A Therapeutic Journey Through the Wisdom Of Rumi’s Poetry

Blog Series Part 1:

From Hostility to Hospitality

This being human is a guest house.

                                        - Rumi

Fixing Ourselves

Many people come to therapy seeking ways to get rid of sadness, anxiety, anger, or fear.

It's a natural desire to seek a “fix.”  We live in a culture that treats distress nd uncomfortable emotions as problems to be immediately removed.

But what if healing doesn’t mean elimination?

What if the work of therapy is integration and acceptance of difficult emotions?

People seek therapy because something feels wrong. Maybe they’re anxious, depressed, grieving, stuck, angry, numb, or all the above. I often hear these phrases from clients:

“I just want to feel better.”
“I want this feeling to go away.”
“I don’t want to be this way anymore.”

Sometimes their words are much sharper: 

“Please! Help me exorcise this feeling from my body so I never have to experience it again.”

As a therapist, I get it.  People want relief.  I certainly have had similar thoughts, wishing the hurt would just go away. When someone seated across from me shows visible distress, every part of me wants to reach across the room, bundle up their pain, and chuck it out the window. It is challenging to bear witness to pain and suffering.

And yet, that instinct — to fix, solve, or eliminate the problem — is rarely what helps.

A first shift in therapy requires understanding that the symptom itself is not the whole problem.  What matters most is how we relate to the symptom and recognize what triggers our suffering.

Notice the messenger

We’re taught, often subconsciously, to treat uncomfortable emotions like a disease to be cured or a tumor to be excised from our body. In therapy, we begin to explore another possibility.

What if these feelings — anxiety, anger, sadness — are not diseases, tumors, or invaders?

What if emotions are messengers?

What if the goal isn’t to banish emotions, but rather understand and integrate them?

Therapy truly begins when we dive beneath the surface of presenting symptoms. We start by noticing not just what we feel, but how we respond to those feelings.

Do we judge them? Ignore them? Panic? Blame ourselves?

When we start asking how, when we notice feelings as messengers, curiosity opens more naturally and blooms toward better conversation with our inner happenings.

When we relate to our physical sensations and inner emotions with hostility, suffering and negative symptoms repeat.  Let’s take an example, say around the experience of anxiety.

"I hate this feeling — my heart is racing, my palms are sweaty, my thoughts won’t slow down."

In the act of hating these sensations and the struggle to get rid of them, the emotional experience is interpreted negatively, often as self-judgment:

"I’m weak. I’m a mess. I can’t handle my life."

Over time, if this internal narrative repeats, it solidifies into a core self-belief.

"I am a weak, disaster of a person who cannot handle my life."

When we believe these things about ourselves, we begin to lose trust in our self and our ability to tolerate difficult circumstances. This loss of self-trust often intensifies anxiety or easily leads to other symptomatic expressions such as depression.  Here is small guidepost:

If you tell yourself twice a day that you’re a disaster, it’s no surprise that you feel sad, discouraged, or stuck.

When this happens, we lose sight of where the suffering began. We forget that it was our resistance — our dislike or even hatred of these sensations — that magnified and triggered the downward spiral. Without realizing it, we contribute to our own distress.

To step out of this downward spiral we need a shift from inner hostility to inner hospitality. We need curiosity and acceptance of our inner happenings.

Create A Guest House

Rumi suggests a small shift:  Might we create a guest house where our emotions are noticed and welcomed?

Our sensations, thoughts, and feelings are meant to come and go freely — just like visitors in a guest house. They don’t need to be fought or defended against. Instead, we can learn to make space for them, to invite them with compassion rather than shutting them out.

The first step in transforming our relationship to ourselves and stopping the downward spiral of suffering accepts that we humans are a guest house, not a gated community.

As the guest house we accept that we are not in control of the sensations, thoughts, and feelings that arrive.  We are in control of how we meet and greet what arrives and is alive within us.

This shift - from inner hostility to inner hospitality- is at the heart of the work I do with clients.

And it’s why I keep returning to a 13th-century poem by Rumi as a framework for relating to our inner worlds in a way that fosters compassion and curiosity:

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of all its furniture,
Still, treat every guest honorably.
They may be clearing you out
For some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
Meet them at the door laughing,
And invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
Because each has been sent
As a guide from beyond.

-       Rumi

In this series, I want to explore this poem more thoroughly.  I want to ask how it guides us toward self-understanding.  I want to build a conversation about how we create this guest house where inner hospitality grows curiosity, acceptance, and compassion.

Citations:

Rumi. (1995). The guest house (C. Barks, Trans.). In The essential Rumi. HarperOne.