A GoodTherapy.org Featured Column written by Dennis Thoennes, Ph.D., ABPP

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Lewis Carroll chose to close his renowned work Through The Looking Glass with a poem. One stanza reads:

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Buddhist note that as we walk our path through life that suffering is inevitable, the root of all suffering is attachment and that everyone, everything changes.

In his book The Forgiving Self psychologist Robert Karen Ph.D. notes that “all lives are rent with losses from the very beginning.” The list of authors addressing this fact is very, very long. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ classic book On Death and Dying introduced many of us to the four stages of grief.

Yet often, in our office we fail to recognize or acknowledge the more frequent losses both we and our clients experience. They are ubiquitous. They may be as simple as closing our eyes and going to sleep at the end of the day, closing a conversation on the telephone, bidding farewell to a friend when we drop them off at the airport. Or a client may end therapy before we thought it was the “right” time, a spouse or close friend may announce that they are ending their relationship with us and death comes to all living things, including each of us.

We have many options for dealing with these endings. Ernst Becker’s Pulitzer Prize winning book Denial Of Death addresses this at length. Drawing from the science of fractals, each ending can be understood as a mirror or recapitulation of previous endings we have experienced. How have we been impacted by previous endings? How have we previously related to or understood endings? Do I believe and/or participate in ending rituals such as a football player’s dance in the end zone, jubilation after a sports event, a wedding, a funeral? What about an after-life or reincarnation?

Back in my office am I, as James Masterson writes, the “guardian of the real self” of my client? Can I, do I attend with compassion and curiosity to my client’s ending experiences: the end of the session, the ending of a job, loss of sight, hearing, dexterity, agile and creative thinking, the loss of hope, loss of resources? How do I deal with such endings in my own life? Do I have a well from which I can draw compassion, curiosity and patience? Does my narcissism weave fantasies into apparent realities: that I will not die, that not winning the lottery or catching the big fish was not a disappointment? Does my depression keep me enmseshed in my losses and endings?

Do I have to have an answer? Perhaps “don’t know mind” and “bare attention” warrant exploration. Have autumn’s frosts slain July or have I given it that meaning? And so what meaning do I give to a client’s report of an ending? Do I notice at all, mine or yours?

©Copyright 2009 Dennis Thoennes, Ph.D., ABPP.  All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Dennis and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile