You know that feeling when you want someone close—but the moment they actually get close, something inside you recoils.

Or maybe you feel safer on your own—until the space around you gets so quiet it starts to ache, and suddenly you find yourself craving contact, wishing someone would just reach for you?

Welcome to the “claustro-agoraphobic dilemma”, a term coined by psychoanalyst Henri Rey.

At its core, this dilemma refers to a fundamental tension: the longing for closeness, comfort, and emotional safety that exists alongside the fear of being engulfed, overtaken, or intruded upon by the very people we need.

It shows up in therapy. It shows up in love. It shows up in our homes, our calendars, our clutter, even our furniture.

Why Do We Feel Trapped… or Alone… No Matter What We Choose?

From early in life, we use others—especially caregivers—as containers for aspects of ourselves that feel too much to hold alone. We project into them our neediness, our rage, our hunger for attention, our fears of being bad. And we hope they’ll survive it. Make sense of it. Offer it back to us in a form we can live with.

Sometimes we feel lost or abandoned if we’re too distant from those we imagine are holding the parts of ourselves we’ve projected outwards. After all, the projected parts of us, felt to be inside others, in reality are not.

And projection is a two-way street. Once we’re in a relationship, others begin projecting into us, too. And sometimes that feels invasive or destabilizing.

This is where it gets complicated.

We need our objects (in psychoanalytic terms: our emotionally invested others) because we can’t fully develop or hold our sense of self in isolation, and because we’re counting on them to symbolically hold our unwanted parts for us.

But once we become vulnerable enough to need others in this way, we become vulnerable to introjection too—to taking in their moods, needs, perceptions, or projections (often before we’re capable of making sense or containing them).

This can lead us to want to push away those very same people felt to be holding split off parts of ourselves. Because We don’t want to hold unwanted parts of them.

When it’s not just our own emotions we’re managing, but theirs too, we may feel trapped—with toxic contents inside of us.

This dynamic can feel physical too. We might have grown up in a cluttered home, or with a smothering caregiver who intruded into our space. Or maybe we experienced the opposite—too little contact from a parent who feared engulfment themselves.

As children, we may have found ourselves with no reliably comfortable position—whether we were trying to avoid excess or hungering for proximity.

The Manic Defense: Coping by Controlling

To avoid the pain of this “unsolvable” dilemma—the helplessness of needing others who might engulf us, or the loneliness of too much distance (and our fears that our aggression has destroyed our objects)— we often fall into defensive strategies.

One such defense, described by Melanie Klein, is the manic defense: denying or minimizing painful feelings of loss, guilt, or need by replacing them with feelings of triumph, control, or contempt. We flip vulnerability into power. Dependency into superiority. Grief into busyness.

We become busy instead of connected. Intellectually analytical instead of emotionally present. Superior instead of needy.

We clean the house rather than feel our longing. Or hoard objects that “hold” meaning and make us feel surrounded. Or avoid possessions altogether, for fear of being buried in clutter. Some of us say we want to get rid of our stuff, but we can’t seem to actually do it.

Physical manifestations of this dilemma

As I mentioned before, our relationship to our physical space can mirror our relational anxieties.

Some of us feel safest surrounded by our things—books, blankets, candles, mugs. Others feel suffocated unless everything is pared down. And some of us oscillate between the two, just like we do with people.

Our external environment often reflects our internal tension:

I want comfort, but I don’t want to be trapped.

I want space, but I don’t want to be alone.

In the Therapy Room… and Beyond

This dilemma plays out powerfully in therapy.

A client may come craving closeness, but if I respond with warmth, they pull back. Or they may keep me at a distance, then get hurt when I don’t break through their wall. Often what they long for is for me to know—without them having to ask. They want to be seen, but not intruded upon. Held, but not engulfed. Understood, but not interpreted too soon.

And I get it. Because don’t we all want that sometimes?

The work, then, is not to “solve” the dilemma but to name it. To notice it. To get curious about it instead of collapsing into it.

Sometimes that means grieving that no one can ever fully attune to us the way we imagine. Sometimes it means risking closeness anyway. Sometimes it means learning to hold the space between wanting and not wanting. And sometimes it means changing the physical objects we surround ourselves with or the space we embody.

Can We Learn to Stay With the Tension?

Over time, as the therapy relationship holds both sides of the dilemma, clients can internalize a new experience:

That they can approach without being swallowed.

That they can withdraw without being abandoned.

