In counseling, perhaps the most meaningful action a counselor can take is to be fully present. We tend to get caught up in studying approaches, thinking of underlying problems, focusing on changes in symptoms, etc. We focus so much on these topics that we see (and treat) the client based on all those factors instead of as an individual. People come to therapy because they don’t feel heard or understood, and often don’t even understand themselves. In our effort to try to find the perfect intervention or the most meaningful response we sometimes forget to actually listen, being added to the client’s list of examples of being unheard and misunderstood.
Being present means giving another person our sustained attention without immediately judging, correcting, or deciding how to fix it. It’s giving attention without trying to predict what they’ll say next or what we’ll say next. It’s simply being there, open to whatever they say, and not thinking about ourself. Doing this means we’re creating a space where clients can speak honestly, explore their experiences, and feel that someone is genuinely willing to be with them as they speak and try to find the right words.
This type of presence may sound simple, maybe even too simple for what our roles and goals are, but it requires intention, patience, emotional awareness, and humility.
What Does it Mean to Truly See a Client?
In How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, author David Brooks examines what it takes to help another person feel recognized, understood, and valued. Again, this sounds simple. But if it’s so simple, why do so many people seek counseling saying they don’t feel this way? Brooks describes the difference between people who illuminate others and those who diminish them.
An illuminator approaches people with curiosity, genuine interest, making them feel like their experiences matter. They don’t interrupt. They don’t take opportunity to talk about their experience. They lift people up simply by listening.
A diminisher may be distracted, judgmental, quick to give advice, quick to give perspective, or share their own experience that was more impactful (even better or even worse, depending on the context). The definition may sound like a diminisher is someone to aim to avoid, but the reality is can be a best friend, sibling, or parent. It can be a counselor. One of the things that makes coping with the diminishers in our lives hard is that it’s usually people we care about or look up to, leaving us feeling like we’re wrong for being hurt by them. Like the experience that feels very real to us doesn’t exist.
Brooks presents deep listening and intentional attention as essential parts of truly knowing another person.
These ideas are important in daily life. And they’re especially relevant to counseling.
Clients often enter counseling carrying experiences that have been dismissed, misunderstood, minimized, or viewed only through someone else’s expectations. The counseling relationship offers an opportunity for something different: an environment in which the client doesn’t have to compete for attention or defend their feelings. Ideally, they can just talk and be listened to.
To truly see a person, we must become curious about the person’s world rather than assuming we already understand it. We must become curious especially when we think we understand it.
The remainder of this article will apply the concepts of How to Know a Person to the counselor-client relationship. But the book is written for and is applicable to all relationships. A goal in writing this very brief summary of Brooks’ concepts is to consider how you show up in every relationship in your life.
Seeing Through the Client’s Lens
Every person views life through a lens shaped by culture, relationships, identity, and lived experiences. While clients are expected to bring their views to session, counselors inevitably bring their own personal views since they have lenses formed by their own histories, values, and professional training and experiences. As a mental health professional a challenge is that we naturally begin with our own perspective. Rather than a blank slate, we bring ourselves to each session. Yes, these are counseling cliches we’ve all heard in school, but they are very true.
We may hear a client describe a decision and immediately think about what we would have done, or ask ourselves have we had that decision and what did we do. We may interpret a relationship a client is telling us about through our own relationships and what we think healthy communication is. We may think, “I’ve been through this and I know exactly what the client needs to do”. Or we may hear a client talk about an experience completely different from anything we’ve been through and think, “I don’t know what’s like; how can I possibly be helpful with this?”.
Shared experiences, specialized training, or years of practice don’t make us experts on another person. Having similar circumstances and experiences doesn’t mean the results were the same. People experiencing the same trauma together, for example being in a car accident with similar injuries, may tell the stories completely differently. Not only may they remember the traumatic event differently, but how they experienced the accident and processed the trauma may be different. It’s no different from a client facing a challenge that a counselor has faced or has studied. “Knowing” what the situation was like objectively has nothing to do with how it was experienced.
Presence requires the counselor to temporarily set aside the assumption that their interpretation is the correct starting point. Instead of thinking, “What would this be like if it happened to me?” or “What was this like when this happened to me?”, and asking the client questions based on lived experience, the counselor becomes interested and asks a more important question: “What is this experience like for you?”
This doesn’t mean abandoning clinical judgement or professional responsibility. It means allowing the client’s lived experience to be understood before fitting it into a theory, diagnosis, treatment plan, or solution.
The client is not simply a collection of symptoms. The client is more than a diagnosis. The client is a person with a unique story and way of making meaning. We can’t help them understand their own story and find their own meaning when we think we already know those answers.
Listening Without Trying to Fix
Counselors are trained to help. Because of that, it can be tempting to move quickly towards strategies and problem-solving. It’s actually far faster that way. And many times clients ask for that. But timing matters.
When a counselor begins trying to fix a situation before the client feels heard, the client may experience the intervention as a form of dismissal. Advice offered too quickly can unintentionally communicate:
- “You’re wrong in the way you feel about this.”
- “We need to leave the past in the past; why are you still bringing this up?”
- “I already know what’s happening. You’re taking too long to explain it.”
