The Key Step Most Clinicians Are Missing…
When you operate from the unconscious programming that you need to rescue your clients or you need to hold their pain for them, you will rush your clients through their uncomfortable emotional experiences.
Instead of being able to hold a loving, safe space for their discomfort, creating the space where the “ah-ha!” moment can organically arise, you might find yourself trying to impose that moment on them, even when they’re not ready for that.
This unconscious programming of needing to rescue your clients from discomfort and pain comes from a loving place. You are a bleeding heart. You care SO much. You went into this work because you care so much about helping other people. It’s why you do what you do.
And. This programming is so subtle and sneaky, and can unknowingly and unconsciously impact your work with clients.
I was talking with a client of ours about this earlier, and how she’s experienced this with other therapists.
She said “I felt the therapist’s sense of urgency to fix me.”
A lot of practitioners believe that they are helping their clients by holding the pain for them or trying to get them out of the discomfort quickly. This does make some logical sense… if your client is suffering, it is a kind impulse as their practitioner to want to ease that suffering.
But there is a very nuanced skill that is absolutely essential to be able to hold safe, empathic, transformational space for your clients: The ability to not rush your client through their discomfort in order to alleviate that discomfort.
Practitioners must develop the ability to discern if this is a moment where you actually need to lean in, and be WITH the discomfort, instead of automatically jumping to trying to get rid of the discomfort.
When you try to rescue your clients from their discomfort, what it subconsciously communicates to your client is that you don’t trust them. You don’t trust them to be able to learn how to navigate their own discomfort.
Your clients have most likely already been rushing through their discomfort, and doing everything possible to try and get away from the pain. That is what brought them to you in the first place.
Rather than perpetuate that pattern, the solution is to teach them how to transform their own discomfort. This is the most empowering thing you could ever teach someone. Teach them how to be with their pain in new ways, and trust themselves to get there. Self-trust and resilience is the most generous, powerful gift you can give your clients.
When your clients learn in their body, somatically and experientially, that they can be present in their discomfort, and meet themselves in the darkest depths of their soul, they learn that they can trust themselves.
They learn that they can face things that at one time felt so terrifying.
They learn that they are far more capable than they ever imagined.
They find a strength and courage within themselves that they had never been able to previously tap into.
And YOU get to be the one that holds the space for them to meet that part of themselves.
How to lead by example
To be the kind of practitioner that can create this space, you first have to learn to be present to your OWN discomfort. Be able to access safety and comfort in the face of difficult or painful emotions, and lead by example. SHOW your clients that you trust your own body to hold and navigate discomfort, and you trust them to do this too.
This, and so much more, is what we teach you to do in our Healing Embodied Practitioner Training Program. This program is changing the industry from the ground up. You will emerge as the most empowered version of yourself, and this is what you will bring to your clients.
For more information and next steps, head to the link HERE and join the wait list!