On vulnerability, connection, and the courage to experience being human.
Recently, I've been reflecting on James McCrae's poem, Instructions Before Visiting Earth, and how beautifully it captures something I've been thinking about as both a therapist and a human being.
Here is the poem:
Instructions Before Visiting Earth
In the event that you wake up
and find your soul separated from source
and manifest into material form, don’t panic.
Your condition is only temporary.
You have been selected for the opportunity
of human incarnation.
This 3D simulation is designed
to break up the monotony of eternity
by giving you a fully immersive experience
as a distinct ego identity.
Your body will serve
as your physical avatar
as you navigate a dense and dramatic reality.
There will be many distractions
causing you to forget your true nature and origin.
You will experience a range of emotions
from joy to loneliness to despair.
But remember – no matter
what trials and traumas you encounter,
your soul remains perfectly safe.
At times you may feel lost or afraid.
This is totally normal.
If you ever need guidance,
simply slow down your busy mind
and bring your awareness
to the quiet place
inside yourself.
On this planet, nothing is permanent.
People and things will come and go.
You will fall in love and form sentimental attachments
only to lose everything you hold dear.
So cling to nothing too tightly, even yourself,
and when it’s time to let go, let go with grace,
for nothing is owned, only borrowed.
As you walk among
the people on the planet,
try to be a good guest.
Tread lightly. Remember
that you are only visiting.
Don’t make a mess.
Listen more than you speak.
Give more than you take.
Don’t keep your soft heart
locked inside a glass cage,
protected from wear and tear.
You’ll never make it out alive
and time passes quickly.
So come back with some battle scars
and good stories to tell.
This past weekend, I attended a training workshop in modern psychoanalytic group therapy. I've been sitting with the experience and reflecting on how we learn to relate to ourselves and one another, how we protect ourselves from emotional pain, and what becomes possible when we allow ourselves to be more fully known.
Modern psychoanalytic group therapy “is an active, developmental approach to psychotherapy that grew out of the work of analysts like Hyman Spotnitz and Louis Ormont. Rooted in the traditions of Modern Psychoanalysis, it applies psychoanalytic principles—such as examining the unconscious, transference, countertransference, and resistance—within a dynamic, interactive group setting.”
There is something profoundly human about our desire for connection and our simultaneous fear of it.
We long to be understood, accepted, loved, and seen. Yet so often, the very things we do to protect ourselves from rejection or hurt can also keep us from experiencing the connection we crave.
We learn to hide certain feelings, anticipate the reactions of others, avoid conflict, intellectualize our emotions, or become the versions of ourselves we believe will be most acceptable. And often, these ways of protecting ourselves make perfect sense. They developed for a reason. At some point, they may have helped us survive something painful. But what happens when the ways we learned to survive begin to limit our capacity to fully live?
The Group as a Reflection of Our Humanity
Modern psychoanalytic group therapy is rooted in the understanding that many of our emotional difficulties emerge within relationships, and that relationships can also become a powerful place for healing.
Unlike approaches that focus primarily on understanding ourselves through intellectual insight, modern analytic group therapy places particular emphasis on emotional communication and the relationships unfolding between group members.
A group can become a small reflection of the larger world.
Within it, we may discover familiar patterns: the desire to belong, the fear of being misunderstood, the discomfort of disagreement, the impulse to withdraw, react, or the longing for someone to recognize something in us that we've struggled to put into words.
The goal isn't to become someone who never experiences these thing; It's to develop a greater capacity to recognize, tolerate, understand, and communicate our emotional experiences in the presence of others.
One of the things I really enjoyed about learning about this process is that we can discover that we can experience discomfort, disagreement, vulnerability, and uncertainty without necessarily losing connection. And that through this in a safe environment we can actually deepen relationships to others, including with self.
The Courage to Keep a Soft Heart
In McCrae's poem, he writes:
"Don't keep your soft heart locked inside a glass cage"
I've been thinking about this line in relation to the ways we unconsciously organize our lives around avoiding emotional pain.
We build walls to protect the most vulnerable parts of ourselves. Sometimes those walls look like independence, perfectionism, people-pleasing, withdrawal, fixing/ rescuing, substances, or a need to maintain control. Sometimes they look like being the person who always listens but rarely shares. The person who can understand everyone else's emotions but struggles to express their own. And sometimes they look like being so afraid of losing connection that we stop showing up authentically within it.
Modern psychoanalytic group work invites us to become curious about these defenses rather than trying to eliminate them.
What are they protecting? When did we first need them? And what might happen if we could begin to experience relationships in a different way?
Keeping a soft heart doesn't mean abandoning our boundaries or making ourselves vulnerable to people who cannot treat us with care.
It means that protection and openness don't have to be opposites. It means learning when we need our defenses, and when they may be keeping us from something meaningful.
We Are Not Meant to Experience Being Human Alone
One aspect of group therapy that I find especially meaningful is its recognition that healing is not always something we accomplish through individual introspection.
