Puzzle Pieces

I love puzzles, the kind with a thousand pieces that make a picture, like scenery, people, or animals. The more color and details, the more fun and sometimes the easier it is to solve, but sometimes that makes it harder, too. I like to look at the box to help guide me when I get stumped on a portion of the puzzle, because the big picture puts it in perspective and helps me locate where some of the more obscure pieces might go.

Puzzles are actually a good analogy for the psychotherapy process. In my blog on Colors, I introduced an ancient tool called the Enneagram. This tool is very helpful in my intake sessions because it gives me a quick glance at my clients’ motivational strategies that were adopted early in their lives, like looking at the big picture on the puzzle box. The Enneagram also provides smaller “puzzle pieces” that helps me develop a more full “picture” of what my client’s have been through from early in life and what belief systems are persevering for them in the present.

Family history also adds puzzle pieces, as do current life circumstances. For some, their childhood is in the past and they’d prefer it stay there. As painful as childhoods can be, I understand that, but to ignore those “puzzle pieces” leaves the “big picture” with a lot of gaps. While this information is helpful for me as a therapist, it is actually more helpful for the client to be able to see patterns and belief systems from their past and how those patterns influence them in the now.

When there are gaps in our memories or our stories, the human mind attempts to fill in the missing pieces with its own imagined pieces that may or may not be accurate, like who we really are or even why we are the way we are. It’s like trying to see what the big puzzle picture is with a lot of pieces missing, and potentially filling in those gaps with pieces from another puzzle. Wouldn’t make sense. But it’s the same thing with our own histories. When we ignore our past or fill in missing pieces (in other words, believe something that may not be true) we’re either leaving out large parts of our stories or adding memories from “an imagined puzzle” that won’t accurately complete the picture of our motivations. It won’t make sense and dangerously we’ll tend to act on a belief that is not true as if it is true. This is how relationships get wounded.

A completed and accurate picture of all each of us has experienced and endured makes for a more complete understanding of our currently responses to life circumstances, and that allows for greater opportunity of choice in responding to relationship struggles, and more importantly, responding in a healthier way.

In the next blog, we’ll address automatic vs intentional.