That they can want connection without it meaning they’re weak or childish or doomed to be disappointed.

And that they don’t have to tidy up the mess of emotional life with manic control or busy perfectionism just to feel safe.

Because in the end, we don’t want to be alone—but we don’t want to disappear either.

And if we can stay present to the parts of us that want both—connection and space, safety and freedom—we might discover that it’s not about choosing one over the other.

It’s about learning how to breathe in the space between.

The post The Push-Pull of Closeness: Navigating the Claustro-Agoraphobic Dilemma appeared first on Goldstein Therapy.

Anxiety, relationship struggles, and introspection are some common denominators of what Mirel Goldstein is seeing in her practice as people find themselves spending more time with their family members and more time with themselves.

Mirel Goldstein also discusses forgiveness, letting go, and some thoughts about parenting in this video interview.

Hope you enjoy watching!

P.S. You may also want to hear my tips for living with someone abusive during Covid-19

The post What My Clients are Experiencing during Covid-19 appeared first on Goldstein Therapy.

The line between stress and trauma

It’s no secret that many of us are waking up each day to a very stressful reality. Yet where is the line between stress (from which we can recover) and trauma that overwhelms us?

Trauma can occur when stress becomes prolonged, when we don’t have a chance to recover from a state of either profound shut-down or extreme hyperarousal.

Shut-down is a feeling of numbness, depression, lack of energy and motivation, withdrawal into the self and away from relationships.

Hyperarousal is a constant stream of adrenaline, activation, feeling restless, keyed up, on edge, braced for danger.

Being in either state for too long can have effects on our immune system, relationships, and ability to concentrate, focus, and function.

Yet it’s not just prolonged states of an overactive or shut-down nervous system that can turn a stressful situation into a traumatic one.

Our inner coping mechanisms, including our defense mechanisms, need to be functional and powerful enough to stop our egos from collapsing under stress. When our usual ways of coping with internal and external experiences are overwhelmed, we can find ourselves regressing to negative behaviors or emotions that feel out of control, younger, less consolidated, or habitual.

According to Judith Chertoff in the article “Psychodynamic Assessment and Treatment of Traumatized Patients”, there are 5 specific factors noted by Anna Freud that can turn a stress into a trauma:

• The intensity and nature of an event and the meaning a person gives this
• Sensitization due to prior trauma (This is when constant stress or trauma makes us extra reactive)
• Inborn factors that affect one’s ability to cope (such as a genetic vulnerability to becoming depressed)
• Age and stage of development when trauma happens
• Environment at time of trauma (for example, is it safe and supportive)

PTSD occurs when an event collapses a person’s ability to use their regular defenses to mediate between external demands (like the need to cope in daily life) and inner tensions or emotions.  A person’s normal defenses may not work anymore.

One example is when someone has a tendency to cope with difficult experiences or emotions by using the coping technique of distraction; if something happens that is so upsetting or overwhelming to the ego that distraction no longer works, he might find himself unable to cope with daily life as usual, regressing, or being completely emotionally overwhelmed. This could lead to PTSD.

What this means for all of us is that even though many of us are all dealing with objectively similar situations due to the coronovirus,  such as health fears, schools and public places shutting down, being in quarantine, fear of running out of supplies, etc., each of us will have a unique reaction to these stressful circumstances.

Some of us will become especially frightened or overwhelmed by these events if we habitually rely on a sense of predictability or control in order to cope with our emotions and stresses in our daily lives. These defenses of control and predictability may no longer be available to us, although focusing on what we can control and creating routines can certainly mitigate some of the stress.

For others, leaning on loved ones may be a way to feel secure, but our loved ones may be so stressed themselves at this time that they perhaps withdraw from us, or else feel too anxious themselves to provide support. Learning how to be in this together while each person uses their own ways of coping is important but not so easy! For example, what happens if your partner wants space while you want connection, or if your child is acting up when all you want is quiet and decreased stimulation?

Another important point is that sometimes we feel anxious about things that are going on inside of us, for example wishes or feelings that feel forbidden or conflict with our values, such as wishing your kids would move out for a few weeks because it’s so draining to take care of them, or wanting to break free and stop following the rules you live by. We often suppress these wishes or feelings, or we justify them to ourselves consciously while feeling unconsciously guilty, and then we become anxious or feel things are out of control…and it’s easier to blame our anxiety on things like the coronavirus than the actual feelings or impulses that are fueling it.

