What I’ve realised over the last couple of weeks

A client had an ‘aha!’ moment this week! In fact, three clients had an ‘aha!’ moment in our sessions. I am over the moon with the dish and the spoon! My stone age brain was sceptical that the ‘aha!’ moments would come, but I stuck to my guns, walked with the uncertainty and here we are.

What do I think did it? I stuck to the plan from my last post . My uncertainty was that I wasn’t sure how client’s would react if I took a long pause (step 1) and deep breathe (step 2) before labelling their current emotion with a ‘you feel x’ reflective statement (step 3). This week I started doing all three steps once a session with clients I thought were struggling with or avoiding a challenging emotion.

A reader sent me some feedback (thank you!) suggesting I include transcripts of interactions with clients. Due to most my sessions being telehealth I don’t have recordings of these ‘aha!’ moments, so the below is not verbatim:

Context: This was at the start of a session – Client was reflecting on how they had taken the values checklist from the previous therapy session and explored the checklist with their partner. Client was saying that from this they felt more understood by their partner (which was important to them).

Me: What I’m hearing here is… *long pause… *deep breathe* … you feel ‘seen‘

Client: Paused for a brief moment, lent back, chuckled, their eyes widened, they then nodded in agreement and said “that’s dead on!”.

The client then reflected for a time on why being seen was important to them and how feeling seen by their partner was like a weight off their shoulders.

Nathan was right – you can really tell when a client is experiencing an ‘aha!’ moment. I can’t quite remember what was said with the other two clients during their ‘aha’ moments. I remember the 2nd client had their eyes well-up when I reflected they felt lost. The final client said they had been anxious and so it was interesting to notice that they interrupted my long pause – the pause can be useful to see where anxiety is still present.

What I’ve managed to do since my last post

I’ve only been concentrating on implementing the three steps, as above, since my last post. I’m now feeling completely comfortable working on one small thing at a time. It’s funny to see that I seem to naturally bring in other small changes. ‘Naturally’ as in I didn’t tell or expect myself to make other small changes, but I would start bringing them in anyway. For instance, when there’s a reduced Session Rating Scale (SRS) from a client, I reflect to the client that discussing the reduced score is an opportunity to improve the sessions (thanks Nathan). Where as before I would have a mini freak-out at seeing a reduced SRS score.

I’ve also found myself giving my opinion more often to clients when they ask for it, where before I would shy away from this. I think sharing my opinion sometimes helps create a sense of connection with clients.

I think these additional small changes have been happening naturally because I’ve been putting less pressure on myself, in only concentrating on one small change a time. Like in the book ‘Tiny Habits’ by BJ Fogg – tiny habits lead to other tiny habits sprouting.

In pursuit of more ‘aha!’ moments

I’m still fairly convinced that emotional experiencing and resonance is key to a client having an ‘aha!’ moment. For now I’m simply going to continue my 3 steps, as above, to let it sink in and help my caveman brain realise that long pauses and deep breathes aren’t so bad after all.

From there I would like to think about and explore ways to convert a clients small “aha!” into a big one. I’ve noticed that they can vary in intensity – so how do you help illicit more intensity in the ‘aha!’ moment?

It’s fair to say I’ve had my own ‘aha!’ moment – that it is possible to expect more ‘aha!’ moments in therapy. It just goes to show what we can discover when we allow ourselves to go into unchartered waters. If people tell you ‘not to bother’, to not ‘expect’ something or ‘it won’t work’ – it may just be worth going there anyway because you never know what you will discover.

Till next time and as always – thanks for reading.

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