Sometimes, we need other people.
We need relationships in which we can encounter differences, misunderstandings, affection, frustration, and uncertainty—and have opportunities to work through those experiences rather than simply retreating from them. I have heard many folks say they feel great when they are alone, but the moment they enter the more emotioally intimate romatic relationship all of the fears and any “unhealed” parts start to surface, which disrupts their sense of peace. I think group work, especially in the modern psychoanalytic approach to group therapy offers a place to, lets say, “reveal” what is hiding under the surface or the metaphorical iceberg just below the surface. Many times people are not becoming more emotionally intimate with others unless they enter a romantic relationship, and group work offers a different way to access unconscious beliefs, and patterns holding someone back from experiencing a more peaceful existence.
McCrae's writing says:
We arrive in this world with a remarkable capacity to feel. Joy, grief, loneliness, love, fear, longing, tenderness.
And while our individual experiences are unique, there is something deeply connecting about recognizing that we are all trying to navigate the complexities of being alive.
We are all learning how to love, how to lose, how to protect ourselves, how to trust, and how to remain open in a world that can sometimes hurt us.
The Experience of Being Human Is Not a Problem to Solve
As a therapist, I spend a great deal of time thinking about emotional suffering and what helps people heal.
But also knowing not every uncomfortable emotion is something that needs to be fixed.
Sometimes, sadness is an expression of love. Anger can reveal something important about our needs or boundaries. Fear may tell us how much something matters. And vulnerability, despite how uncomfortable it can feel, is often part of creating genuine intimacy.
This doesn't mean that suffering is necessary for growth or that trauma should be romanticized. People deserve safety, support, and relief from pain.
I think we can become more compassionate toward the ordinary discomforts of being human, rather than treating every difficult feeling as evidence that something is wrong with us.
McCrae's poem approaches life with a sense of impermanence. We will form attachments. We will experience change. We will love people and, inevitably, encounter loss.
Psychoanalytic group therapy approaches these same human realities through a different lens, exploring how our histories, fears, desires, and defenses shape the way we relate to one another in the present.
I'm still reflecting on what I experienced during this weekend's training, and what I want to carry forward into my work and my relationships.
I found the workshop training to be quite personally powerful and empowering. Given we had more group process over he course of the weekend, whereas, normally group work might be once a week. Because of this the experience was quite intense but also very meaningful. It felt like individual therapy x 10. Because there are other people in the group it helps others to catch our own blindspots and also be able to relate to others, to share in grief, discomfort and even work through relational patterns that show up in real life, that become present or apparent within a small group dynamic with the opportunity to be able to find a more conscious route to problem solving and connection through relationships via the group. This way a person can take this learning outside of the group into real life. It’s actually quite a magical concept, and I can see groups becoming more popular in the mental health world over the next decade whether online or in-person. I do think having someone skilled in leading a group process can be helpful as it seems like more of an art in navagiating all of the dynamics akin to composing a musical composition that eventually sounds beautiful. I was impressed by Sarah and Chris at Asheville Group Psychotherapy who led the training/ workshop, and I encourage you to check out their groups they offer and maybe even look into trying one out.
I want to come back to this part:
On this planet, nothing is permanent.
People and things will come and go.
You will fall in love and form sentimental attachments
only to lose everything you hold dear.
So cling to nothing too tightly, even yourself,
and when it’s time to let go, let go with grace,
for nothing is owned, only borrowed.
I think this concept can often bring up deeper fears in others and existential questioning as well as the fear of ever attaching to someone for fear of that loss. I believe this poem does not mean to be “dettached” from others or to not form attachments, but rather to have an understanding that the attachments to people we care about are really a gift. To be alive is a gift. To recognize nothing is owned, even this planet.
No matter your belief system you ascribe to, there are unknown things that exist. We do know some things. “Buddhism teaches that all things are impermanent. Suffering happens because we demand that transient things remain fixed and predictable”.
It is not that we cannot love and attach deeply. It is that being overly attched or codependent often leads to increased suffering. Being with what life actually is sets us free. It does mean we will not experience grief or loss. It ultimately is the acceptance of what life actually is. Rather than the fantasy that we can hold onto everything. It allows us to then be present with our life. To be present with ourselves and to connect more deeply because we know this is all temporary.
All the more reason to connect with others, because we need others, especially when we do go through inevitable losses…to remember that the experience of being human was never meant to be something we had to navigate entirely alone.
Stay tuned. Among the billion other things I want to do. Facilitating a group therapy is definitely something i’m inspired to do now after this training.
As a reminder from the poem maybe for your, day, week, month, year or life:
At times you may feel lost or afraid.
This is totally normal.
If you ever need guidance,
simply slow down your busy mind
and bring your awareness
to the quiet place
inside yourself.
As Ram Dass said, Be Here, Now.
