Observing the Space Between the Extremes

Athena, the Golden Mean, and Understanding Our Automatic Responses

As therapists, we spend a considerable amount of time helping clients understand the patterns that shape their lives. We explore how they respond to conflict, manage difficult emotions, navigate relationships, and protect themselves when they feel vulnerable.

Often, these patterns are not unfamiliar to the client. They may recognize that they avoid confrontation, become defensive when criticized, withdraw when overwhelmed, or attempt to control situations when they feel anxious.

Yet recognizing a pattern and changing it are two very different things.

A client may understand perfectly well that avoiding conflict is damaging their relationships and still find themselves unable to express their thoughts and feelings when a difficult conversation arises. Another may recognize that anger has become their primary response to feeling threatened, yet struggle to respond differently when they encounter a similar situation.

As a therapist, this raises an important therapeutic question:

For clients, this can be a difficult process to understand. Intellectually, they may recognize that a different response would serve them better, yet in the moment, familiar emotional patterns can become so powerful that they find themselves responding in ways they would not have consciously chosen. It is as though what they know and what they do become disconnected.

I have encountered this intersection countless times in my work as a therapist. I have listened to clients describe their experiences with familiar words: “I knew better,” “It just happened. I can’t explain it,” or “It’s like my mind was saying no, but I did it anyway.”

Often, these admissions are accompanied by profound grief, self-doubt, shame, or a sense of failure. Rather than recognizing an opportunity to better understand themselves, clients may interpret these experiences as evidence that something is fundamentally wrong with them. This interpretation can become another obstacle to personal growth, leaving them feeling stuck or unable to recognize their potential.

This is where I find Athena’s symbolism particularly meaningful in therapeutic work. She offers us a way to conceptualize the tension between our instinctive responses and our capacity for thoughtful action. Rather than viewing these experiences as personal failures, we can begin to understand them as opportunities to develop greater awareness and discernment. Instead of becoming another obstacle blocking our path, awareness can provide the fuel that propels us forward.

Athena and the Golden Mean

Returning to Athena, we see that she possessed both armor and a spear. She had the capacity for battle, yet she also embodied wisdom, strategy, and discernment. Her strength was not simply in her ability to act, but perhaps more importantly, in knowing when and how to use the resources available to her.

Consider Athena faced with a conflict. She possesses the ability to engage in battle, but does the situation warrant war? Would choosing not to act be an expression of wisdom, or would it represent avoidance? Perhaps the circumstances call for an entirely different strategy, one that neither requires battle nor demands retreat.

Athena’s wisdom lies in her ability to consider these possibilities without being confined to any one of them. She does not have to engage in battle simply because she possesses the weapons to do so. Nor does she have to avoid confrontation simply because another path may be available. Instead, she can draw upon her full range of capacities to discern what the situation requires.

Centuries later, Aristotle gave philosophical language to a related concept through what is known as the Golden Mean.

For Aristotle, virtue was often found between two extremes: one of excess and one of deficiency. Courage, for example, exists between cowardice and recklessness.

But the Golden Mean is not simply about finding the midpoint between opposing responses. It is about developing the practical wisdom to discern what a particular situation requires of us.

The goal is not to eliminate either extreme from our range of responses, but to develop the awareness and discernment necessary to recognize when, how, and whether to act.

When Familiar Responses Become Our Psychological Playbook

I find this distinction especially meaningful in clinical practice. In therapy, we are not necessarily helping clients find a position between two extremes. We are helping them recognize that their familiar response is not the only response available to them.

As we move through life, we develop ways of responding that help us adapt to our experiences and circumstances. Over time, these responses become familiar, and we may begin relying upon them in situations where they are no longer as effective or appropriate. They become part of our psychological playbook.

Consider someone who learned to use humor to disguise hurt or disappointment within their family of origin. Perhaps humor helped defuse conflict, maintain connection, or protect them from feeling vulnerable. Yet when this same response emerges in an intimate relationship, it may prevent their partner from recognizing the depth of their emotional experience and limit opportunities for genuine connection.

The humor itself is not the problem. The difficulty arises when it becomes the only response the individual knows how to access in moments of hurt or disappointment.

This is where I believe the Golden Mean offers therapists an interesting framework. Rather than asking clients to abandon a familiar response, we can help them understand it, recognize when it is activated, and begin exploring the range of possibilities that exist beyond their automatic response.

From Defensiveness to Curiosity

Consider a client who responds to criticism by becoming defensive.

Rather than focusing exclusively on reducing defensiveness, we might become curious about what the criticism activates within the client.

Does it evoke shame? Fear of failure? A sense of inadequacy? Does the client experience criticism as an attack on their worth rather than feedback about a particular behavior?

Once the client becomes aware of these internal processes, we can begin to explore what other responses might be possible for them to develop or access.

Perhaps the client can acknowledge feeling hurt without immediately retaliating. Perhaps they can ask for clarification rather than assuming negative intent. Perhaps they can consider the accuracy of feedback without accepting every criticism as the truth.

Or perhaps, for the first time, they can simply observe what is happening within themselves without feeling compelled to act upon it.

There is also an opportunity here for grace. Rather than criticizing themselves for becoming defensive, they can begin to recognize that this response developed for a reason. They can acknowledge its presence without allowing it to determine what happens next.

The objective is not to eliminate the capacity for defensiveness. Rather, it is to allow the experience to be present, approach it with curiosity, become informed by its presence, and then decide on a path forward.

The question becomes:

Before clients can begin choosing differently, they must first recognize the patterns that have been choosing for them. This awareness does not immediately change behavior, but it creates an opportunity to understand why certain responses feel so familiar, even when they no longer serve us.

This article is a clinical companion to the LeadHer essay The Space Between the Extremes →

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