Minding The Gap: Client Alliance and Tending The Relational Field

Minding The Gap: Client Alliance and Tending The Relation Field

Jeffrey Besecker:
This is The Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Besecker. Client alliances. In trauma-informed clinical work, fewer factors shape the course of treatment as powerfully. Perhaps no single piece of the mental health puzzle is more significant to navigating trauma-informed care. When it's actively tended, it becomes a responsive, moment-to-moment collaboration. Subtle, dynamic, and often quietly transformative. When that relational field destabilizes, repair can feel difficult to locate, even when both the client and clinician maintain commitment to the work. In today's episode, I'm joined by Scott Stolaric for a candid, grounded conversation on what it means to mine the Alliance Gap in real-time. Together we explore how consent, pacing, and relational attunement form the bedrock of sustained trauma-informed care, especially in the moments when rupture, misattunement, or collapse show up in the room. Tune in to find out how when we return to The Light Inside. When it comes to mobile service providers, many of the big-name networks leave a bad taste in your mouth, with their high-rate plans, extra fees, and hidden costs or expenses. Mint Mobile is a new flavor of mobile network service, sharing all the same reliable features of the big-name brands, yet at a fraction of the cost. I recently made the change to Mint Mobile, and I can't believe the monthly savings, allowing me to put more money in my pocket for all of the things which truly light me up inside. Making the switch to Mint Mobile is easy. Hosted on the T-Mobile 5G network, Mint gives you premium wireless service on the nation's largest 5G network with bulk savings on flexible plan options. Mint offers three, six, and 12-month plans, and the more months you buy, the more you save. Plus, you can keep your current number or change to a new one if you like, and all of your contacts, apps, and photos will seamlessly and effortlessly follow you to your new low-cost Mint provider. Did I mention the best part? You keep more money in your pocket. And with Mint's referral plan, you can rescue more friends from big wireless bills while earning up to $90 for each referral. Our identities. At times, they breathe life into who and what we are. They animate us. And when the model collapses, they can also feel like they're sucking the very life out of us. Identity can be a living scaffolding. When it's coherent, it energizes choice, agency, and connection. When it collapses, it can constrict capacity so quickly that the person starts bracing rather than relating. In that moment, minding the gap in alliance becomes the intervention. Not just what we interpret, but whether the client feels felt, tracked, and not alone while their system is reorganizing. Because without a held relational field, even accurate techniques can land as intrusion or performative pressure. Whereas a strong alliance turns the same work into something tolerable, metabolizable, and change-ready. Today we're joined by psychotherapist Scott Solari as we feel our way towards relational attunement and demonstrate what it feels like to mirror relational consent. Scott, how are you today? Good, good. Thank you for taking the time to meet with me. Scott, we're excited to explore with you how establishing and holding the relational field through contact, consent, pacing, and moment-to-moment attunement functions as a primary clinical mechanism for protecting the client alliance, preventing small early ruptures from turning into big breakdowns in the work. Absolutely. That alone can be a daunting task. How do we clearly communicate things and bridge those gaps? And I think you could probably relate.

Scott Stolarick: I'd say I've enjoyed it quite a bit because it's really an opportunity to talk about treating trauma for those who both have experience with it as well as maybe have a listening audience who have experience with being recipients of it, but not necessarily learning how to navigate it or seek out treatment for it. So I've found the conversations really meaningful. And folks I've talked to have wanted to learn a little bit about EMDR, which is something that I do. Taking a trauma informed approach, because trauma, you know, as we know, it transcends many, many domains. You know, I think all of us, you know, at varying levels have experienced at least a traumatic event, small T trauma, as they call it, or big T trauma. So I think all people at varying levels can relate, whether it's a physical injury, a mental injury, both that it's out there and it's among us. And I think, um, having more freedom and openness to talk about it is a good space to swim in, so to speak.

Jeffrey Besecker: Yes. And I think you could probably relate that just forming that client relationship, client alliance, one of the core gaps is that interpretive intrusion where we're honoring what the client's lived experience is, and then trying not to over mingle at times that titration of balancing where do we expose, where do we engage, where do we sit back and allow that client to hold their agency in their container. And that itself, because we're trying to process which where do we overstep that boundary and become such an interesting gap to look at. I think that's one of infinite possibilities to explore from either spectrum, whether we're speaking to peers or whether we're speaking to the more general public or client base of how we communicate that, how do we soften that gap, which sometimes becomes re-traumatizing itself because we're tiptoeing into those waters ahead of time.

