If We Can't Tolerate the Questions, We're Not on Firm Footing

Today I asked a new client what happens internally when they feel stressed.

“I feel it in my chest and shoulders.”

“What is the quality of that sensation?”

There’s a pause, and then a confused, slightly disgruntled look. “I do not know. It feels… tight, I guess?”

I explained that I would be asking questions like this to build awareness. I noticed my own discomfort in the room. The impulse to shy away from my authority as a therapist showed up, partially because I’m in unfamiliar territory with a new client.

And just for clarity, when I use the word authority, I mean this: a person with extensive or specialized knowledge about a subject; an expert.

I’m still learning to tolerate the questions I ask that challenge my clients to be present. Because sitting with “I don’t know” means I cannot interpret their experience for them. I have to let them be uncertain. I have to be uncertain with them.

The urge to resolve, explain, and restore certainty is not unique to therapy. I recognize that pull from somewhere else: the religious systems I grew up in, where questions were treated as threats rather than pathways to connection.

When Questions Become Threats

In fundamentalist spaces, I learned early that certain questions functioned like walls. The conversation ended with platitudes.

“Just trust God’s plan.”
“His ways are mysterious.”
“There’s so much we simply don’t understand.”

There’s truth in those statements. Faith does involve living with unanswered questions. But I began to notice that the room would change when my questions lingered too long.

If I wondered why suffering existed, the answers were caring and patient. But if I asked how we knew the Bible was the ultimate authority, or whether it could be wrong, the conversation constricted.

If I named that I wasn’t sure I wanted to practice faith the way we were practicing it, the shift was immediate. My curiosity shifted from being seen as a sign of engagement to something that needed to be contained.

My questions weren’t explored. They were managed as threats.

I began to understand that certain questions carried consequences. As a child, I didn’t have language for that. I only knew that something in me went quiet. My question was treated as resolved, even though nothing inside me had settled.

What I wanted and needed was leadership. That meant someone willing and able to stay present in the uncertainty with me. Instead, I learned that some questions destabilized both doctrine and belonging. And when that happened, the structure protected itself.

The system could not hold both my questions and its authority. So it made me choose.

The Same Logic in Different Rooms

I see this pattern replicated in some therapeutic spaces.

A client brings in uncertainty, and we rush to name it—diagnosis, disorder, neurodivergence. Naming can be grounding and necessary. But when interpretation replaces presence, it becomes a way to stop feeling the tension of not knowing. The growth of curiosity in the moment stops in its tracks.

A client hesitates about a new way of working, and we overexplain. We think we are being helpful. Sometimes we are. But sometimes the explanation is serving us—so we do not have to feel their fear, or our own worry that they will not know how to follow. That we will not know how to lead them.

A client pushes back or responds in an unexpected way. The label: "defensiveness," "resistance."

Different setting, same logic: the moment is not held in curiosity. Instead, it is dissected and overanalyzed, which ultimately dismisses the client.

This shows up in treatment models that require belief in the framework for it to 'work.' In language about 'resistance' that positions disagreement as pathology. In power dynamics where the therapist's interpretation carries more weight than the client's lived experience.

And every time we need the client to immediately follow along in order to feel competent, we drift toward the same kind of authority I learned to fear.

When I feel that pull to provide certainty—to offer a framework, to diagnose, to resolve the “I don’t know”—I’m not protecting my client from confusion. I’m protecting myself from the discomfort of not having answers.

That is what high-control religion and rigid therapy share. They prioritize the stability of the structure over the lived experience of the person inside it. Questions get handled with language that restores authority. Cliché in one room. Clinical terminology in another.

For clients healing from religious trauma, this matters. They come to therapy to relearn how to trust themselves. If we cannot tolerate their uncertainty, we risk becoming another system that asks them to surrender their questions in order to stay.

What It Looks Like to Welcome Questions

Therapeutic presence can hold questions with curiosity, care, and compassion, supporting the client to learn how to heal, self-regulate, and make decisions.

This means:

Commitment to transparency. Being clear about what I'm doing. "I'm curious about that tightness. Can you stay with it for a moment and tell me what you notice?"

Leading with curiosity. If something isn't working for you, that's information we need to pay attention to.

Meeting clients in their uncertainty rather than overexplaining it away. When a client says "I don't know," that's a place to pause, notice and see what emerges.

Recognizing autonomy as collaboration, not resistance. When a client wants to approach something differently, that's valuable information about the state of their system.

Willingness to examine our own fears. When I feel uncomfortable with a client's question or uncertainty, that's an opportunity. I see it as a growth edge being given to me.

The Measure of Authority

If we can’t tolerate questions, we’re not on firm footing.

Authority that depends on certainty, compliance, or being right is fragile.

Real authority can stay present when answers don’t arrive. It doesn’t rush to interpret in order to feel steady. It doesn’t collapse when a client hesitates, doubts, or pushes back. It understands that uncertainty is not a failure of the work. It is part of the work.

The ability to stay with questions is a nervous system capacity.

When we rush to resolve, explain, or diagnose, we are providing more than information. We are trying to provide regulation for ourselves. We are relieving our own discomfort with not knowing. Clients feel that, even when our language sounds supportive.

Healing doesn’t happen because the therapist has the best answer. It happens because the client learns they don’t have to abandon their own autonomy to stay in relationship. For clients with histories of religious or institutional trauma, this is often the work. Learning that uncertainty doesn’t cost them connection or belonging.

If therapy asks them to surrender their questions in order to belong, we’re risking recreating the very systems they came to heal from.

The question, then, isn’t whether we have the ‘right’ model, framework, or interpretation.

It’s whether we can stay with the moment, without needing it to resolve to feel secure.

A Question for Fellow Therapists

When a client questions your approach, either overtly or covertly, what's your first internal response?