06/04/2025
ANSWERS TO SOME QUESTIONS!
Hi all - Ben Yalom Creative Therapy posting here. I've had the opportunity to bring some of your questions to my father, and am happy to share some of his thoughts with you. (Please note that the number of questions and lovely expressions of appreciation were much more than I expected. Because of this I have attempted to group discussions thematically, and have tagged numerous people who may have had similar questions. Forgive me if you are not mentioned/tagged, or if the discussion is not about your exact question.)
Note also that there will be more responses in the following weeks.
Okay, all that said, let's get into it:
1. "What do you thinks most helps people cope with anxiety and/or dark moods?"
To this question, and variations involving depression and fear of the unknown, my father's main response is around the importance of connection with others, the deeper the better. Having strong bonds with people you care about is perhaps the best salve for the anxiety of living. It's true that not all people seek this, or gain from this, to the same extent. But it seems nearly always helpful, even as it can be a challenging journey for many of us to learn to open up.
I would note that this valuing of connection lives at the heart of much of his here-and-now work with both individuals and groups.
2. "My question would be an ask for words of wisdom on supporting clients at such a difficult and divisive time."
Many variations on this theme, from all over the world, (particularly Ukraine and here in the US).
When I posed this question, he put his head in his hands, almost as if weeping, then commented on what a dreadful time this is for so many. A genuine sadness. He emphasized the importance of staying rooted and connected to those important to you (for therapists and your clients), and to the notion of reaching out to be helpful to others (which I would connect to the therapeutic factor/usefulness of altruism).
3. "Do you think there is free will?"
This, with some discussion of the increasing knowledge about biological factors of human behavior and experience, as well as the importance, existentially, of choosing our life paths, and searching for / crafting meaning.
We chatted about this for a while, and my main take-away is that the question of whether free will exists on an abstract level is not terribly relevant to therapy. I may be putting some words in his mouth here, but essentially we can only focus – as therapists, as clients, and as humans – on how we behave, the choices we make, how we treat others, etc. We are shaped by life experiences, and things like childhood trauma (which comes up a good deal in “Hour of the Heart”), but these are things to work through during our lives, not completely determining events.
I would add the idea that if there is no free will, then a therapist can no more “choose” what interventions or responses they are going to offer to a client, than that patient or client can “choose” how to response to these. So again, while the abstract questions about free will are intellectually compelling, they may not bear heavily on how we chose to live, nor how we do therapy.
I hope these reflections are useful, and I’ll do my best to share more of his thoughts in the weeks and months to come.
(PS – If you haven’t read “Hour of the Heart”, Amazon appears to have it at 20% off right now.)
https://www.amazon.com/Hour-Heart-Connecting-Here-Now/dp/0063321459/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=KtB6l&content-id=amzn1.sym.255b3518-6e7f-495c-8611-30a58648072e%3Aamzn1.symc.a68f4ca3-28dc-4388-a2cf-24672c480d8f&pf_rd_p=255b3518-6e7f-495c-8611-30a58648072e&pf_rd_r=J9HJRRGVF07E9ZRTG35X&pd_rd_wg=p9rKN&pd_rd_r=9ad021f3-b036-4aab-925e-cc8db95b6764&ref_=pd_hp_d_atf_ci_mcx_mr_ca_hp_atf_d
