Trauma & Healing Archives - Sergio Integral

On the therapist-client relationship, empathy, and the courage it takes to begin therapy

Part of the raw musings of a psychotherapist

When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.
Martin Buber

I have been revisiting my thoughts on the relationship between therapist and client, and the importance of empathy during the first meeting.

It has been over 30 years now, but I remember the first time I went to therapy. Although I had no prejudice against going to a “shrink,” I still felt a bit funny. I guess the way I dealt with it was by convincing myself that I was not crazy, but only needed some help with certain specific issues. In fact, I prepared a list with the five items that, in my opinion, needed to be addressed.

I do not remember my therapist’s attitude in detail, but I do believe that she made me feel comfortable. She acknowledged my areas of concern, whether she agreed with them or not, I do not know, and also made me feel that my problems were solvable. Had she tried to go another way, for example, trying to convince me not to stick to a specific agenda, or letting me know that there might be other issues to consider, I might have felt like she was trying to sell me something I did not need and most probably would have said, “No thanks,” and walked away.

As therapists, we need to develop, from the first visit, a sincere appreciation for the client. We should acknowledge the client’s courage in being there: taking action, accepting that they need help, and trusting a perfect stranger with their deepest and darkest secrets and struggles. That is a lot! We would do well to provide some assurance that coming to therapy was the right move, that they are not crazy, and that there is hope.

The keyword is sincere. As humans, we can feel when someone is faking appreciation or support. In many ways, beneath such sincere support, authenticity and openness are required.

The other topic that keeps coming back, and that I relate to openness, is the need to remember that, even if the client comes to me looking for magical solutions or to be “fixed,” just as they might go to a priest, a guru, or a tarot reader, I should not receive them with a sense of superiority, but welcome them as an equal. As a fellow traveler on the path.

We therapists first have to clear our own trail (healer, heal thyself!), and then invite others to walk along with us, not as an example to be followed, but more like a traveling companion. Someone who, although they may have already visited this specific “country,” is a traveler nonetheless, still learning and discovering new things.

This means encouraging clients to try their own solutions, and walking together in the therapeutic relationship, where therapist and client meet, relate, and, through this meeting, healing occurs.

Yes, to be fully honest, I often find myself suspended in an inner tension. On the one hand, I notice my desire to present myself as wise, capable, insightful, and worth the money I am being paid. On the other hand, I hold the goal of meeting my client, and everyone, for that matter, as an equal, in an I-Thou way. Yes, we may be playing therapist-client roles right now, but underneath that, we are two human beings trying to figure out this thing called life the best way we can.

I remember attending a lecture a few years ago by Rabbi Michael Lerner, in which he discussed two different visions of the world. The first was the market-based society, where fear is the underlying feeling, and every time I meet someone, I evaluate how he or she may be of use to me. Basically, an I-It world. In such a world, it is clear that I, the evaluator, must assume myself to be better than the “its” to which I relate, the “its” I objectify.

The second was the love-based society, where the criteria for a relationship are love, mutual support, equality, and compassion. An I-Thou world. He seemed to suggest that most of the time we engage with each other in an I-It world, treating others as means to an end rather than acknowledging the miracle of having a living, thinking, feeling, unique human being in front of us.

It is as if, instead of appreciating something, a work of art, a sunset, a flower, a person, we are fixated on figuring out what we can get out of it.

It is sad.

May each of us keep remembering that every human encounter is a unique opportunity and a miracle. May you find, in your own therapy and in all your relationships, the joy of being seen and known, and of seeing the other as they are: radiant.

But then again, what do I know…

Therapy works best when you feel seen, respected, and met as a whole person. If this reflection resonates, we can explore whether working together feels like a good fit.

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(and How Shamans Can Help)

“[People] are so caught up in their own little lives that they are not getting their love up to the sun, out to the ocean, and into the earth… people are wrapped up in their little worlds, and they forget the elements, forget the source of their life. People have stopped gathering together, thanking the earth, the gods, the Sun, the sea for their lives.”
—José Ríos Matsúwa, Huichol/Wixarica mara’akáme

In an often-quoted reflection, The Paradox of Our Time, Bob Moorehead captured something many of us feel, even if we rarely say it aloud: we are more connected but more isolated. We have more knowledge, but less judgment; wider freeways but narrower viewpoints. We earn more money, but have forgotten how to live. We have conquered outer space but neglected inner space.

This paradox is mirrored inside. We’re stressed out, exhausted, scrolling compulsively, and burning out.

