Couch to Table

How do we bridge the gap between the therapist’s couch and the client’s kitchen table?

The farm to table movement is quickly becoming a cultural staple. It’s the current gold standard of dining where food is locally sourced, fresh, healthy, and simple.

As I understand the farm to table movement, the goal is to promote a relationship with food that encourages sustainability, accessibility, simplicity, and authenticity. All of these traits include a respectful partnership between the farm (local food source) and the table (eating establishment).

After listening to the many voices that echo from the office couch, it struck me that farm to table offers rich lessons for counseling. Clients want these same characteristics from the process.

The therapist’s couch represents the place where soul searching work happens. While the client’s kitchen table is the epicenter of the home. Not just the hub of eating, but the spot where the daily rhythms of life converge.

One of counseling’s great obstacles is translating what clients learn in the office to everyday life. It can feel like you’re taking a giant leap to get from the office couch to the kitchen table.

But these same traits of the farm to table movement give valuable cues for how to accommodate that transition in our lives.

Sustainability: Just as we want our food to be sourced in a way that has a positive impact on the surrounding environment, we want sustainability from counseling. We desire an enduring imprint, one that’s impressionable, persistent, replicable. Ultimately, we want our acquired insights to nourish rather than deplete the people and places in our locus of influence.

Accessibility: Farm to table food is accessible. It’s readily available due to the proximity of the local farm to our dining rooms. We want counseling to be the same. We value the couch “aha” moments and want them to translate to the kitchen table conversations with a natural flow, comprehensibility, and appealing narrative.

Simplicity: Just as many value food with no fillers, we want counseling that’s natural and focuses on crafting the essentials in a way that’s respectful. Fillers may mean years of unnecessary talk time where we spin our wheels. In contrast, we want to get to the real issues right away–whittled down to the essential, explained with clarity, and applicable to the here and now.

Authenticity: With farm to table, what you see is what you get, no hidden ingredients–just genuine, locally grown food. With couch to table counseling, it’s about a similar transparency that encourages organic relationships and genuine change.

I desire to see my field of work move in this direction. I want counselors, myself included, to care well for those who cross the threshold of each office door and ease weary bodies on to that emblematic couch.

I hope we can reflect on these traits, together, through the shared stories and experiences on this site. As part of version 2.0, you can now find me on twitter as TheRaconteer or visit my website through theraconteer.com. More on that soon…

In the meantime, may you find the rhythms of life uniquely enriched around your kitchen table. Here’s to a new year and new adventures in couch to table storytelling.