Scott Stolarick: Yeah, oh, it's intricate. And it's something that, you know, as clinicians, we have to be really tuned with and aware of. And I think that's why I love the work. It's, it's not boring. you have to be present. And like you noted, you have to be aware of the place that you're in with that client and gauge your level of involvement with what they're presenting.

Jeffrey Besecker: Where we're starting to blur our own material, that's a big one. I'm finding more and more even, I learned to gut check myself more. And then how that also brings us back into that alignment where we're mirroring that co-regulation, how to manage that then becomes another incremental task. Yes, absolutely. The downfall of that is the accumulative stress and buildup of having to manage the relational field. And we're somewhat moving into our own models of suppression sometimes or sublimation to bypass that to be present. becomes a whole nother dichotomy and level or strata of interaction there in the relational field.

Scott Stolarick: It truly does. And, you know, I'm a big believer in clinicians maintaining their own work. Yeah.

Jeffrey Besecker: It's ongoing. We've arrived.

Scott Stolarick: Yeah. Well, that's, that's the big flag, right? If you feel like you've arrived, just look around a little bit.

Jeffrey Besecker: We might've arrived to the next moment, but you know, what's going to happen in the one after that. And I think that's a, another dichotomy throughout what we label that whole healing quote unquote journey is it's in vivio, it's present moment. What's currently coming up, you know, what's working for you. What's not, what's happening, what's coming up.

Scott Stolarick: Right, right. It truly is. It truly is dynamic. It's evolving. And I think that's what's special. One of the many things that's special about our work is that you can't just lay stagnant, that you have to continue to be open to change and evolution, not only personally, but professionally. And that's, I think, what makes it one of the many things that makes a good clinician.

Jeffrey Besecker: Yes. That's something I just ventured out this week, sharing those clinical gaps again. And so we went through and run a real interesting AI model this week of what are the core points that most clinicians talk about as gaps? Where are the under-recognized points? It's amazing how we can functionally use AI with our ethics and nuance. You know, we're not using it as a holistic measurement tool in our actual practice, although we do use it as kind of a metric to look for things like that. There again, you bypass the human relational field if that's your only way of relating becomes an ethical concern because you're not in vivio and present. You're not monitoring. So, you know, there's a balance there, but going back and running the models of where those gaps exist was really fun exercise this week. And we've mapped out 10 high-frequency clinical risk zones exist. A fun model it ran. Where do we balance that with clinical rigor and what's clinically clean comes into play there. Yeah.

Scott Stolarick: Very fascinating and informative. What kind of data did you come up with in terms of just a few examples?

Jeffrey Besecker: Oh, that's interesting. Let me run through here. One thing, of course, is looking at titration. That's when we've come up, you know, how do we monitor dosing, pacing, exposure, things like prosody? Where's the client's capacity at? That itself becomes kind of prescriptive to a client. How do we translate that to them in a kind of softened, exposed tone? that tiptoes up to the very things we're explaining comes into that model. Sometimes we're over titrating, you know, we're being a little protective of ourselves. Sometimes we're under and we're not edging up to that client and bringing them up to that clinical edge. Looking at flooding and exposure, you know, that come up as a major, where do we kind of overdose? the client, so to speak, in that exposure framing. Pacing and sequencing, I think that's one where, from my own experience, until I kind of stumbled on that, interpretive intrusion, where we're not only unconsciously projecting, transferring, inferring our different parts, our different unresolved data, so to speak, where we move to clinical assumptions too soon, What's our clinical motivation? Sometimes we're unconsciously trying to pull that client along. We did a real cool conversation on that with clinician Leah Maroney discussing her book Serial Fixer. As clinicians, we're kind of goal-driven. We want to try to compassionately help and aid, but sometimes we overstep that boundary where our goals, our assumptions, our wishes aren't necessarily honoring that client alliance. and we become motivational. How does that interact with the client's data, the client's experience? That's an interesting gap that often exists because we feel our motivations are noble, we feel our motivations are valid, yet we're not fully aligned and fully in step with where the client goes. You know, one of the biggest, biggest things there is that guilt shame, which was the biggest thing for me to overcome in my therapy. I struggled with the trauma of anger. You know, I didn't have an inherently abusive environment growing up, but that anger was a present characteristic. It became identified. We internalized it, you know, it become a part of our identity structure. It become all the way down to, well, you were raised with hot-blooded German-ness in you. was a model there to wrestle with the identity and until I could reconcile that. I knew what my triggers were, there was that cognitive awareness, but it took me finally getting up to that point of understanding the guilt and shame, again, without going into cognitive bypassing, without going into narrative intrusion, without using that as the model to distance from the present experience. That was the missing piece. And then once I found that out, that was ultimately was there's that unconscious. What's the lower part? And it's going all the way back to the Q base. What's the initial Q arousal that causes me to kick into that cycle of anger that kicks me into that overload that floods me? that extends my capacity, and then I go into all of these habitual responses. I knew all of those things, but until I came to that connecting point with the guilt and shame, I could never truly express that, because I pretty much developed a one-dimensional relationship or association. Anger was the go-to emotion, so all the others got supplanted, inherently bypassed. There's an unconscious bypass loop there. I can identify it now. That, you know, it was by design functioning to keep that in an adaptive manner without guilting and shaming myself now. So understanding how that kind of leaks in and how we relate that falls in that relational interpretive gap.