This is also an opportunity to develop new coping mechanisms, for example, instead of distracting yourself from uncomfortable emotions, learning to sit with them. Or instead of withdrawing when you feel stressed or vulnerable, sharing yourself with someone else and letting them in. It’s a time for us to get closer to those we love, to reassess our typical coping mechanism, and to find small moments of recovery even as we struggle to get through each day.

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Are you getting enough help?

One of my favorite things to teach people is to delegate.

This is important if you have a business, and it’s also important for your personal life…whether it’s getting help with walking your dog, organizing your house, running errands, or taking care of your children at the most hectic time of day, to name a few examples.

Sometimes we just can’t do it all!

Hey, we all have strengths and weaknesses….and a lot on our plates.

Time is a non-renewable resource, but energy can be managed and replenished if you leverage your time well.

I like to encourage people to spend as much time as possible doing those things that just don’t feel like work, because they come so naturally. You know, those things that put you in your flow, tasks that seem to make time just fly by. (As well as those things that no one else can do for you…like spending quality time with those you love.)

And I tell people to spend as little time as possible on tasks they dread. The ones that make you groan just thinking of them, where all you want to do is procrastinate because they take so much out of you.

For me, those energy-sapping tasks that I absolutely dread are things like running errands (like going to the pharmacy or getting an oil change for my car) as well as spending time on the phone (or being on hold!) with doctors offices, insurance companies, billing managers etc.

And the things I LOVE doing, that absolutely don’t feel like work to me, are things talking with my clients, writing and marketing, and teaching about things I’m passionate about (like psychoanalysis!)

So aside from using automated systems as often as I can, I like to delegate.

Over the past 5 years, I’ve hired virtual assistants and personal assistants to do things for me such as running errands, spending time on the phone with potential clients and with insurance companies etc., helping with tech support for my website (which I could figure out myself, but it would take up time better spent elsewhere), cleaning help, social media help, and more…so I can focus on doing those things I’m most called on to do…helping, coaching, inspiring, empowering, spreading comfort and love, and also challenging people to push past their status quo and grow to the next level. Getting help frees us up!

But here’s the thing I’ve learned…you need to hire the help before you have the money for it or before you feel it’s “justified”.

Getting the help is what lets you be present for your family, make the money you want to make, and feel the balance in your life. Fear of investing or spending is one of the biggest resistances I hear from people,  but I really feel the difference between those who accelerate in life and in business, and those who don’t, is the willingness to take this leap.

The other fear is of letting go. I know what that feels like because the first time I let go of my schedule by letting my assistant manage my scheduling…well it was pretty scary…but I got used to it and now it’s a huge relief to have someone managing that for me!

Another thing I want to mention is you can’t be anal if you want to get help. I think the most important thing is to find someone who shares your values- for me it means someone ethical, honest, responsible, kind…you choose for you.  But you can’t expect perfection  because no one will do things the exact same way as you would, and because humans make mistakes (sorry to break the news to you!). So remember to be forgiving (you’ll become more forgiving of yourself too), take a chance, let go a little, and free yourself up to feel supported as you focus on what matters to you!

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Conflicts and anxieties about rivalry and competitiveness

Are you a perfectionist? Competitive? Afraid of what people would think if they saw or knew the “real” you?

You may be more anxious and/or conflicted than you know!

Symptoms of anxiety such as

• perfectionism,
• self-consciousness,
• fear of social situations,
• panic attacks,
• or getting stuck on details

often have their roots in conflicts about how we measure up against others, or in  rivalrous feelings or thoughts in relation to those we love or need. (Yes, oedipal issues as Freud described them do tend to affect us!)

Deep down lots of us compare ourselves to others.

We don’t always know who that other is (the one we keep trying to keep up with) or why it seems to matter all that much…yet often there’s this invisible standard inside we hold ourselves to, this way in which we judge ourselves against an ideal of who or what we’re “supposed” to be.

Money, confidence, looks, and other externals often affect our sense of self worth…even if we don’t like admitting that it’s true.  Most of us have insecurities (some conscious and known to us; some we only unconsciously play out) about being exposed as lacking, or as a failure, or somehow not “good enough”. We want to be better, the best, or the “only one” in the eyes of some important other in our lives, or in relation to an internalized authority figure now living inside our own minds.

Living this way turns life into a competition or a quest. It’s never just us out there, being ourselves, living our values and desires, being who we are with ourselves in relation to our world. Life instead becomes about this other “someone” or “something” in the background, the one we imagine to be judging us, or the person or thing we judge ourselves up against.

