Foreboding Joy: Even Therapists Have Blind Spots

A while ago, a surprising email landed in my inbox. A therapist I trained with, a virtual colleague whose work I genuinely admired, wanted to book a session with me.

She came with something quite debilitating: foreboding joy. Every time life felt good, peaceful and content, a creeping dread would follow. Happiness usually means you let your guard down, feel relaxed and at ease. This was not her case. Instead, she felt anxiety, a sense of danger, as if something bad was about to happen.

She called it anticipatory anxiety, understood the patterns and had the tools. And yet, she couldn't access what was running underneath her own experience. That's not unusual. Knowing how the mind works doesn't automatically give you the keys to unlock it.

Where it came from

In the consultation, she described memories involving her family, particularly her mother. Critical, unsupportive, leaving my client feeling misunderstood and unworthy, expectant of judgement whenever something good happened. Family celebrations turned into quarrels. Pretty gifts were taken away because they were too precious to be used or played with. The narrative this little girl absorbed was: happiness is followed by judgement. It is safer to stay small and mediocre than successful and content.

The subconscious mind's job is to keep us alive, even if that means staying small and invisible. This was the chain we needed to break.

Breaking the chain

In every session there is a visual, sensory part where old beliefs get uprooted. For her, breaking chain links was the most powerful image. Links that had kept her small, anxious, braced for criticism — she broke them open by refusing to believe in them any longer. She gave those beliefs back, because they were never hers to carry.

What I saw on screen

By the end, I could see it happening through the screen. Her shoulders dropped. Her posture opened. Her voice came back — the one she told me she kept losing in her own consultations.

Does online work as well?

This was all done on Zoom. I needed to see her — her body language, how she responded as she eased into a theta state. It is no different to an in-person session. If anything, it may be more comfortable and more convenient to do this from your own home.

The part that stays with me

We all carry inherited patterns, even those of us trained to recognise them. Especially, perhaps, those of us trained to recognise them. RTT gets underneath the knowing, to where the pattern actually lives.

That's where the work happens.