Holding

Holding the client takes on a new experience for me last week at a sandplay session.
A 15 year old boy suspected of being an Asperger and from a single parent family is facing great difficulties in school. Being of mixed blood makes things more challenging. He gets endless teasing from classmates and bottles the anger all within.

His sand stories are all about fierce battles where the enemies are decimated. The final scene is always a carnage with overturned tanks, scattered skeletons and dead bodies on every inch of the tray. At the last session he shared that school was hell. At one point after tossing enough dead bodies into the enemy side of the tray he suddenly paused and viewed the tray in silence for a long while. As a facilitator I usually seat myself next to him providing an emotionally safe space for him to express his feelings. When he paused and stared at the tray in silence, I did the same. The carnage in the tray evoked in me a mixed feeling of sadness and bitterness which I can feel in him. We stared at the tray in silence for quite awhile and I know now what it really means by the phrase "holding the client"; a conscious insight as well as an unconscious intuitive connection. In a holding environment the therapist needs to be empathetic, trustworthy and stable. This is what is referred as therapeutic rapport.

Only when therapeutic rapport is established would the client be open to the therapist's point of view of the issue. I find this most true among the children at the children's home too. Once the rapport is established the child takes in and remembers well what the therapist says. The importance of therapeutic relationship in counselling outcome is supported by studies and well mentioned in counselling literature.A study has shown 5 potential results arising from a therapeutic relationship. The results include "feeling cared for", "empowerment", "safety/security", "willingness to divulge" and "willingness to take risk (to change)".