Hold you in the Moment of Discomfort

They make it feel safe by making it about you, not them. You don't have to deal with their issues, you only have to deal with how what you do affects them. Not so much with how their craziness affects you, hopefully!

The other "safe" thing is that you get to take an incident and slow it down and talk about it and revisit it - you don't always get that opportunity IRL.

I read this as t helping me stay in discomfort in order to confront and work through it. Perhaps because at my last session, t said, "We can work through this or you can find something else to to talk about."

But, I could also see this as a t helping me through a difficult time.

A very interesting thread, CE.

With my T, who I have been with for over 5 years, feeling safe is the result of the process of building trust and working through things. It involves many things from her hearing me without judgement, her giving me plenty of space and time to talk about what I want to talk about, to accommodating my schedule changes, adding an emergency session outside her normal working hours, being available between sessions, and more.

As far as feeling safe in the moment, she just does more of the same, including gently nodding her head to encourage me to continue, leaning forward toward me to show deep yet intimate interest, offering observations in a "I wonder" type of approach, asking me if I feel "this" might be connected to "that", etc. She's there *with me* as we explore. I don't feel she is there to out me about something I might not be aware of, or to shame me for not seeing something clearly or fully. We share fantasy thoughts - she might say "My fantasy is that you tell this (work) person how you feel about that", and I might say "My fantasy is that I never return to work" . We share humor and use it as a way to open doors and explore too.

I don't know if that makes sense but it's how it feels for me. I could never imagine a Tom Cruise/Jack Nicholson "You can't handle the truth!" kind of moment