The metaphor of “holding space” for a client or someone in need has become increasingly popular among mental health professionals. It’s not uncommon to hear therapists talk about the importance of “holding space” for their clients’ pain.
What does it mean to hold space for a client?
At a fundamental level, when we “hold space” for another person, we are focusing on and prioritizing their experience above our own; we bring to bear our full, non-judgmental presence to what they are sharing in an effort to help them feel emotionally safe and seen.
In order for this level of safety to be realized, the therapist has to achieve certain aims that make the therapy relationship different from other relationships in the client’s life. Before turning to how counselors/therapists facilitate (and, at times, impede) this holding space, let’s briefly focus on the actual, physical space where client and therapist meet — a space that has a significant impact on how therapy unfolds.
The physical holding space of therapy
As therapists we not only go a long way to make sure our office space is comfortable and inviting for clients, we also place a premium on protecting their privacy by keeping what is shared confidential.
The ubiquitous white noise machines that sit outside our office doors are designed to create a protective sound barrier that allows the inner space of our office to become a temporary sanctuary for our clients.
Not surprisingly, if our clients can hear people walk past our office door or if voices from adjacent offices can be heard (even if only muffled), the client can become momentarily distracted and stop speaking; or they may lower their voice or change the focus of discussion to a less sensitive topic (the switching of topics can be done unconsciously).
In these moments, the physical “holding space” of the office has been impinged upon. There is a momentary hiccup in the therapy process because in these moments the client becomes overly self-conscious about the presence of others who might hear what is being discussed.
The creation of relational-psychological holding space
The physical office environment is the first and most immediate protected space we offer our clients. If our clients feel that the physical space offers enough safety in the form of privacy and confidentiality, the stage is set for the psychological holding space that is generated in the relationship between therapist and client.
Building blocks of holding space: A non-intrusive, engaged presence
The therapeutic spotlight prioritizes the client’s subjectivity (even when the therapist’s own self-experiences are used as a potential pathway to better understand what is going on for the client). If a therapist chooses to share their reaction/counter-transference with a client, it should only be done so in an effort to help the client better make sense of their emotional struggles.
To achieve what the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott referred to as a therapeutic “holding environment,” therapists must be engaged to what is unfolding in the therapy without responding in ways that impinge on the client’s experience. We must be impactful without being disruptive.
Impingements to holding space for clients
When therapists mis-attune to what is unfolding for a client, when we inadvertently impinge on a client’s experience and cause them to shut down or emotionally constrict in some way (the latter moments can be very subtle and easy to miss), we have momentarily become like the outside voices that intrude into our physical office space, an unwelcome presence that distracts the client from their inner world.
In these moments, our well-intentioned comments, feedback, or observations, inadvertently disrupt the psychological space we strive to provide for our clients. These disturbances are more likely to occur when we lose sight of or disconnect from what is emerging within us.
In psychodynamic/analytic thinking, there is a long history that addresses the important issue of how a therapist’s countertransference reactions can become an impediment to the therapeutic process. Here it is the therapist’s developmental wounds and emotional conflicts that can collide with a client’s subjectivity and block the generative moments of therapy.
We must do our best to recognize our blindspots. We must hold a space for them in order to examine how they play out with a particular client’s psychology.
The biggest blindspot a therapist has is the unwillingness to acknowledge that we have blindspots; equally problematic is the belief that we can simply put ourselves (including our inner conflicts and emotional wounds that are a part of us) aside in order to tend to our clients’ struggles.
Countertransference barriers to holding space for clients
In sum, we cannot hold space for our client’s psychology while trying to bypass or ignore our own. Our countertransference reactions can be an important source of information that can help us better make sense of our clients’ pain, but our reactions are not always a pathway into understanding our clients’ unconscious dynamics.
A therapist’s unexamined developmental wounds can become entangled with their clients’ underlying conflicts, a commingling that if not examined can turn into a repetition of painful interpersonal dynamics that played out in the client’s childhood — in these instances, the present moment is negatively impacted by the therapist’s disavowal of their reactions;
In order to hold space for another, we must regularly reflect on our emotional discomfort (and, if appropriate, use this discomfort as a potential source to help us better understand what is going on between us and our clients). We cannot tolerate in others what we cannot tolerate within ourselves;
It is not uncommon for therapists/counselors to collapse the holding space by moving out of a self-reflective mode-of-being into premature action-mode (for example, advice-giving or making suggestions before understanding what is unfolding in a particular moment). Once our reflective mode-of-being is side-lined, we are more likely to intervene in ways that can compromise the therapeutic holding space;
Therapists must work to tolerate and psychically contain uncertainty and complexity — the latter often involves the challenging task of holding opposing self-experiences that may arise within ourselves and our clients (Ogden, 1993). If our esteem as therapists buckles under the pressure of not knowing, we can too often compensate by becoming overly reductionistic and all-or-none in our thinking; a narrowing of our mind that can prevent us from holding space for the diverse and conflicting self-states that may exist for our clients.
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We cannot effectively hold space for our clients, especially over time, while distancing ourselves (or ignoring), our own subjectivity. Our other-directed presence is an inter-dependent phenomenon: what we are open to within ourselves helps to open possibilities in another and in the same vein; what we remain closed off to within ourselves has a narrowing effect on the other.
In this way, the client’s and therapist’s emerging subjectivities are mutually shaping each other (Aron, 1996; 2003). And therefore, attention must be paid to both. We cannot hold space for our clients without holding space for ourselves.
The therapeutic holding space is co-determined, existing at the intersection of two unique psychologies (therapist and client). It’s at this intersection that the holding space is created and maintained and nurtured. Tending to what is co-shaping this space — moment by moment — is necessary.
Richard Nicastro, PhD is a psychologist in Austin, TX where he works with individuals, couples, as well as offering clinical consultation and supervision to other therapists. He also offers tele-counseling to individuals and couples who live in Texas.
Aron, L. 1996. A Meeting of Minds: Mutuality in Psychoanalysis.
Aron, L. 2003. The Paradoxical Place of Enactment in Psychoanalysis: Introduction. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 12 (5), 123-31.
Ogden, T. 1993. On Potential Space. In One’s Bones: In The Clinical Genius of Winnicott, Goldman, D.
