What slows the spiral: being witnessed

Tending Notes · Issue 03 · August 25, 2026

Tending Notes is a monthly field note for therapists building a practice, solo, in a group, or in some other form. This one is about witnessing and why "good enough" may be easier to accept when someone we trust, or who holds similar values, is in the room.

The Field Note

I've been reflecting on a conversation about consultation I had a few weeks ago, sparked by the question I'd left you with last issue: where do you feel you are on the path right now, and what is that one quiet thing in your practice that is worth noticing? It touched on both clinical consultation and administrative consultation, but we kept circling back to something simpler: the importance of just asking about someone's progress. How is this landing? How are you doing? What's new?

What we were reaching for was more than the drive-by of pleasantries. "How you doing?" "Good." Both parties move on. As a born and raised New Yorker, I've seen this art perfected; the exchange happens, and you only really get to follow up if you happen to land in that same social situation again a month or a year later.

To ask someone, or yourself, how what you're producing is landing requires a different kind of presence. A presence that involves real curiosity and some form of shared, ongoing connection.

As therapists, we do this naturally with our clients. We commit to the work, engage with curiosity, and maintain connection through the frequency we agree to meet, but what is really happening within that structure is something more human, attunement, or at the very least, regard. As supervisors, we help new therapists attune to the subtle shifts that happen while holding the relational field with care. As practice consultants, we help therapists attend to the business side of their work, too, knowing that this side shapes how clients feel about the practice and how we feel about it ourselves.

We write our websites, posts, and flyers to attune to prospective clients. What we're really communicating is our willingness to witness their self-discovery and growth regularly. As leaders of a practice, solo or otherwise, how do we witness ourselves? How do we answer the question, how is all of what I'm building landing, against the vision I set out with?

I think about a younger version of myself here, researching and developing experiential learning programs, feeling like I just wanted to get there already, past the mess of the process and into some version of myself that had finally arrived. It took years to find compassion for that anxious part of me, and to be willing to just be in the space of the journey instead. To work within good enough.

I wonder if what we call the spiral of thoughts during the creation phase, the one where we can't stop turning over what needs to happen next, is partly what happens in a chamber with no other voice answering back. In that kind of system, the volume of the question has nowhere to go but up, because the need to be heard, witnessed, or responded to hasn't been met.

Perhaps what actually slows the spiral is being witnessed by another, and it's that slowing down that makes it possible to accept good enough, rather than reaching for whatever the spiral is demanding next.

I recognize I may be speaking from a biased place here, shaped by both AEDP and DBT, where growth and healing seem to happen in the presence of another, not in isolation, and where learning and discovery often come from the dialectical process of communing with someone else.

One thing worth tending to

Even writing this, I found myself trying to remember who once said, or maybe only implied, that witnessing involves the other regarding you regarding yourself. If that rings a bell for anyone, send me the source; I'd genuinely appreciate it.

Opening the Tending Circle is an invitation for other therapists and for me to witness ourselves and each other as we show up in the process. This coworking initiative is fully exploratory; there's no formal consultation group attached to it, but I hold real hope for what it might grow into, formally and informally.

A question worth sitting with

Zoom out: think of a time when a simple validation of your experience pulled you out of the spiral. Now zoom in: who witnesses you in the business side of your practice, and who, in turn, do you witness?

Something worth knowing

In the spirit of witnessing, the Slack space is quietly being built out, hopefully with a handful more of us joining over the next couple of weeks. My hope is that it grows into a place to share resources and start threads together, colleague to colleague.

And for anyone interested, the Tending Circle opens September 8th, meeting Tuesdays from 10 to 12, a professionally held space for therapists navigating the business side of their work, whether in solo practice, group practice, or something in between. The first Tuesday of each month is a check-in; the remaining weeks are dedicated coworking time, space to engage with the business side of your work, or anything adjacent that supports it, studying for a certification, working toward licensure, whatever that looks like for you. If Tuesdays don't work, let me know what would; there may be others in the community interested in starting a second group on a different day and time.