Redwood Majesty (Photo credit: MizzD)

Goals in therapy are interesting.  On one hand, it can be important and helpful, as in many undertakings, to set some.  Sometimes there are very pressing goals, such as ending episodes of panic that are debilitating, or alleviating some obsessive thinking, or stopping  a series of damaging relationships, or many others.  Goals can help give an intention, a direction; they can be a touchstone for evaluating progress.

But consider another point of view:  If I go to the Redwood forests in California for the first time and somebody says, as we set foot onto the fern-bordered path, “So what do you want to see?”, what is the answer?  Or even better, “What do you want to accomplish?”  What is the answer?

It would seem a pity to say, “I want to see the following seven species of flora, and also two birds, preferably males, that are said to live in this vicinity.” !!

Hopefully we would go into it with an attitude of wanting to see what there is to see; to explore; to experience the Redwoods and their amazing environment.  We can’t know in advance what we want to experience there, because we’ve never experienced it.  To set out with a list would keep us from really being in the Redwoods, like carrying a camera around Paris in order to snap shots of the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and ten other famous spots, and then head south.

Opening up in psychotherapy to a point of view of exploring the self can be one of the most exciting parts of the journey. The psyche–that is, the whole of your mental, emotional, spiritual functioning, conscious and unconscious–is like the Redwood forests times a million.  Or rather, it’s like every possible kind of landscape on earth–and beyond.  It contains infinities.  “Know Thyself” is one of the oldest pieces of wisdom in the world.  It takes radical openness.

When we travel, we often feel particularly alive.  Our senses are sensing more.  Our minds are thinking more.  We’re open to new experience, which is invigorating and energizing–so much so that it also gets exhausting.  Can we experience our selves like we experience a new place we visit, something ever anew?

Arnold Schwarzenegger for years kept secret from his wife the existence of a child he fathered with a housekeeper.  Many other significant events were kept from her as well, such as heart surgery and even the decision to run for governor of California, which he told her he would do only a few days before the filing deadline in 2003.

He says in his autobiography, Total Recall, that his habit of putting his emotions “on deep freeze” goes back to his days as a bodybuilder, because emotions make athletes lose.

Of course that’s only partly true, since ambition, excitement, anger, and adrenalin are all major emotional factors in sports and can help bring victory.  But Arnold makes the point that in many parts of life, emotions DO get in the way, and in order to keep pushing onward we sometimes have to push feelings aside.

However, as his life also attests, pushing feelings aside can lead to disasters in relationships.  In psychotherapy, sometimes a goal is to take emotions out of deep freeze so disasters won’t happen.  But at other times or for other people, feelings can be overwhelming and can be in the way of important goals.

These are simple but extremely important truths.  In the world of psychotherapy, some say it’s all about feelings and how we must let them in and experience them. Others want to control feelings with thoughts so we can get the messy stuff (often stuff from the past) out of the way and get on with our lives.

Both approaches, and every combination of them, are valuable for different people with different needs at different times.  There is no golden key to psychological health.