Series: Notes for New Therapists — Part 1
A new therapist recently asked a wonderful question:
How do I evoke emotional processing in session?
It's an understandable question.
You've probably had sessions in which a client tells you something painful in enormous detail—and yet somehow neither of you seems to get very close to the experience itself.
The client understands what happened.
They can explain why it affected them.
They may even know exactly how their childhood contributed to the pattern.
But everything remains strangely intellectual.
So how do you get from talking about emotion to actually experiencing and processing it?
The first thing I'd suggest is this:
Don't make emotional processing the goal of the session.
Think about a song.
It may have melody, rhythm, harmony, lyrics, repetition, tension, silence, and resolution.
You can certainly study each of those separately.
But nobody listens to a song by saying, “That was excellent. There were 42 seconds of harmony.”
The parts matter because of what they are doing together.
Therapy is much the same.
Emotional processing is one important part of psychotherapy. But so are safety, curiosity, meaning-making, relationship, cognition, bodily experience, behavior, hope, humor, silence, challenge, choice, and sometimes simply being witnessed accurately by another person.
Research likewise suggests that the therapeutic relationship and therapeutic technique work together rather than functioning as separate ingredients.
So rather than asking:
How do I get emotional processing to happen?
a more useful question may be:
What does this client need from this therapy, with me, right now?
That is a very different question.
Early in practice, it's easy to begin evaluating sessions according to visible signs of depth.
Did the client cry?
Did something powerful happen?
Did we “get underneath” the intellectualization?
Did they have an emotional breakthrough?
Be careful with this.
Tears aren't a therapy outcome.
Neither is catharsis.
A client may cry deeply and change very little. Another may sit quietly for thirty seconds, recognize something they have never recognized before, and leave the room fundamentally different.
The work needs to be organized around the wellbeing of the client, not around producing evidence that deep therapy occurred.
Virginia Satir offered a particularly useful way of conceptualizing human experience through what has come to be known as the Satir Iceberg.
Above the water is what we can observe: behavior.
Below it is an extraordinary amount of internal experience.
Feelings.
Feelings about feelings.
Perceptions.
Expectations.
Yearnings.
And the person's experience of Self.
Later development of the Satir Model, particularly through John Banmen's work, made attention to the body increasingly explicit.
In my own work, I also listen for excitements—what draws the person, interests them, energizes them, delights them, or makes them feel more alive.
That matters.
Therapy isn't only an excavation of pain.
Suppose a client says:
“My boss criticized something I did. I know intellectually that it wasn't a big deal, but I've been thinking about it for three days.”
You could immediately try to deepen the emotion:
“What are you feeling right now?”
Sometimes that's exactly right.
But there are many other places to listen.
Body: What happens physically as the client talks about it?
Feelings: Hurt? Anger? Fear? Shame?
Feelings about feelings: Are they embarrassed that criticism affects them this much?
Perceptions: What did the criticism mean to them?
Expectations: What do they believe they should have done differently? What do they expect of themselves?
Yearnings: Is there a wish to be valued? Accepted? Respected? Seen?
Self: What happens to their experience of themselves when someone is disappointed in them?
Excitements: What matters enough about this work—or this person's life—that the criticism has so much power?
Now emotional processing isn't an isolated intervention.
It's part of understanding a whole person.
There will also be moments when you sense something emotional happening and feel an urge to help it along.
Try doing less.
Slow down.
Let the client's last sentence remain in the room.
Notice what happens.
You might say:
“What happened just then?”
or:
“Something seemed to shift when you said that.”
or simply:
“Take your time.”
These aren't magic prompts.
Their usefulness comes from your attention to the client.
You're not dragging someone from cognition into emotion.
You're noticing where the client already is and helping them remain in contact with their own experience long enough to discover what is there.
A highly verbal client may use thinking to maintain distance from painful experience.
But thinking is also one of the ways human beings understand themselves.
Don't declare war on cognition.
And don't assume that because a client is explaining something intellectually, your job is to get them “out of their head.”
Their capacity to think may have served them exceptionally well.
Respect it.
Then become curious about what else is happening alongside it.
What do they notice in their body while they tell you this?
What feeling accompanies the thought?
What expectation is embedded in it?
What are they hoping for?
What becomes possible if both thought and feeling are welcome?
Experienced therapy can look almost effortless from the outside.
It isn't.
The therapist is listening simultaneously to content, emotion, body, relationship, shifts in energy, patterns, meaning, context—and to their own responses—while continually asking what serves this particular client.
Some sessions crescendo.
Some don't.
A symphony isn't all crescendo either.
The quiet passage isn't waiting impatiently to become the loud one.
It belongs to the composition.
Emotional processing is important. There is good evidence that deeper emotional processing can contribute to therapeutic change.
But therapy isn't a hunt for emotion.
It is a relationship organized around the client's wellbeing, in which emotion is one vital part of a much larger human experience.
Learn to hear the whole song.
Then you'll have a much better sense of when—and how—to help one part become louder.
Part 1: How Do I Evoke Emotional Processing in a Therapy Session? You are here
Part 2: How Do I Stop Being a "Coping Skills and Psychoeducation" Therapist? - coming September 13
Anne Lindyberg, LMHC (Iowa), LCPC (Illinois), integrates the transformational therapy of Virginia Satir with Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) and the Alexander Technique. She specializes in helping adults with complex and developmental trauma create lasting emotional change through therapy.
This work is created on the traditional and unceded lands of Indigenous peoples; a fuller acknowledgment of the land, its history, and its peoples is available on this website.
Steindl, S. R., Matos, M., & Creed, A. K. (2023). The interplay between therapeutic relationship and therapeutic technique: The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Journal of Clinical Psychology.<a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23519"> https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23519
Pos, A. E., Greenberg, L. S., Goldman, R. N., & Korman, L. M. (2003). Emotional processing during experiential treatment of depression. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 71(6), 1007–1016.<a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14622076/"> https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14622076/
Pascual-Leone, A., & Greenberg, L. S. (2007). Emotional processing in experiential therapy: Why “the only way out is through.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 75(6), 875–887.<a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18085905/"> https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18085905/
This article is intended to support professional reflection and learning. It does not constitute clinical supervision, formal training, or individualized professional guidance. Clinicians remain responsible for practicing within their competence, scope of practice, and applicable professional and licensing requirements.
This article and other informational content on this website are provided for educational purposes only. They are not a substitute for individualized professional care, do not constitute advice specific to your circumstances, and do not establish a therapist-client relationship.
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