Structure and Safety in Therapy

The other day I came across a post that about therapy being a safe and yet a structured place. While I couldn’t agree more about the indispensability of these two co-existing, I also couldn’t waive off the realization of how difficult it has been for me to marry these two in my practice over time or how confusing it can also be for clients to differential between essential structures and emotional threats in therapy space

What seems simple and logical when put into words can feel so congesting while passing through our nervous system. Words like safety and structure have widely subjective meanings depending upon individual experiences.

A person who has grown up amidst rigid boundaries, punitive consequences for making human mistakes, might associate safety with forgiveness and accomodation. Any hint of regulatory structures, like sliding scale or limitations around rescheduling can really trigger their sense of threat. Even though these structures are put in place to maintain a sense of mutual accountability towards the work, our unhealed wounds often seek overcompensation to dull the pain and in this case can lead to subconscious expectation of endless accommodations from the therapists and unintended blinded to the validity of professional boundaries.

As therapists our policies can also be colored with our relationship with structure and safety. I will confess that for a long time I saw cancellation fee as a punitive structure that didn’t agree with the value of benovolence that I wanted to abide by. Lately I’ve felt great deal of shame while realizing how I wasn’t being benovolent but enabling towards avoidance of discomforts of different sorts for both me and my clients.

But as I make my structures more firm to uphold accountability and respectful use of of my in my private practice, I also realise that maybe those early days with porous professional boundaries were not just divergence from protocol but also a part of my journey, those boundaries mirror where was as human being and not just a therapist when I started and therefore it’s to have started imperfect.

I suppose the task of marrying structure with safety is not just of therapeutic relevance for clients and also for therapists, their human selves.