by Lachezar Afrikanov

Imagine you have a session with a client. You guide them through a process that, from your professional perspective, seems appropriate and well-timed. You have shaped the space with care, ensured trust, and offered a structure designed to support their growth. Yet, in the middle of the session, something shifts. The client hesitates, resists. They express discomfort, an unwillingness to continue.

You do what experience has taught you to do. You honor their boundaries, adjust in the moment, stay present to what is emerging. After the session, you reach out with care, ensuring they feel safe, seen, supported. The process is held with integrity. There is no mistake to correct, no ethical question, no professional failure.

And yet.

Long after the client has moved on, something lingers.

Not self-doubt. Not regret. Something quieter, harder to name. A feeling that stays in the body. A weight carried beyond the session.

As trainers, we are skilled at navigating feedback. We separate our work from our ego, we reflect, we adjust, we meet clients where they are. But some moments do not fit into the usual framework of feedback. They touch something beyond the professional self.

There is a professional layer to receiving feedback, the one we discuss in intervision, in coaching, in reflective practice. It is the layer where we analyze, refine, and grow. But then there is the other layer, the one that moves through us not as logic, but as sensation. The one that does not always have words. The one that asks for time before it can be understood.

Not all feedback touches this second layer. But when it does, it is not about handling criticism or making adjustments. It is about something more profound. The echo of care, when we feel the weight of holding space for someone else’s process. The echo of responsibility, not because we are at fault, but because we were present in a moment of deep vulnerability. The echo of self, when a situation mirrors something in us we did not expect to see.

The challenge is not in fixing these feelings, but in allowing them to be felt. Too often, we rush to analyze. What does this mean? What should I do with this? How can I turn it into learning? But what if we simply listened?

What if we allowed these moments to settle, to breathe? What if we trusted that the echoes will find their meaning in their own time?

Feedback is not always about the session itself. Sometimes, it is about what it awakens in us. And that, too, is part of the work.

The echo does not disrupt professionalism, it enriches it. If we let it resonate, we learn not just about clients, but about the depths within ourselves. We do not always need to have an answer. Sometimes, it is enough to say: This touched me. And that is worth listening to.