What do you need?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a human being in possession of a consciousness must be in want of perfect happiness.

Or, to put it a bit more directly: sometimes, you feel like shit.

By the summer of 2020, I had been feeling like shit for quite a while. My psychiatrist recommended a therapist. I called and told her: I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder 15 years ago. I’m used to regularly feeling like shit. I’m used to therapists telling me to exercise, to eat better, to sleep better, bla bla bla. I’ve tried all those things. I’m not interested anymore. If I do therapy, I want to go absolutely all the way down. I have no idea where that is or what is there. But I am not interested anymore in managing my pain. I am either going all the way into it, or I am not going into it at all.

Er, I don’t have any space for new patients, she said.

Oh, I said, the wind taken out of my sails. Oh. Right. Sorry. Okay. Thank you for your time.

I don’t know what it was. Maybe she heard something in my voice, maybe it was something else. We’ve spoken about it since, and she doesn’t know either. But, whatever caused it, at this point, instead of hanging up, she said:

You know what? Come next week. Come next week, and we’ll see.

I think I had tears in my eyes, because sometimes, when you feel like shit, an unexpected bit of kindness can be more wounding than the most vicious stab.

Thank you, I said. I appreciate that. I … I know … you must be … I know what it … just, thank you.

See you next week, she said, and the phone went silent.

I sat in her room next week and told her about my state. I don’t remember the details. But I must have told her about my history, about how I felt, about why I was there. The week after, we began.

We used a method called brain spotting. The method uses the memory of the body to excavate memories and images, and then you are very gently guided, or at least I was, to stay with whatever comes up and see what happens.

One of the things that regularly came up was images and memories of a younger Pranay in distress. Fear, anger, pain, grief, etc etc - all the usual stuff. And very soon, I noticed something interesting, something that was new to me and very helpful. And it’s this that I want to share with you today, because who knows, maybe it helps you too.

The therapist didn’t ask: Why does the Pranay in the image feel angry / sad / whatever? Never. Not once did she make an attempt to understand, or to help me understand, the reason for the feeling. Instead, she asked: What does that Pranay need? What would help him?

When I write it down here, it seems so simple. But in my experience it was a revolutionary shift. It liberated me from the perspective of the inquirer. It put an immediate stop to the effort of telling stories that would make sense of my suffering. Instead, it placed me in the role of healer, in the role of an agent, in the role of a compassionate helper. It allowed me to relate to myself with a kind of practical love.

That’s all. That’s the tweet.

When we suffer, we seek reasons for our suffering. We try to find stories that make sense of it. We spend a lot of time and energy on figuring out what part of our suffering is “justified” and what isn’t.

But all of that is secondary. What matters is the suffering. And it doesn’t matter, not really, what caused it. What matters is what you can do right now to help.

Maybe sometimes we don’t need to understand our suffering. We just need to respond to it.