Head Led to Heart Led Psychology

A new paradigm for my ways of working

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I’ve written before about the unravelling - or rather total fundamental collapse, of my belief system post autism diagnosis. Here, and the posts linked within, if you’re interested:

The Rest before the Rebuild

And also here

Science or Wisdom?

And probably in a few other places too.

There were some central elements to this collapse, I think. I’d always been critical of psychological models and approaches. I’d been questioning of the way we applied them and the way that services operated in often reactive and highly stressed ways. I’d wondered how we as psychologists could call ourselves psychologically minded when we were fuelled by adrenaline, powdered coffee and bare-knuckled hope. I knew, theoretically and through conversations with others, that psychology could do harm. But alongside my autism diagnosis was a crashing realisation, I now know, of the harm psychology had done to me. And my family, but that’s another story.

I’m maybe anthropomorphising (is that the right word? Maybe not) psychology here. I know psychology isn’t a homogenous concept, or a domineering person or an outdated university lecturer. But psychology as a whole, as a concept, with all the power imbalances, and intellectualising of feeling, and the need to create new models for old understandings - I began to see it not as a force for good but actually as an obstacle. That the models we were working in, and the ways we were working, often created obstacles to genuine connection and that, in turn, create obstacles to healing/change/progress/awareness (choose your favoured outcome). And that this wasn’t happening just to other people, but had happened repeatedly to me.

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

I know, I know, I wish I’d taken it more seriously when I observed it for others. And it’s not like I wasn’t told by people around me to stop looking for my answers in psychology. But there is something about realising it for yourself that hits harder isn’t there? And I’ll talk a bit more about dissociation another time because that ‘helped’ me not realise the extent of this sooner.

I know too that what I’m describing here is a black and white way of viewing a complex problem. But I’m ok with that. That was the starting point, and things have become more multi-layered since then.

As I’ve written about before, initially that involved a letting go of psychology, seeing it from a more objective distance, and beginning to see it as a mask. Psychology and the study of human relationships helped me to appear more neurotypical and allowed me to ‘fit in’ and build a much-loved career for a very long time. It created a barrier for my hyper fizzy nervous system, a sort of lens through which everything got a bit duller and less overwhelming. And it allowed me to offer support to others in ways that I have always found, and continue to find, enormously rewarding.

And next I think there was a deeper exploration of critical psychology, and psychology as philosophy, and thinking about the roots of models in colonisation, white supremacy, patriarchy and all that jazz. This is something that continues (will continue forevermore for me). Slowly, I started to rebuild a foundation that fits more for my ‘authentic’ autistic self (bleurgh) and which feels more genuine for the people I work with too. This is integration, I guess- the process that happens in therapy when we draw together the different parts of ourselves and become more connected and ‘whole’. When we’re less split, and understand why we are behaving in the ways we are, why we respond as we do, why we feel how we feel. What this has meant for me is that I show up in every scenario - personal and professional - as myself. Ok, not every scenario. That might not sound particularly revolutionary if this is how you have lived your life, but for me this process of unmasking and integration has been profound and wonderful. And helped by therapy, so I couldn’t throw it all away, could I?

Alongside this, organically, has been a parallel process of connecting with people who also want to show up as ‘their whole selves’. I mean, this is something that we explicitly talk about in the Psychology Co-operative, the therapy organisation that I co-direct. And I have colleagues and educators who have spoken straight to my heart, encouraging me to let go of models and trust my instincts. Maybe there is something about what we look for and what we no longer tolerate when we become more integrated, which means I have more of these people in my life. Lucky me. And I have found, to accompany me on this journey other psychologists who work as themselves, who are led by their heart first and supplement this with their intellectual knowledge.

It makes me think about the new approach to work that I am using now as my foundation. In the past, as a newly qualified psychologist, I know that my main way of working was to educate and inform - speaking to the intellectual parts of my clients and sharing my understanding of them (even if I thought it was a shared understanding, it definitely wasn’t). Then I think I moved into something more collaborative. A genuine shared understanding, but still driven by knowledge. Now I think I’m offering something that is about co-regulation. Using knowledge sometimes, for sure, but with a connection that is heart to heart, or perhaps nervous system to nervous system.

Here’s a visual depiction:

It’s not rocket science is it. It might feel a new paradigm for me, along with this whole unmasking thing, but it’s really not new at all. Yoga teachers and breathwork practitioners and body workers have been doing this for years, and there are psychological theories about just this, and all of it comes really from the deep, timeless wisdom of our souls, from ancestral wisdom, from the core essence of humanity - and not from theory at all. But it makes sense of something for me, so I’m sharing it with you.

What’s difficult about this approach for so many of us therapists is that it depends on us to be regulated ourselves. Not all the time, because we can’t be, that’s not possible nor healthy. But to know what regulation feels like, to be able to feel grounded enough to share our nervous systems with other people. And if we have nervous systems that are sensitive and prone to fizz, then that might feel like an impossibility. Or if we’re working in systems that leave us sensitive and prone to fizz, then that does become almost impossible. But maybe that’s where we need to start with our work as therapists. Not on learning models but a deep understanding of ourselves - our bodies and minds, and how they exist in society. Therapy is healing work, and we can’t do it well if we are not healed ourselves. And that’s not a one time thing, but a lifelong journey. To really know our hearts.

I’m curious about what this brings up for you - as a therapist reading or as someone who has been to therapy, or even just someone who is reading with no interest in therapy at all. As a therapist, how does this feel for you? If it raises fear, why? Or if frustration or resentment - what do you think I’m asking of you? As a person who has been to therapy, have you had the experience of a block to connection? As a human being in the world, what stops us, do you think, from being heart to heart?