Who's holding my coat?

Who’s holding my coat?      Mike Moss

First published in The Person-Centred Quarterly Spring 2025

 I am in the middle of a session and Tom starts to cry. This is the first time he has cried with me, and it seems he has been building up to this, having recently described feeling there was a wall of tears just waiting to rush in, but he had to hold them back in fear of what might happen he said. He also once talked about a dream where he was walking by the sea and had to try hard to resist being pulled in. We wondered if this might have been a symbol for the tears inside him and, indeed, the fear inside him of what might happen if he did start to cry.

He seems full of tears. It’s strange. Here is someone crying and experiencing some overwhelming emotion right in front of me, and I don’t speak, I don’t act. And yet I experience a feeling of deep empathy, as if I am alongside him as close as I can be, being present in the fullness of my nature of being a helping human. There is nothing to do but be. Something important is happening to Tom. I feel I know this from somewhere deep inside me.

 I remember once, in my own therapy, being in a flow of tears and the therapist offered me a tissue. Well meant, of course, but it stopped me experiencing that feeling which felt raw and new and relieving. I wished it had gone on a little longer. On reflection I believe that I would have experienced more about myself at that moment, packed into the flow of tears, if I had been able to just cry, uninterrupted, with an understanding and knowing there was someone there.

So here I am with Tom, I trust he knows where the tissues are if he needs them. It feels as if there is something kind being placed in motion between us. A sensation I can only describe as me being able to connect to something life affirming.  Having a strong sense of being alongside, witnessing new feelings happening and being lived, and in these moments getting closer to who Tom is. Getting closer to who I am too, as Mike the therapist, the man, the child, the human being. Trusting there is potential new life forming and growing. And all is meaningful in this experience; honouring Tom is finding his way. Feelings surfacing slowly and powerfully, releasing gently at their right time, ebbing and flowing, and things being put in place somehow, opening, and easing towards healing.

I am moved. Tom’s distress seems to touch me in my heart. I reach out to him from what feels like my heart, following an invisible stream of energy between us, linking our spirit over many feelings passing through an unseen realm: a whole system of fibres of presence, outside and inside ourselves, criss-crossing and vibrating, activated, live, setting in motion the depth of sacredness in both of us. Here and now in this moment. There is softness in my own tears too as I feel his tears through me. I am seeing the fullness of Tom lovingly through them, reaching out, listening, understanding, and being aware of gently holding. He is crying because there is something that needs to be expressed and his body is communicating it.  

Carl Rogers (1902-87) writes about a similar experience he had in connection with a client where he reveals that

‘..it seems that my inner spirit has reached out and touched the inner spirit of the other. Our relationship transcends itself and becomes a part of something larger. Profound growth and healing and energy are present.’ Rogers (1980, p129)

 Tom is having a big experience right now. I know this is difficult for him, and I know this might feel scary, but I also feel it might be truly helpful, as if the tears he has been holding back over the years may be starting to dissolve some of the fears he has held. I imagine a cleansing of the wounds of painful memories just enough to see what else might be there. This is a small step. What else might be understood, what else might be longing to be heard, to emerge into a safer place in the world.

And then later, as we slowly move towards ending the session, I finally want to confirm if Tom is ok to meet again.

‘Yes, please.’ he says, and ‘thank you, I would like that, same time next week if that’s ok?’ And then he gets up and puts his coat on and smiles.

 ‘It’s all about coats isn’t it’ he says.

The space in the room feels like it has taken on a new shape, it is brighter and more open as he walks out. Tom also looks lighter somehow and I feel lighter too. Working with clients close to the edge of their painful experience is tough sometimes, and also remarkable. I am always aware of the potential risk, and growth, and also the possibility something will change whenever a struggle is touched on. It is not straightforward moving into the realms of what is making us struggle, where something starts to emerge, not quite formed, but in the process of forming, as if it is just letting us know it’s there.

I am beginning to trust this idea of feelings letting us know they are there and how they communicate what is needed through us both, client and therapist. Even if it is only confirming there is ‘a something’.  Eugene Gendlin (1926-2017)

There may even be symbols, which are always correct in my experience, like the wall of tears for instance that Tom described, or also being pulled towards the sea. We may have to wait a long time for understanding to emerge, and it may never come up fully, but we know it’s there. I also believe at times when clients experience their feelings and release them through tears, as with Tom, tears may be able to wash away something from inside. It feels like a cleansing. Perhaps some of our pain starts to dissolve, as if it has been waiting for the right moment, and I wonder if this can help another part of us start to grow.

