The Client who Refused to Heal
Holding ourselves hostage
I was some years into my career as a workshop leader and one-to-one therapist when I started to notice this odd kind of mental twitch that I would get around certain clients. Like a “where is this person actually coming from” kind of thing.
As a therapist, I have formed the image in my mind that I am helping clients to get back on their feet. That’s my role. But does everyone who reaches out a hand actually want to be pulled back up? Perhaps some are actually seeking to pull the helper down. Or trying to recreate an early struggle they had with their parents.
Why might someone attend therapy, if they actually do not seek their own healing?
The client who does not want to heal is invariably of the Endurer type, in terms of their character structure. What happened was that their brain reacted to their parents heavy-handed attempts to get some control over them when they were two years old and starting to scream and shout. Their nervous system learned to identify anger and self-assertion as life-threatening. For, indeed, if a two-year old should be ostracised, thrown out of the family, then death would have been the result for our evolutionary ancestors. So they started out on life with this programme running in their brain, not within their control. Their nervous system won’t let them get angry or to assert themselves. Those feelings are simply shut down, as though they still constitute a threat to their very survival.
Living like this is not easy. If your brain won’t allow you to assert yourself then you have to go all around the houses to get your needs met. You have to please. You have to be submissive. You have to be willing to work hard and submit to routine. You have to bury your talents deep inside of you. Your whole personality becomes forged around your brain’s refusal to allow you to assert yourself directly.
Perhaps you become a grounded, caring individual, a rock in the lives of others. But underneath the surface you know that you are a seething well of angst. You love those movies where the mild-mannered hero is finally pushed too far and wreaks brutal revenge on his tormentors. You know that somewhere inside you are John Wick or John McClane. But instead you have to accept getting your kicks from holding up things up at work with some piece of health and safety legislation you’ve dug up. Because your brain won’t let you say, “I think we’re approaching this wrong.”
The Endurer in therapy actually longs to be free. But because their brain is blocking the expression of anger, a necessary component in their personal healing journey, it’s hard for them to let go of the injustices they’ve suffered in the past. At some point, all those voices inside of them, that were never listened to by their parents, become overwhelming in their rage and they have no choice but to fall back. And they begin to seek revenge against authority, for the way it shut them down as a kid.
You think your therapy can heal me? I’ll show you! You see, unhealed! Nothing works! What do you say now, Mr or Ms Therapist, with your fancy ideas of helping people? Look at me, six months down the line and I’m no different from when I walked in here! Let’s face facts, you and your therapy are a complete failure!
Of course, you don’t actually say those words out loud. Your brain won’t allow you to. But that is the role you act. You hold yourself hostage as a means to pay back authority for the way it let you down as a kid.
And the forlorn look on the therapist’s face gives you satisfaction, for a while. And you get a good feeling from the idea that you’ve dragged them at least a little way into the black hole in which you are forced to reside. But then you’re back where you started.
And the crazy thing is it’s not your fault. It is simply that your brain came to associate anger and self-expression with life-threat when you were two years old. It’s blocking that stuff off from you ongoingly.
This above is a description of the behaviour of someone who is strongly of the Endurer character type. But, in my experience, pretty much everyone, certainly myself included, has this side to their personality to some degree or another. And it is this side that holds us back, not just in therapy but in any aspect of life where we need to come out of ourselves, speak our truth and take risks.
When we feel that there is no other way for us to express our upset at things that happened in our past, we will hold ourselves and our own development hostage, regardless of the limiting effect that this has on our own lives. We will make ourselves a martyr to our own cause.
So it’s really so useful to recognise our Endurer side. And to learn to identify when it’s in the driving seat. Because maybe our life is going pretty good actually. But if we can reduce our Endurer side then it will for sure be going better still.
So, what is the strategy for the Endurer character? Let’s take a look at practical steps.
General Principles
Your Endurer side is not your fault. It’s the way your nervous system has orientated itself. It’s being overly protective and continuing to keep you safe long after any potential danger has gone. It’s like there is this absurdly protective creature inside and your task is to find a way to reach it and to get it to gently stand down.
You must be willing to work slowly with this side of your personality over a course of months or years. If you try to create rapid change, your nervous system will likely come in and shut you down, and you will feel like you’re back to square one.
Acclimatize yourself to hearing negativity from your own mind and not being controlled by it. Keep this up until you can experience deep feelings of despair, hopelessness or pointlessness and yet still continue on the path. These feelings are inevitable when we start to work with the Endurer. But you need to keep feeling your body, get any reassurance you need and continue.
Working slowly and gently on a daily or weekly basis invariably creates change, in my experience. Slowly over time the nervous system will relax and you will find that anger and the ability for self-expression will come back.
When you do start to get expression and anger back, be prepared. It will likely freak you out to suddenly start feeling that reactive fire inside, threatening to take you over at any time. Take it slow and easy and keep feeling your body.
Strategy - Affirmation
I’m not so into affirmations but at times they can be very handy. With the Endurer type, it is the nervous system orientation that is the issue. It’s protecting you from a perceived life-threat that has not actually been around for decades.
Shortly after rising, stand in front of a mirror, look yourself in the face and slowly repeat the following sentence five times. “I thank you, my nervous system, for protecting me all these years. But now I am ready to access my anger and to express my needs and boundaries, so I ask you to slowly stand down from protecting me from these feelings.”
Strategy - Introspection
It’s useful to ongoingly monitor when and how our personal Endurer shows up in our thinking and behaviour, as we go about our day. Where do you wish that someone else would do something about such-and-such a situation? Where do you fantasize about payback coming down upon someone from anywhere but your own hand? Where do you look for a way that you can hold things up without having to do or say anything yourself? Where do you gossip, or seek to recruit others to your negative stories about another person? These are all classic Endurer traits, arising originally from a nervous-system mediated shutdown of our need to express ourselves. Just being aware of them is really useful of itself.
Strategy - Expression
Begin to deliberately start your sentences with phrases like “I want…”, “I need…” and “I think…” when at work, around friends or with a partner. Take gentle steps to start asserting yourself in this way, feeling your body as you do so. This will acclimatize you to more direct ways of expressing yourself. Take it slow and take in how people respond to you.
When we, as an Endurer, first begin to speak up it’s normal for us to feel like we need a nuclear warhead in our pocket to back us up, should we meet resistance. This is especially when talking to those who, on some symbolic level, we feel have wronged us. But remember that we actually don’t. Instead we need speak our truth clearly and without charge, remembering that we can always go back later and continue if necessary.
Strategy - Bioenergetics
There are some excellent Bioenergetic exercises on my YouTube channel that can help you to increase your sense of feeling safe around self-assertion.
I recommend you construct a 3-stage workout, around a 90-second ding track, starting with the Bow posture, concluding with the Arch posture and featuring one of the following exercises in the middle.
Dog-Lion
Teenager Release
Dragon’s Breath
Right-to-Exist Exercise
Complete three reps without a break and then spend two more dings simply lying down, eyes closed, feeling your body to conclude.
Remember, this is not about finding a magic bullet or a quick fix. We’re in this for the long term. Meaning, create your workout and try it daily for at least a month before changing it in any way.
Good luck!