Being polyamorous is, like any other form of diversity, both a cause of joy and, to be frank, pain (especially when looking for a psychotherapist).
I was talking to a colleague of mine about biases in our days, and she made me realise how 99% of all that we use and interact on a daily basis has gone through a long process of design, testing and production… but who are the people for whom products and services are designed for? They are, usually, a white, heterosexual man in his forties with in a monogamous relationship with a woman, with a career, a big car and a favourite football team. I can add that this man has no diagnosis of any mental health conditions, nor neurodiversity, is in good body shape, has not moved to another country and is right-handed.
The list of features of the “customer” goes on an on. Each feature creates a separation… if you have this feature in you, products and services will be a good fit for you. The more you are far from these feature, the less you will find services and products suitable for you.
I have the privilege of helping therapeutically many people who are, in some way or another, different from the norm. Psychotherapy is a service that was created based on the needs of the “customer” with the features I have described above. I often ask my clients “What is it that makes therapy good for you, as a polyamorous person?”
The answers are get are a variation of the this
Good therapy for me is when I tell my therapist that I am polyamorous, and he/she does not say anything.
Every time I hear this, part of me feels surprised… and this message keeps on coming to me. Colleagues ask me “how do you deal with polyamorous clients?”, and even supervisors at times feel uneasy when dealing with polyamory.
So, what is it that makes a psychotherapist a good fit for a polyamorous client?
I would say that these two aspects of a psychotherapist make a good start
The psychotherapist needs to have had enough self-development to respect and honour the client’s polyamory;
The psychotherapist needs to not frame polyamory as a “problem” or as a distortion or a deviation from what should be the norm (monogamy).
Too often I hear my clients say that their previous therapists hinted that polyamory was an unnecessary complication to their relationships (if one relationship is problematic, why having more than one?). Other times, therapist have gone suddenly silent and had a strange look in their face.
In an ideal world, talking to your therapist that you have three partners should be as “normal” as a monogamous person talks about their only partner.
IFS and polyamory
IFS (Internal Family Systems) psychotherapy is a newer form of therapy that teaches how to connect to a state of consciousness from which we can heal from traumas. By its very design, IFS does not pathologise psychological states.
On the contrary, IFS states that we have a number of different parts to ourselves (or sub-personalities), which determine how we live our life. This framework therefore lends itself very easily to polyamory. The moment we do not see ourselves as a “one block of thoughts and feelings”, we can embrace our multiplicity and complexity.
An IFS therapist might therefore invite all your parts to come forward and discover how different parts of you live different partners…. and how others can’t stand other partners.
I am not saying that an IFS therapist will surely be able to deal with polyamory, but I am saying that, at least, at its core, an IFS therapist uses a model that embraces diversity and does not make it a problem.
In conclusion
No matter that type of therapy is offered to you, it is important that you meet the therapist and have a sense of how they think and react around polyamory. If you are new to IFS, I recommend going to the IFS section of my website to read more about this beautiful model.
