Reflection · Theory
What neurobiology has changed in how I sit with people
Psychodynamic work was built long before we could watch a nervous system settle. Studying neurobiology has not replaced that thinking for me — it has given it a body.
I am part-way through a course on neurobiology and its applications to psychotherapy, and it keeps quietly rearranging small things in my practice. Not the theory I work from, but the pace of it.
Regulation before insight
Interpretation lands very differently in a settled body than in an activated one. Where I might once have followed an idea, I am now more willing to slow down, notice breathing and posture, and let the room become safe enough for the idea to be bearable. Insight that arrives before regulation tends not to stay.
Why the relationship is the mechanism
What the research describes as co-regulation is close to what psychodynamic practice has always called the therapeutic relationship. Something in being reliably attended to, week after week, does the work that explanation alone cannot. It has made me more patient with slow beginnings.
What I am still holding lightly
Brain language can be used to close conversations down as easily as to open them. I try to use it as a description of experience rather than a verdict on a person, and I keep returning to what the client themselves notices changing.