One thing I’ve noticed in the work I do is the effect that environment plays on our thoughts, feelings, and even our predisposition to said thoughts and feelings. If you are in a therapy office you are much more likely to give the types of responses that someone who is in a therapy office might give - for better and for worse. It can be very easy to fall into a script of who you think you should be and how you should present. These feelings can vary per person. Some people who have a naturally angry predisposition, will highlight their anger in the therapy office. This, as a practitioner, signals me to enter their world with compassion. A person who is predominantly feels shame risks presenting as someone that only feels shame. This signals to me to enter into their shame with a special kindness and to honor that feeling as the only concern. Strange as it sound, many people enter and leave the therapy office unknowingly as a character.
Doing therapy from home sounds like it would be the antidote - and in a way it is. However when the pendulum swings it tends to swing equally as far in the opposite direction. When people meet with me online from their home I often find a notably different problem. Many of the people I meet find themselves stuck in a completely different headspace. Since they typically work from home and do Zoom calls all day with their bosses and co-workers, they often find it hard to take off their “work masks”. They respond to me like they would to a member of their cohort, blasting over personal questions with sidestepping etiquette. This means that 50% of our time together is spent going from work persona to normal persona.
But one observation has captured my attention and I can’t exactly explain it. For some reason almost all of the most effective therapy sessions, especially during COVID, happened to take place while the other person was sitting in their car (not while driving of course). Sitting in the driver’s seat, parked in a parking lot, engines idle or off, and with pen and paper in hand; these sessions tended to either reach important conclusion effectively, help unearth long pent up emotions, or both. Being in a car and doing therapy made our sessions surprisingly more intimate and vulnerable.
I have my guesses as to why this was the case. First I think that we in the US have a distinct relationship with our cars. They are the place we spend a lot of our time and hold a lot of our emotional experiences. Went though a rough break up? Where was the first place you went after it ended? Probably into your car to drive home as you begin to process the raw emotional intensity at the top of your voice before calling a friend. Running late for a meeting? Where was it that you verbally beat yourself up again for ruining your work prospects? Probably in the car with your makeshift breakfast in hand as your car also made its self into a makeshift dinner table for you. Can’t sleep? What do you do when you need to calm your mind and find a sense of peace? Get in the car and drive. We share some very focused, personal, and intimate times with our vehicles so it comes as no surprise that therapy could be more effective in a place that already knows our most intimate secrets.
My next guess is that there is the perfect balance of safety and vulnerability in the car. Cars are like little drivable homes for many of us. Cars offer us the seclusion and safety of home while also giving us visual access to the outside world. We are safe to exist but also have people all around us looking into our seemingly safe mobile home. Our existence in cars is a lot like our own cognitive dissonance - we hold things together (the safety and the visibility) that normally don’t make sense. This is one of the things it means to be human - to be holding contrasting ideas and trying to make them work. The feelings we have while in cars are the feelings we have within ourselves.
My last guess is that cars tend to impart a sense of control to the driver. Being behind the wheel of a vehicle that is owned and insured by you is a very empowering position. When all else is out of control in your life, you have the car to manage and control in every sense of the word. Its also here while in control of driving the car, that we find a type of highway hypnosis. We are focusing just enough energy to safetly drive while also letting our brains be free to drift. Its here that we can more easily come into contact with our subconscious or entertain thoughts we normally don’t have access to because we are too busy to acknowledge them. Our brains are just occupied enough that we don’t fall asleep but unoccupied enough that the thoughts that haunt us are given free reign to creep ever so slowly into our psyches.
So in short if you want a better online therapy session try having it from the front seat of your car. You may just find yourself more engaged, more alert, more attuned, more honest, more composed, or more like the full version of yourself that you may struggle to be.
Photo by Kyle Perez