasises the agency of the client. If the person has entered treatment under duress, the therapist needs to be clear that they are not in service of the referrers. The therapist needs to centre the experience of the client to start establishing therapeutic goals. John O'Donohue suggests that what we need to heal is a loving gaze. The misery of life is born from the eyes that are greedy, judgemental, resentful, indifferent and inferior. Suppose the therapist turns a loving gaze on the client. In that case, they are attentive to more than the presenting challenge and the external influences on the client's experience. "The loving eye can coax pain, hurt, and violence towards transfiguration and renewal loving visions does not get entangled in the agenda power, seduction, opposition or complicity. Such vision is creative and subversive" (O'Donohue, 1997, p. 92). A piece of music can probably rest a weary spirit and invite the secret inner beauty that is always lurking in the peripheries of their identity.

Perhaps the next time you will be thinking about therapy for yourself and others, you will be inviting them to experience the loving eye. Attention to the spirit enlivens a person. Their beauty will begin to emerge for all to see. They will become a light shining on the mountain top to illuminate the world. Turning the loving gaze is not the preserve of therapists. I do not suggest so. I wish people did not need to see a therapist. Yet, I am aware of the scarcity of loving communities in the best way love can be. People are starving of love. Most of the desperation is a result of the hunger for radical love. "Look for the best in me…it may take some time. See me, beautiful."

"You have travelled too fast over false ground;

Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up

To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain

When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,

Taking time to open the well of colour

That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone

Until its calmness can claim you."

― John O'Donohue

References

Grammer, R. & Grammer, K. (1986). See me Beautiful [Song]. On Teaching Peace . Smilin' Atcha Music, Inc.

O'Donohue, J. (1997). Anam cara: A book of Celtic wisdom. Harper Collins.

Thoreau, H. D. (1846). Civil disobedience and other essays. Courier Corporation.