Here-and-Now Mentalization: A Tool for Stuck Moments

Every therapist, and honestly every person who cares for other people, eventually runs into the same wall: a moment where you feel completely stuck with someone. Nothing you say seems to land. Nothing shifts. I want to offer a tool for exactly that moment, because it’s changed how I work with the clients I find most difficult to reach.

The tool is a specific, focused kind of mentalization — trying to imagine what’s happening inside another person. But the key shift is timing. Instead of imagining how someone felt about a past situation, you focus entirely on how they’re feeling about the work happening right now, in the room, and how they’re feeling toward you, specifically, in this moment.

Here’s a small example of the difference. If a client seems hesitant to confront someone in their life, the distant version of a reflection might be, “it seems like you’re hesitant to talk to this person.” True, but one step removed. The here-and-now version is different: “right now, with me, it seems like you’re hesitant to even consider the possibility of talking to this person — like there’s some resistance to even looking at that.” That small shift in timing changes everything about how present the moment feels.

This becomes especially important around shame. When someone starts approaching something they’re ashamed of, I’ve learned to name it directly and immediately: “it looks like you’re feeling ashamed to talk about this, right now, with me.” And then, gently, “what do you imagine I’m feeling toward you, here and now?” Some people find that question uncomfortable in a specific way — they’re afraid to let in the possibility that what’s coming toward them is actually good. They don’t trust it, or they assume it won’t last past the end of the session. Making room for that fear, out loud, is often more useful than trying to reassure it away.

The reason this matters so much is that most of what we’re trying to help people access is, by definition, something they’ve repressed. They don’t know what they don’t know. That material doesn’t surface through explanation — it surfaces through what happens between two people, live, in real time. A person’s behavior in the room, right now, is often the clearest window we have into what’s been buried.

You don’t have to be a therapist to use a version of this. The next time you find yourself stuck with someone you love — a spouse, a child, a close friend — try shifting the question from what happened to what’s happening between us right now. It’s a small change in timing that tends to open doors explanation alone cannot.