Tracking affect is a powerful way to help a person feel understood and witnessed

When driving, we must pay attention to road conditions and adjust as needed. Conditions will dictate how you drive that day and is important to monitor, so while it usually wouldn’t alter your route completely, some days it can! In a similar manner, while we may have plans for a session as we greet the client, we need to be ‘tracking’ what’s going on for them and adjust accordingly.

Tracking refers to paying attention to your client’s current state: what they’re talking about and how they’re doing. We need to know clients’ current status in many dimensions and then deliberately use that information to inform how we work in the moment. More specifically: 

• What content they’re discussing or avoiding

• Their affect (observed and reported)

• Readiness for change

• Level of responsibility taking

• Psychological mindedness

• How they think change occurs

• How safe they seem to feel with you

• Themes

• Patterns of cognition

• Anything else your approach suggests you attend to  

If you’ve ever thought of a good question but realized now’s the wrong time because your client currently seems too distressed, you were ‘tracking’ them. Perhaps I’m biased by my EFT leanings, but I think tracking affect is a powerful way to help a person feel understood and witnessed, leaving them more ready to do ‘the work’ that they need to. Ignoring affect, getting it wrong, or not using this info is a great way to have people feel misunderstood. 

However, tracking does not mean follow your clients in content everywhere they might go in an attempt to be extremely client centred. That would be similar to ‘drafting’ a larger vehicle and following it regardless of where you wanted to go, getting off the highway at the wrong exit because that’s where they got off, or ending up in another city! I will discuss being directive and non-directive elsewhere, if this comment bothered you.

Get a feelings wheel and master it.

The more conversant with the language of emotions you are, the more granular you can be in helping clients explore their experience. It helps you track clients better, discern in a more nuanced way when and how to express yourself during sensitive moments, improve your own self-awareness and self-care, and improve your awareness of countertransference.

The stronger your alliance is the more you might be able to ‘push’ your point in a given moment, but a common attribute I track is either anxiety or if a person is shutting down. I think in most cases we want to stick with the ‘zone of proximal development’ and not beyond. For example, it’s usually okay if our discussion is making the client a bit anxious (perhaps a good session to teach and practice grounding/coping/regulation skills) because part of my job is to help them feel supported and safe so we go further than they might alone. 

For example, I’ll monitor how anxious clients are becoming and pause, ask them about it to process, or change the subject as needed. If we’re talking through their next public speaking engagement and my client is tapping their feet and wiping their hands on their pants a bit I’m probably going to slow my pacing down but continue. If they make markedly less eye contact as we progress, talk less and in short answers, even covering the side of their neck with their hand while looking down etc—then I know we went too far and I should have tracked more closely earlier in the conversation.

Fortunately most clients are generous with us and in those moments I’ll give them a moment of silence then I’ll ask something like “what’s it like to be talking about this right now?” I like to use immediacy to process and also investigate feelings, coping styles etc, whatever it is you’re looking for.

Return to Article overview