Dear Therapist #6: Collaborative Practice
New comment from Marta on Dear Therapist #5: Google Docs Therapy:
I am nearing the end of What My Bones Know, and I’ve been deeply engaged by Stephanie’s writing and her journey -- one that I also resonate with on a personal level. Reaching Chapter 38 felt like an unexpected, quiet plot twist. Your introduction into the narrative was genuinely energising. I found myself leaning in. Your reaction to E.E. Cummings’ style-- that sense of professional joy in form, structure, and meaning-making -- really stayed with me. I recognised something of myself there. What struck me most, though, was not *just the collaborative ethos of your approach. So often, collaboration in therapy remains an aspiration. But the way you have operationalised it-- It felt like a way of “walking the talk” -- of creating a shared space where authorship is not just encouraged but structurally supported and edited (healed).
Interestingly, I’ve also been exploring Open Education Practices, where knowledge is similarly co-created, adapted, and made transparent. I find myself wondering if there is a deeper connection here — between collaborative knowledge-making and collaborative healing. Not sure where I am going here…
I’d be really curious to know whether your therapeutic identity has always leaned toward this kind of “open” and collaborative practice, or whether it evolved over time. Do you sense a growing demand for therapeutic approaches that more explicitly support client agency and shared authorship -- perhaps through digital spaces that support collaborative meaning-making in real time?
Hi Marta,
My first reaction to the word collaborative was pause and rejection. I didn’t want to think of myself as collaborative. It had a hollow corporate HR tone to it in my mind. And, as I’ve reflected on it for some time, what seemed to be underneath that reservation was my sense of how little I actually feel like I know about what will help any particular person. I feel like I’m always dancing between experience-based, intuitive conviction and the devastating truth that life is so much more complex than I can ever fully comprehend. In my mind, I see an image of steam diffusing into a room. We know with mathematical precision that the steam will distribute evenly into the room, but we remain silent about the path of any particular molecule. Then, in my mind, I see a cloud of datapoints moving from a pre-treatment distribution to a post-treatment one. I know with a fair degree of confidence that therapy, of all sorts, improves people’s lives, but the path of one person’s journey, anticipating which therapy will work, with whom, when, and how… well, I feel like, again, I have to remain silent. That was what first came to mind when I thought of the word collaborate and that is the truth that feels like the backdrop of my stance.
On a more emotional level, my experience has been that I’ve longed for certainty and conviction when I felt overwhelmed, anxious, and insecure about whether I will be good enough to help someone. I’ve also made the most painful mistakes in my career when I’ve felt most confident that I know what I’m doing. It blinded me to presence and attunement in ways that I will always regret.
But, on a positive note, I want to say that the moments when I’ve felt most grateful, amazed, and purposeful were the moments when the work just did itself, in some magical synergy between my “expertise,” their intuition, and the grace of something bigger than us. That’s my favorite way to work. It feels inspired, like a creative act. …Maybe that’s the best word to replace collaborative: creative, an act that produces something greater than the inputs of ego and effort but could only come about through it.
I hope you’ll consider joining this community that I’m still working to build (still months away). That’s where I hope to foster a space that nurtures this creative act in all of us, so we may share it with those we co-create with.