Scott Stolarick: crucial insights. And I think so many people are in positions of caregiving and don't take that journey. Don't do that work. And it's a barrier to genuine engagement, in my opinion. Yeah. And I think, you know, not only engagement with another person, a client, but engagement with yourself. And that's kind of what working through in my own journey as well. It's how do you engage with your own self and understanding what fuels your process. and balancing that in coexistence with a client who's trying to do the same thing. So yeah, fascinating.

Jeffrey Besecker: So holding that with you for a minute, how would you relate that then to what we label the healing journey? That's our common vernacular, the healing a lot of times. Itself can kind of create a narrative conflict. What is it? How do we experience it? A lot of times how we frame that. There's a conscious connection and sometimes an unconscious disconnect from how we relate that to kind of our physical, medical-based healing journey that, well, eventually this will get better, quote unquote, and we'll be done with it. Creates some existential conflict a lot of times. I'd love to hear how you relate that with clients and how that plays out with you.

Scott Stolarick: Well, I think with, for example, EMDR, you're asking a client when they are processing a trigger or a node event to often understand the relationship between that and the somatic. Yes. You know, the physical experience, and both of those things are happening at the same time. If someone is what we call looping in their processing, what I will do is bring them back to the body and say, Where are you feeling this in your body, chronic sufferer of indigestion, and you know, esophageal issues will say, I'm feeling it here, it's burning, ask them to focus on that and do some reprocessing there. And I think the journey with EMDR tends to be kind of a marriage between those, the somatic and the emotional and I don't know if that's answering your question, but that's how… It gives me insight.

Jeffrey Besecker: I'm not sure that we're looking for an answer, but we gain insight from that and how we're relating, how that process has worked for you and the client. Yeah. Yeah. That sheds a lot of wisdom on where we're going with it.

Scott Stolarick: It's beneficial because in traditional talk therapy, I don't think we go to the body enough. You know, we'll often ask, what are you thinking? What are you thinking right now? Versus what are you thinking and where are you feeling that?

Jeffrey Besecker: Well, we're moving like in a fourth step order there.

Scott Stolarick: Yeah.

Jeffrey Besecker: Where we're not addressing the cue. And I think that's one of the biggest gaps as humans we all kind of wrestle with is being aware, again, that unconscious part of what's coming up sensory-wise. It's signaling where our body is going first and foremost. We're kind of putting the horse after the cart there, so to speak.

Scott Stolarick: Exactly, exactly. And I think asking that of your own self, like, okay, you know, my stomach is feeling upset right now. What's happening? You know, just taking a moment to pause and ask questions. and understanding connection. Is this because I just ate a bad piece of pizza? Is this because I'm nervous about a meeting I have coming up in a few hours? Is this, you know, it's, it's, it's this connectivity that we seek to understand and understand the connection between the mind and the body and in your just your daily walk. You know, I often do that with myself. in addition to clients. And it's helpful to say, okay, I think I see this now, this connection. And all of a sudden, there's a synthesis and a reduction of the reaction, if you will. And I think understanding the saying, knowledge is power, is so, so true. And you understand something, you become empowered.

