What Does My Client’s Voice Say About the Story They Are Sharing—and How Can I Intervene?
Facilitating appropriate levels of emotional arousal for the processing of pain or maladaptive/problematic emotions is essential in Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT).
Research shows that clients who improve most in therapy are those who are supported to:
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Access their pain, and
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Process it at appropriate moments in therapy.
However, no one naturally wants to approach pain. Clients may come to therapy, but often hold themselves back from going to those painful places. All they want is to stop feeling the pain, and in their effort to do so, they try to stop themselves from feeling at all.
Clients have many ways of avoiding painful topics—such as taking a sip of water just as they approach something emotional, smiling, taking a deep breath, or suddenly changing the subject. These subtle behaviors often occur right at the edge of emotional contact.
In those moments, the therapist may “hear” the emotion being choked back—a limited or strained voice. Other times, clients tell stories they’ve repeated many times before. These are often shared in a neutral, fast-paced, or loud voice, indicating low emotional activation and a more externalized stance.
Emotional Over-activation and the Need for Regulation
On the other end, emotions can become over-activated, leaving the client feeling overwhelmed. In these moments, the quality of their voice becomes more emotional, and normal speech patterns are disrupted.
All of these vocal cues indicate that the client is either approaching something emotionally significant or trying to protect themselves from it. These are moments that call for therapist intervention.
Why Optimal regulation Matters: Avoiding Hypo- and Hyper-Arousal
Consistent research findings from various therapeutic approaches show that it is neither desirable nor productive for clients to enter hypo-activation (emotional shutdown) or hyper-activation (emotional flooding). In these states, the autonomic nervous system either shuts down or fires intensely, making emotional processing impossible.
Clients may:
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Lose access to words
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Struggle to make meaning of their emotions
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Get stuck in loops of painful feelings or repetitive stories
This can lead to a sense that therapy isn’t progressing. In such moments, the therapist must know how to help the client get unstuck and move toward more adaptive emotional experiences.
Emotional Arousal Predicts Therapeutic Improvement
Research supports that a heightened level of emotional arousal is necessary for emotional processing and positive therapeutic outcomes (Missirlian, Toukmanian, Warwar, & Greenberg, 2005).
Increased arousal, when regulated and supported, predicts:
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Reduction in depression and psychological symptoms
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Increased self-esteem
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Emotional clarity and meaning-making
But the timing and method are crucial. Emotional deepening must happen at the right moment, with the right kind of support. As therapists, we must be concerned with:
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When is it productive to deepen emotional experiencing?
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When is it necessary to help the client regulate?
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And then, when do we return to truly process what hurts?
Avoidance vs. Protection from Pain
As EFT therapists, we aim to help clients deepen and explore emotion when it’s appropriate. At other times, it may be more useful to help clients understand how they stop themselves from going to those emotional places. While some might call this “avoidance,” in EFT we see it as protection from pain.
When clients are dys-regulated—when “the emotion has them instead of them having the emotion”—our task is to help them feel grounded, connected, and safe.
Attuning to Voice and Emotion in therapy
The therapist’s empathic attunement to vocal quality, combined with timely and appropriate interventions, can deepen the client’s emotional experiencing.
Different types of empathic interventions in EFT:
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Help clients turn attention inward
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Facilitate contact with bodily-held emotion
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Support clients in making sense of their experience
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Encourage emotionally congruent expression through words and tone (Geller, 2019)
When Do We Process What Hurts?
When (and how) is productive to deepen client’s experiencing? When (and how) is productive to help client regulate? And how to facilitate clients to really process what hurts? This is where the magic happens!Want to Learn More?
To learn more about empathic attunement, working with emotional arousal, and the types of empathic interventions used in EFT, reach out to us at: info@eft.cy
Reference for this post: Michael, C., (2025).What Does My Client’s Voice Say About the Story They Are Sharing—and How Can I Intervene? Online article.
References mentioned:
Geller, S. M. (2019). A practical guide to cultivating therapeutic presence. American Psychological Association.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0000136-000
Missirlian, T. M., Toukmanian, S. G., Warwar, S. H., & Greenberg, L. S. (2005). Perceived helper expressiveness, client emotional arousal and the working alliance in experiential therapy for depression. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 5(1), 20–27.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14733140512331343868
Rosner, R. (1996). The role of emotional arousal in therapeutic change: An empirical investigation. [Doctoral dissertation, University of Hamburg].
Warwar, S. H. (2003). A process-experiential investigation of emotional arousal and productive emotional processing in experiential therapy for depression [Doctoral dissertation, York University].