Rogers also writes about the therapist’s skills in listening deeply at these moments of intimacy, where being listened to can have an effect on the client when they experience being genuinely heard by another person.  

Writing in ‘A Way of Being’ (1980) although not writing specifically about tears, Rogers describes how ‘elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens’ and how he believes this can transform the client’s experience of what they might be struggling with when they are heard deeply by another person. And ‘how confusions that seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard’ (Rogers 1980, p12).

I appreciate this image of clear flowing streams, which takes me right back to Tom’s tears and my own empathic tears, the stream being a symbol of the flow of connection and how powerful and transformative this work we do as therapist can be. I also know from my own experience as a client, a release of tears can let hope in, and how the freeing of feelings I have been afraid of or ashamed of can offer clarity and a way forward. Rogers also describes listening to his clients as being like

‘...listening to the music of the spheres because beyond the immediate message of the person, no matter what that might be, there is the universal. Hidden in all of the personal communication which I really hear, there seem to be orderly psychological laws, aspects of the same order we find in the universe as a whole.’

He goes on to say that over time he has learned to make an attempt to really hear the sounds and shapes of his client’s ‘inner world ‘ and asks himself,

‘Can I resonate to what he is saying so deeply that I sense the meanings he is afraid of yet would like to communicate, as well as those he knows?’ (Rogers 1980, p8)

I believe that when a person tells the story of their struggle, in whatever ways they can manage to tell, and experience their story being empathically witnessed by another, regardless of colour, privilege, race, politics, gender or sexuality, it is a way of inviting a person from isolation to connection, from their being alone to being all one. My questions to myself as a therapist, then, are: Am I able to really listen to my clients and how do I know I am hearing them well enough? Do I really believe that how I am able to be inside and outside of me will be sufficient, enough? Can I effectively be alongside a person in their sadness, their pain, their joy, their confusion, their trauma? Can I fully hear them in their heart by listening from my heart?

 I have to say that I don’t know if I can, truly. I don’t have a plan for my next client. I don’t know if I can help them. I am not an expert in them. I am not an expert in me either. I also know that sometimes I am not fully present every time with every client. However I try to be, as best as I can. Being able to listen and genuinely trying to understand a client is something I can only truly strive for. I believe we are all in the process of learning how to be in the world, and that we can all learn from the experience of being helped and helping each other, and that we always take our individual experience onto the next situation, or person, or client.

Tom’s parents struggled with alcohol and drugs. He said he could understand how they were like that, and it didn’t really bother him that much now. But I also heard in his words that he had failed at school, failed at getting a job, failed at finding a relationship with a girl, and had failed at being the child he wished he had been growing up, and that life sucks most of the time. Listening to Tom this way was difficult at times for me, as I really wanted to help him look at how he appeared to be stuck in his view of his past which he felt didn’t really bother him. To me, it felt like there was incongruence.

I could really feel Tom’s need to be held and to know that he was ok. He was a survivor, and yet he wasn’t aware of having been wounded. I felt he had a lot more to say at times, and then he would talk about something else. I felt sad and heard his struggling. My experience of him was that he felt rejected, although he always appeared positive, and I often wondered what it might be like for him to explore what was behind his ways of being. I knew his life had been very difficult and he had experienced some very violent physical abuse from his father, and there were some horrific stories.

On reflection I honestly do think we created a safe space to explore some of the things he had never been able to tell anyone. Most of our work together was around the things he was doing now, his hopes for the future and how he was coping. I felt like it was a warm relationship, and we shared some humour, and I think he began to trust more of himself in our being together. I felt privileged he had been able to talk about some traumatic events. I trusted this experience of therapy had been helpful, being listened to deeply at times and that we could talk about other things in his life that seemed lighter, still held in the knowledge we had connected at depth.

