Nethra Nallari

How does one eat and has one been fed, what stays in of what one eats, what is rejected of eating, are explored in this essay. Why, the reader may wonder, must we think about eating, digestion and elimination? The patient arrives with a need to be fed, it is the relationship that feeds, something of what is fed must be assimilated, digested, metabolised and excreted. If only it was as simple, I would not be attempting to write this essay.

What does the patient arrive with? A need for something to take inside themselves. It takes much time before the therapist begins to understand this need, and even so, this need will change over time.

To think about this need in itself. Some of us will express quite clearly just how hungry we are. This hunger is a cue, it allows something to begin to be formed. Both the therapist and patient work together to now “cook”. There are two at work, and with some synchronicity, they make something together.

It is the patient who teaches the therapist of their history, appetite, palette, and capacity to digest. Without this particular feedback, the therapist would be quite alone in cooking. We need to know whom it is we cook for and with.

Some of us arrive hungry and we would much rather like to be fed something, just about anything. It is painful to tolerate hunger for too long. To be fed anything is a relief, it is to have something inside oneself, just enough to sustain staying there and returning. We must understand that such hunger must be given into, if only to fill the body. We are not to measure, analyse, interpret, gauge. A hungry child, a hungry psyche is to first, be fed. All else, comes later.

Now, to continue to feed would be a grave mistake. Yet a tempting one, because one who feeds and the one who is fed, are both gratified and content. This cannot continue for long. And if it were to continue, the food would no longer have any meaning. The relationship would binge on fulfilment without question. When we arrive with hunger, we hope we are fed. And we must be. But we continue to return, and now perhaps we want something more than to be treated like hungry children.

Now, before we go on to thinking about what must be differently after the hunger is met with some food. There is another patient who arrives with no need. To say the least, no apparent need. I would still like to think that we arrive hungry, yet to admit that we are would be a confession too much. To admit that we infact need something from the outside to go inside us, would be far too painful an admission.

What is it that might pain one about their own hunger? Perhaps the need to be fed, their need for an other person. All of us begin with being fed. Yet we do not know how we felt as we were fed or what we were fed with. Hopefully, we were fed and fed with nutrition. This is not so much about who feeds or the breast, the formula or the kind of food. I believe it is about how one is fed, with whatever one is fed with.

Whatever is fed, it is fed along with feelings. Was there another person who wanted to feed us? Were we left alone with food? Were we forgotten to be fed? Were we watched over as we were fed and how? Were our rejections of food and the feeder tolerated enough to continue feeding? Were we allowed to learn that we must feed ourselves, and when were we taught this? Were we allowed to learn how to take in and even more so, reject food? Were we taught to eat when hungry, and eat as much as we could? Or were the motivations and anxieties of the other adult fed into us as we eat?

The patient who arrives with no hunger, with little appetite, with denied hunger, with a struggle to continue, with rejection, all of us have known this for ourselves. And it began with our first feed, continued as we ate, in our lunches, with our peers and in our families. There is hunger, there always is, it is just that not all of us can allow ourselves to feel hungry. And this too must be treated with care, we must not force feed a psyche that is still learning of its hunger. So, we must wait for hunger to be felt, to be understood, to be acknowledged. We must be with the patient who will begin to painfully understand their need for a relationship that allows them to feed, eat, digest and eliminate.

If we are not careful, the therapist’s needs to feed may get in the way. We begin to give, interpretations, analyses, suggestions, advice, models, activities. We hope to feed, to metabolise, to digest and eliminate. All when the person before us has not yet begun to feel any hunger. None of this forced feeding and digestion will help, and even if it were to help, it will not sustain for very long. If one is starved, we eat what we get our hands on. But something must change after we feel some satiety. And we must not fool ourselves into thinking it is only the patient who arrives with some need, it is the therapist too who always holds some need.

Returning to where we left off, we begin to acknowledge hunger. Both of us, the therapist and patient. We want to give to each other, something. Much has been written about who gives, who digests, who metabolises. Put simply I believe a larger responsibility rests on the therapist, however it is the relationship that comes to hold a lot of these functions.

What does any of this mean, you may ask, to feed, to digest, to metabolise, to excrete. In psychotherapy, our ingredients are words, silences and bodily movements. The less tangible ingredients are what is unsaid, what lingers on in the mind, the strange detours that our mind enters on, the memories from work and otherwise. Each of us gives each other these ingredients. And now what we do with this is the work.

To take words as an ingredient, we look at the form at which it comes to us. Are there many words or few? Are these words strung into sentences, do these sentences connect with each other? Do these words jump from one theme to another? Do the words keep trying to rearrange themselves to get to some meaning? Are the words closed in on themselves or do the words wait for a response from the other person? Do the words form more questions than sentences? How do words end? Where do they begin again? When do they turn to the person or turn away. Abstract as it is, this is what we cook with.

We listen to each other’s expressions, be it words, silences or their movements. And we respond to what we can manage to listen to. Now what we cook must begin to satisfy hunger. It is unlikely that a beginner cook will be able to, by this I mean, it takes time to familiarise yourself with the ingredients that arrive. And this applies for both the therapist and patient. For it is both of them who try together to do something with their needs.

Still we have digressed much from what we began with, which is the question of hunger. Or perhaps we have not? As a reader too, you must have come with an appetite to read something. Often we imagine what we will come to read, or so I suppose. I cannot say with certainty whether this has satiated your appetite or has left you hungry or if you would rather eliminate all that this essay has left you with. If you have arrived at the end at all, perhaps there was some hunger to begin with. So you see, to feed, to be fed are deeper questions that stretch far beyond the plate. These questions, only seem to make sense to me, when couched within a relationship of some kind. And even this relationship of reading someone’s thoughts on a screen will suffice to be one.

May we find ourselves to be fed with enough to feed ourselves and the others in our lives. Fed with what, you may ask me. Love, primarily. But perhaps a love that accepts yet questions, validates yet challenges, and continues to exist. For no such feeling can be fed without discernment, we must care enough to think about what we leave the other person feeling, as we feed them with our presence. Much is to be written on the temptations to binge and starve, but for now, this is where our meal ends.