When “She Needs to Leave” Isn’t the First Step

A therapist told me recently:

“I need to help her end this relationship.”

And I remember thinking…

Actually, no, not yet.

Her client was in a relationship that clearly wasn’t good for her.

She knew it.

The therapist knew it.

And every time she tried to leave, she completely fell apart.

So naturally, the treatment started organizing itself around helping her finally get out.

Except there was a problem.

For this client, leaving didn’t feel like making a difficult adult decision.

It felt like dying.

Her earliest template for relationship was connection mixed with survival.

So if we remove the relationship before her nervous system has another way of experiencing connection, we haven’t necessarily created freedom.

We may have just taken away the thing holding her upright.

And this is where knowing the movements gets interesting.

You might look at that case and correctly think:

She needs more push.

More separation.

More capacity to stand in herself.

Yes.

But I think implementation starts one thought earlier:

What would have to become true inside this client before push becomes possible?

Maybe the therapeutic relationship needs to become a different relational template first.

Maybe she needs to experience steadiness.

Maybe she needs neutral relationships she doesn’t have to rescue.

Maybe the work for months is not leaving at all.

Then eventually the push comes from her.

This is the part of Movement Vocabulary I want to spend more time on now.

The first workshop helped you recognize what may be underdeveloped.

This next one is about building the treatment around that recognition.

Because the goal isn’t to become very good at naming movements.

It’s to know how to help a client actually develop one.

And that’s where I think this work gets much more clinically interesting.

Because identifying “she needs more push” is relatively easy once you know what you’re looking for.

Figuring out how to build enough underneath her that push can eventually belong to her is the work.

That’s what we practice in the Movement Vocabulary Implementation Workshop last Thursday, August 27.

You’ll get the recording too, whether you’re there live or not.

Join us here:
https://buy.stripe.com/28E8wPgxf7YqbDc1Fn73G3k

Esther