off-script
Learning to walk the line between planning and ambiguity.
As I sit down to write today, I'm doing so with no plan. This is unusual and unnerving for me: I'm a planner by nature, and usually wouldn't write anything without already having reams of notes, and a rough outline of my key points. I work through my days with the support of meticulous to-do lists; I do my grocery shopping with a firm meal plan. But one of the biggest things that my therapy training has been teaching me is to embrace ambiguity.
Many autistic people will recognise and relate to my tendency to meticulously plan my life (and, admittedly, my tendency to get overwhelmed when the plan just isn't planning like it should). This trait even extends to the words I say, and the way I behave in social situations. This was one of the first lightbulb moments I had when realising that I was autistic in my late 20s: until I read about it, I hadn't known that "scripting" was an autistic trait, but I had been doing it intensively for my entire life.
If I had an interview, for example, I would literally write scripts for myself – pages and pages of typed up answers to questions that I might be asked, which I would then memorise. Once memorised, the scripts would then need to be practised until I could perform them almost as if they were off-the-cuff. (I'm sure I never was quite successful at this part – my performances probably gave "uncanny valley".)
Many people do this, but my obsession with scripting and performing my way through life didn't only extend to interview scenarios. That was just the most extreme expression of it. I also found myself rehearsing dates, chats with friends, office small talk, neighbourly nods, arguments, shop transactions. I had no idea, for many years, that most people don't need to work this hard to prepare themselves for the performance of life.
These days, I try to walk a line between planning and ambiguity that allows space for a little more balance. I've accepted that planning things is, for me, an accommodation that makes life easier and less anxiety-inducing. I don't beat myself up for preferring to have an itinerary for my holiday, or preferring to eat my planned meals for a week, for example. I try my best to cut myself some slack when I feel a sense of panic rising in response to a change of plans. Maybe I wish I could be more laid-back, more go-with-the-flow, but I also know that that's simply not part of who I am, and that's okay.
My therapist often reflects that I seem to struggle with uncertainty. I don't like this about myself; it doesn't feel very cool girl. The thing is, I know that many people feel this way. It's as much a part of simply being human as it is a part of being autistic. I want to try and accept and acknowledge this part of myself, with neutrality, or even with love. But I also find myself resisting against it – I don't want to be someone who always falls back on the safe option, or sticks to the plan. I believe in shaking things up, and rejecting the status quo. Staying within our limits isn't always what's best for us. And in the therapy room, in particular, I'm learning that predictability isn't always what I need.
As a therapist, there are ways in which predictability and routine are highly important: for example, always being on time, and maintaining the clear boundaries that are set out in your contract. A big part of what we offer to clients is that sense of safety. Particularly for clients who have struggled with frighteningly inconsistent relationships outside of therapy, that warm, boring sameness can be a balm.
But some degree of ambiguity and uncertainty is unavoidable, and bound to make an appearance in the therapy room. There will be sessions that take unanticipated paths, interventions that land entirely differently to how they were expected to, situations that cannot be simply resolved or understood. We can do everything in our power to support people to discover solutions and remedies and ways of coping, but life is full of unsolvable problems – particularly systemic issues, which hold the therapy room in the palm of their hand, leaving us all stuck and powerless at times.
So whether or not I feel comfortable with uncertainty, I know that my role as a therapist requires me to get more comfortable with it. Or rather, to get comfortable with being more uncomfortable.
As a brand new baby therapist, before seeing my first client, I found myself scripting, hard. I practised my opening spiel in the mirror: I rehearsed going through our contract, rehearsed saying my own name, rehearsed every syllable of every word I wanted to say. Often, with new clients, I still get this urge to rehearse in preparation. At this point, I don't need the rehearsals; going through it is more like a comforting pre-session ritual, allowing me to imagine that I have some form of magical control over what's going to happen in the room.
Of course, nothing ever prepares you for the alchemy that can take place in a therapy session. It's a two-way process, and so I can never fully imagine it alone. Still, preparation and therapeutic planning have remained a core part of my practise. I probably skew towards the more over-prepared side of the spectrum of therapists, whether that's because I'm autistic, because I'm still at the beginning of my career, or simply because it's my preference.
But I'm also hoping to grow a therapy practice that allows more space for risks, spontaneity, and fluidity. Therapeutic planning can take you so far; but the magic of therapy is that it's a relationship, and relationships can't be predicted. Working out that navigation between maintaining a conscious awareness, via supervision and journaling, while also allowing space for creativity and flexibility, has been seeping into other areas of my life. I'm becoming a little more accepting of some ambiguity in my own life, too – like writing this post without an agenda, and trying to resist the urge to neaten it, but instead accept it for the meandering, pondering-out-loud exploration that it is. It is what it is – a little messy, a little off-script – and I'm trying to learn that that's okay.