I regularly hear people claim that every individual has their own unique healing and recovery path, even among other professionals and colleagues. Today, there are now more than 400 types of psychotherapy to choose from and many therapists utilize what’s referred to as an integrative approach, borrowing from a number of different models and orientations.[1] I myself would fit this definition because I also borrow techniques from several models, but I do not agree with the assertion that we all have such diverse and unique needs from the therapeutic experience, as I never saw evidence to support this notion in practice. Extensive research findings suggest otherwise as well.[2] When I consider these opposing viewpoints and what I have discovered from my time in the therapy room (on both the personal and professional side), I often reflect on something I heard in my youth: “People are like snowflakes: No two are alike.” Today, I find it to be the perfect metaphor for the therapeutic experience.
While the crystalline structure of each snowflake may be unique, at the foundational level, all uniqueness is removed. Every snowflake is made from the same source material and each becomes a snowflake under the same conditions. Therefore, it may be argued that snowflakes share more commonalities than they do differences. Like snowflakes, humans have universal needs that must be met in order for their unique, individual qualities to emerge (their gifts, talents, authentic self, desires, purpose, etc.).
The needs of snowflakes may be fewer and simpler to quantify than those of human beings, but both have fundamental needs that cannot be deprived if their uniqueness is to be effectively revealed. For snowflakes, their foundational need requirements are purely physical and consist of the presence of H20 and sufficiently cold temperatures. Humans, on the other hand, have both physical and psychological needs, with the latter often being either misunderstood or overlooked altogether.
To illustrate, one person’s unique expression might be through technological engineering and innovation, while another person’s may be through creating music on the piano, but they will both have a shared and nearly identical need for food, water, and oxygen. If either of these individuals were sufficiently deprived of these needs, we would witness roughly the same physiological response and related symptomatic expression of having those fundamental needs withdrawn, ultimately leading to the same predictive outcome: death. While one person may be able to deprive their need for oxygen slightly longer than the other, for example, the differences would be negligible, and neither would survive a full hour under those conditions.
When it comes to the physiological needs of humans, as described in the example above, we have an easier time understanding the qualities that are unique and different; when it comes to the less-tangible and more esoteric psychological needs, we tend to be less aware and less understanding. We may easily recognize and understand a child’s need for physical safety, for example, but completely miss the equally necessary need for psychological safety. If a child has been physically abused, we may easily see the symptom of a bruise, cut, or broken bone, which nearly everyone can recognize. In contrast, if that child was never physically abused, but exposed to domestic violence in the home instead, they will develop a similarly predictable set of symptoms indicating the need deprivation and resulting psychic injury that occurred, but fewer people will be able to recognize, decode, and understand those symptoms.
After many years of close and careful observation and inquiry with hundreds and hundreds of people, I began to develop the skill of spotting unmet needs and psychic injuries. I found that there were often striking similarities between particular case histories and symptomatic presentation, which were clearly independent of any individual personality, interests, gifts, talents, etc. a person may have. Toward the later stages of my career, it was almost as easy to spot what happened in a client’s past as it would have been to predict they weren’t getting enough oxygen if their face turned blue. Many clients would initially find it very surprising that I could often accurately “guess” many conditions or events from their past without them telling me, or that I could predict their relationship patterns without them disclosing those dynamics prior as well. Often, with wide eyes, they would exclaim: “How did you know that?!” While some people would think I could read their mind, that was never what I was doing; instead, I was reading their symptoms, and the symptoms they presented with were not unique at all.
In many ways, this would be both the best and worst thing I discovered over the thousands of hours of listening and observing people from every imaginable background and presentation, from the impoverished to the extremely wealthy, from the carpenter to the aerospace physicist, from a child to the elderly. It did not matter what part of the world they were born into, if certain needs were not sufficiently met, predictable symptoms would emerge, and after years and years of very close observation, these symptoms would become easier and easier to decode.
In many ways, I found this to be excellent news, and experience suggested that if injury was predictable, healing and recovery were likely similar from person to person as well, and that everyone didn’t end up needing to find a uniquely specialized form of therapeutic intervention or go about trying all 400+ different therapeutic approaches in order to find the one that “fit” them best. Again, from what I observed and experienced, therapeutic healing and recovery—to the degree possible—looked very similar from person to person. As such, it certainly appears that we have 400+ models because we’ve mostly misunderstood what’s actually unique about us as humans, and what is not.
Unfortunately, there was some bad news with this discovery as well: I found that the lasting healing and recovery efforts are the least pleasant and most difficult of all the proposed potential therapeutic interventions I have encountered. As such, it remains very attractive to maintain our belief in our individual uniqueness when it comes to psychic needs, wounding and recovery, and it further explains our desire for less risky, less challenging, and quicker healing and recovery options. This is certainly understandable, and I will forever remain open to such a potential, but after decades of intense exploration—maybe even obsessive at times—I become less optimistic a legitimate alternative will be found.
For now, more than anything else, it is our allowance and commitment to reclaiming our full range of human emotional expression that brings us into truth and reconciliation with our past and moves us closer to wholeness. With each step in this process, restoration of physical and psychological health occurs (to the degree possible), and more and more of our destructive symptomology falls away as our authentic self re-emerges in its place, with all of those wonderfully unique gifts, talents, purpose, etc. that were our birth-right.
As such, when it comes to which model of therapy we should consider, I don’t have a strong recommendation. Instead, I encourage finding someone who has the capacity for understanding and an ability to identify and meet the previously unmet psychological needs (such as learning how to work with and fully experience ALL of our physical/emotional capacities in a healthy way, which almost no one alive today received as children). While this person may be a licensed therapist, they need not be, and unfortunately, many therapists do not have the capacity either, as it cannot be gained through college courses or licensure; instead, it is earned through one’s own healing and recovery work, which most people—therapists included—avoid for the reasons mentioned previously.
In the amazing book, Revolution of the Soul… by internationally acclaimed yoga teacher, Seane Corn, such a therapeutic encounter with a woman by the name of Mona is described in chapter eight. Mona wasn’t a licensed therapist, but she possessed all the requisite skill and understanding to identify and meet Seane’s unmet psychological needs, aiding significantly in her healing and recovery process.[3] Finally, given that we have a need for human connection, it’s also no wonder that it is the “therapeutic relationship” that remains the key determinant in positive therapeutic outcomes (over particular models, which only account for approximately 1%).[4] Therefore, finding someone who cares, connects, and can understand and accept your full humanness, especially the parts of you that you previously learned to regard negatively and/or suppress, can aid tremendously in the healing and recovery process.
[1] Sussex Publishers. (n.d.). Integrative therapy. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/integrative-therapy#:~:text=There%20are%20more%20than%20400,%2C%20and%20similarly%20successful%2C%20outcomes.
[2] Wampold, B. E. (2001). The great psychotherapy debate: Models, methods and findings. Routledge.
[3] Corn, S. (2019). Revolution of the soul: Awaken to Love through raw truth, radical healing, and Conscious Action. Sounds True.
[4] Wampold, B. E. (2001). The great psychotherapy debate: Models, methods and findings. Routledge.