Single Session Therapy: Change is inevitable

My garden is full of native, butterfly- friendly plants that grow wild when left unattended. A couple of weeks ago I put on my gardening gloves and set out to fill a paper garden bag with weeds and the carcasses of early summer flowers. As I dragged a half-filled garden bag from the porch a small, pale green cylinder attached to the side of the bag caught my eye. It was lovely, a beautiful jade colour with a line of silver dots stretching horizontally about a quarter of the way down. After a quick Google search I understood that I was looking at a monarch butterfly chrysalis. 

The next day when I looked inside the bag I noticed another chrysalis, this one dangling off the tip of a dead leaf. The day after that there were two more chrysalises attached to the side of the paper bag. I was quite worried about them. A paper bag full of sharp sticks and crumbling leaves seemed like a precarious environment for brand-new butterflies to navigate. For the next week, every time I left the house I paused with a bit of apprehension to check on the chrysalises, until finally the first chrysalis was replaced by a beautiful monarch butterfly, tentatively beating it’s wings on the tip of a dried-up daisy stem. 

The existence of monarch butterflies reminds me that change is both possible and inevitable. It reinforces the fact that occasionally change happens at inconvenient times and in unlikely places. Sometimes caterpillars have no choice but to spin cocoons in situations that are full of hazards, but they are guided by an unwavering instinct that tells them that regardless of circumstance caterpillars have the potential to become butterflies.

I’ve been wondering if perhaps clients come to us most often as caterpillars, ready for change but surrounded by weeds and darkness. So often in single session therapy we are taught to move conversations away from problems and towards hope-filled descriptions of alternative futures. This makes sense. Talking about problems takes up time, space and energy that are all luxuries in the context of single session therapy. However, the world is filled with real problems. Violence, racism, sexism and abuse exist. They are not subjective constructs as some would have us believe. Conversations that ignore or avoid the impact of systemic injustice are disrespectful and unhelpful. 

So lately in my practice I have been asking questions about the possibility of desired outcomes occurring in contexts that may not be ideal. I have been asking questions that acknowledge the existence of problems while reflecting the client’s ability to transform within them. The phrase “in spite of” is now embedded in many of my questions. These questions are not easy to answer. So often people’s conceptions of “better” hinge on the presence or absence of conditions that they have very little control over. People forget that like the caterpillar, they have the ability to spin protective cocoons that trigger change, even when surrounded by turmoil.  

People seem to be naturally more interested in the story of the beautiful butterfly who spreads its wings and flies away than the story of the caterpillar who spins cocoons in paper bags among dead things. However, as therapists I believe we can learn from the caterpillar and draw inspiration from its unshakable belief that regardless of what is going on around them, they will become the butterflies they are destined to be.