Suffering is normal

Most clients arrive in therapy wanting relief. They want problems resolved, suffering eased, and a sense that something painful will be ‘fixed’. It is also entirely understandable that there is often a conscious – and sometimes unconscious – expectation that the therapist holds special knowledge, insight, or skill capable of delivering that relief.

Over time, however, what has become clearer is that this expectation and the deeper reality of therapeutic work are not always aligned. Many clients leave therapy before reaching this realisation, but at its core, the process often involves coming to terms with something less immediately consoling: that suffering is not an anomaly to be eradicated, but a fundamental and inescapable part of human life. The struggle, then, is not simply to eliminate pain, but to find a different relationship to it.

At the heart of this tension is a shift in how I now understand the purpose of therapy. It is less about transforming ourselves into something other than who we are, and more about learning to relate differently to who we already are. This includes developing a different relationship with suffering itself – both our own and that which exists in the wider world. Not by removing it, which is not realistically possible, but by recognising how much additional suffering is created in our attempts to avoid it.

If the task of therapy is, in part, to move towards acceptance of ourselves and of life as it is – rather than as we might wish it to be – it is reasonable to question why such a process might take time at all. Yet, from within the work itself, it becomes clear that self-acceptance is rarely a simple or linear shift. It is often long, complex and deeply challenging, shaped by the extent of early relational experiences, trauma and internalised beliefs about the self. The depth of that work varies, but its difficulty is rarely in doubt.

In this context, I understand my role less as someone who ‘fixes’ problems and more as someone who helps create the conditions in which clients can notice how they relate to themselves – often in ways that mirror earlier experiences of being treated by others. This includes both compassion and, where appropriate, a more challenging stance: gently supporting clients to recognise these patterns, while holding in mind that although the past cannot be changed, our relationship to it – here and now – can gradually shift over time.

This is an edited extract from an editorial first published in Private Practice, December 2025, published by BACP©