Dear GoodTherapy.org,
What kind of therapy can help someone who feels as if he is not human, knows what he is, and is traumatized by it everyday? - Not Feeling Human

Dear Not Feeling Human,

Since I don’t know you or the details of your life, I am going to answer your question using what I have learned from my clients who have felt and expressed similar questions.

Most of the individuals I work with who have felt as if they are not human have endured rather painful and cruel experiences. Oftentimes, these experiences were ongoing and occurred in relationships or situations from which the individual could not easily exit. While I don’t know if you have had experiences like this, I am going to talk a bit about how I help these individuals heal.

The first piece of this healing has to do with educating my clients that their experience of being ‘un-human’ is understandable and explainable, and the outcome of what once was an effective coping skill. Here is what I like to teach my clients:

1. You, as a human, are built to survive, and if you cannot physically exit painful and cruel experiences, then you will do the next best thing and learn how to distance yourself from your own feelings, thoughts and sensations connected and related to the unavoidable experiences.
2. Unfortunately, the human experience functions a bit on an all-or-nothing principle, meaning that if you cut out one part of your human experience you lose access to most of the other parts. Disowning your pain might mean you don’t hurt, but over time, it also means you don’t feel joy, happiness, meaning, etc…
3. Eventually, the more parts of yourself that you disconnect from, the more you will begin to disconnect from your inherent sense of humanness, and your sense of belonging to the human collective will begin to fade.
4. While effective in the short run, (i.e. you don’t feel pain), the overall ‘price tag’ of this coping strategy is just too much. So, learning how to let go of this coping strategy in favor of alternate coping strategies is critical.

Thankfully, therapy is just the place to engage in this type of learning, and the good news is that it is not the specific type of therapy, but rather the specific therapist that is most important. By connecting with your therapist, your therapist can teach you how to reconnect with yourself, and this reconnection with yourself allows you to regain your sense of connection with your humanness.

The big question then becomes, what type of therapist should you be looking for? You will want to connect with a therapist who embodies, i.e. lives, the following key attributes:

1. Warmth. You want a therapist who expresses and displays warmth towards you, has genuine compassion for you, enjoys working with you and possesses enthusiasm to be your therapist.
2. Understanding. You need to have the sense that your therapist gets you, that your therapist can understand who you are and how you tick. In addition, you want this understanding to be linked with acceptance – that your therapist accepts you just as you are and welcomes you to engage in the therapy process just as you are.
3. Genuineness. You should link up with a therapist that you perceive to be genuine with you. Someone who will be authentic with you and someone you can be real with. This genuineness will allow you to build trust in your therapist, so that you can be open, honest and share 100% of who you are.
4. Even though these traits are the most essential part of your therapist search, here are a few buzz words you might want to ask about: attachment theory, and a client-centered approach. You will want a therapist who agrees with these concepts and at a minimum lines her/his work up with the overall spirit of these approaches. Finally, if there are traumatic experiences in your past, then you need a therapist who has specific training in working with trauma.
5. Ultimately, you will need to locate a therapist who creates a space where these approaches come alive and are embodied and applied to your therapy. I applaud you for reaching out with your question, and I encourage you to locate a therapist that can help you reconnect with yourself. Don’t worry if the first therapist isn’t the best match – it sometimes takes a few tries. Just don’t give up: You deserve to feel human, and you have the inherent ability to do so.