Something happens.

Sometimes it is obvious. Sometimes barely perceptible.

A sigh. A swallow. A small physical shift. A change in someone's expression. Occasionally nothing I could easily point towards at all, yet something about the encounter seems different.

I may notice it.

But I don't necessarily know what it means.

That distinction has become increasingly important to me.

In clinical practice, we are understandably drawn towards explanation. We assess, measure, diagnose and interpret. We use our knowledge and experience to try to make sense of what is happening. When something changes, particularly something unexpected, there is a temptation to explain that too.

The person relaxed.

Their nervous system felt safer.

Their brain updated its prediction.

They let something go.

Perhaps.

Each may be a useful way of understanding what happened. But they remain my words describing someone else's experience.

And words are insufficient.

Something else happens

Sometimes I ask permission to touch someone's back, feel a muscle, assess a movement or explore an area that has been painful.

The permission matters.

Not simply because consent is an essential part of clinical practice, but because occasionally there seems to be something within the experience of permission itself.

A sigh.

A swallow.

Sometimes apprehension.

Perhaps even an unfamiliarity with being invited to feel something rather than immediately protect, avoid, correct or change it.

There I go again.

Perhaps.

Because I don't actually know what the other person is experiencing.

I can notice what happens in front of me. Interestingly, I can also notice what happens within me.

There are occasions when I have a feeling that something has shifted in the person I'm witnessing. I couldn't necessarily tell you why. Maybe I've unconsciously noticed tiny changes in their face, breathing, posture or voice. Maybe it is something else entirely.

Again, I don't know.

It is data, not truth.

And perhaps there is nothing I need to do with it.

Something happened.

Can that be enough?

Relief or reveal?

We commonly talk about relief.

Relief from pain. Relief from tension. Relief from fear. Relief from whatever was previously uncomfortable or overwhelming.

But I wonder whether relief sometimes contains another possibility.

Relief may also be reveal.

Persistent pain can become all-absorbing. So can fear, vigilance, grief, responsibility and the effort required simply to keep going. An experience can become so dominant that, temporarily at least, it seems to occupy everything.

Then something changes.

Perhaps only slightly.

And what follows may not simply be the absence of what was there before.

Something previously obscured may become perceptible.

What?

I don't know.

Peace?

Freedom?

Love?

The self?

Even those words feel too large once I put them on the page.

Perhaps nothing needs naming.

Because the experience belongs to the person experiencing it.

The privilege belongs to them

This may be one of the boundaries of clinical expertise that is worth remembering.

There are things I can know about another person.

There are things I can examine, measure and observe.

There are possibilities I can offer from years of clinical experience.

But I cannot inhabit another person's experience.

The moment I explain their experience to them, however compelling my explanation might be, I have moved into my interpretation of something that belongs to them.

That doesn't make explanation unhelpful.

It simply puts it in its place.

I can offer a map.

They remain the territory.

And when something changes, perhaps they should retain the privilege of discovering what, if anything, that change means.

I don't have to claim it.

I don't have to name it.

I certainly don't have to own it.

Sometimes perhaps I can simply witness it.

And increasingly, I recognise what a privilege that is.

The privilege of witnessing

There have been moments during my career when I have watched something change in another human being and felt profoundly grateful simply to have been there.

Not because I necessarily caused it.

Not because I completely understood it.

And not because it proved a particular theory about pain.

I was simply present when something happened.

The person has the privilege of their experience.

And anyone invited to witness that privilege may themselves be privileged.

There is a paradox here too.

In witnessing something becoming available in another person, occasionally something becomes available in me.

Yesterday, while thinking about this, something unexpectedly simple arose:

Perhaps my whole existence is a privilege.

I don't offer that as a conclusion anyone else needs to reach.

It was simply what appeared for me.

And perhaps that demonstrates the point better than any explanation I could construct.

Nobody needed to teach me that conclusion.

Something happened.

I noticed what arose.

There it was.

What is sufficient?

I began this reflection with a question:

What is the minimum sufficient experience that allows someone to experience themselves differently?

I expected that I might find an answer.

I'm less sure now that I need one.

Perhaps sufficient cannot be prescribed in advance.

A movement might be sufficient for one person. A conversation for another. Being believed. Being touched with permission. Silence. A sigh. An unexpected absence of pain. Pain remaining while something else changes.

Or something for which neither person has words.

Perhaps there are moments when nothing needs to be manufactured at all.

Something is already happening.

Maybe it is enough to notice.

To remain curious.

And perhaps not to fill the space too quickly.

Words can point towards an experience.

They can illuminate it, question it and sometimes help create the conditions in which something different becomes possible.

But words are not the experience.

Sometimes something happens before either of us knows what to call it.

And perhaps, occasionally, nothing more needs to be done.

It is.

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Relief May Be Reveal