Everybody Wobbles

The most effective therapeutic work, leadership, training, organizing is relational first.

You know there are moments when technique isn’t what’s called for, when trusting yourself and the relationship will serve your process best. You wobble now and again. I do too. It's part of the work we do. What do I mean by, “wobble?” Well… You know a wobbly moment when you feel one….

Here are a couple from my groups:
~A silence falls over a group I've been working with for a number of years. It's smothering. It feels never ending.
~A client whose engagement has been expressive but measured starts hurling insults at the new one I’ve brought in.

In individual:
~When a client tells me they can’t pay this week or
~Something they’re saying starts tugging on my own shit.

I want to make a move but the right one isn't clear yet. The wobble is that place of uncertainty.

I have two choices, when the wobble shows up:

Pick up a tool.

Implicitly, this is what most clinical trainings teach. A method. They provide a protocol. I can avoid the wobble. Technique is useful when it arises on its own. If I am searching for it, I leave my client.

My other option…

Pause.

Before turning on my training brain, I can breathe. I can recognize there's value in this not-knowing moment. This disrupts left brain autopilot. Sometimes your client doesn’t need your tools. They need you.

The wobble is inherent to relational work and staying with it is its own kind of competence. It’s another kind of mastery. The mastery of staying present when there's no map. The mastery of trusting the relationship when technique doesn’t serve. The mastery of being human before being a therapist. It’s a capacity you can always count on. And it takes practice.

The best setting I know for exercising and strengthening these muscles is interpersonal process. through participating in my own on-going training group, I've learned this bones deep and I'm going to hold a space where you can learn it too.