Tom was the youngest in his peer group. He would talk about the adventures he and his friends had and would share some lively stories. I sensed his yearning to feel better about himself and put distance between his past and present experiencing. He once told me he had lost a bit of confidence and described being anxious at times and that he wanted to be happier, and then - almost in the same breath - didn’t want to go any further.

‘Well, that’s life’ he used to say.

I had been working with Tom for just over a year, and I sometimes felt sadness in me when he talked about his friendships. He wanted to feel accepted in a particular group of friends and, at times, talked about wishing he was more like them. On one occasion he told he had been out at the weekend where he and his friends visited a night club in town. They had been out till the early hours, and he had got drunk. He said he had a great time. During the conversation he mentioned he had been ‘holding the coats’. I was curious. I asked some more and discovered that whenever he went out night clubbing with his friends, they would give him their coats to hold. I wondered what this was like for Tom. I imagined him standing at the bar with his arms outstretched, each coat being dumped on him so the others could have fun, and he would be smiling.

‘So, how many coats? ’ I asked.

‘It could be 6 or 7’

‘So, you hold all the coats while they dance?’

‘Sometimes they don’t dance that much, we just stand and watch. ‘

‘What if you want to dance?’ I asked

 ‘Oh, that’s ok, I am happy just to watch. They like me being there to hold their coats. I don’t mind’

This was how it was for Tom on a night out and from his experience he was having a good time. At these moments he felt part of the group; he was happy and felt that he was being included by looking after their coats. It was me who was frustrated; me who was annoyed, me who was sad for him. It felt such a shame, here was this young man trying to join in and yet, to me it, seemed he was being taken advantage of. I didn’t say this though. I listened to what was happening in me, and it felt like a judgement, and then I listened to what I was hearing from Tom and on one level he was genuinely happy. To me it felt worthy of further exploration though, as I was curious about what else might be happening for him, even though he may not have been aware of anything else other than he seemed to think this was ok.

‘But what if you want to dance, would someone hold your coat?’

‘Oh, I don’t really like dancing’ he said.

‘I feel a bit sad for you, standing there on your own with the coats.’

‘I’m ok, I am not on my own.’ he replied.

 ‘Well Tom, all I can say is that I hope someone would hold your coat if you ever changed your mind and wanted to dance.’

And he smiled.

Eventually I think our work together helped Tom find more understanding of what he felt he wanted in life, also discovering what more accurately fitted his experience from his perspective. I hoped that he would continue to move a little more freely in terms of the suffering he experienced and find a more peaceful way perhaps to walk along the beach without fear of being pulled into the sea.

The events from his past had affected him and he had spoken about some of the things that had happened, but they had not ‘made him’ he said. He began to find that he could trust himself to experience his feelings a little more and in addition was able to make connections more easily with the events in his past and find some understanding.

Tom also felt some of the challenges he had experienced had made him unique and that he was now able to accept his own value in being the person he was. I believe that, from having been genuinely listened to and being in relationship with another person, this had helped him listen to and be in more genuine relationship with himself. In my experience this kind of deep listening can have a profound effect, and evidences that indeed we are all connected at some level, all the way back to the first humans, and that we can help each other. And how we relate with each other is important.

When we go towards listening deeply with the intention and hope of understanding the other, we may discover we speak from the same inner voice, the same spark, igniting a universal law of actualisation, where healing and growth is waiting for its potential to be activated in us all, in me and in you and in the other and in the world, whenever we are deeply heard.

I enjoyed getting to know Tom and sometimes felt that I was holding his coat during our work together. I remember mentioning the idea of me holding his coat a few times, and I think he appreciated this. And then he got up and put on his coat and smiled.

‘It’s all about coats isn’t it’ he said.

References

Rogers, C.R. (1980) A Way of Being. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Gendlin, E. (2017).

Focusing with Eugene T. Gendlin Youtube: Nada Lou. https://youtu.be/Bjhf_qUklSc?si=RnR7n60wDLpybfaz

Mike Moss is a BACP registered Counsellor and Supervisor. He has worked in voluntary and statutory organisations for over 40 years and is currently employed as a counsellor in a school. He describes his approach as Person-Centred with an interest in the Transpersonal. He has written widely about the power of the therapeutic relationship and presented his work at workshops and national and international conferences. He has a small private practice offering counselling, supervision and training and can be contacted at mike.moss@outlook.com.