What a snow globe tells us about the space between therapy sessions

During my counselling training, one of my tutors shared an analogy that has stayed with me ever since. She compared therapy to a snow globe.

She said that in a session it can feel like the globe is being shaken. We might revisit experiences from the past to understand how they continue to affect things now. When those experiences have been sitting quietly in the background for years, bringing them into focus can stir things up.

But the important part of the analogy wasn’t the shaking. It was what happens afterwards.

When you shake a snow globe, the snow doesn’t settle straight away. It takes time to fall back into place, and when it does the landscape looks a little different. My tutor used this image to explain that therapy isn’t just about what happens during the session itself. The space between sessions plays an important role too.

This resonated with me because it reflected my own experience of therapy. I remember leaving sessions sometimes feeling like I’d gone five rounds with Mike Tyson. I’d walk away a bit stunned, struggling to remember exactly what had been said or what had come up.

Then gradually, over the next few days, things would start to settle.

I’d remember parts of the conversation. Thoughts would come back. Sometimes emotions would surface that hadn’t fully appeared in the room. As things processed, they often started to make more sense.

My therapist at the time used to say that strong emotions were often a sign that something was shifting — that fresh perspectives were beginning to emerge.

I notice something similar with clients now. People often start a session by saying something like, “I’ve been thinking about something we spoke about last week.” Sometimes it’s a small shift in how they see a situation. Other times it’s a bigger realisation that has come to them during the week.

The session might start the process, but the mind often keeps working on things afterwards.

Sometimes clients worry about the emotions that show up between sessions. Feeling sad, angry, or unsettled can make people wonder whether therapy is making things worse. I understand that feeling because I had moments like that in my own therapy too.

But often those emotions are a sign that something is moving. There can be short-term discomfort while things are being worked through, but it often leads to a deeper understanding of what’s been going on.

In many ways, the session is just one part of the process. The rest often happens in the days that follow, as the snow slowly settles. And often, it’s in that settling that things begin to make a little more sense