Many thanks for your comment. It is as with all the comments you have left on my blog insightful, personal and too the point. You certainly add value when you comment!

The notion of joyful therapy sounds good, but not true enough in my experience. It sounds too close to positive thinking, a concept I find to be an overlay, veiling problems/difficulties. The unsaid directive, put on a happy face, rather than an authentic happy face. I believe the entire reason for therapy for most people is to be released from what is holding them back. (Not the only reason, but as you know therapy is generally a big investment and I don’t mean only monetarily or predominantly.) No matter how you look at holding back there is at minimum some form of restraint aka loss of freedom, then to the other end of possible severe bondage.

Whether one likes it or not fighting is required to gain or regain freedom. Since the natural flow of joy has no element of fighting as far as I can tell, whether it be the ‘good fight’ or not, I think the joy can only be arrived at once the pieces of restriction begin to move.

If the goal is for joy in therapy or as a result of therapy, as both you and Sarah have indicated, it can and does arise in the course of the work. In fact, I feel it is the element that compels one to continue therapeutic work, for without it the necessary fight(s) can seem pointless. But the fight itself? There is a seriousness one must embrace and employ dealing with detrimental issues and they must somehow be detrimental issues or one wouldn’t be or feel held back. In therapy I find it difficult to remain anchored to what is causing me pain and remain joyful traversing that course.

If I do find myself ‘joyful’ as I confront a restriction, it is generally not genuine joy, but something I am telling myself to relieve the pain. Meaning, I want the joy, but the work I have done is not suffient in some way to foster, support, generate, or more corectly, release my joy, which is and has to be spontaneous for it to be real. Applied joy reveals itself soon enough to be what it is. I find I’m kidding myself or maybe giving myself a reprieve, even a necessary reprieve, until I can take the next steps toward real. The other element to this joy I’m telling myself I have or need to have, is an illusion, and in part, what got me to therapy in the first place.

That’s not to say there are no joyful moments, there really are, but I have not found them to be in conjunction with or simultaneously to what may be very difficult awareness. Joy after the relief, yes. During or throughout, not as likely, if at all. I guess it could also be said more simply, joy is natural, fighting is not, although one definitely leads to the other in therapeutic work.

The other joy position I can see is the anticipation of resulting joy as catalyst. In that case I guess you could say one starts out with at least a joyful frame of mind. I do think mostly all people doing purposeful therapeutic work have adopted that position, whether knowing it or not.

agree with all your musings on the nature of joy, but am confused about how you intend to construct a new therapy around them?

In my experience as a therapist, joy is always part of the journey, it’s always about increasing joy, and the connection of joy with authenticity means it sometimes arises in the midst of real misery early on.

Therapy is, to varying degrees, about creating a space for the client to be authentic. (Therapist of course has to be too!)Joy can arise as a part of that.