Tag: therapy
Unrequited Opportunities
What on earth, you may ask, are unrequited opportunities?
The phrase arose a few weeks ago in the lively little poetry group that meets one evening every month in my sitting room. Each time we set a new poetic theme for us all to work on. Put on the spot at the end of one of our recent meetings, someone (not me!) came up with ‘unrequited opportunities’. It’s a phrase without much obvious meaning, a bit surreal, and yet, the more I thought about it, the more it intrigued me.
And being a therapist, naturally I had to dig a bit deeper to see where it might have originated. It came out so spontaneously that, as with an image from a fast-vanishing dream, I could feel the surge of unconscious energy pushing through. Unrequited opportunities? Hmmm.
So here’s how my train of thinking went. It started with the word ‘unrequited’. Unrequited what? Unrequited love? Definitely seemed a likely first connection. Many thoughts and feelings and memories of my own started to tumble about. Early ones, teenage memories – the classic period for unexpressed yearnings, unconfident attractions, the longing to be valued, acknowledged, admired – and the fear of not being any of these things. The need to be the hero in one’s own story. So, yes, maybe this was a good place to begin.
And opportunities. An opportunity for romance, for friendship, for relationship, for travel, for a special career path, for something – anything – one would have loved to have had in one’s life, and that was missed? An opportunity only now, after many years, and in the light of greater maturity, fully noticed and regretted? And suddenly creating a great big resounding WHAT IF? A secret desire to have another look at what might have been?
Social networking sites, apparently, are awash with people madly trying to locate long lost relatives, friends and lovers. I’ve experienced this first hand: shortly after joining Facebook I re-connected with one of my closest friends from high school and we found ourselves picking up quite easily and happily where we’d left off decades earlier.
It’s only as we get properly into the second half of life, round about the late 30s, that these ‘unrequited opportunities’ really come back to haunt us. Sometimes, like with my old school friend, it’s a prompt to retrace and recover something that’s still relevant, still valuable, and worth reviving.
More often, it’s a prod to look at what’s missing and what we need to create anew. What it might be good to make room for in our lives.
Something of those youthful yearnings we once had pointed to a more profound sense of who we really are – the true self – and to our deepest needs, our passions. Maybe we’ve settled for something less, something a bit more secure and sensible. And now, looking down the vista of years to come, that spark of possibility, so strong in our young life, is shining again and asking whether this time we’re open to adventure, to a new chance of relating, to following our heart’s desire.
An admission: I’m afraid I never wrote that poem! But now I’ve written this instead, and it’s given me the chance to pursue an interesting train of thought set off by a seemingly random idea – much as one does in therapy – and at the same time reclaim an opportunity I might easily otherwise have missed.
Change and transformation
Change is a popular theme in terms of self development or self-improvement. Actually, change is happening to each of us all the time, without any deliberate intent, as we respond to what’s going on around us in our lives. In therapy, the client is helped to become more consciously aware of these changes, mostly tiny shifts, occasionally something more obviously noticeable resulting from a particular life event or crisis.
But all the time, each and everyday, little changes, little growth spurts or regressions, happen quite naturally but unseen. So exactly how useful is the active striving for change, or change being the object of therapy, or a personal goal?
Anyone who’s ever been involved in organisational change management knows that a smooth transition is one of the most difficult things to pull off, maybe impossible. And that’s because, desirable though it may be in theory, we are all more or less resistant to change when face to face with it.
Jung said there was good reason and justification for this resistance, and it should never under any circumstance be ridden over rough shod, or otherwise argued out of existence. Neither should it be belittled or disparaged.
On the contrary, resistance should be taken with the greatest seriousness as a vitally important defense. When there are strong resistances, the conscious attitude of the client must be carefully watched and supported. This support is therapeutically valuable, and it is often enough to bring about satisfactory results.
To summarise: change may be the goal, but it is always a challenge. Sensitive and positive support of those affected by it can help them steer a steady course through the transformational process, and achieve the desired aim. Managers and business team leaders take note!