The Couch
It’s 9 am and my first client has arrived.
My face offers a warm expression to the man walking into my therapy office. “Hey, welcome. Come in and take a seat.” My eyes catch his — they look tired, bogged down by the untold stories and hard and fast lifestyle recently interrupted.
He offers me a sort of half-smile as he plops his body sideways on the brown leather couch in my office, his lanky limbs gently melting across the curves of the furniture. I pause, only for a few seconds, grounding myself and taking in the presence and beautiful humanity of the person sitting across from me. And then we begin.
I am a marriage and family therapist, co-founder, and executive director at Minnesota Trauma Recovery Institute (MN-TRI).
AT MN-TRI, we work with individuals, couples and families struggling with the impact of trauma on their lives and often substance use issues. Most of our clients are involved in the criminal justice system. The large majority of our clients have survived a battery of traumatic experiences from childhood abuse, torture, gang violence, homelessness and years of solitary confinement. Our clients have a history of turning to drugs and alcohol to sooth the pain associated with the legacy of those traumatic events bouncing through their bodies like a pinball in its machine. The second-hand, tattered leather couch in my therapy office has been a constant companion in my work. Over the years we have come to be good friends; the kind of friend that you can you count on and lean on in difficult situations… quite literally.
Some time ago, I sat alone in my office after a particularly difficult session where I guided my client as he processed the severe abuse from his childhood. I sat there gazing at the couch in my office and felt a deep sense of gratitude for her unremitting presence. I began to think about this couch and how she has gently held so many folks as they courageously share their deepest pain, sorrow, and trauma with me. I thought about the soft and supportive platform she provides as they speak out loud secrets they have swallowed for years or decades. I thought about all the tears she has absorbed into her leather, generously allowing the saltwater to soften and age her surface. And I thought about the joy she has buoyed, her cushions attuned and flexing to the waves of soft chuckles and deep belly laughs.
As I thought about these things, I wondered what she thought about all the humans she carries through such challenging times. I realized how important of a job she has. Not only is she the aesthetic centerpiece of my office (peeling leather and all), but she also serves my clients with a kind of nonjudgmental stance I as a human can only aspire to. She doesn’t care whether my clients can read or write or whether or not they have a driver’s license- she simply provides a seat for them. She doesn’t care if they have only smoked marijuana or if they bang meth every day — she simply offers a place to rest. She doesn’t change her structure if my clients have been a victim or perpetrator of violence- all are welcome to lean back and find support from her cushions. I am confident she pays no attention to whether they have all, some or none of their teeth, hair, fingers or family members. Her steadiness and commitment to support all my clients grounds me.
I wonder what I would do without her. I think about my clients who have spent too many homeless nights crawling into a bed of concrete seeking a blanket of warmth from heroin. How refreshing it is for them to find refuge on my couch if only for an hour at a time as they tell me through tears, “it was so dark out there. I never knew it could get so dark.” I think about clients who have been shot in the hip or the knee during street violence- a collateral consequence of intergenerational trauma eroding bodies like eddies in a river. How much more comfort their joints find from my couch than park benches or the injection molded plastic chairs which fill county jails. Again, I am grateful for the support this couch offers to my clients.
My work focuses on healing complex PTSD in individuals who have been exposed to multiple incidences and types of trauma. This is hard work and most of it happens on my couch. She provides the platform for healing in a way I take for granted all too often. She never complains and she is always there waiting to support whomever takes a seat. While this work is challenging, it is also deeply inspiring, and she gets to witness that too. She gets to see the transformation of my clients as they narrate their lived experiences, allowing their nervous systems to begin to settle and their memories to integrate in healing ways. She gets to hear them talk about how flashbacks are no longer ripping them from the present and dropping them in their past without warning like an concealed riptide. She hears them tell me that their nightmares are few and far between and how they have found hope or faith for the first time in a long time. She heard one of my clients weeping as he told me, “I thought I would live like this forever. I didn’t know I could heal.” She gets that too.
At the end of the day, on my drive home from my office, I press my foot on the break, slowing to a stop as I reach the red light. My hands drop to my lap and I allow my eyes to fall out of focus. I see the array of blurred circles—yellow, red, and white lights drowning out the late evening darkness. I breathe deeply and notice how my body feels: heavy but energized. This is good work; I think to myself. I think about the stories I heard today, and I think about the couch in my office, a constant and sturdy companion offering her gentle embrace through endless hours of therapy—a platform from which my clients emerge after taking their next step towards healing. I think about her, and my heart warms in gratitude. The light turns green, my eyes sharpen, and so does my sense of hope.