The Art of Therapeutic Presence: Creating Space for Human Experience


Last updated: 22-11-2024


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The most important source of resistance in the treatment process is the therapist's resistance to what the patient feels. - Paul Russell



The Problem with Solution Seeking


Perhaps you know what it's like - that relentless search for answers, for ways to fix what hurts, for strategies to finally feel better. Maybe you've tried different approaches, read self-help books, learned coping techniques. Maybe you've sat with therapists who offered tools and strategies, who helped you reframe your thoughts or change your behaviors. And maybe some of this has helped, at least for a while.

But beneath the strategies and solutions, something deeper persists. Perhaps you've noticed that no matter how many techniques you learn, how many insights you gain, there's still something calling for attention. Something that doesn't want to be fixed or changed or made better. Something that simply wants to be witnessed.

Our therapeutic culture tells us that pain is a problem to be solved, that difficult emotions are something to be managed, that if we're struggling, we just haven't found the right solution yet. This emphasis on solutions can create a subtle but profound pressure - pressure to transform our pain before it's been fully acknowledged, to "get better" before we've truly been met in our suffering. Parts of us that resist change get labeled as "stuck." Deep pain gets bypassed in favor of more "productive" responses. In our rush toward solutions, we might miss the very thing our pain is asking for: the simple gift of being heard, of being seen, of being felt, of being understood, of being held. Of being allowed to exist without being a burden, or shameful, or wrong.

This solution-focus isn't wrong - it comes from a genuine desire to help, to ease suffering, to find our way through pain. But when we approach our inner world like a puzzle to be figured out rather than an experience to be met, we might inadvertently abandon the very parts of ourselves that most need our attention.

What if there was a different way? What if, instead of trying to fix or change or improve our experience, we could learn to meet it with presence? What if the healing we seek doesn't come from finding the right solution, but from finally being able to hear what all these parts of ourselves have been trying to tell us all along?


Understanding Therapeutic Presencee


Presence offers something radically different from our usual search for solutions. Instead of treating pain as a problem to be solved, presence creates a space where our experience can simply be what it is. Where nothing needs to be fixed or transformed. Where every part of us - including the parts that hurt, the parts that resist, the parts that don't know what to do - can be met with gentle attention.

This might sound simple, but it goes against much of what we've learned about dealing with pain. We've been taught that when something hurts, we should try to make it better. That when we're struggling, we should work on ourselves. That acceptance and transformation should be our goals. While these aren't wrong, they can inadvertently deepen our suffering by creating a subtle battle with our own experience - a constant pressure to be different than we are.

The paradox is that real healing often emerges not from our efforts to change, but from our capacity to be with what is. When pain is met with presence rather than resistance, when difficult feelings are welcomed rather than managed, when our experience is witnessed rather than fixed, something profound begins to happen. Parts of us that have been braced against pain begin to soften. Feelings that seemed unbearable become easier to hold when they're held in company. What felt like too much to carry alone becomes bearable when truly met by another person.

This is what therapeutic presence offers - not clever solutions or strategies for change, but the profound medicine of being witnessed. Not someone to fix us, but someone to accompany us as we meet ourselves more fully. Not pressure to transform our pain, but space to discover the wisdom it might be carrying.

When our pain is met this way - with presence rather than pressure, with attention rather than agenda - healing tends to emerge naturally, in its own time and in its own way. Not because we've figured out the right solution, but because we've finally created the conditions where our natural capacity for healing can unfold.


The Role of Boundaries in Presence


There's a common misconception that therapeutic presence means being endlessly available, emotionally and energetically, to whatever arises. But true presence actually requires clear boundaries - not as walls that separate us, but as containers that make depth possible. Just as a river needs banks to flow, therapeutic work needs boundaries to reach its depths.

These boundaries aren't rigid rules or defensive positions. They're living edges that help us stay authentically present. When we're clear about what we can and cannot offer, when we're honest about our limits and capabilities, we create a space where real meeting can occur. Our clients don't need us to be endless or boundless - they need us to be real, to be clear, to be trustworthy in our yes and our no.