Jeffrey Besecker: And it's such a dichotomy to that too, you know, because are we waiting for that arrival or sometimes are we getting ahead again and trying to move quickly to that awareness is a core integral part to me there, that pause to simply acknowledge the Cubase sensation. I think in a lot of regards, as humans were predispositioned in a lot of ways to be somewhat dissociated. Yes. In any given instance, you know, there again is that kind of getting ahead of the survival urge if we go philosophical on it. We're always trying to stay one step ahead to survive or to escape the reaper, so to speak. So, you know, it's interesting and the pause opens us up to that. You know, there's that inherent uncertainty and that's ultimately probably one of our greatest fears if we're to marginalize it and kind of focus in on it, that uncertainty and ambiguity.

Scott Stolarick: Yeah, absolutely. I do a lot of work with trauma clients on what was adaptive for them growing up in dysfunction, and how does that translate into adulthood? And ultimately, we realize it doesn't, but there isn't really that understanding of how we really carry antiquated and maladaptive methods of coping from our earlier development into our grown state, into our adulthood. And I think when there becomes awareness on how to, first of all, be aware of that process that happens, understand it, identify it, and then modify it adaptively, that's really, really interesting when that occurs. Because you see so many lights go on for people, and I know in myself, I've, you know, headlights go on in that area as well that, you know, you, you know, there's no, there's no user manual, you know? Yeah.

Jeffrey Besecker: And if it were, it would become too prescriptive a lot of times, again, because we're trying to look for that default that keeps it out of the present moment. So for sure. Relating to that, there again, it's that idea, there becomes kind of an element of escapism there where we're not able to assess that data and process it as generative. I'll say generative because it helps move us into a forward state. It helps us address what's going on in the present moment and then create a more viable outcome. Hold that loosely because there again, it can become framing. You know, what's moving us into that next action and how do we parse the two?

Scott Stolarick: No doubt. Yeah. No, it's intricate. It really, that's the word I keep coming back to is that it's the process in this work, the work we do with others, the professional collaboration, it's all very intricate. Yeah. And I think we have to be present at all times during it or we risk missing crucial pieces for ourselves and others. Definitely.

Jeffrey Besecker: And there again, it's that relational interaction where we kind of go hand in hand with each other. Sometimes we're guiding, sometimes we're leading, other times we're following along, but finding that relational alignment and attunement that kind of helps us step together is crucial.

SPEAKER_02: It's crucial.

Scott Stolarick: It being in the zone you want to be in and when you're there you recognize it and I think it's wonderful to sustain, but also recognize when we, you know, step out of it when we're off track. Because that happens, you know, it's not always that sweet spot of a place. But that's part of the journey too.

Jeffrey Besecker: That willingness to say, I have an inclination about this, but share your experience with me. You know, I'm willing to be vulnerable and hear where you're going with that. That could possibly be one of our greater challenges. I'll put that out there.

Scott Stolarick: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, judgments, conclusions. Yeah. You know, that that we draw. I mean, I'm confronting that in my own work in terms of whereas maybe in the past, I would have come to the conclusion of, well, on paper, this is clearly a higher care level situation. Yeah. But hey, why not? step in and give informed consent and say, I'm willing to assess and see what we have versus saying, no, this isn't. And maybe that openness in and of itself creates an opportunity that wasn't there. Yesterday, I was on the phone with a mother of an adult client, and I didn't really do anything other than sit with her and listen for a few minutes. And she couldn't stop expressing appreciation for that. Because I don't think prior she had had that experience with with others that it was no, we can't do this. Now, ultimately, I may not be able to do anything productive for her and her son. But, but, you know, I can say that, you know, we walked through an open door together, and this is where we're at. And You know, whereas maybe earlier in my career, I would have shied away from that.

Jeffrey Besecker: It's interesting. So integral in expanding that capacity, that feeling of belonging versus isolationism. I'm standing in this field alone versus, hey, you know, somebody's got my back. I have support. I have nurturing. You know, I have somebody on my flank, a wingman. So. Yeah. And that again is crucial and that's ultimately that alliance that's so fragile that we sometimes inadvertently break it in someone else, even when we have the best intentions. Absolutely. Yeah. It's integral. That's where I'm fascinated looking, again, I automatically am a very system driven person looking at, we have these behaviors and those behaviors, how do the two intermingle? And for me, it was looking at that marriage of, What spurs the anger? You know the cues, but there's other behaviors that supplement that and kind of wanting to pick that apart. Some of that was bypassing throughout the course of it. Some of it still can be bypassing, but again, finding that merger of when you are regulated, when you are attuned to that invivio present moment. Still being able to use that logic and sense as a tool itself, generatively. Going back then and looking, we broke that down. Primary behavior, secondary behaviors. This happens and then this occurs. As a result, then this is the outcome. That's the ancillary. Well then, what happens whenever it comes up again. That becomes the recursive behavior. That's where the loop and the cycle usually exists in that recursive because ultimately that's the part that's most neurally imprinted, the most familiar, the kind of go-to survivalism that, you know, this gets me out of X, Y, and Z throughout the loop. Literally, so I can find that place of comfort or familiarity or that place of ultimately what we sometimes label that bubble of safety is sometimes what can cement us and hold us in itself too.

