10 Questions with Ernst Meyer

• What led you to choose psychotherapy or counselling as a profession?

• After a crisis in my private life I was looking for different ways to live my life. In my search for a more meaningful life I first participated in a couple of self help courses and eventually I enrolled in a training program for psychotherapy.
  
  Being in my own personal therapy was part of my training, and I first hand experienced the gradual changes that emerge in psychotherapy.
  
  After three years of "hands on" training I continued my education with another three years of academic studies in the field. As part of my academic studies I did volunteer work. I had the humbling experience of sitting with very troubled members of the community and listening to their stories. It was then that I decided to open a private practice, and be of service of those in need.

• Which philosophical approaches have influenced your professional/personal development?

• I consider the work I do as "applied philosophy".
  
  It is my view that mind and soul of a human being cannot be grasped and made sense of by focussing on perceived mental illnesses or functioning, behaviour and thinking.
  
  Instead, I believe that lives need to be seen in the context they are lived in. All of us are born into cultures, grow up and adapt to certain circumstances, have life experiences, make choices - add out biological heritage to this and we get a more complete picture of the whole person.

• Which particular aspects of health or the human journey are you interested in?

• I see psychotherapy primarily as a human science, and am interested in how non-medical approaches are promoting long lasting growth and change.
  
  Burston and Frie (2006, p. 284) explain that “contemporary psychotherapy is often portrayed as an empirically based treatment technique practised by professionals in a medical setting. According to this account, the patient has a discrete form of psychopathology, while the therapist is an expert with the requsite knowledge and skills to remove the patient's symptoms as quickly and painlessly as possible”.
  
  It is my conviction that this belief system has led to a contemporary culture of medication. What is often overlooked is that the person wants and/or needs to understand and articulate the social and interpersonal roots of whatever emotional distress they find themselves in.

• What method/s do you use?

• The way I work is informed by contemporary psychoanalysis, philosophy, trauma research, the role of affect and emotion in human motivation, infant and child development, philosophy, neuroscience, and body-oriented approaches.

• When do you think the client will start to feel that progress is being made?

• This depends on which issue the client brings into the room. Someone who experienced a single traumatic event in adult life will need different support than someone who grew up in, and had to adjust to, a traumatic environment.
  
  In general though, I see it as progress if a client feels better on the way out of the therapy session than they did an hour earlier. If the client manages to carry this "feeling better" into their life outside of the therapy room then that's progress.

• How has therapy made you a better person?

• I am grateful that both the organisation I trained with as well as my professional association insist on psychotherapists undergoing their own personal therapy. The value has been immense both on a personal and a professional level.
  
  To be more precise, therapy has developed my critical thinking as well as self-reflective and relational capacities. Because of the body-inclusive approach to psychotherapy I am practising, I have moved from an understanding of "I have a body" to that of "I am a body". I am aware of my bodily senses as well as my emotions, and have an awareness and understanding of what these feelings and emotions are trying to tell me.
  
  What is of utmost importance for both my private as well as my professional life is my capacity to sit comfortably with discomfort. I don't get easily triggered, but remain in the present moment, and continue to stay in relationship with those around me.

• What do you like most about being a therapist?

• It is both an honour and an obligation when a person decides to work with me in a therapeutic setting. For me it is impossible to not be touched by the lives of other people.
  
  To answer the question: to see people change in ways which are meaningful for them, and which ultimately allows them to live life without the additional support of psychotherapy.

• Do you ever have 'bad hair' days?

• Of course I do, but I hope it doesn't show.

• What do you think is the most significant problem we face, in the world today?

• January 27th 2015 was the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Marta Wise, who survived Auschwitz and the Holocaust, had this to say a few days after the terror attacks in Paris:
  
  "I used to be an optimist until a few years ago, but the situation in the Middle East has changed and the world does not notice anything. Reading the newspaper in the past few days is just like reading the newspaper in the 1930s. The world has not changed at all. The bottom line is it can happen again and it is happening again in many places, not necessarily to the Jews, but to anyone.”
  
  Her words highlight the - in my view - most pressing issue for the human race: we continue to amplify our differences, and forget about that which unites us.

• Can you share the name of a book, film, song, event or work of art that inspires you?

• In general: stories of survival, against the odds.