Why Some Sessions Feel Off
(And What I've Learned to Do About It)
In an attempt to create a positive experience for every client, I've been thinking hard about why some appointments end up feeling awkward or forced. Most people chalk it up to chemistry and leave it at that. But chemistry can, to an extent, be forced or faked — which means it's not really a valid excuse. My theory is that it has more to do with my own reactions to certain triggers: something a client says, or doesn't say, or even just the energy he gives off. So I started looking for patterns in the sessions I'd consider not my best work.
I landed on a couple of conclusions.
The first is that I've always been reciprocal.
I'll spare you the psychoanalysis of why, but the short version is: I tend to mirror back whatever energy I'm given. I've noticed the same thing in my personal relationships — my mood was hugely dependent on my partner's. My day was only good if his was good. I caught onto this pattern because the sessions where I felt (and came off) anxious were, without exception, with clients who were themselves anxious. Awkwardness only bred more awkwardness.
It's not something I do on purpose, and for a long time I didn't even clock it as a pattern — it just felt like "some sessions are good and some aren't." But once I started paying attention, I could feel it happening in real time. A client comes in a little tense, unsure of themselves, over-explaining or apologizing for small things, and I notice my own voice getting a little tighter, my laugh a little more careful. I'm not deciding to do that. It just happens, the same way you can't help but talk a little quieter in a quiet room.
The flip side is just as telling. The sessions I'd call my best work weren't necessarily with the most experienced or confident clients — they were the ones where, for whatever reason, I stayed relaxed from the first few minutes, and that ease had somewhere to go. It fed back into the room and the client settled into it too. Good energy compounds the same way awkward energy does. That's what convinced me this wasn't really about who the client was. It was about which version of myself showed up first and set the tone.
Now that I'm aware of it, I'm working on catching it in real time — treating the first few minutes of a session almost like a reset, where I'm deliberately checking my own state instead of absorbing whatever's already in the room. Instead of compounding the negative energy, I'm learning to actively counteract it to put the client at ease.
As a client, the best thing you can do to set a session up for success is simple: put out the vibe you actually want back.
The second conclusion is that I really don't like feeling analyzed, or like I'm under a microscope.
I'd much rather talk about you than about me, and I'd rather volunteer information than be quizzed on my life. There's a real difference between being asked something and being interrogated, and I feel that difference immediately. The moment a conversation turns into question after question — about my background, my day, why I do this work — I feel myself pull back. Not because I have anything to hide, but because it stops feeling like a conversation and starts feeling like an audit.
I see this pattern outside of work too. In friendships, I'm usually the one who remembers the small details of your life, but I tend to volunteer very little about mine unless I choose to. It's not secrecy. It's that I want the exchange to happen on my terms and at my pace, not on someone else's timeline.
In a session, this shows up as a kind of quiet stiffening. When a client leads with a string of personal questions, I feel myself shift into something closer to interview mode — and that shift is almost impossible to fully hide, even when I'm actively trying to stay warm. The energy in the room changes, and not for the better.
If you want a session to feel like connection instead of small talk, don't front-load it with questions. Let information come out the way it does in a real conversation — and you'll get more of me, not less.
Put together, these two things explain a lot. The sessions that felt the most natural weren't the ones where the client was the most relaxed going in — they were the ones where I stayed grounded enough not to absorb their energy, and where the conversation flowed toward them instead of circling back to me. Both of those are things I can actually work on, which is a relief. It means "bad chemistry" was never really the problem. My reaction to it was.
If you've ever left an appointment (with me or anyone) feeling like something was just a little off, it's worth asking: was it really chemistry, or was it just two people mirroring each other's nerves? Once you know what to look for, it's a lot easier to fix.
