Translation or transformation?Â
- Fe Robinson
- Sep 23
- 2 min read
Experience is about patterns. There is structure and form to how we are, to what we perceive and to how we behave. The work of psychotherapy is helping clients to uncover and understand their own patterns, both the ones they like and value, and the ones they want to change. Increasing insight can provide opportunities for difference, be it amplifying the useful, or transforming the redundant.
Sometimes though, patterns translate rather than transforming. A translation is where a pattern just moves to a different manifestation, the same underlying issue shows up differently. It’s like different waves expressing the same shape of the ocean floor, the deep structure interacts with the prevailing conditions to shape each particular wave. A shopping addiction becomes a sex addiction, or an eating disorder, all reflecting self-regulation and relational issues, or depression morphs into severe anxiety or dissociative tendencies all reflecting avoidance of feeling.
For change to be beneficial, it needs to go past translation into transformation, it is the deep structure itself that is changed. This requires a willingness to be vulnerable, to not know, to explore at depth, and to step outside what has passed before to enable something different to emerge.
Bridges transition model talks about letting go of the old and moving through a liminal, unknown space in which the new has not yet emerged. I liken it to a trapeze artist, letting go and flying through the air trusting the next trapeze will be there, but not yet securely holding on to it. This is the art of transformation, it can be liberating and powerful, just as it can be terrifying along the way.
Transformation is about changing the pattern itself, working at a deeper level. It transcends what has gone before and establishes something new. For psychotherapy that goes beyond translation and into new ways of expressing your true self, get in touch confidentially at fejrobinson@gmail.com.
