DL_Why face-to-face psychotherapy?
Deafening decibels in a concert with 3000 people jumping and raising their arms, the football fans screams echoing down the field after a goal is scored, the breath that is held before the flip of a trapeze artist 5 meters from where we sit ... these are live experiences that shake us. Broadcast through a screen, however, the impact is anaesthetised.
Discomfort is the product of the situations we find ourselves in, due to the logic we follow in the face of decisions, obvious or absurd, supported by the language we use, but which we suffer (and enjoy) in the body.
Therapy begins when one opens the door. The greeting, the mindful look and suspended attention, the physical presence, the tools of the therapist and the safe space for the consultation, delimit and sustain that intimate discomfort, which is difficult to handle and weighs on the body.
The patient deposits the material, the words of the invisible speech follow a logic whose consistency has an objective correlate: the body. The discomfort is in no other place than in the body.
In therapy, the logic of what is appropriate is not an enigma. What is an enigma is that push to repeat ways of functioning that weaken us, that discourage us, that make us fall, figuratively or literally.
Behind the screen, in 2D, the raw material is excluded, the weight of the discomfort does not start to circulate, it cannot be manipulated. Online, there is disembodiment, the patient and the therapist are filtered, anaesthetised, the discomfort is floating and suspended in a way that makes it ungraspable and unmanageable.
It is the body that suffers and is relieved, the impact is always physical. If the body is involved in the cause, then would it not be an illusion to exclude it from the therapy in order to find some more convenient arrangement?
Cristina Andrés