The polycrisis and its origin

The World Economic Forum has called our moment a polycrisis, meaning multiple crises that interact and amplify one another. Beneath it, I believe there is a common denominator: disconnection. We feel disconnected from the Earth, from others, and from ourselves. We have lost our ground. We feel uprooted. We’re adrift.

I want to suggest that Indigenous and shamanic wisdom may help. This is not a call to become plastic shamans, buy a drum, or move to the Amazon. I’m not here to exoticize or romanticize shamanism, but to acknowledge that these traditions worldwide have developed and preserved specific practical truths that modern life tends to erase. It is an invitation to remember them:

Slow down. Reconnect. Look around.

The Earth as a library

Luther Standing Bear, a Lakota leader, described a childhood where the natural world was a literal classroom, where the Earth itself was a library. Children were taught to study nature as modern students study a book. They watched ants at work. They observed clouds for long stretches. Lakota youth were encouraged to remove their moccasins and feel the “sacred earth” by sitting directly on the ground. They believed sitting in the “lap of our Mother” allowed a person to think more deeply, feel more keenly, and see more clearly into the mysteries of life.

Over time, Standing Bear says, this cultivated a “soft” heart—respect for living things—and trained the eye to perceive beauty everywhere: in a black thundercloud, in an insect, in the slow turning of seasons. Life was never trite or boring; instead, it was (and is) alive and pulsing.

Now contrast that with us.

We live enveloped by a manufactured environment, like astronauts encased in a metal world, alienated from organic reality. We’re trained to seek constant dopamine hits from our own artifacts. Everything that is not fast feels boring or pointless.

We need to move from nature-as-resource to nature as mother and teacher. Shamanic cultures remind us of something we’ve forgotten: relationship is the medicine. Relationship with ourselves, with others, and with our surroundings.

Three movements of reconnection

Here’s the good news: this doesn’t require exotic beliefs or borrowed rituals. To slow down, reconnect, and look around is simple and specific—not a performance but a practice.

First: slow down and return to your inner life. Learn to listen to the silence. Everything is meaningful. There are no dull moments. Stop judging and become curious. When we’re in pain, we ask: How can I get rid of this? A shamanic sensibility changes the question: What can I learn from this? It is an invitation to let things unfold and find out what happens next.

Second: reconnect. We are wired for connection (human—not artificial—connection). We can’t heal in isolation. We get sick alone. Isolation amplifies trauma. We need community to witness our story, help us make sense of our suffering, support us in our challenges, and celebrate our victories.

With community comes ritual, ceremony, and containment. Ritual emerges from deep places in the psyche to provide structure for grief, transition, fear, and renewal. Across cultures, people gather to mark life’s thresholds: births, coming of age, marriage, death. Without ritual and community, we struggle to understand life, and we feel the loss more sharply.

Third: look around. The Earth surrounds us. Get out of your concrete and steel confinement. We are not separate from nature. Earth is not merely “resources,” but a living organism we can relate to. Change the consumer mentality to one of stewardship—not “what can I take?” but “how do I live in reciprocity?” Shamanic traditions encourage gratitude, offerings—as ritualized gratitude—and a return to sacredness.

What happens when we lose connection?

The paradox of our time already told us. We feel out of balance—lonely, lost, sad, broken.

As Matsúwa suggests, we’ve forgotten the Earth; instead of giving offerings, we plunder Her and the Sea. We lose roots and drift in a meaningless world, trapped in “skin-encapsulated egos.” In the shamanic world, this is known as soul fragmentation. We lose aliveness. We become scattered, incomplete, not quite inhabiting our own lives. We feel as if we lost something but can’t remember what.

In The Little Prince, he finds a lonely flower in the desert and asks it about human beings. The flower gives an answer that sums up our predicament: “Men? The wind blows them away. They have no roots, and that makes their life very difficult.”

Let’s grow some roots…

What can we do?

Start small. Start today. The practice doesn’t need to be grand. It can be as simple as this: one small offering of attention.

Remember Standing Bear’s story. Walk on the ground. Leave behind your phone and observe nature for five minutes. Reconnect with yourself. Reach out to others. Get out of the city and look around. You are surrounded by beauty.

If you want to go deeper

If you want to learn more about shamanic-informed psychotherapy and practices, feel free to reach out. Mine is an integral approach that bridges Western clinical knowledge with ancient spiritual wisdom to restore wholeness. It rejects the mind/body split, treating the person as multidimensional, leaning toward transformation rather than symptom management alone. Illness is approached as a messenger, and through ritual, symbols, expanded states, and deep listening, we begin to understand the native language of the unconscious—inside, in between, and around us.

