The 10 minutes between sessions: a reset routine

The door clicks shut behind your client. For a second, the room is very quiet. Their chair still holds the shape of them — the cushion slightly pressed, the box of tissues pulled a little closer than you left it.

And then, almost without noticing, you’re already somewhere else. Checking messages. Writing half a note. Glancing at the clock. Ten minutes later the door opens again, and you meet the next person with the last one still sitting somewhere in your chest.

Those few minutes between sessions are some of the most important in a therapist’s day, and the most easily lost. They’re where you set one person down so you can be fully present for the next. They don’t need much. But they do need to be yours.

Why the gap matters

Therapy asks you to take people in — their words, their feelings, the weight in their voice. That’s the job, and it’s a good one. But whatever you take in has to go somewhere. Without a pause, it simply stacks up: session on session, until by five o’clock you’re carrying a whole day’s worth of other people.

A short reset isn’t a luxury or a break from the work. It’s part of the work. It’s how you make sure the client at four gets the same therapist as the client at nine.

A reset you can actually do

The best routine is the one that fits in the time you really have — some days ten minutes, some days three. Try this one now. Pick a length, press start, and let it walk you through.

Notice that it begins with closing, not with relaxing. The body finds it much easier to let go once the mind knows the last session has been put somewhere safe.

Set down what you’re carrying

Not every session leaves the same residue. A tender story needs something different from an irritating one, and a worry about a client’s safety is a different thing again. Before you reach for the same routine every time, ask yourself what’s actually still with you.

Come back to your senses

There’s a reason so much of this is physical. Sitting still, listening closely, holding your face soft for an hour — it all lives in the body. The quickest way back to yourself is through it: the stretch in your shoulders, the cold of the water, the warmth of the mug in your hands, the air from an open window.

You know this. You teach it to clients every week. The invitation is simply to offer it to yourself, too.

When back-to-back is the reality

Plenty of therapists don’t get ten minutes. The schedule is the schedule. Even then, something is possible.

• Protect one minute. End each session a minute earlier than you used to. Nobody will notice, and you will.
• Use the walk to the door. Three slow breaths on the way to collect your next client.
• Do your notes later, not now. One line to remember, then the full note at the end of the day — not in the gap that’s meant for you.
• Build the gap into your diary. If you run your own schedule, put the ten minutes in as if it were an appointment. It is.

The ending of one thing

There’s something quietly beautiful about these few minutes. You’ve just been with someone in a way very few people ever are. Pausing afterwards is a way of honouring that — of letting it end properly, before something new begins.

So tomorrow, between your first and second clients, try it. Close. Move. Breathe. Taste something. Arrive. Then open the door, and meet the next person fresh.