If you’ve endured the death of a friend, colleague, or relative, hopefully someone was there who could witness your pain. In the case of grief and mourning, witnessing illuminates how our grief in the current situation is influenced by our beliefs and previous experiences of loss. A witness helps us honestly evaluate whether our grief is constricted or complicated by internal or external factors, and what that might suggest about our adjustment process. Support of this kind might eventually help us see a way through the seemingly impossible, to begin reconstructing life, perhaps leading to the choice to return to our former self and familiar patterns, and/or to contemplate and plan for a changed way of being. In modern society the psychotherapist is often the witness who empathically helps us understand our personal problems and potentials, recover from traumas, explore pragmatic solutions to interpersonal impasses, and enliven our connection to our own soul. After a loss the therapist encourages us to slow down and begin an honest, brave, self-respecting, albeit uneasy search for a way to survive and live forward with grief, by stretching beyond our characteristic coping patterns to bring us closer to a more authentic expression of our deeper self in the world. Therapy is a ritual container co-constructed by therapist and client to hold, protect, and dignify grief and mourning. Connecting with a witness in the form of therapist potentiates such ritual space and is itself an act of self-compassion.
Having a Witness
