January 20, 2021

“Even as we grieved, we grew.”

Amanda Gorman, former national youth poet laureate who gave a capturing delivery of her poem during the Biden-Harris inauguration ceremony, said these words: “Even as we grieved, we grew.”

Grieving is the bedrock of growth, in therapy and in life.

What happens when we don’t grieve?

We ignore loss, because it’s too painful to feel. We deny harm, because it brings us too much shame. We minimize pain, our own and others’, because it’s too intolerable to hold.

Here’s the problem: What we can’t bear to remember we inevitably repeat.

Joe Biden said at the COVID-19 memorial service, “To heal, we must remember. It’s hard sometimes to remember, but that’s how we heal.”

This sentiment is true no matter the source of the pain we’re talking about. It’s true when we’re talking about the impact of any loss. It’s true when we’re talking about the impact of parents enacting their own traumatic upbringings upon their children. It’s true when we’re talking about the trauma of racism from this country’s beginnings through present day.

Forgetting is not healing.

“Moving on” is not healing.

Not feeling is not healing. 
It is in remembering, reconciling, and bearing witness to the past and the present that we are able to forge a clearer path to our future.

This healing act of witnessing is by no means relegated to therapy, but I know in my bones that therapy is a powerful, transformative venue for it. 

So, here’s to remembering, repairing, and healing—in therapy, in our relationships outside of therapy, and in our country.

If you’d like a witness in repairing and healing, you’re welcome to schedule a phone consult with me. If for whatever reason I’m not the right fit for you, I’d be happy to help you find a therapist who is.

Take care,

P.S. What is political is also inextricably personal. Internal and external are always intertwined, so both are always present and welcome in therapy.

Photo credit: Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

August 10, 2019

Centering the Margins: Otherness and Othering

Let’s go dictionary diving. An Other is “one that is psychologically differentiated from the self” or “one considered by members of a dominant group as alien, exotic, threatening, or inferior (as because of different racial, sexual, or cultural characteristics).”

As a verb, to other is “to treat or consider (a person or a group of people) as alien to oneself or one’s group (as because of different racial, sexual, or cultural characteristics.)”

To other someone is to marginalize them, to distance yourself from them. To other entire groups of people requires dividing the world into categories of Us and Them. This division underlies hatred in the -ism and -phobia sense (sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, etc.) “You are not like me. You are different.” can morph into “You are entirely different. There is nothing in you that’s also in me. You’re bad. I’m good. You (all) are bad. We are entirely good.”

At its most extreme, the Other is transformed into an anonymous, unknowable, collective They, comprised of Its. This is a process of dehumanization, and we know how dangerous and devastating this can be. White supremacy and fanatic nationalism thrive at this end of the othering spectrum.

Feminist theory and critical race theory talk about centering the margins, creating a space where historically silenced voices can speak and be heard, understood, and known, so that these constructed divisions between Us and Them can begin to be dismantled.

This othering process happens inside ourselves too.

Internally, we other parts of ourselves, forming deep unprocessed beliefs. Maybe some of these sound intimately familiar to you. Maybe they’re so ordinary that you don’t even notice when they’re operating.

I’m good when I’m happy. I’m good when I’m patient, grateful, optimistic. I’m good when I have no needs.

When I’m mad, I’m bad. When I’m sad, I’m bad. When I feel anxious, hurt, tender, sensitive, vulnerable, jealous, I’m bad.

I’m never mad, sad, hurt, jealous, lonely… 

Which of your identities have been marginalized historically? Which are marginalized in society today? What parts of you are marginalized in your closest relationships? What parts of yourself do you marginalize internally? 

Which of your thoughts and feelings do you allow in, and which ones do you other? Which ones are you afraid of? Which ones do you hate?

Maybe your first impulse is to get rid of these no good, very bad parts of yourself. 

But what would happen if you tried to get to know them first? What if they became less threatening and more understandable?

What would happen if you centered the margins of yourself? 

“I don’t know” is an ideal starting point for therapy. In therapy, you can begin to give voice to what’s been marginalized within you, societally and internally.

If you’d like to get started, drop me a line.

Take care,

October 13, 2017

A Baby Walks into Therapy: Attachment and Dependence

A major part of my education and training in adult psychotherapy is infant and child development. Huh? How does understanding babies help me work with adults?

Unnecessary news flash: We all used to be babies.

The baby in us is always there inside our adult selves. That inner baby goes everywhere with us, and I need to know how to work with it through its adult host in therapy.

