When Support Doesn’t Quite Land — Invisible Dynamics in Healing Spaces
The Field Beneath the Frame….
There’s a particular kind of pain that can arise in spaces that are meant to support us — not the pain of rupture, but the ache of not quite being met. It’s subtle. Often invisible. But deeply felt.
You arrive with something tender — maybe a theme you’ve carried for years, something you’ve finally built enough trust to explore, even though it isn’t fully formed or clear.
But the response doesn’t land.
What’s reflected back to you doesn’t quite resonate. A technique is offered, or a helpful suggestion — but it doesn’t reach the depth of what you’re holding. You begin to feel slightly out of sync with the space. Misread. Slightly misunderstood. Not necessarily harmed — but not fully seen.
This is more common than we realise.
And not because facilitators are careless or lacking. More often, it’s because of something deeper and more complex: the ways our inner lenses — both as clients and practitioners — shape what we perceive, and what we miss.
These subtle moments of mis-seeing don’t only happen in session work.
They happen in friendships, partnerships, families — any time we’re relating through unconscious filters — what I sometimes like to call “overlays” — rather than meeting in the present moment.
The Lens We Look Through
Every practitioner, no matter how skilled or intuitive, works through a lens. That lens is shaped by training, worldview, nervous system patterning, personal history, ability to perceive, amongst others. It determines what feels familiar, what feels trackable, what can be named and held with confidence.
When something emerges that doesn’t quite fit within that lens, it can cause a kind of unconscious discomfort. The practitioner might respond with a reframe, redirect the focus, or reach for a tool they know well. This is often done with good intent — but it can leave the client feeling unseen or classified.
Even the most spacious modalities have edges.
Even the most holistic approaches can carry quiet assumptions about how a session should unfold. And when the client’s process doesn’t match that arc — when their system is doing something less linear, more emergent — the mismatch can feel gently pathologising.
The Client’s Knowing
From the outside, it might look like the client is lost, blocked, or unclear. But internally, something very precise may be unfolding — just beneath conscious awareness.
I believe that we carry an inner intelligence that knows the path forward, even if the conscious mind can’t yet articulate or see it. This knowing can’t be forced and it often doesn’t speak in clear steps.
In these moments, the system isn’t asking to be fixed. It’s asking for space — a kind of lead-free support that doesn’t interfere with what’s emerging but quietly holds the energy, and follows where the system goes. It’s not about more intervention, but less, and not about interpretation, but deep presence.
The Echo Effect: When Both Sides Bring the Past Into the Room
And here’s where it gets even more layered: both client and practitioner bring their own inner filters into the room
You might come into a session with a history of not being met, not being understood — and when the present moment doesn’t fully land, it activates something old. Not a clear memory, but a feeling-lens: a somatic echo of past experiences that quietly shape how this moment is felt.
The same thing can happen on the practitioner’s side.
They hear your words, and without meaning to, associate them with previous clients, familiar patterns, or unspoken echoes from their own life. Sometimes their response is filtered not only through their professional experience, but also through their own nervous system imprints, lived personal history, and even ancestral lineages — all the subtle, inherited ways they’ve learned to interpret the world.
And so, without either person intending it, both begin to respond not to what is, but to what has been. The present moment gets shaped by invisible threads of past resonance.
In this way, both people can stop seeing what’s real.
Instead, they begin relating through projection — shaped by past experiences, somatic echoes, or familiar emotional patterns — rather than what’s truly here, without realising. This isn’t anyone’s fault. It’s part of being human. But it can deeply affect the field of connection, especially in moments when something raw and new is trying to surface.
The Fear of Not Knowing
For many facilitators, meeting what’s emerging — without trying to shape it — can be daunting and require a leap of faith. It asks us to let go of control. To sit in the unknown. To trust the intelligence of the client’s system, even when it’s messy, wordless, or slow.
This requires a kind of ego softening — a surrender of the role of “knower.”
It’s not easy. Especially in professional settings that reward certainty, insight, and outcomes.
But the deepest work often doesn’t move through those channels.
It happens in the quiet places — the gaps, the pauses, the unspoken. In the space where neither person is rushing to make sense of what’s arising.
The Power of Not-Knowing
One of the most courageous things we can do — both as clients and as space-holders — is to enter the field of not-knowing. To lay down our need to name, interpret, and resolve. To stop reaching for meaning and allow what is true to emerge in its own timing.
This doesn’t mean becoming passive. It means becoming attuned.
It means cultivating presence in the now moment — stepping away from the analytical mind, and into the felt field of what’s here. Because that’s where the real movement happens. Not in what we think should be unfolding, but in what’s actually alive beneath the surface.
When we meet from this place — even with all the inevitable projections and misreadings — something honest becomes possible. Something unforced. And from there, healing and transformation begin to feel less like a process to follow, and more like truths that are beginning to emerge and flow.
That’s when true connection becomes possible. It feels precious and exquisite. And it is the healing and transformative current that allows true unfolding to flow and evolve in its own unique way. I believe this is something I believe this is something that, deep down, we are all longing for
Intuitive Guide, Embodiment Coach and Transformational Facilitator
Your energy and presence are gifts to share with the world — even if they are deeply quiet. They are the very fuel that helps you transform your life and truly flourish.
You can tap into this when you ground in the essence of being you.
That’s what this blog is here to hold: reflections from my own long journey home to myself, interwoven with the insights I’ve gained through years of lived experience and training.
Warmly, Julia
About this work
This piece is rooted in my training in HAKOMI (mindfulness-based psychotherapy by Ron Kurtz), the Moving Cycle (developed by Christine Caldwell), and the wisdom of perinatal psychology, shamanic and spiritual traditions.