The Space Between – Noticing What Arises Outside the Room: Interactive Worksheet

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Online Therapy Clinic

Individual Worksheet · Psychodynamic

The Space Between
Noticing What Arises Outside the Room

A weekly practice for holding what happens between sessions, so it can be thought about together

A clinical worksheet from Online Therapy Clinic — Ari Sotiriou MA PGDip (UKCP)

Ari Sotiriou, UK accredited psychotherapist · enquiries@online-therapy-clinic.com Ari Sotiriou provides Psychodynamic Individual and Couples therapy via secure Live Video. Dr Ruxandra Ion provides psychiatric expertise and BABCP-accredited CBT. UK practice · 50-minute sessions, on the hour.

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Your privacy is fully protected This worksheet runs entirely within your browser. Nothing you write is transmitted, stored on a server, or accessible to anyone else. All responses are saved locally on your own device and are cleared only when you choose to reset. Online Therapy Clinic has no access to your answers.

Your progress will be saved automatically as you write.

Complete the worksheet, then save or print your responses

Much of the real work of therapy happens outside the consulting room — in an ordinary conversation, on the drive home, lying awake at night, or in a feeling that arrives without explanation. This worksheet is not a test, and it is not homework in the usual sense. It is somewhere to hold those moments before they fade, so they remain available to think about together.

There are no right answers here. You do not need tidy sentences or finished thoughts. Bullet points are enough. Single words are enough. Even an unfinished sentence is enough — the aim is to leave small footprints, not to produce a polished piece of writing.

Use this worksheet across the week between sessions, adding to it whenever something catches your attention. Bring it with you, in whatever state it is in.

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Before you begin This worksheet is a companion to the article Preparing for the Work Between Sessions, which explores why the period between our meetings matters, and why curiosity — rather than getting things “right” — is what makes this kind of reflection useful.

Exercise One Catching the Moment

As the week unfolds, certain moments tend to stay with us slightly longer than others — a conversation that lingered, a feeling that arrived without an obvious cause, a reaction that seemed larger than the situation warranted. You do not need to understand these moments yet. Simply catching them, as close as possible to when they happened, is enough.

Where in your week do these moments tend to arise? Tick any that feel familiar.

In conversation with someone close to me
When I am alone — driving, walking, in the shower
At work, or in a moment of being evaluated or observed
Lying awake, or in the transition into or out of sleep
In a bodily sensation — tension, tiredness, restlessness — before I have words for it
Around family, or in situations that echo something familiar from earlier in life
Somewhere else (describe below)

If there is somewhere else worth naming:

Describe one moment from this week that stayed with you. (What was happening around you? What did you notice in your body? What thought or image came with it?)

What did you want to do in that moment — say, leave, reach out, disappear, argue back, cry? (Note the impulse, whether or not you acted on it.)

Exercise Two What Might This Be Telling Me?

Rather than asking “how do I stop feeling this?”, it can help to wonder instead what a feeling might be trying to communicate. This is not about arriving at a conclusion. It is about staying with a feeling a little longer than usual, and seeing what — if anything — begins to emerge.

“What might this feeling be trying to tell me?”

Returning to the moment you described above — name the feeling, or feelings, as precisely as you can. (More than one feeling can be present at once, even contradictory ones.)

Does this feeling — or the situation that brought it on — feel familiar? (Has something like this happened before, perhaps in a different form, at a different time in your life?)

If you allow yourself simply to wonder, without needing an answer — what might this feeling be about?

Exercise Three Curiosity Rather Than Judgment

Many people notice a pull to judge their own thoughts and feelings as soon as they appear — as silly, excessive, shameful, or simply wrong. This exercise is not about the content of what you wrote above, but about how you related to yourself while writing it.

As you wrote your answers above, how self-critical did you notice yourself being?

Not at all A little Somewhat Quite a bit A great deal

If you noticed self-criticism, what did it sound like? (Was there a familiar voice, phrase, or tone to it — perhaps one you recognise from earlier in your life?)

Was there anything you avoided writing, or wrote around rather than directly? (You do not need to fill in what you avoided — simply noting that something was avoided is itself useful.)

Exercise Four Fragments for the Session

This is a running log for the rest of the week. Whenever something catches your attention — a feeling, a dream, a phrase someone used, a moment of unexpected reaction — jot it down briefly, in whatever form it arrives. You are not writing for anyone else, and you are not writing the final version. This is raw material, to be picked up again together.

When What I noticed

Between Sessions Three Small Practices to Try This Week

These are gentle invitations, not tasks to complete perfectly. Choose one to try — or let it choose you, in a moment that seems to call for it.

Practice 1

The Pause Before Reacting

When you notice a strong reaction arriving — irritation, withdrawal, an urge to fix or explain — try pausing for a few seconds before acting on it. You do not need to suppress the reaction, only to notice it is there before it carries you along. Afterwards, if you can, jot a fragment about what you noticed.

Practice 2

One Sentence Before Sleep

Before sleep, write one sentence — even an unfinished one — about something from the day that is still present for you. You are not looking for insight. You are simply keeping the door open a little, so the thought does not disappear entirely by morning.

Practice 3

Naming Without Solving

When a difficult feeling arises this week, try simply naming it silently to yourself — “this is anxiety,” “this is grief,” “this is something I don’t yet have a word for” — without immediately trying to make it go away or work out why. Notice whether naming it changes anything about how it feels to carry.

Which practice will you try first this week — and is there a particular moment or day you already suspect it will be useful?

Closing What I Want to Bring to a Session

This worksheet does not need to be finished, tidy, or fully understood before your next session. The parts where you got stuck, avoided something, or felt an unexpectedly strong reaction are often at least as useful as the parts you completed easily.

“The worksheets do not replace therapy. They prepare the ground in which therapy can take root and grow.”

Before your next session

Looking back over what you’ve written this week, is there one thing — a moment, a feeling, a fragment — that feels most alive, or most in need of being spoken about together?

Is there anything about doing this worksheet itself — the writing, the noticing, the pausing — that felt significant?

Individual Therapy via Secure Video

If working through this worksheet has raised something you would like to explore in a confidential setting, an introductory conversation is available at no charge. Psychodynamic individual therapy is offered via secure live video in English, French, and Greek.

Arrange a confidential introductory conversation → Individual Therapy via Live Video • Psychodynamic Specialism • UK Practice • English · French · Greek

A Note for Your Next Session

If you are working with Ari, bring this worksheet to your next session, in whatever state it is in. It does not need to be complete, and it does not need to be explained in advance — we will look at it together. The moments you found hardest to write about are often the ones most worth bringing into the room.

To book a session or make an enquiry, contact: enquiries@online-therapy-clinic.com

“Sometimes a single sentence written shortly after a moment can tell us far more than an hour spent trying to remember it a week later.”

Online Therapy Clinic Clinical Team enquiries@online-therapy-clinic.com · online-therapy-clinic.com · UK practice · 50-minute sessions, on the hour

Ari Sotiriou provides Psychodynamic Individual and Couples therapy via secure Live Video. Dr Ruxandra Ion provides psychiatric expertise and BABCP-accredited CBT.

© Ari Sotiriou MA PGDip | UKCP Accredited | enquiries@online-therapy-clinic.com
This worksheet is for personal reflection only and does not constitute clinical advice.