Scott Stolarick: Fascinating. It's great work. It sounds like you're really identifying and formalizing some valuable processes.

Jeffrey Besecker: We're so complex as beings and that's one of our core adaptive urges. We need a quick answer to survive the moment, but when we have that capacity to enter the kind of slow things and ease into it and then there again you're developing new habits and even me the vocabulary is so large of ways of framing it the number of different categories that come up that it can become limiting so why not just rest on we have models now to store that information and we can kind of pull that dictionary back out and not rely so much on our identity structure to validate it and say, but we can go back to what we've made note of. It's been cataloged. It's like going to the library. Let me see. We do it with our bodily ailments a lot of times, but we don't attach kind of the same categories of identification with that consciously a lot of times. I think we do it unconsciously. My father-in-law is up at Cleveland Clinic right now, just went through heart bypass and has had some minor repercussions. But, you know, this week he had some recovery setbacks. But, you know, it's interesting to see how the two co-relate then, framing what I have in knowledge about where our bodily somatic functions go and where they go whenever there's a quote-unquote malfunction with the system. Right. with our core health model, which again, it becomes separating that there's not necessarily that separation there. Again, we've created that, that the two are automatically intertwined. So it's interesting to see how we fragment and compartmentalize that idea, that concept of healing or integration a lot of times.

Scott Stolarick: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, no, I think we are complex creatures and I think having that analogy of a dictionary, a library, a reference source.

Jeffrey Besecker: It's all referencing and predicting, right? Yeah, I think it's so crucial. At the secondary level, I can now name that. Start with that initial stimulus cue, what's the prompt? Then we step into appraisal, which is fascinating now for me to look at. We wrestle so much with the ideal of judgment, like you mentioned, yet appraisal is inherently part of the process. How do you stop judgment without first judging that you've judged something is kind of redundant and dichotomous that it takes a judgment to realize you're judging. Can we look at judgment with greater nuance? It obviously serves a function. In what manner are we judging now? What tone and what emphasis? Where are we focusing that judgment? That again brings in additional context and nuance. We know in a therapeutic field that most people, when they experience that idea of judgment itself, can become very… I'll go to triggering. That kicks us into that impulse a lot of times. It automatically kicks us into some of those ruminated patterns we go into. Recognizing the judgment.

Scott Stolarick: or the tendency to want to judge. I mean, by itself, the appraisal, the assessment there is so important. Years ago, I read a book by the late Wayne Dyer called The Power of Intention. And it's literally going into a situation unarmed. without judgment, without preconceived notion. And the impact you can have on a situation when you do that is so significant. If a person knows that when you're sitting with them, you're not judging them. You're trying to truly be aware of who they are of who you are in that moment. It really does change the dynamics of the situation.

Jeffrey Besecker: That's a fun one to hold. Let's hold that for a minute if you're open to that. Sure, yeah. I just want to bring that into the room. I want to ask for consent to explore it because there again, I'm going to move into that model. So I'm not overstepping my boundary and inserting my interpretation without permission. So in that moment, aren't we again automatically going into that appraisal and it's fun to look at again that what happens when we soften that idea that we're naturally designed to appraise and assess and where do we kind of blur those lines? That's always fun to me because we're never not judging at the deepest level. We're appraising our environment. We have to kind of size things up. We have to make generative judgments just to get across the street. That's very basal. I had to make a generative assumption about, is this person a threat? Are they reliable? Can I have a prediction that there's at least a marginal influence of certainty? And my presence with them, are they going to drag me into peril? Again, can be generative if we're loose in how we hold that, I feel.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

Jeffrey Besecker: So then we automatically unconsciously from, again, I'm going to an interpretation here, in a lot of instances are unconsciously in that guilt and shame and culturally we reinforce that guilt and shame in some manner. Well, don't judge. Judgment is inherently bad or wrong. Well, you're going to do it naturally. So now I'm shamed because I'm doing a natural processes becomes inciting in some way. So how do we manage that from your perspective?