If that sounds like a put-down, consider this: babies are brilliant! The rate of development during the first few years of life is astronomical. Babies are mini physicists, mathematicians, linguists, artists, and anthropologists, studying and playing with a world that was entirely alien to them at birth.

Something that comes up in therapy with adults is a fear of dependence on the therapist. This is a big reason why people put off starting therapy in the first place. This makes sense!

In Western culture we’re often taught that dependence is bad or weak. Let’s take a look at what attachment research has to say about that.

Attachment Theory 101

We all have attachment needs—the need for relationships, for connections with other people. This need is present at birth and continues throughout our lives.

As infants we are entirely dependent on our caregivers for survival, not just for our physical needs but for our attachment needs as well. We know from research in overpopulated orphanages that babies who are adequately fed but not emotionally nourished (not held or interacted with) experience failure to thrive and do not develop normally—physically, cognitively, or emotionally. Some of these severely emotionally deprived babies die despite receiving physical sustenance.

Let’s take a normally developing infant. She’s totally dependent. Ideally she has a caregiver, an attachment figure, who is able to meet her basic physical and attachment needs. (I’m going to refer to this attachment figure as mom for simplicity, but it can also be dad, a grandparent, or whoever takes a primary role in taking care of the baby.)

This baby grows and develops into a toddler. An interesting thing happens during a toddler’s development. She starts walking (or sprinting at full speed) away from her attachment figure to explore what she can’t reach when she’s in mom’s lap. There’s a big, exciting, and sometimes scary environment to explore outside of mom’s arms, so naturally the toddler sometimes feels a little freaked out. When this happens, she goes back to mom for comfort.

Like homebase in a game of tag, the toddler needs mom to be a secure base where she can calm down and refuel. This bold, independent explorer needs to be able to briefly move back into dependence. Once she’s allowed to do this, and sometimes with a little reassurance and gentle encouragement from mom, she’s off and running to conquer the world again.

This pattern happens over and over again, and soon this refueling process is able to be “wireless”—just a quick look back at mom can recharge the toddler.

This is the dependency paradox. Knowing she can return to dependence when she needs to actually bolsters her independence.

Eventually, the child becomes able to keep the comforting aspects of her mom with her emotionally, even when they’re apart.

Our dependency needs resurface regularly, especially when we’re going through a difficult time. This is also called regression. Think about what you crave when you have a hard day at work, a nasty cold, or when the world feels especially scary. You want to go home, maybe put on your fuzziest pajamas, eat some comfort food, and talk to your person (a partner, a friend, or, yes, maybe your mom). Then, when you’re feeling stronger and safer, you brave the world again.

Contrary to this regression being harmful for us, it actually serves to re-power and empower us. This is called adaptive regression in service of the ego (ARISE). Think of the ego as your sense of you. The keyword here is adaptive—this regression is helpful and necessary.

Independence requires the ability to return to dependence when needed. In this way, we are all interdependent.

In psychotherapy, one of the therapist’s functions is as an attachment figure. Therapy serves as a homebase, a safe place for regular refueling before you go boldly back into your life outside of the office.

If you could use the homebase of therapy to feel stronger and safer in your daily life, I invite you to schedule a phone consultation with me.

Take care,

June 30, 2017

Are you a human on a hamster wheel?

Whatever you do is never enough. So you stay busy. You fill up all your time.

When you do get a spare minute to yourself, you fill it with a scroll through Instagram or a Buzzfeed video or a “Which sandwich am I?” quiz. Maybe you fall asleep with Netflix on autoplay.

Being a human on a hamster wheel has its perks.

You’re always doing. You go for that extra degree, that extra assignment at work, that extra vacation.

You’re competent, you’re productive, you’re fun!

From the outside, all of this busyness looks like SUCCESS in bright marquee lights.

If this is working for you and you feel good, keep doing it!

But what if it doesn’t feel good?

What if you feel a painful gnawing inside when you slow down for even a second?

What if, despite all of this doing and filling, your middle still feels like a bottomless hungry pit?

Sometimes doing everything can be a way of trying to cope with whatever’s buried inside that pit—or missing from it.

What would happen if you were to get curious about the well inside you?

Looking at the deepest parts of yourself with curiosity rather than judgment builds insight, understanding, and self-compassion.

Making sense of what you find better informs the everyday choices you make.

Therapy can help you start seeking pleasure instead of just reflexively avoiding pain.

If this sounds like something you’re looking for, I’d love to hear from you.

Take care,

PANTHEA COUNSELING NYC • PSYCHOTHERAPY FOR PROFESSIONAL MILLENNIALS IN NYC • 80 FIFTH AVE, UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK, NY 10011 • 347-765-1555