How to 'Hold Space' + What It Actually Means
“Holding space allows us to build a fortress around a given experience or emotion so that we can be vulnerable, be curious, and be human in a world that wants us to be anything but. It creates a forum to feel safe and make sense of our lived experiences. ”
What does it mean to ‘hold space’ for yourself and for others?
Those of us who work in the mental health profession tend to have our own language of sorts, which thankfully, is becoming more “mainstream” as— slowly but surely— the wellness community grows.
Even still, as I was writing some of my social media content this last week, I found myself caught on two words: “hold space.” How often I use it but how little I truly reflect on the power within these two words!
That being said, I wanted to hold space here in the online world for us to break those two words down together— what they mean, how to actually do it, and how imperative it is to your mental health.
What Does ‘Hold Space’ Even Mean?
“When you hold space, you create an environment of emotional, physical, and mental presence for yourself or someone. You put the rest of the world on pause in order to be exactly where you are.”
Over time, we humans have spent less and less time processing our emotions and experiences, despite the fact that with time, we have more emotions and experiences to process. Emotions are complex, multifaceted things that often have more of an impact on us than we can understand when we don’t pay them mind.
In the midst of the hustle/grind/success culture that we live in, we have started to operate from a scarcity mindset where our healing is concerned. We either don’t have enough time, or enough energy, or enough self-compassion to put in the work of emotional processing. We simply barrel on through life, squashing our feelings down without any idea how significantly that is chiseling away at our nervous systems and our wellbeing.
When you hold space, you create an environment of emotional, physical, and mental presence for yourself or someone. You put the rest of the world on pause in order to be exactly where you are for an explicit purpose: to support someone else in their grief, to witness your own grief with self-compassion, to process difficult emotions like anger or guilt, and so forth.
It all sounds so fundamental, but so few of us know how to do it. Our minds are always elsewhere, which can singlehandedly invalidate an emotion or experience without our even trying.
Holding space allows us to build a fortress around a given experience or emotion so that we can be vulnerable, be curious, and be human in a world that wants us to be anything but. It creates a forum to feel safe and make sense of our lived experiences.
3 Tips for Holding Space for Others
Refrain from jumping straight into problem-solving mode. When we want to help, we often come rushing in with a laundry list of advice and solutions. Although this is often remarkably well-intentioned, it can often have the opposite effect, instead making someone feel like they aren’t allowed to exist in the emotional space that they need right now. They might not only feel the terrible pressure of moving on but might feel like moving forward is entirely impossible. Don’t underestimate the power of just being there. It is a powerful thing to witness simply by sitting and listening.
Don’t insert yourself in the situation. Again, while typically so well-intentioned, attempting to empathize is less helpful than we like to think. There is a time and a place to discuss your own experiences, but that isn’t when you are holding space for someone’s grief or other difficult emotions.
Focus your listening on what is being said, not on what you are going to say next. There’s no script for holding space for someone. Practice active listening, repeating back what the individual said to be sure you understood before responding.
It’s also important to remember that holding space wears on you, the space-holder, too. Be sure to tend to your own needs and ramp up the self-care after holding space for someone else.
3 Tips for Holding Space for Yourself
Operate from a place of self-compassion. If you’re judging yourself for the thoughts that come up, if you’re chastising yourself for being too sensitive, if you’re keeping your space to a half hour time block between lunch and your next meeting: You’re not holding space. Truly holding space means leaving judgment and expectations by the wayside and just being where you are with what you are experiencing. (Read: The Difference Between Self-Compassion and Self-Care)
Practice mindfulness. Holding space isn’t old hat for many of us. It requires patience and practice. Mindfulness is a great place to start when seeking to hold more space for yourself. Practice meditation; move slowly through your day; ground yourself in specific moments of your life, taking care to notice how you feel, what the world around you looks like, the sensations flowing through you.
Validate all of it. With every thought or emotion or conscious sensation you experience: Validate it. Remind yourself that it is justified. That you are only human. That you are worthy of this space.
Creating space is far more nuanced than anything else we do as humans. It isn’t a step-by-step quite so much as it’s a pick-your-own-path book. We all have different needs and processes given all of our different emotions and experiences, and it requires practice and self-compassion to learn how to truly hold space.
For more insights into the complexity of our emotions and why holding space is so crucial, read: Why is Grief So Hard to Overcome?