New comment from Azra on Guest Appearance on The Courageous Life Podcast with Joshua Steinfeldt:

I'm curious about ways that we as therapist need to close during sessions with clients. Often I feel badly about it, because it makes me less present with the client as I notice it happening inwardly, and because of the closing I am less willing/wanting/ able to connect to others. Curious how you attend to this is the moment when you notice your heart wanting to close in the moment with a client as a therapist?

Hi Azra,

This is a wonderful question and a beautiful sentiment. I hear you about feeling bad about the closing, but you have to be careful with feeling bad. Feeling bad could be a north star coming from your heart, saying I want to stay connected with them, but it could also turn into shame and should’s which might only interfere with your clarity and discernment. You’ll have to feel into which your own ‘feeling bad’ is or wants to be.

Now as for what I do, I try not to judge the closing. I let it spark my curiosity. Why is this coming up? Is this my stuff, their stuff or something in between us? My stuff: am I preoccupied with something else? Their stuff: are they closing up because shame, embarrassment or self-consciousness is arising and I am mirroring their own closing? Something in between: are we closing up to each other because something just happened between us that wasn’t noticed or acknowledged?

Should I mention that I feel this way now and let us be curious together? Or, should I see where it goes and wait until I know that they are open to being curious about it with me? In that regard, is the ‘feeling bad’ my body’s way of warning me that they won’t receive it with curiosity? See, so much to feel into!

As I’m awakening my curiosity, I re-read your question and return to the emotion of ‘feeling bad.’ This is the most interesting point of the conversation, not all the other technical ways in which I remain curious about my own closing. If we were talking, I would have us both feel into this part of you that feels bad. And that inquiry itself would both tend to the part of you that feels bad and return us to the state of curiosity that is all that there really is or needs to be. Then, I bet your question would evaporate and you would feel okay in the not knowing and waiting to see how things unfold.

What do you think? Maybe?

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