Scott Stolarick: You know, an awareness of it is the first crucial step. I think managing it is an ongoing, evolving level of mindfulness and intentionality that continues to change shape. I did court-ordered evaluations for many years. Yes, that's an interesting background. And it's, you know, it's you're asked to judge, you're asked to assess your data that you produce goes to a judge and that judge uses it to judge and assess. So it's a wrestling match. It really is where you, in some situations are asked to, but on the other side, trying to recognize that you need to leave room. Yeah. as well to not and to be open to other things that you may or may not be looking for. So to me, it's an ongoing wrestling match within, to do it, to not do it, to know you're doing it, to know that it's an essential part of day-to-day life, crossing the street, whatever. And then are you doing it at a higher level when it comes to person-to-person interaction, developing a plan to try to help somebody? So, yeah, the balancing act is at the very least delicate.

Jeffrey Besecker: Back to that relationship to those two core gaps and I'm stepping in intruding here already because I'm trying to rush ahead. I'm getting excited about it. I'm going to acknowledge that in a moment. In my excitement, in my anxiousness about it, I'm stepping over and kind of intruding in my boundary here. Pausing and bringing it back into alignment. Again, we're looking at that titration. Sure, sure, sure. Are we selectively exposing ourselves as human beings, not only as a clinician, but as an everyday, quote unquote, interaction? How are we pacing that and sequencing? Where is somebody's willingness or cooperativeness, their consent coming in? Sure. Pacing and sequencing, number two gap that AI is telling me exists. We can observe that in practice. We can compare the two, it becomes a judgment. You know, there's somewhat of an appraisal and assessment there. Where do we tighten that bounds and over-interpret and under-interpret? We don't pause, you know, we don't pause enough.

Scott Stolarick: I'm going to wholeheartedly go on that one. I acknowledge in my work, it tends to be fast moving at times and there isn't enough pause. There isn't enough acknowledgement and candor in the moment that can be shared and acknowledged in the presence of a client that is beneficial to them, but doesn't happen. You know, so an area of growth and development I look at in my own work is go slower. You know, don't feel like there's a need to rush to this conclusion or this destination, right? I mean, so see and feel what you're saying is that, you know, the pause, the recognition, the titration, it's all important stuff.

Jeffrey Besecker: looking at that whole concept of thinking fast and slow. It's not all inherently thinking, which kind of becomes an epistemic diffusion of it, but processing fast and slow might be reframing it a little bit more in accordance and cleanly, which is a judgment, which is interesting. But again, yeah, you know, we have that kind of default urge, you know, we're programmed and habituated to a quick response. Our body likes the quick response then.

Scott Stolarick: For me, I exited the work with court-ordered clientele in 2019. So, that's been a good seven years and it's a continual process of deprogramming, I think. you know, and recognizing how for many, many, many years, I was relied upon to judge, relied upon to assess, relied upon to make important conclusions about the fate of a human being, and trying to be less, oh gosh, narrowly focused, has been you know, untying a knot, you know, untying a big old knot. Yeah.

Jeffrey Besecker: You literally are holding lives in balance there. So yeah, there's an extra air of burden there for moral responsibility, ethical responsibility. Yeah. Hopefully for all of us.

Scott Stolarick: Yeah. So it's, you know, in my, in my journey, I look at, okay, that was a chapter that was, you know, a version of my career, but you know, it's not the only part. And so I do look at it as an untying and a retying or reworking kind of process that pausing and taking time to really recognize what is happening, that did not allow for that. You know, that process, I could literally say it did not allow for that.

Jeffrey Besecker: So if you're open to it, again, stage for consent here. Yeah. Let's hold that for a minute. If you're open to it. Sure. See what lands for you. If again, you're open to that, reflecting back on that. If I might ask, what were some of the more burdensome aspects of that and what might've been some of the repercussions or some of the things that came up as you were processing that?