No borrowed outfits required. No foreign performance. Just the slow, steady work of remembering who we really are, to become human again.

Slow down. Reconnect. Look around.

Things don’t look good. It’s getting harder to be an optimist. It doesn’t matter if you are liberal, conservative, man, woman, old, young, even wealthy or poor — there is a sense that we’re moving through dark times. Worse, it seems to be hitting us from every direction: health, safety, economy, relationships, ecology…

Of course, not everyone agrees. Pinker (Our Better Angels and Enlightenment Now), Rosling (Factfulness), and Norberg (Progress) argue that — contrary to what our brains (and the media) want us to believe — we are living in the safest, healthiest, most educated, and most prosperous times in human history. Then again, plenty argue the opposite. Graeber & Wengrow (The Dawn of Everything), Hickel (The Divide), and Mann & Wainwright (Climate Leviathan) claim that inequality, ecological collapse, autocratization, war, and mental health crises put humanity at risk.

I am not a global trends analyst but a psychotherapist. In my sessions, I don’t deal with the reality of the world, but with my clients’ perceptions of it. This makes my work both easier and harder. Easier, since we don’t need to figure out what is “real” (although at times reality-testing is useful). Harder, since facts don’t matter as much as how clients feel about them. (Nietzsche wrote, “There are no facts, only interpretations.”) In any case, I keep hearing concerns about the state of the world. It’s been a while since a client said, “I have a good feeling about where things are going,” quite the opposite, anxiety and depression have surged worldwide—up about 25–30% since 2020—with U.S. rates of depression rising over 60% in the past decade, reaching historic highs.¹

How can we face this reality? Faced with distress, our brain seems to have a limited number of preprogrammed responses: fight, flight, freeze, or appease. Depending on circumstances, we select the most viable. We can despair, give up, curl into a little ball and wait for impact, pray for divine intervention, etc. With my clients, we’ve explored many of these alternatives. None of them (with the exception, perhaps, of some forms of prayer) feels truly satisfying.

Fortunately, there are other options. Some existentialists, who also faced extreme circumstances (WWII, Nazi occupation, concentration camps), urge us to accept the absurdity of existence (not an easy thing to do) and remember that even in the worst situations (e.g., Frankl in Auschwitz), we still have the possibility — even the responsibility — to choose how to respond. We have agency. Our actions matter. We get to choose; we must choose. Regardless of the outcome, it is we who define the meaning of our lives. Some take it even further. Leaders such as Gandhi, MLK, or Thích Nhất Hạnh urge us not only to avoid running from suffering but also to face violence without succumbing to it, to transform hatred through love, and to act decisively with compassion.

There is yet another possible (and perhaps puzzling) approach. As a transpersonal psychotherapist and psychedelic facilitator, I am familiar with the teachings of sacred plants and mystics throughout the ages. Paralleling Buddhism and Hinduism, plant medicine consistently reminds us that life is illusory, a cosmic game or līlā. Many times, I’ve witnessed clients cracking up (what I like to call the Cosmic Laughter) when they realize how silly and pointless our toils are — echoing Julian of Norwich saying, “All shall be well” amid Europe’s plague, or Ramakrishna’s supposed answer to why suffering exists: “to thicken the plot.”

How are you facing our current situation? How is the barrage of negative news affecting you? What resources do you have to move forward? Please remember: if you are struggling, if you feel despair (perhaps the healthiest reaction to our profoundly sick society), reach out. You are not alone. We are not made for suffering in isolation. There is help.

Since my clients are not mystics (yet), and many would not even consider themselves activists, my job is not to philosophize or tell them what to do. I am there (and here) to explore alternatives, to empower them (and you) to make their own decisions. How to face suffering, and what to do about it, is a deeply personal choice. Yet, perhaps influenced by those same mystics and plant-teachers, I — most of the time — remain optimistic. Mostly because every day I witness in my practice the strength, beauty, and dignity of our shared human struggles.

Perhaps, until each of us finds our own answers, the best we can do — as Vonnegut suggests — is to remember that “we are all here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”

Sources: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2025/20250416.htm?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://www.who.int/news/item/02-03-2022-covid-19-pandemic-triggers-25-increase-in-prevalence-of-anxiety-and-depression-worldwide?utm_source=chatgpt.com ↩︎