surviving & flourishing

Gender is tricky. At times, being female can feel like a glorious gift; at times, it can be a burden that’s overwhelming. There are constant struggles to secure the necessary safety, visibility, mutual understanding, and fairness that our well being requires. I’m extremely interested in the challenges facing women of all ages and origins. My compassion also extends to our brothers, sons, and fathers as they, too, try to build with us a world we can all share.

Experience with bullying teaches some hard lessons about the value of dignity, boundaries, and self-respect. I am familiar with relational aggression, social competition, and the costs of cynicism. Early exposure to groupthink, peer pressure, and shame culture has been instructive for my worldview, and my priorities as a therapist. Most everyone endures some degree of interpersonal disappointment and adversity—in the family, in schools, at work, or elsewhere. We do our best to improvise defenses that serve us well enough, but these usually turn out to have some hidden costs. Therapy is a chance to see more clearly just what those nereids and costs are, and to revise our defenses to fit the new circumstances of the here-and-now.

Today it’s quite possible to get all the way through high school and an entire college education, without hearing a word about mental health; about relational dynamics, and communication skills; or about how to navigate through life’s stages, with their developmental tasks.

discussion & growth

Therapy exists to help people to love and to work. Taken at their broadest scope, those two big categories contain most of what people strive for. Friendship, romance, family, and community keep us connected and illuminate our lives with meaning. Work builds for each person a role in the world, linking us to the sources of culture and commerce, and actualizing our potential. “Do your work,” wrote Emerson, “and I shall know you.”

If you’re a mother or you aspire to become one, you may be facing daunting questions of timing and opportunity cost. If you hope to start or maintain a marriage, you may be wondering if your partner’s dreams are as congruent with your own as you had hoped. If your career is a major part of your identity, you might be engaged in a formidable tangle of problem-solving that has no simple answer.

All these areas are part of what I discuss with patients, in sessions that combine pragmatic coaching with insight-oriented, relational therapy. What heals most is the reliable, wholesome, focused, and gentle form of connection that is the therapeutic relationship.