Catching Moments
One of the hardest things to teach is how to catch a moment. Throughout the flow of conversation in therapy, hidden opportunities can pop up to help usher change along.
For example, the client makes an offhand statement that is contradictory to what their distressed feeling typically says. “It was really sweet to know how much they care” can be a stark contrast to the “no one cares about me” narrative present in more distressed moments.
Catching moments can be difficult with all we are trying to manage within a session. However, there are a few things that can help you catch more moments to greater effect.
Hold on to the distressed feeling
The first thing is to stay connected to the client’s distress even when it isn’t present in the moment. Knowing this feeling is likely a major focus of the work, we keep it “alive” within us and allow the feeling to move or resonate when something related to it appears in the moment.
We are leveraging the principle of emotional resonance to allow the client’s feeling to respond when it hears something related to itself which alerts us to the moment so we can catch it.
Know what to listen for
When you know what needs to change in a client, it helps you know what to listen for. Say a feeling believes something untrue such as “no one cares” or “I’m not good enough.” Knowing we want to help those narratives shift, we subtly listen for contradictions, exceptions, examples, metaphors, and underlying longings of the narrative when they happen to show up.
We don’t want to overthink in session. It’s more about holding that story within you and allowing your brain’s filtering function to highlight elements you need to help things change when they show up.
Crafting the moment
On the other end of the spectrum, there are times we can bring moments into being. Like baking a dish, you recognize the ingredients are present. It just requires is some direction to put them together.
The “Catch and Reverse” technique in ASR is a good example of this. A form of constructing empathy, the therapist recognizes the feeling of one partner is similar to the other but the feeling partner, who typically doesn’t connect with the other’s distress, does not recognize it. Holding the feeling of both parties, knowing what needs to change in the relationship, the therapist recognizes the opportunity and seizes it.
(For more coaching on the Catch and Reverse technique in Constructing Empathy, check out “Fail-Proof Enactments” online course on the inRelationship website.)
Catching moments is a skill that can be hard to work on as you have to recognize it when it is present. However, the more you look for moments, the more you’ll find them. The more you find, the easier they are to spot!