What if your therapist knows nothing?

“You are never too young to wonder, ‘why am I doing this?’ You need to have an excellent answer.” 

– Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier

I ask myself this often, Why am I doing this? “This” being “doing therapy as a profession.” 

In an earlier post I shared my mission for doing therapy. That mission is (I hope) an "excellent answer."

But I think I can do better.

Better because I don’t just do therapy with anyone and everyone. I do therapy mostly with creatives – artists, designers, musicians, actors, entrepreneurs, etc. 

“Jeremy," folks sometimes ask me, "why creatives? Explain that.” 

My answer is inspired by the writer Austin Kleon. He wrote the book Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad.

“In this country," he writes in Keep Going, "you’re supposed to have your ideas and stick with them and defend them with your life. Take our politics, for example. If a politician changes their mind publicly, it’s a sign of weakness. A sign of defeat.” 

“Uncertainty," Austin proposes, "is the very thing that art thrives on." He points to Donald Barthelme who said that the artist’s natural state is one of not-knowing. 

I believe we could replace "artist" in that phrase with "therapist." Therapists should strive for not-knowing or "shoshin," which means beginner’s mind in Zen Buddhism. I value a therapy grounded in shoshin and open-mindedness. The word "open" feels right because it suggests that embracing uncertainty might open up or expand the client's world.

Austin adds that uncertainty could be a source of hope. That's an interesting reframing of uncertainty. He connects this back to the act of art-making. He reminds us of something the painter Gerhard Richter once said: "art is the highest form of hope."

“Hope is not about knowing how things will turn out, "Austin says, "it is moving forward in the face of uncertainty. It’s a way of dealing with uncertainty.” This sounds like a good mission for therapy: helping someone to move forward in the face of uncertainty and restoring hope.

I do therapy with creatives because we share the value of uncertainty, not-knowing and shoshin. Sometimes artists become overwhelmed by uncertainty and lose hope. When that happens their world contracts. This is often the point where they contact me. Through therapeutic connection and collaboration, we restore their strength of uncertainty, amplify their hope and expand their world.