"Am I doing this right, or am I too dark?" It's challenging to know how to "do" therapy. Frequently, clients worry that their thinking is almost too dark to say out loud. The answer though, to "can therapy be dark," is yes. In fact, getting to the dark parts is how we add light to our journey.
When healing isn't puppies and rainbows
The Uses of Sorrow — Mary Oliver
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
People often imagine relational work as warm, soft, and endlessly comforting.
We hear this a lot, that Relational-Cultural Therapy must be “gentle,” “pleasant,” or even, “too nice.” Sometimes, before sharing something particularly thorny, someone might say, "I know I shouldn't be this dark but . . ."
RCT makes room for all of it though: the dark, the thorny, and the messy, contradictory pieces we all carry.
There is such relief when those places are met in connection rather than silence.
Because the truth is: relational work becomes transformative not when we try to shrink down the hard things, but when we can bring them into a relationship sturdy enough to hold them with us.
Therapy can be dark because all have black boxes
In our recent relational group, we explored the idea of the “black boxes” we have been given over our lives — the sealed places full of pain, mystery, or tenderness that we don’t quite know how to open.
Some of them come from outside us, external black boxes full of betrayal, harmful relationships, ruptures, abuse, empathic failure, controlling images imposed on us.
There are some that come from inside us, internal black boxes full of shame, tangled relational images, fears, stories we’ve carried alone for years.
We also have boxes from the long arc of history. Cultural or ancestral black boxes come with legacies of oppression, inherited wounds, generational patterns. Sometimes we've been told to dismiss them, but they continue to shape our experience.
Others live in between us, disguised as a hope of protection, but with a reality of disconnection. In-between black boxes contain unspoken needs, protective silence, fear of burdening, and inauthenticity.
Our goal in relational group isn't to stack them away, hidden in the back of our attic. We create a space full of curiosity and warmth, safe enough to open our boxes, at a pace you can handle. Unpacking our boxes together, in the context of supported vulnerability, allows for an authentic unfolding of experience. Once we've started the journey of unpacking, we begin to create new understanding, both of the past and of our present. Can therapy be dark? Sometimes it has to be.
What happens when we open the box together
n group, we see this again and again:
When someone opens a black box, even just a corner, others don’t turn away.
Instead, there’s a softening.
A recognition of each other, followed by a collective exhale.
There's a shared feeling of “Oh! you too! I'm not alone!"
These are moments that loosen our years of silence, even just a little. Making room for us to find new ways of being.
This group is a place to bring what’s real.
Not to fix it.
Not to rush it.
But to open it in a relationship sturdy, compassionate, and mutual enough to witness it.
You don’t need to know what your black box holds.
You just need to be willing to come as you are, with your darkness, your questions, your tenderness, your longing, and let connection do what it does best.
To help you remember who you are.
To help you not carry it alone.
