Tiny Tells: Noticing in Therapy

The Little Things That Speak Volumes

Over years of practice, I’ve learned that therapy is about more than words. It’s in the small gestures, pauses, and shifts that real information about someone’s experience often appears. What people do (sometimes without even thinking) can reveal how they’ve learned to manage safety, connection, and emotion over time.

As you read the list below, notice what catches your attention. Do you feel recognition, curiosity, or maybe a little surprise? All of it is part of noticing how we move through the world and relate to others.

Not Just Listening, Noticing

These are the small, real-time behaviours I notice in session that often show how clients manage emotion, closeness, and safety in their relationships.

• Sitting through the entire session even if they need a bathroom break

• Long silences during the session

• Apologizing while crying or trying to hold back tears

• Sharing vulnerable information near the end of a session

• Feeling guilty about being late but not commenting if I am late

• Minimising or softening requests or needs

• Remaining polite and contained even when upset or distressed

• Shifting attention to me instead of themselves

• Looking at my face or tone before speaking

  
  

These behaviours are common and understandable. They reflect the ways people learn to navigate relationships and manage safety over time (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2016; Tomm, 1987; Kashdan et al., 2020).

What These Patterns Can Mean

Over time, I have learned that these behaviours often come from places where expressing needs or emotions felt complicated. Holding a bathroom break can reflect old habits of putting your body’s needs last. Apologizing for crying can be a sign that emotion was once met with discomfort or criticism. Doorknob disclosures often show up when someone wants to share but has learned to keep the most tender things tucked away until the last possible second.

In relational psychodynamic work, these moments are part of the therapy, not interruptions. They tell me something about how someone learned to move through the world. Transference shows up in little micro-moments. My own internal reactions, when reflected on ethically and carefully, can offer clues too (Gelso and Hayes, 2019).

Where Patterns Meet Possibility

Here is what I tend to do when these patterns show up. Think of it as the behind-the-scenes of my approach.

• I slow things down and name what I notice in a gentle, curious way

• I invite us to explore what the moment feels like in your body

• I pay attention to the relational dynamic forming between us and what it might echo

• I use my own reactions thoughtfully, as information, not as truth

• I help you experiment with small shifts in real time, like taking a break, expressing frustration, or letting emotion stay instead of tucking it away

• I create space for corrective emotional experiences so you can feel what it is like to have needs or feelings met with steadiness

• We explore how these patterns developed and how they can soften over time

Therapy is not about getting it right. It is about noticing what shows up between us and using it to create something new. If anything in this list made you pause, smile, sigh, or even cringe a little, that might already be the beginning of something meaningful.

References

Gelso, C. J., & Hayes, J. A. (2019). Countertransference and the therapist’s inner

experience: Perils and possibilities. Routledge.

Kashdan, T. B., et al. (2020). Emotional regulation and relational patterns in

psychotherapy. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 75(4), 582–593.

Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2016). Attachment in adulthood: Structure,

dynamics, and change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Tomm, K. (1987). Interventive interviewing: Part II. Techniques for eliciting meaning and managing the therapeutic relationship. Family Process, 26(2), 167–183.