Who is your accompanist for you?
When a person asks for a 1-to-1 session are they seeing the other as a pushchair, a punch bag, wallpaper or a springboard?
PRH accompaniment adapts to offer different ways of helping each individual grow. Between you and your accompanist, directly or indirectly, you choose the best approach according to your own present needs and the stage of your journey. You may decide on growth coaching, healing therapy or personal training and practice with tools for self-development and autonomy.
But underlying these different technical approaches, how do you SEE your accompanist? What PERCEPTIVE APPROACH do you bring to your accompaniment? Are you aware of which attitude underlies your request for support? Enjoy trying to recognise yourself below:
A pushchair
A person walks into their accompanist’s room and presents their situation.
The request can come in many forms, but in the pushchair scenario the underlying message is: I can’t move forward without you.
They will display different degrees of demand:
Mild: I feel sorry for myself and I need some comfort from you.
Medium: I need you to rescue me. I can’t do it alone.
Severe: Poor me, little me, victim me. I’m broken and helpless. I’m only a little child and you are my parent who’s going to pick me up and tell me where we’re going. YOU are going to make it all better by doing it FOR ME.
A punch bag
A person walks into their accompanist’s room and presents their situation.
Looking for help is not their first priority. What they want is to direct or redirect their frustration, anger, disappointment – sometimes many years of repressed feelings – on to someone else. They need to feel the cathartic benefit of externalised blame.
Using our accompanist as a punch bag has its definite short-term advantages. Especially if we feel unconditionally accepted even when we are raging, belittling, behaving “badly”, rejecting etc.
Unfortunately, if we don’t realise what’s really happening, we will just reinforce a dysfunction that keeps us away from a reachable and satisfying goal of once-and-for-all growth. What is really happening is that we are just bringing our pent up emotions, designed to be expressed spontaneously in another place and at another time in our past, to a convenient scapegoat in the present, (who indeed actually may, or may not, have failed us in some way). This is the classic case of negative transference that at some time hits every relationship of every person who has not worked on themselves in depth.
The worst outcome for this type of individual? To dump and walk away. To walk away to face the same relational scenario another day with another “enemy”.
The best outcome? To trust the relationship enough to hang on in there – despite feeling frustration, despair, or hate or disdain for the other, etc. To take responsibility for their own feelings and by working through them, reach the other side.
Wallpaper
A person walks into their accompanist’s room and presents their situation.
They see their accompanist as wallpaper. Something that exists and acts as background environment. A two dimensional entity, with no voice of their own. The person being helped doesn’t need feedback. In fact they may resent it. They are self-sufficient in their own world.
A person walks out of their accompanist’s room, feeling lighter. They have satisfied a need to express themselves – but they haven’t entered into conscious relationship and made the most of all that that can bring for human development and fulfilment.
A springboard
A person walks into their accompanist’s room and presents their situation.
They see their accompanist in one of the following ways: a stimulus, resource, guide, companion, witness, loving parent, firm parent. They see the relationship as a fertile connection in which life can grow. Perhaps they even perceive the two of them contained within a larger sacred space that nurtures and inspires potential, profound change and healing. They know their accompanist is human, fallible and flawed but, even despite that, they recognise that there is alchemy between and around the two of them that produces something synergistic and life-giving.
The client is open and receptive, self-affirming and free. They can communicate freely and responsibly how they feel, even how the other makes them feel – both the positive and not so positive. The encounter is inspirational and dynamic for their self-knowledge and growth.
As they leave the meeting, not only do they walk taller and more in charge of themselves and their life, but those around them in their daily lives benefit from their increased inner harmony, focus, maturity and autonomy.
Do you recognise yourself in any of the above? Are you one of these, or maybe more than one, or all of them on different occasions and at different stages of your journey? It’s normal for there to be a time and a place for each one.
Being aware of what’s driving you to ask for accompaniment will help you on your path, as each perception you have of your accompanist tells you something significant about yourself. Each one, in different ways, will mark and influence the outcome, your process, and the lives of both you and your accompanist through your unique human relationship.
Are you interested in using the PRH Helping Relationship more effectively for your growth and autonomy?
Three possible ways forward are:
- For beginners – take the plunge and ask for a one-off session to test the waters.
- For those with prior experience – take the opportunity to discuss your particular approach with your chosen accompanist – your strengths and obstacles.
- For those with basic PRH training behind them – explore how to make it a springboard relationship in the 5-day residential workshop Learning How to Give and Receive Help. It offers clear practical tools to support your present experience, together with opportunities to observe and deepen this powerful growth resource for yourself. You are also introduced to the fundamental attitudes to employ for optimum effectiveness in launching yourself to fulfilment, harmony and balance.
Robina Scott
PRH Educator