Caring for the relationship rather than the person

How caring for the relationship IS caring for the person.

A psychotherapist recently asked:

I’m working to understand what it means to care for the relationship, rather than the person. Does this speak to the recognition that the person is really just my perception of the person, and therefore clouded/filtered/veiled? Therefore the relationship/the space OF the relationship, is where I can tap into what is compassionate/kind/needed in the moment?

This is such a beautiful and reasonable question. The simple response is that we are caring for both the relationship and the person. The individual person comes to therapy to deal with their individual existence. It's what they know. That is, they know part of the story of human existence. In fact, because it is all they know, they suffer from the belief in this limited perception and conception of reality. Buddhism calls this limited belief ignorance. It's not that independent self-existence is wrong, it's that it's only part of what is real. The part that causes suffering.

What most individuals do not realize is that this self that completely defines their existence is constituted in relationship. If we can perceptually and conceptually zoom out (perspective), we find that perceived independent existence is an illusion. It exists but is only part of the story (truth) of reality. In Thich Nhat Hahn's 'The Heart of Understanding, ' he describes the reality of perceived independent existence (duality) from the nondual (relational) perspective of interconnectedness and interdependence:

"In the light of emptiness [empty of independent existence], everything is everything else, we inter-are, everyone is responsible for everything that happens in life. When you produce peace and happiness in yourself, you begin to realize peace for the whole world. With the smile that you produce in yourself, with the conscious breathing you establish within yourself, you begin to work for peace in the world. To smile is not to smile only for yourself; the world will change because of your smile. When you sit in the silence, if you enjoy even one moment of sitting, if you establish serenity and happiness inside yourself, you provide the world with a solid base of peace. If you do not give yourself peace, how can you share it with others? If you do not begin your peace work with yourself, where will you go to begin it? To sit, to smile, to look at things and really see them, these are the basis of peace work, love and unity."

For the integrative psychotherapist, this core understanding of relationship is not just the truth of self-existence (ie, that we are rooted in and never separate from relationship), it is the very healing agent of individual suffering. Therapy from an integrative perspective, through a slower process (journey), transports the individual from the location of perceived and conceived 'self as existing ONLY independent,' to 'self existing as part of a vast web of interconnectedness.'

Between these two realities (dual and nondual) is teaching/showing the client the power and design of relationship to heal (attachment metaphors) suffering.  The reason why relationship is the vessel of healing is because relationship is the truth and deeper reality of human consciousness.  From a yoga perspective, the heart of therapy is simply aligning the perception of/ belief in independent existence with the deeper reality of relationality or interconnectedness. 

This is not esoteric. It's practical and scientific (that is, confirmed in biological evolution)