The body of pain, the accompanying body

Abstract

The objective of this qualitative research was to understand how the psychotherapist’s experience of pain and bodily suffering is a resource for performing psychotherapy from a self-referential perspective in connection with meta-observation and reflexivity, typical of second-order cybernetics adopted by systemic psychotherapy. An autoethnographic process was carried out where elements such as body, pain, suffering and self-reference were traced in order to describe the subjective bodily experience of the psychotherapist to understand the therapeutic resources that emerge from it. The main participant in the study was the researcher, there were teachers and a student in training from the master’s degree in clinical and Family Psychology at the Universidad Santo Tomás and a user of the Psychological Care Service (SAP) at the Universidad Santo Tomás and two consultants from the psychotherapist’s private practice. Thus, understanding that pain and suffering become resources to mobilize change in psychotherapy to the extent that they are contextually situated in the psychotherapeutic scenario through well-used language, recognition of the therapist’s internal conversation, and sustained beliefs around suffering, but above all the acceptance and integration of psychotherapists’ vulnerability as a connection strategy from fragility.