Scott Stolarick: Oh, great, great question. And one that that I wrestle with continually is a burden. Clearly was get this done quickly. Okay, here, here's an enormity of a task here. Get it done quickly. Get it done with a client who does not want to work with you to get it done. Get it done with somebody who doesn't have the resources to fund it. And get it done in a context of others who already have preconceived conclusions about what your work should say. And talk about tangled. You know, talk about pressure and loss of professional autonomy. That was hard, especially, especially with juvenile work. I did juvenile and adults. And in the juvenile system that I worked in, they were notorious for asking for the product yesterday. You know, here's the referral, here it is. And by the way, I know I'm asking a lot here, but I need it in less than a week. You know, so It was tied me up in knots. And as I reflect on it, I didn't have the professional or personal strength to push back on it. At that time, this is 25, 30 years ago.

Jeffrey Besecker: feel myself bracing and tensing up just kind of considering that weight and imagining how I would handle that myself and the kind of you know it's tension you know tension you're feeling it and the tension I'm feeling and I can't project it on you but

Scott Stolarick: I feel it as well, recalling it. And it was, you know, I've come to say and own that, you know, a very traumatic part of my professional history. One that, you know, I did gain very, very valuable insights from. As I look back on it, I try to look at it with honor, you know, that it was something that informed me in who I am today. versus looking at it with disdain or judgment as being this awful time in my life and awful time in my career. How has it informed me? How has it created what I'm trying to be today? And yeah, I felt the same tension you felt as I was recalling it. And it's always going to be challenging to navigate. I don't think it will ever be an experience where I say, oh, man, I got this. It'll always be a work in progress. And honestly, that's how I like it. I don't want to feel like I'm done. I don't want to feel like that. I want to feel like there's always work to do. There's always awareness to have, things to see. Because if you say I'm done, then you're putting something away maybe prematurely. I like how you put it. You put it away in the library, but you take it out. You reference it. You look at it and say, oh, you know what? This looks a little different from last time I saw it. And I'm going to put it back, and I'm going to honor the place that it's in. And next time I need it, I'm going to be very excited to see how I how I view it then, you know, and interpret it as I pull it out for reference. So. So, yeah, that's to your question. Those were the burdensome things for me then in my career.

Jeffrey Besecker: I want to hold that and honor that with you a moment, Scott, because that is such a grounded, valuable insight. Thank you truly for sharing that with me, because now I have that in my own library to reference. You know, how do I compare what your experience was? How do I call that back into play? And not only honor you in carrying that forward, but using that as a generative step for others going forward. So thank you for that.

Scott Stolarick: Oh, thank you, Jeffrey. I appreciate that.

Jeffrey Besecker: Yeah. I don't think we pause often enough just to do that, to honor each other, you know, and recognize in a moment where we do have that kind of connecting place where we are relating and saying simply, thank you because you've enriched me in this moment so much.

Scott Stolarick: No, I really feel appreciative of that. Thank you. And you're right. We don't pause. We don't take those moments to realize, you know what? There are a lot of life's nuggets out there that we can benefit from if we only stop or pause a little bit to take them in and to flag them and say, hey, you know, Let me honor that with you. You know, let me express appreciation for that. I think. Wow, if everybody did that, could you imagine?

Jeffrey Besecker: So I want to pose this to you, if I can, in that whole lump of experience, if you were to pause and reflect for a moment right now. What might be one kind of unique or under recognized takeaway that you've gained from that you think that others can value from?

Scott Stolarick: Oh, many, I think a demonstration of of resiliency, being resilient, that adverse experiences or things that you experience adversely don't have to be defining of you as a professional, but more contributors to the ongoing creation of that product, if you will, that it's okay to honor things that don't feel honor worthy. It's okay to look back at things that were not favorable in a specific moment in time and embrace them, not distance them. and understand that they're part of your personal mosaic to talk about the name of what I chose to be my practice. And so those are some things and to have empathy. um you know to understand others around me at that time and what they were thinking and what they were needing and to not necessarily personalize things like that it's it's okay to be candid it's okay to be honest and say you know gee i cranked out some work back then that i don't know that i'm necessarily proud of um and also that I did work then that largely I am proud of, but you really have to be able to look back on that and be able to access it when you need it and not be afraid to look at it and open that book and see what's in it because what's in it can be very helpful. So that's sort of, I guess, how I would put that out there.

Jeffrey Besecker: I want to sit with that a moment and let it sink in. I think that's truly deep insight. I want to truly feel it because I think we can again, rush to add our own explanation, share our own experience rather than just, again, honoring that experience that you've had. So thank you again for sharing that. Oh, thank you.

