Episode #26
The Therapist and The Coach Podcast - EP 026
Episode 26: Who Holds the Helpers? In this episode, Lerae and Oren turn their attention toward the people who spend their lives holding space for others—and ask a question that is too often overlooked: who is holding them? What begins as a reflection on the emotional reality of coaching, therapy, and other helping professions becomes a deeper conversation about the limits of knowledge, training, and technique. Helpers can continue accumulating certifications and learning new methodologies, yet still find themselves depleted, triggered, uncertain, or alone with what happens inside them while sitting across from another human being. Lerae and Oren explore the need for spaces where professionals can speak honestly about the work, the relationships they form with clients, the places they become activated, and what it actually means to keep developing not only as practitioners, but as people. At the heart of the conversation is a powerful distinction between knowing what to do and having the capacity to truly be with someone. Lerae shares the story of a client whose progress did not come from another strategy or solution, but from being accompanied through a period of uncertainty long enough for something deeper to emerge. Rather than forcing movement, she stayed beside him. In that spaciousness, he began attending to an important relationship in his life, and movement elsewhere followed organically. Together, Lerae and Oren reflect on how difficult it can be for helpers to tolerate not knowing, to recognize their own triggers and limitations, and to discern when another kind of support or referral may serve a client more fully. The work asks not only for skill, but for self-awareness, regulation, humility, and the willingness to trust that transformation does not always happen on the timeline we would choose. The conversation ultimately becomes something more than an exploration of professional practice. Lerae and Oren begin imagining the kind of space they themselves have found so nourishing in their relationship: a place for coaches, therapists, healers, and helpers to come together without the pressure to perform, earn another credential, or arrive with an answer. A place to bring cases, questions, reactions, uncertainty, and themselves; to draw on collective wisdom; to co-regulate, restore, and continue growing in community. What emerges is a reminder that the quality of what a helper can offer another person is intimately connected to the care, support, and development available to the helper themselves. Sometimes the most responsible thing a person who holds others can do is allow themselves to be held too. We cannot continually offer from an empty place. Sometimes the next level of our work does not require learning more—it requires having somewhere we can be fully human, supported, and nourished enough to return to those we serve.
