I am an artist, teacher, and lifelong psychology student.  I believe in our inherent potential for growth, self-actualization, and healing. Connect with the community on social media platforms, subscribe to keep up with this growing community, and to participate in upcoming group art sessions. We focus on the whole person, in a safe, empathetic, and non-judgmental space to explore our authentic selves, fostering personal meaning and emotional well-being through genuine connection. ~Doria R. G. 

“When people see truth visualized, it bypasses the carnal noise of mental chatter and speaks directly to the nervous system. The image becomes a mirror for the psyche — helping people feel what the intellect alone could never quite articulate.”
~Cup of Peace

The Space Before Choice

Stress can narrow our perspective until one interpretation feels like the only one available. Creating enough safety, time, and space allows us to hold more than one possibility long enough to think. When the field widens, choice becomes possible again.

When the Field Narrows

Most of us know the moment when our perspective suddenly narrows. Someone says something, and we know what they meant. A friend does not return a call, and we know why. A colleague gives us a certain look, and before we even leave the room, an entire explanation has formed around it. They are angry with me. I have done something wrong. They do not respect me. Something is going to happen.

Sometimes our interpretation is correct. Sometimes it is not. But another question may be even more important: Were we able to stay open long enough to consider that there might be another interpretation?

This is an important question for counselors, coaches, holistic practitioners, artists, facilitators, teachers, and anyone whose work involves sitting with another human being while something difficult is unfolding. It is also an important question to ask ourselves. The developmental challenge is not merely teaching people better opinions. It is about strengthening our capacity to remain open long enough to think.

Room to Choose

Flexible thinking requires more from us than we sometimes realize. To consider several interpretations of an experience, we must hold our emotional response in check while also considering context, another person’s perspective, information we may not yet have, and the possibility that our first interpretation is incomplete.

That takes capacity.

When we are rested, safe, connected, and relatively regulated, the field can remain fairly wide. We might think, that bothered me, but perhaps I misunderstood. Maybe something else is happening. I can ask about it. I don’t have to decide yet.

Under stress, that same field can narrow dramatically. Our emotional and cognitive resources are limited. Grief, anxiety, financial pressure, relationship conflict, illness, exhaustion, trauma, information overload, caregiving, loneliness, or simply too many demands arriving at once can reduce the amount of complexity we are able to hold. The other possibilities may not disappear. We may simply lose access to them. One interpretation begins to occupy the entire field.

That is why telling an overwhelmed person to “look at it differently” isn’t always helpful. We may be offering perspective to someone who doesn’t have the capacity to hold another perspective right now. Sometimes we have to reduce the field before we can widen it.

The pause is where freedom begins to be constructed.

The Space Before Choice

We often speak about choice as though it were simply a matter of selecting between available options, but something important happens before choice. First, we need enough internal space for more than one possibility to exist.

This may be what happened.

Something else may also be true.

Perhaps I don’t know yet.

That last sentence is deceptively powerful. To say I don’t know yet requires us to tolerate an unresolved space. We have to resist the very human urge to close uncertainty as quickly as possible. Stress makes this harder. When we feel threatened or overwhelmed, certainty can provide temporary relief. The nervous system wants an answer: Is this safe or dangerous? Is this person with me or against me? Am I succeeding or failing?

Complexity becomes expensive when our resources are already depleted, and sometimes we exchange complexity for certainty. The problem is that certainty may reduce discomfort without increasing accuracy. Meaningful choice therefore requires more than having options. It requires enough capacity to keep the field open while those options become visible.

We need enough capacity to contain an experience, enough containment to remain with it, and enough time for another perspective to emerge. Only then does a genuine choice point begin to emerge.

Finding Traction

I have always loved the expression, “My existence is resistance.”

Resistance is often imagined as opposition—pushing against something, refusing something, fighting back. But another kind of resistance is essential to psychological development.

It is traction.

There is the experience, and then there is me experiencing it. Those are not quite the same thing, and that distinction gives us somewhere to stand. I can feel anger without becoming only anger. I can experience fear without requiring fear to explain the entire situation. I can notice a thought without immediately treating the thought as fact.

Too little resistance and we may be swept up in whatever is happening around or within us. Too much resistance and we become rigid, unable to receive new information. What we are looking for is something flexible: enough structure to maintain our position and enough openness to move around.

Freedom requires structure—but structure flexible enough to permit movement.
That small amount of psychological traction creates a pause between experience and response. The pause is not the absence of action. The pause is where freedom begins to be constructed.

Freedom requires structure—but structure flexible enough to permit movement.

One Page, One Canvas

This is one reason art and journaling can be so useful when the internal field becomes crowded. A blank page creates a boundary. A canvas creates a boundary. For a moment, we do not have to organize the entire world. There is simply this page, this mark, this word, this color, this shape. The canvas does not interrupt us. It does not argue with our experience or demand that we explain ourselves. It does not insist that we arrive at an answer. There is simply a relationship between self and material.

Something that was entirely internal can now be placed outside of us. Experience becomes expression; expression creates a little distance; distance makes observation possible; and observation may make room for another perspective. The drawing does not have to be beautiful. The journal entry does not have to be wise. Nothing needs to be solved. The act of making can simply create enough space for us to see what we could not see while we were fully immersed in the experience.

Now there is the feeling, and there is the person observing it. There is the story, and there is the person reading it. There is the image, and there is the person standing before it. The field has quietly expanded.

Holding the Field

Sometimes we cannot create that space alone, and this may be one of the most valuable things another human being can offer us. A counselor, coach, facilitator, teacher, friend, art therapist, or holistic practitioner does not always need to provide an answer. Sometimes their most important contribution is helping us keep the field open long enough to regain our own capacity.

This changes the question for those of us who work with people. Instead of immediately asking, What does this person need to understand? we might first ask: What is happening in the whole field that is affecting this person’s capacity to think, feel, relate, and choose?

Perhaps they do not need another interpretation yet. Perhaps they need less stimulation. Perhaps they need a boundary, movement, silence, a walk, a page, a paintbrush, a safe room, a familiar ritual, or another regulated human being. Perhaps the field simply needs to become smaller for a while.

One page. One canvas. One question. One breath. One trustworthy person. One additional possibility. Then, as capacity returns, the aperture can widen.

We don’t always need a better answer. Sometimes we need enough safety, time, and capacity to stay open long enough for another option to emerge.

Widening the Aperture

This distinction matters in holistic work. We don’t merely work with thoughts. Human beings think and experience through their bodies, relationships, histories, environments, emotions, identities, and nervous systems.
Our capacity changes with the conditions surrounding us.

Good helping therefore does not always mean asking someone to hold more. Sometimes it means helping create the conditions in which holding becomes possible again. Perhaps peace is not always the absence of conflict, confusion, or uncertainty. Sometimes peace is the small amount of space we create around them. It is the moment in which we can say:

This is what I see right now, but perhaps it is not everything there is to see. That little perhaps matters. It introduces another degree of freedom.

Room for Perhaps

For those of us who accompany people through change, our work isn’t necessarily to provide the better answer, correct another person’s perspective, or rush someone toward resolution. Sometimes our work is much quieter. We help protect the space before choice. We reduce the field when it becomes overwhelming and gently widen it when capacity returns. We offer enough steadiness so uncertainty does not have to be resolved immediately. We make room for curiosity to return.

Eventually, the person may discover something that could never have been handed to them from the outside: There is more than one way I can understand this. There is more than one way I can respond. Somewhere here, I can stand. And from that place, another possibility becomes visible. We don’t always need a better answer. Sometimes we need enough safety, time, and capacity to stay open long enough for another answer to emerge.