The shrink I am

Answer to the question: How do you manage to do this job?

Over the last few days, two people have asked me the same question:

“But how do you do it? Listening to all these sad stories, all this suffering — how do you manage not to get dragged down, you drown yourself?”

These questions have helped me put into very clear words what drives me, what fascinates me deeply about this work. First of all, I don’t sink; I swim, I float, I ride the waves.

What inspires me is human resilience. How people who have endured childhood trauma, violence, subjugation, profound isolation — or, conversely, a sense of omnipotence that crumbles the moment they step outside their front door — how these people still manage to find a way. A survival strategy. A purpose. A way of living despite everything.

What also captivates me is the way in which each person learns to be with the other. In fusion, at a distance, in mistrust or in self-abandonment… There are infinite ways of inhabiting the connection, and this human creativity touches me deeply.

My role in all this? I hope that the questions I ask bring awareness to what has happened. That they provide a tool:

How have I learnt to react to events? What might I dare to do differently?

Sometimes it helps. Sometimes a little less, or not at all. But I am there, with curiosity and a sincere interest in supporting what each person

For this is what I believe: we are born unfinished — prematurely. And it is precisely this that has enabled us to survive and still be here today — the human being, the underdog of evolution. To grow is to adapt, to integrate our environment, to create our identity from what we experienced in childhood. These patterns, these traits that define us — they were not mistakes.

They were intelligent responses to what we had to go through.

That is why I deeply value these traits, rather than fighting them. The aim is not to erase them, but to bring them into our awareness — so that we can manage them as adults, in a way that allows us to move towards the person we wish to be. Therapy is that space where we dare to do things differently:

to experiment, experience and integrate something new, more in line with the life we wish to live.

And then there is a mystery that remains entirely beyond me, and which I do not claim to solve. Within each of us, even in the lives most marked by violence or deprivation, there is a little voice that says no, it cannot be that this is all there is. Something within us speaks, beckons, knocks at our consciousness—which knows, which hopes, which pushes towards something better. A higher self, one might say. Others call it God, the élan vital, the soul. Whatever the name — that part exists, and it resists, it helps us move towards the unknown, towards something better.

I imagine she’s the one who’s just started looking for help, for therapy.

If I can play a part in nurturing and helping that part of you to flourish — the part that believes a better life is possible — then I’m truly here for you. And that fills me with joy.

Uschi Waldherr

Gestalt- & Sexothérapeute & Thérapeute de Couple

m 06 32 80 02 31

contact@uschiwaldherr.fr