This clarity about boundaries serves another profound purpose: it offers an implicit lesson about healthy relating. When clients experience us maintaining caring limits, they learn that connection doesn't require self-abandonment. They discover that authentic presence includes the capacity to say no, to acknowledge limits, to stay separate while staying connected. They learn, through direct experience, that real relationship can hold both closeness and separateness.

This becomes particularly vital in trauma work, where boundaries may have been violently breached or never allowed to develop. Clear, consistent boundaries offer an experience that many trauma survivors have never known: the safety of being with someone who can stay present and caring while remaining clearly distinct. Someone who won't merge or collapse. Someone who can bear witness without becoming overwhelmed.


Working with Internal Conflict: The Example of Solution-Seeking Parts


When we create space for a person's full experience to be known, we often discover that different parts of them are in tension. This is particularly visible in the common conflict between parts that urgently seek solutions and parts that need to simply be witnessed in their pain.

When someone urgently seeks solutions, it's important to recognise that this impulse carries deep wisdom. It often comes from a protective part that's trying to keep them safe - perhaps from overwhelm, from uncertainty, or from the raw vulnerability of feeling their pain. The urgent need for solutions often comes from very real experiences - times when emotions felt overwhelming or dangerous, when pain seemed unbearable without some way to fix it, when staying with feelings didn't feel safe.

Rather than seeing this solution-seeking as resistance to be overcome, we can meet it with curiosity and respect, while also making space for what lies beneath it. We might say something like: "I hear how much you want answers right now. That makes so much sense. Could we get curious together about what feels so important about finding a solution?"

Often, when solution-seeking parts feel truly heard, they begin revealing what drives their urgency. "I just need to fix this" might soften into "I'm scared of what I'll feel if I don't." "Just tell me what to do" might open into "I don't trust myself to handle this." "Give me tools" might reveal "I feel so overwhelmed and alone with this."

This same approach applies to other common conflicts we see in therapy. One part might push toward acceptance while another holds essential resistance. When someone says "I just need to find a way to accept this," they might be carrying both a genuine desire for peace and an equally valid resistance to accepting something that feels unacceptable. Our role isn't to side with either part, but to create space where both can be heard: "There's space here for both your desire for peace and your resistance to it."

What makes this especially powerful is that when both sides of a conflict feel fully heard, they often begin to soften. Not because we've pushed for resolution, but because each part feels safe enough to loosen its grip on its position. This creates space for something new to emerge - not from our efforts to create change, but from the natural wisdom that unfolds when all parts of us feel welcomed home.

This doesn't mean we never offer practical help. Sometimes concrete strategies are exactly what's needed. But by first making space to hear all parts of the conflict, we create conditions where any practical help can be received in a deeper way - not as a bypass around pain, but as one form of support among many.


Attending to Our Own Experience


Even with the deepest commitment to presence, there will be times when staying present feels challenging. As therapists, we too are human, carrying our own wounds and vulnerabilities. Sometimes a client's material touches something raw in us, awakening our own history of pain or protection. Yet our internal experience offers more than just information about ourselves - it can provide profound insight into our client's world.

Through our capacity for deep emotional attunement, we often find ourselves feeling what our clients have carried. When we feel a strong pull to fix or rescue, we might be experiencing the very pressure that our clients have internalised - perhaps from caregivers who couldn't bear their pain, who pushed them to "get over it," who withdrew when things got hard. When we notice ourselves becoming frustrated with a client's "resistance," we might be feeling what they've felt from others, or even how they've learned to feel about themselves.

These moments of pressure, disconnection, or urgency in us aren't failures of presence - they're windows into our clients' relational patterns. When we feel an overwhelming need to make things better, we might ask: Where does this pressure come from? Has our client been carrying this weight of needing to fix themselves? When we notice our curiosity or compassion waning, we might wonder: Have others in the client's life felt this way? Has the client learned to expect this reaction, perhaps even unknowingly inviting it through protective patterns developed in earlier relationships?

By attending to these experiences in ourselves, we begin to see the larger relational dance. We might notice how our client's expectations of others, born from past experiences, create subtle pressures in the room. We might feel the pull to play a familiar role - the rescuer, the critic, the abandoner.

