Significance of the Setting
I learned the importance of setting early in my career. Years ago when I was an undergraduate psychology student I met a therapist who had been practicing for 25 years. Eager to learn how to help people I asked her what was the most important thing she had learned about healing emotional pain.
Without hesitation she told me that she had learned that "you don't make people normal by treating them abnormally". "Normalize the intervention as much as possible", she said. She went on to tell me that her idea of what is normal behavior has become very broad over the years and that normality and abnormality are difficult to define, and are always relative to the situation. "However", she said, "if you open your mind and your heart you will know the difference when you see it."
I took her advice seriously and I tried to open my mind and heart as I continued my training. I decided that hospitals, waiting rooms, and most offices were not normal spaces and were not the best settings for normalizing interventions. This is why I chose to locate my practice in the small building nestled amongst the oak trees at the end of my drive.
“We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time”
T. S. Eliot
