What do I mean when I say “hold a compassionate space”? How can someone hold a space?

To answer this, let’s step back to childhood for a minute, to a time when we were dependent on parents or caregivers for safety, nurture, love and protection. If we fell and hurt ourselves, if we lost our favourite toy, or our best friend didn’t want to play…. all those times when the world seemed to end in a crescendo of unconsolable loss – we needed an adult to soothe and comfort us. Ideally, this would have given us an experience of feeling held, both literally with a caring hug, but also held by the security of that parental relationship, a security we felt in our bodies through hearing gentle words spoken, seeing a kind face, savouring the time our caregivers spent calming our emotional upset.