Scott Stolarick: I appreciate you doing that. And I think in EMDR work, which has taught me various things, there's a part in the protocol that talks about honoring the past. And I think at times there's a reluctance to use that word because of the you know, the connotations that we assign to the word honoring, but a tragedy, a trauma. Clients have said, why would I honor that? That intuitively makes no sense to me. And the grateful opportunity to explain that is informative for them and for me as a clinician to say that this is you know, something that created who you are today. And, um, You know, it's something that you can acknowledge, ultimately, as part of your past that you can reference when you need it, and you don't have to be scared of it anymore, you know, is ultimately the goal down the road. But that honoring, applying honoring to past experiences that were hurtful is a unique way to look at things.

Jeffrey Besecker: You know, to me, I'm having a thought here, if I can share. Sure. I tend to be lax. I'm going to set myself up on this. I'm going to frame it, tee it up. I tend to be a little lax and hold loosely the idea of axioms and general mottos. You know, sometimes those can become limiting from a certain perspective. I'm going to frame it as such. But in this case, reflecting on that axiom or that motto, don't honor the man, honor the journey. Sure. What do we gain from that journey as experience and put into that referential file? And how then do we honor the way we utilize that? You know, without bypassing, without moralizing again, where do we hold that personalization loosely to step back? from where we are currently and honor what we can take away, you know, is a very nuanced journey in and of itself.

Scott Stolarick: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I, and I love that. I do. I really like that. It's a nuanced journey and there isn't necessarily like a, here's the blueprint. Here's how you do it, you know? So yeah, I appreciate how you broke that down.

Jeffrey Besecker: Thank you. Again, where do we pull that reference in? How do we hold that context? It's all relational. For me, healing is entirely, not maybe entirely, but integral and dependent on relational fields, not only with how we're relating to each other, how we're relating with ourself, but how we relate to that larger context of things. Again, we bring so much ambiguity in there and so much complexity that itself can become an existential struggle or it can be a very freeing progressive generative thing depending on how we hold it.

Scott Stolarick: Yeah.

Jeffrey Besecker: It's all in that. It's all in how you hold it. Exactly. Exactly. You got it. Well, I want to propose something to you. We're talking a lot about frameworks, a lot about sometimes assumptions, sometimes models, yet we've had a very generative, informative, intimately engaged conversation today. How would you feel about releasing this as a podcast episode? I would feel fine about it. Yeah. Well, there we have it. I think we've summed up, you know, we've covered a lot of the same points. I've stepped out of my comfort zone. I've allowed that relational field. We've connected very intuitively, very openly and very vulnerably. So thank you for that.

Scott Stolarick: Oh, thank you, Jeffrey. I really appreciate it. Really appreciate you having me.

Jeffrey Besecker: I want to just honor that. We'll call that an episode.

Scott Stolarick: Thank you, Jeffrey. I appreciate you having me. It's been a pleasure.

Jeffrey Besecker: Thank you. Take care, buddy. Bye-bye. Scott and I spent some time naming and gently unpacking some of the common gaps that cliently strain the client alliance in the middle of real therapeutic work. As we close, here's the core takeaway. When the relational field is actively held, Through consent, pacing, and moment-to-moment attunement, the alignment becomes the intervention. So even precise techniques land as collaborative and capacity-matched, rather than intrusive. How this addresses the core alliance gaps? It directly reduces the two most common breakdown points we named, interpretive intrusion and pacing mismatches, by keeping the work organized around the client's lived experience, agency, and in-the-moment signals. The top three highlights to support this insight. Consent as lived clinical stance. Walking through an open door together before you problem solve. Sometimes the intervention is simply staying with the person long enough for contact to return. And next, pacing is not politeness, it's mechanism. Tracing doses, sequencing, and the client's capacity prevents help from becoming pressure. The held field protects meaning making. Without it, even accurate interventions can register as performative pressure. With it, the same work becomes tolerable and generative. And finally, here's a coachable supervisory takeaway from our session. Before I interpret or intervene, what's the smallest next step I can take to strengthen contact so the client feels felt, tracked, and not alone? Finally, we'd love to hear what landed for you. What felt most useful or meaningful in today's episode? Leave us a voicemail at www.thelightinside.site or drop us a comment on social media. If this conversation felt valuable, please share it with a trusted peer or colleague. And as always, we're grateful for you, our valued listening community. This has been The Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Besecker.