Competition and perfectionism often come with internal conflict.

We want to be the best. We want to be the winner. We want to be special and exclusive.

But we also feel guilty…for the loser, who we identify with too, or for that person we may also love who has to take second place.

We both hate our rivals and we need them, and the same goes for our inner standards. They give us something to live up to, but they also remind us that we can be beaten at our very own game, that we can fail or come up short. There is fear of defeat and humiliation, but there is also no fun in winning if there is no-one or nothing to win up against.

Our earliest rivalries happen in our families of origin, in the homes we grow up in, among people we both love and need.

We like to think parents aren’t jealous of their kids…but sometimes they are. An insecure wife may secretly resent her daughter for being Daddy’s little girl. Or an insecure husband may feel jealous or shut out when his wife seems more into their child than himself. Siblings can be jealous or guilty if another is perceived as a parent’s favorite, and feeling left out or set apart at school can make one feel “less than” or inadequate with one’s peers…for boys this often has to do with feeling small or weak, and for girls it might be about who’s pretty or who’s not.

A young girl in childhood looks to her mother to tell her what it is to be a woman, yet she also notices what it is her mother lacks…and wants to surpass her. This is sometimes with guilt, sometimes with shame, and sometimes with a feeling of conquest or satisfaction. Young boys often act “macho” while secretly feeling like a fraud… because deep down they know it’s their father who’s the “real man” in the house, and there’s all this hidden fear underneath all the bravado.

Learning how to live life on one’s own terms often boils down to relinquishing the invisible other who is always in the background telling us how to be. It’s about being free to be oneself without constantly judging that self against some impossible standard, preconceived expectation, or fantasied other who seems to have it all…

Giving up the invisible competition, the quest to be best, the wish for the “most prized” or “special” position…means saying goodbye to an impossible search…learning to live on completely new terms, terms that are exciting yet scary both at the very same time.

For many of us, the process of giving up one’s drive to always keep up or be best, or to always live in relation to an ideal, only starts to happen once we realize that the idealized others we always looked up to are only human too; that chasing after perfection may seem urgent for a while but at some point gets old; and that accepting our rivals for who they are liberates us to accept ourselves too.

Are you ready to stop feeling like a fraud? It might just be time to let go of whatever image or standard you’re trying to live up to and to accept who you actually are instead.

P.S. Want to read more about relationship triangles in families? Here’s a post you might like:

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Do emotions tend to get out of control in your family?

Do people in your home trigger or escalate each other just when they both need the most support?

Does a family member yell at you when you’re hurt or scared?

You might need to learn how to break cycles of emotional contagion if you or a family member has a sensitive nervous system.

Here’s how to understand what’s going on and what to do about it:

The post Avoiding Emotional Contagion During the Holidays- Goldstein Therapy-Clifton, NJ appeared first on Goldstein Therapy.

Do you worry all the time? Are you a ball of stress? Do you struggle with perfectionism, panic, or simply overthinking things?

Anxiety is no fun, but lots of people wait until things get really bad to get help.

If you struggle with anxiety, you may find yourself minimizing the problem; telling yourself it’s not so bad, or that needing therapy is a sign of weakness or deficiency. Underneath this may be shame or else some deep-seated beliefs about the importance of being strong, normal, or together.

Or perhaps you have already tried to get help for your anxiety or panic attacks, but found that your anxiety didn’t go away, or only got better for a short time.

Some therapists say that it’s important for people with anxiety to push themselves to face their fears.

On some level, this is true…but what if you don’t know what it is that you’re really afraid of?

In my work, I have found that the story people consciously tell themselves about their anxiety is often quite different from what they’re really unconsciously afraid of.  In this sense, the conscious target of a person’s anxiety is often just a mask for something that is buried in the unconscious. For example, a fear of heights might really be about traumatic memories from when one’s father used to get “high” and use drugs. A fear of “moving on” from a job or relationship may have to do with a traumatic move in childhood. The trick is to figure out what the undercover issue really is.

Whereas in many cases a straightforward CBT, family therapy, medication, or even psychodynamic approach can be helpful, I have found that some people with anxiety require a specific blend of interventions in order to unlock the core issue that is upholding the anxiety. This is because the role of the unconscious is to protect a person from threat, and if there is an unconscious threat that is not being addressed, the anxiety will often persist.

