Any collaborative relationship, whether it be a therapist and patient, a close loving intimate relationship, a business or a nation, requires all parties to be in what therapists call "a working alliance." A working alliance is, in effect, an agreement between two or more people who have made a clear-cut commitment to working toward the benefit of the relationship, the We.
We all remember the beautiful music of the USA for Africa music video and in that song, I can hear the refrain of people who summon the bravery to come to see a therapist: "There's a choice we're making, we're saving our own lives." The song is an invitation to join a world wide therapeutic alliance, in hope of aiding African victims of famine.
Therapists often forget about the power of WE, as do friends and lovers. We all too easily dissociate ourselves from our lovers and friends in crisis, telling them "you'll work this out" when they in fact need us to include ourselves in response to their cry for help: "We'll work this out." Artists seem to have a better knack at remembering the power of WE. In fact, in my years of training I was never encouraged to intervene with the word WE. I learned to do it with experience and development of my art as a therapist, and I think it's important for all therapists to integrate this concept.
If I tell a worried patient, "You'll get through this" it's reassuring but impersonal and not terribly powerful. If, however, I boldly bring myself into the working alliance and say, "WE'LL get through this," it's much more reassuring and puts me into the problem in a very personal way. After all, a working alliance is a deal contingent on two people taking responsibility for their part of whatever challenges stand in the way of their success as a team. That's why WE is the proper pronoun for a therapist to use in a crisis situation or when a client is going through tough times.
In an interview in the NY Times on April 18, 2009, Nell Minow, a co-founder of the Corporate Library, a provider of corporate governance research was quoted as saying, "One thing that helped move my thinking forward was that I noticed in my first job that there was something very definitional in who was included in somebody's "we" and who was included in somebody's "them." I found generally that the more expansive the assumptions were within somebody's idea of who is "we" - the larger the group that you had included in that "we" - the better off everybody was. I started to really do my best to make sure that my notion of "we" was very expansive and to promote that idea among other people."
Ms. Minow makes a powerful point here and it's the very expansiveness she describes that makes using the word WE into a commanding force in business and the relationship between leadership and inclusion. By the same token, when a therapist uses the word WE, as in "we'll figure this out together," as opposed to the restrictive "you'll figure this out" that therapist is creating a much more potent alliance which exerts a much more influential force of change for the patient.
The very expansive inclusiveness that helped elect President Obama was nurtured by his campaign mantra, "Yes, WE can." That's not terribly surprising given that the very foundation and declaration of ourselves as a nation begins with "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
One of the lines of the Yes We Can video states, "Yes we can heal this nation, yes we can repair this world." The whole campaign embodied hope and hope is what we all crave in this country. Hope is also the best prognostic indicator for improvement in psychotherapy. So if you want to help someone you love and at the same time feel better about yourself, all you have to do is remember and remind, "Yes, We Can"
