Hold the Map, Release the Agenda: Felt Safety and Integrated Presence with Highly Dysregulated Clients

We often think of felt safety as the client learning to trust the therapist. But trust emerges from us first trusting the client. This becomes especially hard with highly dysregulated people, when it’s harder for us to remain connected to our own integrated presence and easy to reach for a tool or an outcome as a way of managing what’s happening in the room.

Robyn and Jan explore what it takes for a professional to hold a map of where the work is going, and to have good tools for getting there, without those becoming an agenda the client has to meet. They’ll talk about being OK when things aren’t OK, tracking our own shifting states without trying to correct them, and how staying connected to ourselves gives us more access to our tools, including our relational ones. Tools that emerge from this kind of presence tend to be more useful and more intuitive, and they’re offered by someone who is regulated, which isn’t the same as calm. Over time, these experiences can increase a client’s capacity and create the circumstances that could prompt memory reconsolidation.

The conversation also touches on work with parents, where creating space for a parent to shift can directly impact a child the practitioner has never met. Robyn brings her owl, watchdog, and possum framework, and Jan brings the Felt Sense Polyvagal Model and her work with trauma and addiction.

Robyn’s website:

https://RobynGobbel.com

Robyn’s Immersion:

https://RobynGobbel.com/immersion

Embodied Dialogues is educational and experiential content. It is not psychotherapy or a substitute for mental health treatment.