- “The goal is to make this feeling disappear as quickly as possible.”
- “This is a very easy problem; you should have figured it out sooner.”
Sometimes clients do need practical strategies. And it can feel tempting to move quickly in cases where you have a limited number of appointments. However, moving too quickly won’t help the client solve the root of the problem or teach them how to find their own strategies. There’s also value for the client to know they are talking with someone who can accept the discomfort of the moment without rushing the client out of it. A hard truth is a lot of times when counselors (or other people in our life) rush through things to solve someone’s problems, it’s not because they want the person to feel better sooner; it’s because they feel uncomfortable with the person’s discomfort. The faster the person feels better, the faster they’ll fell better.
Being present means resisting the pressure to produce an immediate answer. It means trusting that listening itself can be meaningful. Before asking what should change, the counselor takes time to understand what the client is experiencing. While the counselor benefits from getting this deeper information, the client learns this information to as they hear themself working through it.
Understanding is not Always the First Goal
Counselors naturally seek understanding. They listen for many things: patterns, defense mechanisms, and changes in symptoms. They’re simultaneously thinking about how to proceed. The acts of listening, understanding, and deciding which thing to respond to and in what way to respond, is an important part of clinical work.
A counselor may be actively present in the session, then starts silently thinking about diagnoses or possible interventions while the client is still speaking. The counselor’s attention shifts from the person in front of them to the theory forming in their mind. Instead of wholly listening, the counselor begins preparing an interpretation and potential interventions. While the clinical understanding matters and is an important part of the counseling process, the client may not be able to share all the things needed to fully form an intervention if they haven’t felt heard first.
There are moments when a counselor is fully present, but due to differences in culture, history, or personal circumstances the counselor can’t fully understand the client’s reality. This may cause worry or doubt about the or moments like these, humility becomes essential. The counselor doesn’t need to be able to have a complete understanding and honesty about this with openness can still help the client feel heard.
In both of these instances, in which the counselor feels the need to focus on intervention or when the counselor recognizes their own background is different from the client’s, it’s important to lean into the benefits of openness and connection.
The Practice of Accompaniment
Brooks describes accompaniment as an important state in knowing another person. Rather than directing the person from a distance, accompaniment involves moving alongside the person and participating as they share more and more of their story. This concept offers a powerful way to understand the counseling relationship.
To accompany a client is to walk alongside the client. It’s not creating a destiny and pulling the client towards it. It’s certainly not taking over the journey. It’s also not being an observer on the sidelines. Accompaniment is to stand beside them as they experience hardship and as they work through it.
While the counselor helps the client notice things and consider options, the client is the one deciding the path and making the change.
Accompaniment sends the message that:
- “You don’t have to carry this alone.”
- “You can choose the pace of our sessions.”
- “You can speak freely and express emotion; you don’t need to worry about my comfort.”
- “I am, and will remain, curious about your experiences.”
- “We can explore what comes next, together.”
This approach preserves the client’s autonomy while strengthening the therapeutic alliance.
Presence Requires More than Silence
Being present isn’t the same as sitting quietly while waiting for a client to finish speaking. It’s not giving the client an hour to vent without any intervention. The client doesn’t need to attend therapy for that. Presence is active.
Presence can be communicated through attentive body language, clarifying questions, reflection, and willingness to follow the client’s pace. It requires the counselor to notice not only what the client says, but also what might be hard for them to say or what they can’t find the words for. However, helping doesn’t mean filling the silence too quickly. Being comfortable with silence requires active presence; both paying attention as well as being patient.
Active presence helps the client feel seen as a whole person rather than just as a clinical case or problem to solve.
Presence Creates the Conditions for Change
Counseling is often associated with change, but people may struggle to change when they feel judged, unseen, or pressured. A strong therapeutic relationship creates the emotional safety necessary for honest reflection.
When clients feel deeply heard, they may become more willing to explore painful experiences, consider contradictions, question long-standing beliefs, and develop new ways of responding. Feeling seen can reduce the need for defensiveness and make room for greater self-awareness.
Presence does not eliminate the need for evidence-based interventions, boundaries, and clinical expertise. Instead, it creates the foundation for a relationship that allows the clinical elements to be used effectively.
All of the concepts that we focus on in school: technique, treatment planning, counseling approaches all matter. None of them, however, can replace the experience of one human giving another human careful and respectful attention.
Remaining with the Person
Being present in counseling asks professionals to resist several powerful impulses: the impulse to fix, the impulse to teach, the impulse to prove expertise, and the impulse to view the client’s life through the counselor’s own lense.
Instead, the counselor begins with curiosity.
What does this experience mean to this person? What is the client seeing that others might have missed? What emotions, values, fears, or other hops are shaping the client’s understanding? What becomes possible when the client no longer has to struggle to be heard?
As How to Know a Person reminds us, meaningful connection begins when people experience themselves as genuinely seen. The counselor’s task is not always to understand everything immediately or to produce a quick solution. Sometimes the most therapeutic response is to remain attentive, compassionate, and willing to accompany the client through what cannot yet be resolved. In such moments, presence is the intervention.
Reference
Brooks, D. (2023) How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. Random House.