Max Littman, LCSW
February 17, 2026
There is a reality many therapists do not always recognize or explicitly name in therapy: clients often have more access to Self in session than they do between sessions.
In the container of therapy, clients may experience a clarity, curiosity, compassion, spaciousness, steadiness, and so on that surprises them. They notice parts rather than being blended with them. They relate internally instead of reacting. They may describe this shift with phrases like, “I don’t know why I can see it so clearly right now,” or “I wish I could stay like this all week.”
Often, without meaning to, therapy culture treats this state as a preview of how clients could or should function outside the therapy room. This is usually not explicitly stated, but it is implied. Sessions become a reference point, a felt sense of how things can be, and a demonstration of capacity.
Then life resumes. Emails arrive. Relationships tug. Old environments reactivate old roles. Protectors return to familiar posts with familiar intensity and blending.
When this contrast between therapy and “real life” is not acknowledged, many clients assume the difference means something about them. A manager may conclude they are failing. A critic may say they are regressing. A discouraged part may wonder whether the clarity in session was real at all. A firefighter might numb out.
What often goes unspoken is that therapy is not a neutral, natural, or wild environment. It is a carefully structured relational field. There is containment. There is attunement. There is someone tracking your system with you. There is permission, and sometimes invitations, to pause. There is a shared belief and intention that inner experience matters. These conditions are regulatory, organizing, and supportive in ways daily life rarely is.
The conditions of therapy and the therapeutic relationship create a place where the pace slows, attention turns inward, nervous systems sense accompaniment, and minds, that usually scan outward for cues of danger or demand, are willing to look within.
From an IFS lens, protectors often permit more space for Self in session because they sense they are not alone in guarding the system; the therapist’s attuned presence functions as a temporary co-regulator and witness. From a spiritual perspective, the room can become a small sanctuary where striving loosens and something larger than effort is allowed to move. Relationally, being seen without demand or agenda signals safety in ways many nervous systems rarely experience. Neurobiologically, this convergence of slowed pace, focused attention, and responsive connection shifts autonomic state toward regulation, making it more likely that networks associated with curiosity, compassion, and integration come online while threat-detection circuits soften their grip.
In other words, access to Self is not only an individual achievement. It is also relationally scaffolded.
When we as therapists do not name this, our clients may develop an invisible expectation of themselves: I can and should reproduce session-level Self energy on my own. The expectation is usually impossible to achieve. Our clients don’t lack the capacity, but the conditions “in the wild” are different. Expecting identical access outside a session is like expecting the body to recover at the same rate during a sprint as during rest. The nervous system and our psyches do not work that way.
The cost of this unspoken expectation can be subtle. Some clients push themselves to generate Self qualities on demand. Some try to perform calm or curiosity. Some parts attempt to imitate Self rather than wait for it. Other parts withdraw entirely, convinced they are doing therapy wrong. None of these responses are signs of failure. They are intelligent adaptations to hidden demands.
When this discrepancy is spoken about directly, clients often experience relief, both intellectually and somatically. Protectors soften when they learn they do not have to maintain session conditions alone. Exiles feel less ashamed when the loss of clarity is understood as contextual rather than personal.
Naming this reality also opens a different kind of therapeutic work. Instead of trying to replicate session states, we can become curious together about what helps even a small amount of Self come forward between sessions. Not the same amount. Not the same quality. Just more than before.
A striving part might want a checklist. A doubtful part might predict disappointment. A vigilant part might insist the outside world is not safe enough for inner openness. A hopeful part might already be imagining what could help. Each of these responses carries information about what the system needs in order to allow more presence of Self during the week.
Sometimes what helps is very small. A pause before responding to a text. A hand on the chest. A moment of noticing breath. A brief inner hello to a part. These actions don’t guarantee access to Self, but they can remind protectors and exiles that they are not alone or abandoned and that Self exists even if it is not currently accessed.
It can also help when we explicitly frame between-session life as a different environment. Sessions are carefully controlled laboratories. Life is wild and unpredictable. Skills learned in one arena are translated, not duplicated, in the other.
Over time, many clients discover that Self outside session does not have to look exactly like Self inside session. In the room, Self might feel spacious and unhurried. In daily life, it might appear as a two second pause, a slightly softer tone, or the decision not to escalate. The scale and quality may change, but the presence is still real and felt.
It can be stabilizing for clients to recognize that therapy is not meant to make them identical in their daily lives to who they are in session or to recreate what they experience there. This stabilization can be understood as helping their system see and know Self across different dimensions, even in brief or partial ways, in ordinary moments, and even when no one else is there to witness it.
For feedback and comments, I can be reached at max@maxlittman.com.
I provide consultation and therapy for therapists.
Purchase my new book IFS Therapy for Gay and Queer Men here.