Yet in these very moments of pressure or disconnection, something profound is happening. Without words, without explanation, we are being invited into our client's inner world. Through our own visceral experience - the urgent need to fix, the numbing despair, the rising frustration - we are witnessing their truth in the most direct way possible. Our own internal experience becomes the bridge across which their unspoken pain travels. We aren't just learning about their world - we are feeling it from the inside.

This is witnessing at its most profound - not just hearing about their experience, but temporarily inhabiting it. The pressure we feel to fix them is the pressure they live with daily. The helplessness we feel is their helplessness. The withdrawal we feel is the withdrawal they've known. Even when neither of us can put words to what's happening, this deep attunement is doing its work. Simply by staying present to our own experience while remaining in relationship, we are already offering something healing - the possibility that these feelings can be felt, held, and survived in connection with another.

Sometimes, however, our challenge comes not from these relational patterns but from genuine uncertainty. We simply don't know what's needed or what to say. These moments of not knowing, though uncomfortable, can be profound gifts. They humble us, keep us curious, deepen our listening. Often, it's precisely when we let go of needing to have answers that our presence becomes most genuine and helpful.

If you find yourself uncertain about how to respond, try returning to these simple questions:


Remember: presence isn't about maintaining perfect attention - it's about the practice of return. When we lose connection, when we get caught in our thoughts or reactions, we simply notice and come back. This returning, this willingness to begin again and again, is itself a powerful medicine. It offers our clients permission to be imperfect, to trust in the messy process of being human, to have faith that presence can hold both comfort and discomfort.


Practical Examples in Therapeutic Presence


Every therapeutic moment offers an opportunity to embody presence in ways that meet the client's unique experience. Here are examples of how this might look in different situations:


When Someone is Overwhelmed

Rather than rushing to reduce the overwhelm, we might say:



When Someone Urgently Seeks Solutions

Instead of jumping to provide them, we might reflect:



When Someone Expresses Self-Criticism

Rather than arguing with their judgment, we might say:


When Deep Pain Emerges

Instead of trying to ease it, we might offer:


When Someone Feels Stuck

Rather than pushing for movement, we might reflect:


When Someone Resists Change

Instead of pushing past resistance, we might say:


When Working with Silence

Rather than filling the space, we might offer:


In each of these responses, we're:


Closing Reflection


When we first come to therapy - as clients or as therapists - we often arrive carrying our culture's deep belief that pain is a problem to be solved. We come seeking solutions, strategies, ways to fix what hurts. There's nothing wrong with this desire for relief. It's a natural, human response to suffering.

Yet something profound happens when we create space for a different kind of meeting. When we dare to slow down, to turn toward what hurts rather than away from it, to trust that our pain might be carrying something important. When we find ourselves met by another person who isn't trying to fix us or change us, but who can stay with us in our experience as an empathic witness - whatever that experience might be.

The medicine we offer as therapists isn't in our clever insights or helpful solutions, though these might sometimes have their place. The deepest medicine lies in our capacity to stay present with another person's pain without trying to fix it. To hold space for complexity without trying to simplify it. To trust the wisdom in all parts of their experience - even the parts that seem stuck or resistant or hopeless.

This presence becomes a quiet invitation. An invitation to come home to ourselves, to welcome back the parts we've exiled, to trust our own deeper knowing. Not because we're pushing for transformation, but because we're creating conditions where natural healing can emerge. Where what feels unbearable alone becomes bearable in relationship. Where what's been frozen in isolation can begin to flow in connection.

Your presence, offered with deep respect for the natural wisdom in all human experience, is enough. Everything else flows from there.


A Note on the Paradox of Teaching Presence


There's something that might seem paradoxical about this guide: I'm being quite directive about... not being directive! Yet this paradox points to something important about therapeutic work - while emotional pain needs witnessing, this doesn't mean practical guidance never has a place.

Sometimes the search for a solution comes from an internalised pressure to reject pain, but sometimes it comes from an uncomplicated desire to know what is possible and how to achieve it. My intention for this article is to express some ideas for consideration and reflection in cases where there is an interest in different ways of relating and being with someone, uncomplicated by deep pain or internal conflict.

This article is intended to be a piece about presence, rather than trying to be presence.