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I remember hearing a story about Medusa during a trauma treatment training that I’ll never forget. They said that treating trauma is not about staring directly at Medusa (eg the Trauma) but it was about indirectly addressing the trauma just like killing Medusa had to be indirect otherwise she’d turn you to stone.
As an Autistic person, I am sensitive and complex and regular direct therapeutic approaches don’t work for me, especially the modern behavioral therapies and approaches that are basically manualized and standardized. My brain abhors the manualized and standardized, it feels stale to me and overly simplistic and one-size-fits-all. It also feels way too direct and obvious, I get it already. What I truly need is to approach my issues in a different way, a more clever and playful way that will work with and soften my defenses.
When I think about how I have actually healed and grown as a person, it has never been through direct approaches. No one has ever sat me down and intervened in some direct way that has made much of an impact. Most, if not all, of my healing and growth has been roundabout, indirect and meandering, ruminative and experimental. I may hear something wise or perspective-altering but I need to take it back home with me, mull it over, experiment with it and learn it’s nature, apply it various dosages to my life or way of thinking, and see if it’s true. I may need to live out various scenarios until the truth seeps into my bones and I understand the true cause and effect relationship of something. I need to read endless books, listen to endless podcasts to learn the nature of something and then dream up how I will incorporate this new understanding into my life. There is no worksheet that could ever encapsulate this and simple directness of telling me to do all of that would take the true healing nature of it away.
This also means that this type of healing could never take place only in a therapy room, either. What is talked about there must then be taken back by that person to be digested, challenged, experimented with, mixed with their own wisdom and experience and transformed into something that might help them know more about themselves and the nature of life.
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