THE INVISABLE ELEPHANT

...............by Stanley

....In our work we talk about respect – respect for the person. Some of us even practice it. Respect means a non-interfering, careful attention to what is. It means a humble passion to know what is going on, deference and a delicate caring for the structure of reality, a reverence for the facts that are none of our own personal making; the other person is the unfolding reality we respect.
.....David Attenborough was on TY1 last night all excited about Ida, the 4.1 million year old humanoid fossil they’ve found. Scientists say she is the famous missing link in the evolutionary chain of human kind. But will the biblical creationists give up ? Of course they won’t. They’ll go on arguing that God made the world six thousand years ago. This got me thinking about respect for truth, about the love and curiosity to unravel the secrets of how things really are.
.....Ida was found in Germany, but think of those archaeologists with their young students who go into the desert looking for barely visible fossil remains, kneeling under the sweltering Ethiopian sun, carefully brushing away grains of sand around the precious find, buried perhaps for millions of years – helping them reconstruct the true story of our ancient ancestors. I’d call that respect.
.....That attitude is no different! It’s the same quality the good counsellor or therapist has. Those young student archaeologists are lucky being taught so thoroughly how to respect. We have more in common them than we do with some in our helping profession who have only been taught to pay lip-service to respect, who really and truly have never been shown how.
.....A client once said to me that they felt lost. It was one of those throw away remarks that turned out to be a deep global feeling, first experienced when she was very young. For quite a while in session she wondered all around it, trying to see it differently, trying to find out why it was like this, trying to understand it.
.....Finally, she said, ‘just let me say “I’m lost”.
.....I replied, ‘All right, just say “I’m lost”’
.....“I’m lost”, she said – and said it several times as though it was a relief – breathing and sighing.
.....Finally, (and I thought this was marvellous) she said,
.....‘Now I know I am lost, I don’t have to find myself.’
.....That’s what she said. Isn’t that completely awe-inspiring?
.....Acknowledging how things actually are, just that, is not only respectful; it is a powerful psychological act. In this case, just getting that she was lost, plainly and simply getting it, letting it be as it is, she found herself.
.....As simple as that.
.....Anyway, that night after watching the news snip with David Attenborough and thinking about science and counselling and ‘respect’, I had a dream. There was this swamp and, barely showing above the surface, was the skin of an elephant. Just a patch of skin – the whole dead carcass must be sunk deep in the swamp. Clearing away some of the bog the elephant moved slightly – it was still alive!
.....Sometimes in therapy when feelings are running underground, when some unknown something is going on, I will say,
.....‘There is an invisible elephant in the room’!
......It’s a joke, but it’s a way of noticing the feel of something that hasn’t come out into the open yet. Buried but alive. It helps to foster a curiosity for what is being overlooked, so we can work carefully, respectfully, brushing away the grains of sand.