“There are so many valuable techniques for regulation, for exploring and integrating traumatic experience, and so on. Once we get to know these protocols, they may pull on us in ways that invite us to seize control of the therapy.

The other pathway suggests that her system holds the answers and that if I can offer enough safe support, it will likely begin to speak with us.

At least cognitively, I can recognize that this person's inner world contains much more information about the root causes of her upset than I do.

From this perspective, I am less interested in dealing with symptoms than moving towards making room for the implicit origin to emerge so that the protective systems can take care of themselves.”