Kintsugi for the Soul
Relationships grow through rupture and repair. So does psychotherapy.
All meaningful relationships grow through rupture and repair. Ruptures are inevitable. With skilled, intentional repair, a relationship grows stronger and deeper.
It’s like Kintsugi, the ancient Japanese art of golden repair. Cracked or broken pottery is rejoined with lacquer and gold. The object becomes stronger in the repaired places. Its character and beauty come from honoring, not hiding, its history.
Repair involves acknowledging the rupture, understanding why it occurred, and understanding one another’s experience of it.
This requires intention. We must be willing to share our experience of what happened and how it affected us, and truly hear the other person’s experience. Each time, we learn something more about ourselves, about them, and about connection.
This is how connection grows.
Golden repair is impossible when we paper over ruptures to keep the peace, sweep them under the rug, or “move on” without understanding what we’re moving on from.
The cracks may be hidden, but the structure is weakened. You cannot build intimacy on a foundation of denial.
What is papered over remains broken.
Each crack creates more emotional distance. Over time, there are only two outcomes. The relationship remains superficial—a pleasing façade over a fragile structure—or it breaks, irreparably, when stressed. One or both people often think the stressful event caused the break, but they are mistaken. It isn’t the event; it’s the accumulation of hairline fractures never attended to.
If it is a meaningful relationship, dissatisfaction, disappointment, frustration, despair, anger, hurt, and resentment are inevitable. These are part of the human condition.
The same is true in meaningful psychotherapy. Ruptures are inevitable because we are human.
In meaningful psychotherapy, we work to recognize, acknowledge, and understand how and why ruptures occur. We invite hurt, disappointment, anger, and frustration into the sessions and into the psychotherapy relationship. With every cycle of rupture and repair, we discover something about ourselves and we are changed by what we learn. We stop sweeping emotional life under the rug. We learn golden repair.
What we learn carries over into our lives and our other relationships.
People always ask, “Should I tell my therapist that I am unhappy with them?” If it is meaningful psychotherapy, the answer must be “yes.” What is acknowledged, discussed, and understood leads to emotional growth and strength. What is papered over stays broken. When you tell your therapist you are upset, golden repair becomes possible. (For more nuance, see my Instagram post.)
Therapists who consistently invite discussion and exploration of what is going wrong in the therapy relationship—and things will inevitably go wrong—help you learn golden repair. It’s not to improve the therapy relationship for its own sake, but to help you have healthier, more meaningful, and more intimate relationships in life.
This kind of psychotherapy is painstaking work, and not for everyone. It’s how brokenness becomes beauty.
More essays, interviews, clips, and reflections: linktr.ee/jonathanshedler
A lovely read. I’ve recently broken an old plate of my late mother’s - a joy to repair and to reflect on rupture and repair both within my personal life and those that occurred within the therapeutic alliance. Here’s to the golden. Thank you 🧡🙏🏻
Thank you Jonathan…..your beautiful post spoke to me so directly about the current schism in my psychotherapy and counselling profession between traditional exploratory therapists like myself and and those whose practice is shaped by critical social justice ideology….despite many attempts for dialogue and to reclaim ground for non-political activist therapists (including standing for chair of the UKCP in the election earlier this year) we are met not with relationship but with ignoring, discounting or the platitude of ‘we include everyone’. My latest post, inspired by you, can be found here. I hope you don’t mind me adding this link…..
https://open.substack.com/pub/fair370/p/are-psychotherapy-and-counselling?r=qxggu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false