DescriptionThis case study outlines the experiences in training that shaped my professional identity and practice as a relational psychotherapist. I show how my clinical conduct shifted over the course of a single treatment by reflecting on previously unquestioned commitments to certain psychoanalytic techniques and then how I became more open to new ways of experiencing the patient and my internal responses to him. Using Donnel Stern's (1997) framework on dissociation and unformulated experience, I show how the therapeutic relationship transformed from first being characterized by rigid patterns of constricted relatedness to becoming more relaxed through the intersubjective negotiation of personal boundaries and emotional safety. I demonstrate how working through mutual enactments with my patient occurred nonlinearly and, ultimately, necessitated the creation of internalized conflict out from our external disjunctions. This process represented an achievement of reflective capacity on previously dissociated aspects of self-experience for both of us and fostered my acceptance of tender feelings for the patient in particular. I argue that relaxing the constricted relatedness inherent to rigidly following any theory or technique and allowing oneself to be tenderly affected by the patient are the hallmarks of becoming a relational practitioner.