who is it that’s “holding space”?

Yes, I’m still indulging my critique of wellness culture. But there’s a deeper point, promise.

It was with great delight that I settled into the fourth season of Couples Therapy when it was released late last year. I find Orna Guralnik’s clinical stance - combining intelligence, fortitude, compassion and honesty - quite masterful. I also admire her courage: displaying one’s professional self publicly opens up possibilities of criticism and attack. But most of all, I find the way her practice engages contemporary cultural issues: challenging, informing and even (occasionally) validating of my own practice.

A case which caught my eye was a polyamorous triad, grappling with boundaries, envy and power dynamics in their relationship(s). One of the defining features of Guralnik’s work was to challenge the contemporary language the three used, which, it turned out, masked complex emotional dynamics. The excavation revealed great tenderness and vulnerability, and ultimately resolved undue power imbalances.

One phrase each of them used was to “hold space”. What they meant in real language was to listen meaningfully to each other. But somehow, using the phrase in the way they did, glossed over that meaning. It became a bit throwaway.

As a phrase “hold space” has many cultural associations, from wellness influencers who use it in their content, usually to mean to “centre” or to “validate”, but as Guralnik’s three illustrate, it has also become a meme. As such, its become abstracted from its original context. It’s meaning then, quite clearly, has been diluted.

All of this made me wonder, now that “holding space” has “gone viral”, and as is the case with many cultural waves, it has crept into therapy. As such, we might need to re-examine it in this new context. Hence I’m asking, do psychotherapists actually “hold space”?

An aside: I am aware my recent posts increasingly critique popular and “insta-therapy” concepts and misconceptions. Full transparency: this is part a response to what seems to create engagement. It’s also part due to my trickster-cum-cynic - a part of me that likes to scintillate. For humour and attention, sure, but also to raise awareness of something which might otherwise go unseen. I honour my trickster and trust these examinations will be taken with both the goodwill and the reflective intention, with which they are offered.

What does “holding space” actually mean?

One of the defining moments of therapy training is when one begins to see clients in a private capacity. This phase of professional development can be quite challenging, as a therapist’s capacity to “hold space“ outside the shelter of the training environment is being built. Even using this phrase in quotes makes me feel somewhat uncomfortable. I can’t marry up the now flattened meaning of the words with the complex psychological and practical transformation which occurs in a practitioner around this time.

Therapists do of course, learn how to hold all manner of things. First and foremost we learn to hold ourselves. This is a critical aspect to clinical presence. We need to be aware of our own emotions in relationship in order to attend, but also to notice what the relationship constructs in us. If we work with countertransference, this is key diagnostic information. We also learn to hold projections. Clients will make of us whatever they need to. It’s easy to buy into a positive projection, or to indulge the impulse to “resolve” a negative one. The art of holding is to take a middle ground, thinking about what ought be done with projection, in order to best aid the clients process. Finally we also have to hold our clients material. We have to listen, get alongside, and react authentically and in a considered way to what they bring.

So we hold ourselves, projections and client material, but do we hold space? Well that’s a different question.

The space between

“Space” might mean many different things. There’s the physical space, the emotional space of the relationship, the metaphysical space. Where shall we start?

The immediacy of boundaries, defining temporal and physical space, is perhaps the most obvious beginning. But don’t let the obviousness disguise the nuance.

I often find myself saying to supervisee’s “you’re not holding the client, the frame is”. This is an important distinction: when an artist frames a painting, the frame holds the work, a similar thing is true for therapy. We negotiate and maintain boundaries, but the boundaries are there, in both minds. If a client breaches a boundary, or asks me too, I might ask “do you remember our agreement?”. It’s easy to slip into an authority position in such situations, and sometimes we need too. But the important recognition is that in a relational piece of work, authority isn’t the starting point. Indeed, in relational work, both are in the container of something bigger, which brings me to my primary criticism of the idea of therapists “holding space”. Does the phrase implicate a position which is prone to inflation? Isn’t it more that we together, participate in a relationship?

Many psychological theories aim to provide a way to think about the mystery of relationship. I simplify here, but safe to say the idea of didactic relationships, between two objects, is best used to understand the inner world of states and processes. This is the traditional object relational idea, Kleinian theory let’s say. Where baby perceives mother as an object and, introjects that object, and over time is able to sustain more complexity in that object composition. Humanistic thinking shifts focus to the contact edge of relationship, as illustrated through Buber’s concept of the I-Thou, where the raw and authentic experience of another is paramount, ruling out pathologising and encouraging non-judgemental acceptance.

The relational turn in psychoanalysis integrates these movements to some degree. A relational analyst or therapist might co-create an understanding of the clients inner world, whilst exploring how outer world phenomenon, co-arise alongside internal dynamics. The relationship too becomes the “primary instrument” of the work, bringing attunement and co-regulation, as well as making conscious through interpretation and mentalising. What is being forged, is a third/other. The shared relationship itself, which has its own processes and states, boundaries and, healing potentials.

In my view, it’s that co-created, third/other which holds the relational space. Sounds quite different to the meme, no?

Lets get metaphysical for a moment

Working from a psychospiritual perspective, introduces further dimensions. But let’s be careful not to get sucked into any exceptionalism here: when working with higher states of consciousness, that’s always a risk. The truth it seems, is that many tribes of psychotherapy work with interconnectedness. The Group Analysts with their “matrix”, to Gestalt therapists and their “relational field”, Jungians with their “working from the field” or “collective unconscious”. Despite understanding interconnectedness at different degrees, mapping via different traditions or models, and certainly using different language, there are some common elements which are relevant to our exploration.

I’m often asked “how do you therapists remember so much ”. The truth I want to say, is, that we don’t. This might sound strange but it seems to me, the relational field provides what’s needed, when it’s needed, through whatever level of consciousness is available at that time.

Let’s say a client is sharing, and my felt sense quickly leads me to something I haven’t yet thought. Now I have a choice, to indulge the spontaneity of Self, or to sit with and process this a little, to see what happens. Neither is right or wrong.

To illustrate, say the client is talking about their family trauma in general terms. I have a felt “ancestral urge”, pointing at “maternal grandmother”. And while I have a quite specific intuitive direction of travel, my memory hasn’t yet connected whether we’ve even spoken about that grandmother before. So I think it’s better to wait and hope for some synchronicity. Maybe it does: say the client starts going that way, or a bird lands on the windowsill, leading us there. Maybe my memory returns something useful. If that doesn’t happen, then I might tentatively offer: “doesn’t this sound like your grandmother”, and even “no, the other one”.

I hope this somewhat convoluted example connects some of the dots. We’re operating at multiple layers, all of the time. Dancing between them is the art of “holding space”.

So who is holding space?

I always get a bit nervous using the G word. It can bring up all sorts of projections, from “religious nut” to “toxic patriarch”. Over time though, I’ve found it important that I do.

God, as I see them, isn’t an overbearing vengeful authoritarian as some might preach. I’m more inclined toward the Jungian thinking, that Self is, God manifest in our individuality, a link to the eternal, present within. In that sense, we might see Self, as the I, the seer. Then, ego as the vessel, the do-er.

When we’re working with clients it seems quite clear to me, we’re working between those two states. Our own godliness in Self and our ego, which hopefully, is sufficiently free of its own trauma and unmet needs, nourished by our own rich living and reflectivity, to be an able and humble do-er of the seers work.

If that’s what is meant by “holding space”, then yes, I’m right onboard.