I’ve dealt with clients from many walks of life as a psychotherapist. My job is to create a secure, accepting environment where people can talk about their most personal issues, whether they are struggling students or powerful executives. ‘John’, a very accomplished lawyer who seemed to have it all on the outside but was collapsing under the weight of unresolved grief and sadness, is one particular instance that sticks out.
John grudgingly came to meet me, per his wife’s insistence. John was a well-liked partner in an esteemed legal practice who took great satisfaction in always being intelligent, perceptive, and in charge. It went against everything in his being to be open and honest about his inner anguish with a complete stranger. However, his spouse could no longer observe him retreating even more into himself.
John was reticent during our initial meeting, answering my open-ended queries with condensed answers. He acknowledged that he was depressed and tired most of the time, but he blamed stress and overwork for his feelings. Although I felt there were more serious underlying problems, I knew I had to meet John where he was and gradually develop trust.
By employing a client-centered and insight-oriented methodology, my goal was to establish a secure space where John could explore his emotions without worrying about being judged. Week after week, John started to lower his defences through thoughtful inquiries and introspection. He talked about his difficult relationship with his emotionally distant and demanding father. It dawned on John that he had lived his entire life chasing after his father’s unfulfilled approval and affirmation.
Then, John’s father unexpectedly died of a heart attack six years ago. John didn’t let himself fully digest the loss and pain since he had poured himself into his profession. He took great satisfaction in being the epitome of professionalism, never allowing his personal life to interfere with his work. However, suppression of feelings and denial frequently catches up with us.
John choked up, unable for the first time to control his tears as he described seeing his father’s casket lowered into the ground. The hurt, abandonment, and anguish he had believed he had carefully stored up burst forth in that instant. John became very vocal during our sessions, expressing his anger at feeling unworthy of his father’s love. He mourned the emotional abandonment of his early years and yearned for the pride and affection of a father he never had.
John’s depression and emotional emptiness stemmed in large part from this unresolved grief that left him feeling fundamentally alone and flawed. I worked with him on feeling and accepting the full range of emotions like anger, sadness and longing for his father’s love. Only by giving himself permission to experience these difficult feelings could he begin to process them in a healthy way.
We also explored John’s harsh inner critic – an internalized voice of the unforgiving father figure from his childhood. So much of his drive and perfectionism was rooted in trying to finally earn that elusive approval from his father. John learned to practice self-compassion by envisioning the gentle father he wished he had, offering himself the patience and unconditional acceptance he desperately needed growing up.
In concert with our talk therapy, I taught John mindfulness and meditation techniques to observe his thoughts and emotions with acceptance rather than judgment. These mind-body practices helped him stay grounded during bouts of anxiety, rumination and the harsh inner voice that plagued him. He began carving out brief moments of solitude each day using a mindfulness app for guided meditations focused on acceptance and self-love.
Slowly, step-by-step, John’s depression began lifting as he did the hard work of grieving, opening up and challenging his belief that he wasn’t good enough. The weight he had carried for so many years began to feel lighter. Though he couldn’t change or remake his childhood, John learned to offer himself the love, validation and compassion he deserved but didn’t receive growing up.
After months of laying the groundwork and doing deeper inner work, I introduced John to EMDR therapy to help reprocess and desensitize some of the disturbing memories and emotions around his father that were keeping him stuck. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) allowed John to mentally revisit and reprocess traumatic moments and emotions in a safe, contained way.
During these reprocessing sessions, I had John recall vivid memories like harsh punishments from his father or dismissive interactions where he felt shamed and defective as a child. As John tuned into all the thoughts, emotions and body sensations surrounding these memories, I guided him through bilateral eye movements. These eye movements helped engage his brain’s information processing system, allowing John’s neural networks to reprocess and integrate the disturbing events in a healthier way.
Over the course of our EMDR work, John was able to achieve a healthier perspective on these past events and strip away some of the negative emotional charge keeping him stuck in mental loops and overwhelming emotions. Traumatic memories became more distant emotional memories – still painful but no longer feeling trapped and consumed by them.
As John did this brave inner work, I saw monumental shifts in his outlook, mood and sense of self-worth. Grieving his father’s death and lack of emotional nurturance allowed John to finally step into his own life more fully and let go of chasing the ghost of parental love, pride and approval.
Our culture doesn’t give men and boys enough space and permission to feel and express the full range of emotions like sadness, vulnerability, fear and grief. As a male psychotherapist, I aimed to model what healthy emotional expression and processing looks like, and give John the holding space he lacked growing up.
While John’s personal growth and healing was profound to witness, I can’t take full credit. He did the deeply courageous work of being willing to go inward and hold himself with compassion when he was met with harshness and rejection in childhood. That self-love is what ultimately allowed him to melt through the emotional armor keeping him depressed and disconnected.
In our final sessions as John prepared to transition out of weekly therapy, he reflected back on how far he had come in learning to give himself unconditional positive regard. He realized his depression had been masking an emptiness and a longing to finally love the little boy inside who felt abandoned. By grieving the father and childhood he lost, John was able to show up more fully for his own wife, kids and life.
John’s case reminds me that we all carry wounds from childhood – whether it was overt trauma and abuse or subtler forms of emotional deprivation and neglect. If we don’t do the work to heal those wounds and rewrite the defective stories of self-blame and “not enough-ness,” we stay stuck repeating old patterns and looking outside ourselves for validation that can only come from within.
Depression often takes root when we close ourselves off from feeling difficult emotions and repress parts of ourselves that we’ve learned are bad or unworthy of love. By fostering an environment of empathy, trust and nonjudgmental exploration of our inner emotional worlds, the therapeutic process helps suffering individuals like John reclaim their wholeness.
I feel immensely privileged to do this meaningful, profound work of guiding people back to their innate Self-worth and capacity for giving and receiving love. When someone like John is able to shed the heavy armor of depression and internalized shame, they become a walking testimony to the healing potential we all possess.