A stop sign or traffic light. A comma in a sentence. Intermission in a movie. A timeout in a game.
Examples of slowing down and pausing abound in our lives. Yet, we often fail to do so. We fail to slow down and pause or stop and then deliberate and decide.
Instead, impulse and instinct toss us about as if we exist on a life raft in the open ocean. The failure to slow down, pause, and act with thoughtfulness feeds many personal and social challenges. The absurd repetition of destructive behavior is evidence enough.
The pause stands at the heart of freedom. As Rollo May (1975) said, “Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, to choose….” (p. 100)
E-H Therapy calls on several micro-skills to activate and cultivate presence toward illumination, understanding, and ultimately greater freedom. Slowing down and pausing are stalwart skills.
Slowing down and pausing allow our clients to bring awareness to their experience and way of being, whether thought, feeling, or behavior. For example, we might say, “Maybe you could pause for a moment and get in touch with that feeling.” Or “Take a second and then tell me what is going on for you.”
Slowing down and pausing are likewise critical to our therapeutic choice. The space created allows time to reflect on our experience, to consider what it means and thus what to do. It can be the difference between “acting out” and transformative intervention.
Finally, slowing down and pausing open space between client and therapist. The space allows reflection on what is happening “here and now,” between. It consequently opens possibilities and opportunities for client and therapist.
Links to Related Resources and Blog Posts:
May, R. (1975). The courage to create. WW Norton & Company: New York-Buy From Powell’s Books | Buy From Thrift Books | Buy From Amazon
Read the posts on Micro-Skills here on EHI’s blog.
Read all the Existential Moment series posts on EHI’s blog..
The Existential Moment: E-H Informed Couples Therapy —The Relational Field
October 1, 2026
Earlier this year, The Existential Moment began exploring an E-H-informed approach to couples therapy. After sketching the framework (May) and considering distress and health (June), this month turns to a theory of relational organization: how two distinct “ways of being” meet to construct and sustain a shared “world.” This frame offers the clinician an orienting touchstone so that distress can be understood and change can be facilitated more intentionally.
Within E-H’s “Dimensions of the Therapeutic Encounter,” the interpersonal dimension provides a useful parallel. It directs attention toward the therapist-client relationship as it is being lived in the here-and-now. How do we affect one another? What’s the quality of the “between” us? What ways of being emerge within the relationship? In couples work, this relational process becomes the basis for understanding how two lived lives come together and begin to influence and organize one another.