By Aron Strong, LMFT
Rachel entered shell-shocked. As she talked, she slowly moved from numb to desperate. Her husband had moved out Sunday. He took so many things but left a calendar on the counter with his weeks with the kids highlighted. She pressed her palms into her eyes and said, “Tell me what to do."
Her therapist felt the crushing weight of Rachel’s devastation and terror. Within a minute she was offering a family law referral, a co-parenting app, a book, and a grounding exercise to help Rachel go to sleep at night. Rachel wrote it all down.
But when Rachel came back the next week, she’d done none of it. Her therapist tried to get Rachel to see the importance of moving quickly. Having seen these situations before, she knew the faster Rachel got going the better it would be for her.
Wise counsel can go astray when our strategy ends up more focused on relieving our own fear and distress than the client’s. Activation in the therapist is normal. We are people before we are clinicians. Yet, unguarded, clinician activation can lead us to skip where the work is needed most.
Overfunctioning can easily look like competence. Murray Bowen, however, reminds us that overfunctioning invites another to underfunction. The same pattern can show up in the therapy room. The faster we produce options, the more the client is positioned to receive rather than discover. Frustration that a client isn’t following our action steps is often a clue we’re focused on the wrong thing.
Some sessions genuinely call for action: a referral or safety plan. But even here, there is a feeling urgently waiting to be attended to rather than simply solved. And sometimes, that feeling is louder in us than in the client.
Our brilliant solutions may feel good in the moment, but can leave clients needing us again when the next crisis comes. Attunement, staying connected inside the distress, is how distress tolerance is built. Options discovered together expand client agency past this crisis and into the next one.
Job's friends may be remembered for their bad advice, but they sat on the ground with him for seven days before saying anything. Witness someone’s suffering long enough, and your focus may shift from them to you. When Job began to cry out in his pain, his friends stopped being with him in it and tried to get him out of it. God, on the other hand, is Emmanuel: “God with us.”
Catching when you’re overfunctioning can be difficult. Perhaps the client resists the action steps we offer. Perhaps they beg for a checklist. Perhaps you notice how hard you’re working and how little it is helping. If you catch it, ask whose distress you're trying to treat. Ask a colleague to help you assess if you’re trying too hard. Try to identify the feeling in you that is overshadowing the feeling in them.
Rachel didn't need a plan that week. She simply needed someone who could sit with her in the devastation. The better we attend to our own distress, the longer we can stay with someone in theirs.
For reflection
When a client asks what they should do, what happens in your body before you answer?
Which kinds of client distress do you find yourself rushing to resolve, and what do they touch in you?
Who sits with you in your own distress, and when did you last let them?