A brief account of using map and talk to track a conversation.
I say to Harry, whom I am meeting for the first session. 'It will help me listen if just put words down on paper as we talk. It might help us keep track and chose where we go with the conversation.' Harry nods and puts his hands out as if giving consent. I add. 'We can trace out lines that we can follow and threads we can ignore. We can recap with the words on paper as if it is our conversational map and see what we are saying. It will help us reflect.
Harry smiles but also looks a bit uncertaina. He says. 'Okay, if it helps you, I guess it will help me.' I want to go on and say: 'I will be listening for words with legs on, by which I mean words that when spoken seem like they are carrying something and going somewhere. They are words that resonate and open up to other words. We can sit with them and go over them and see where they might have come from and make links. But I dont need to say all this: I need to show him.
We talk and map. We are having a conversation with pen and paper. We recap and reflect. We pause. 'What about when I cannot find the words.' He says and I wait. 'When I know there is something there: a feeling, an idea or a memory, but I just cannot find the words to hold and bring it out into the open?' I write down: when I cannot find the words. I say pointing to what I have just put on paper. 'That is when we wait in the spaces between words. We are more likely to know where the missing words might come in if we have a map of the main lines of the conversation.' What I am thinking to myself is when we make links we also meet gaps.
Harry talks and I listen, and after a while he stops talking about what matters to him and points at our emerging word map and says. 'I am talking more openly because of your words on paper.'
I enquire. 'How does that work do you think?'
Harry says. 'I can see what I am saying. It touches me. Or I touch it. I can see you are listening. You are not hiding behind a screen of mystery.' I agree with him. I think we when people take on the role of listener we can spend a lot of emotional resources worrying about what they are thinking.
I worry about the map taking over so I say to Harry.
'I don't want to get ahead of you and set the direction of the conversation, so stop me if the words on paper are leading you astray or losing you.'
'Me too.' Harry says. 'Stop me if I am running ahead too fast.' We agree to use the map to slow him down and help us reflect. Every so often and especially when the discussion is racing on ahead, I will offer to stop and recap and take us around the map to see where we are and how we are getting on. After a while he says when he wants a recap, and we fall into a rhythm of mapping and talking and recapping with the map. Sometimes we forget the map is there and I think it is messy and needs tidying up.
With time and practice at mapping and talking, Harry and I begin to talk more freely and point to the words on paper as if they are part of our shared understanding. It is not me keeping notes and him wondering what is on my mind. It is us co-authoring his story and our therapy making story. We have different roles and different tools. He talks and I write down the words according to my mapping template. Links are being made and gaps are being found (see links and gaps)
Sometimes it really feels like he is telling his story from the inside of his experience of it. The relationship is between authoring and being authored Other times, and he senses it too, he tells a story about himself in the way it has been told to him. It is not his voice. Not first-hand authorship. He is telling me stories about his life and he needs to have one foot outside them. I am hearing them and mapping them as we talk. it is as if our choice of pronouns: we, me him, I, you are changing and the process that shift their points of view and ownership or avoidance of feelings is alive to us.
Later, when he is cutting backward and forward between two or more stories about his life, he gets lost. We find the map can help both of us find a direction and a shape to the conversation. We make a small side map on another piece of paper of the pattern or procedure of getting lost.
I ask him after if he thought on the whole if we are going in the right direction. Harry points at us and at the map. He says he thinks we are finding our way together. I say that I often wonder when we talk openly and intimately about our lives and especially the difficult part of our lives that it is a struggle between taking a risk and feeling anxious and uncertain of where it is going or playing safe and telling of familiar things in fixed ways.
Listening is like navigating a 'conversational' boat in choppy seas, around rocks and shallows and in and out of safe inlets and harbours. To navigate we need to we need to work together to see the far horizon and the near distance, the shallows, the depths and hidden currents. We keep on course but through shifting perspective. We need to help each other change position and have more than one point of view without rocking the boat or losing our way. We are constantly working with the changing direction, intensity of feelings and meanings. For a different view on this see the workshop on Mapping transference Learning to do this repeatedly together session by session is the nuanced detail of the therapy journey. It is easier to do this with a map that has our keywords marked out on it to show the way. It helps us reflect and review together, and it helps us write out the troublesome and breakthrough patterns together and give voice to blocked feelings and new ideas.
To work with these ideas, subscribe to my mailing here, follow me on linked in or check my books Talking with a Map and Therapy with a Map
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