Conclusion
When a therapist or therapeutic relationship becomes the most important part of a client's self soothing effort, not only can it drain a therapist but it can also be counterproductive to the client's own journey. In fact, a therapist's over-involvement in soothing a client through empathy, validation, affirmation and lending ego may well undermine a client's own efforts by encouraging reliance on other validation or soothing. If coming to therapy temporarily relieves them of discomfort and anxiety, then how can they learn to rely on their own resources? Bowen expressed this in the following way: "When the therapist allows himself to become a 'healer' or 'repairman' the family goes into dysfunction to wait for the therapist to accomplish his work" (Bowen, 1978 p 157-158)
Rather than trying to teach self soothing the therapist can seek to create an environment in which a client's self soothing resources may emerge and develop. The most important contribution a therapist can make is to work toward reducing their own importance in the clinical process in the face of the anxious client's push to define them as the expert who can fix the problem.
For me, this requires an ongoing focus on the development of my own capacity to self regulate, because sitting with human need and distress activates my own emotional orientation to caretaking and problem solving. When I can restrain my impulse to step in and soothe the client, I am, paradoxically, more able to engage compassionately with another's suffering without feeling the need to relieve them of it. I believe that this involves no less compassion, but rather, compassion held hand in hand with an acceptance of and ability to tolerate the inevitability and inescapability of human pain and suffering.