One way the unconscious protects us from threat is to obscure or cover up any wishes, thoughts, feelings, or memories that feel unsafe for us to acknowledge. The unconscious may do this by creating anxiety any time we get close to becoming aware of what it is that is threatening, or by leading us to focus on the wrong issues.

For example, you may focus on a trauma from childhood, thinking that a fear of the trauma happening again is what is creating your anxiety about trusting in relationships. However, from an unconscious perspective, the real danger might be that if you feel safe enough to stop thinking about the trauma, you may let down your guard in general, and risk showing a side of yourself that others might disapprove of. In this case, resolving the trauma is not going to solve the anxiety, because feeling safe comes with a separate anxiety that needs to be worked through.

The formula I have found helpful for helping people uncover the root issue that is fueling their anxiety is as follows. First, I will try to help you open up and begin talking. You may be afraid to say certain things out loud; for example, that you resent something in your life or that someone you love is not perfect. I will help you understand that it’s not an act of betrayal, and doesn’t mean anything bad, to admit to having a negative feeling or thought about someone or something in your life. Also, many people with anxiety feel a sort of performance anxiety in therapy sessions, as if they have to come up with the right things to say, or important things to talk about. So, I will try to help you just relax, especially if you’re shy and/or dislike awkward silences.

Next, I will listen for certain words, phrases, or themes that seem to come up repeatedly in your speech. Your words are doors into your unconscious; clues pointing towards an unresolved core issue. So, for example, if you talk about wanting to be in control all the time, or being afraid of doing something out of control, I might ask you to say more about what comes to mind when you think of “control”. This might make you think of someone controlling in your life, or of a memory of a time you didn’t have control over something.

Once we get clear about the words or themes that seem important in your life, it is likely that your unconscious will resist the process of getting closer to identifying and resolving the core issue. At this point, you may start feeling more anxious than before, or you may start to question whatever it is that we’ve been talking about in therapy so far. My job at this point will be to help you understand that it’s safe to let go of your resistance and to let yourself become conscious of whatever it is that is about to come to the surface and that is waiting to be uncovered.

Once safety is reestablished and unconscious fears are addressed, it becomes possible to confront the core issue that has been keeping your anxiety alive, and to disentangle you from your anxiety. At this point, we may end up talking about something embarrassing that you thought you could never talk to anyone about, or you might realize that you were living your life according to a childhood belief that is no longer serving you. We may discover that you have been afraid all along of something that has already happened. Whatever it is, this phase of therapy can either be terrifying and painful, or painless and natural. Either way, you will survive, and once your defensive system comes toppling down, you will feel tremendous relief and a sense of freedom.

Before you embark on this journey, though, I want to mention that each person’s story is unique, and that there is no one outside of yourself who holds the answers you need. Your unconscious alone holds the key to resolving your anxiety, but you may need a therapist to help your unconscious mind understand that it’s finally safe to speak of whatever it is that is buried inside of it.

Are you ready?

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To speak or not to speak?

Many people wonder why it’s a good thing to talk about problems, feelings, memories, and more, instead of just pushing them away and forgetting about them. This is especially true when the act of talking seems to dredge up stuff that hurts to think about. A common complaint early in therapy is: Talking about everything is only making me feel bad. Suddenly I’m aware of all kinds of feelings that I was able to push away before. What’s the point of all this talking anyway??

So here’s why it’s important to speak!

For one, talking about things dissolves some of the tension and feelings bound up in our words and thoughts. Although you may initially feel worse for a short time, there should be a payoff in terms of feeling less tension overall and finding yourself able to start resolving blocks. Whether it’s being more assertive, being able to do things you have been avoiding until now, spending less time running away from your feelings through various distraction strategies, or just feeling more energetic and alive in general, expressing yourself in words is somewhat like having a good cry: it feels bad in the moment but things feel much better afterwards. (I want to also point out that although many of my clients are afraid they will start crying in their sessions if they talk about their struggles, crying can be a great release and is not a sign of weakness!)

When we put things into words, we also define them. Words limit and this is a good thing. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by things we know but haven’t been able to say out loud to ourselves (like a general anxiety that festers but doesn’t seem to have a concrete beginning or end, or focus), putting words to experience makes the experience seem more manageable. The proverbial elephant in the room is so stressful because everyone knows it’s there but what it is that’s there is undefined, nebulous, and unbounded. Many times, what we’re most afraid of admitting to ourselves in words is something we already know on some level but want to pretend we don’t know. Pretending or denying a truth that we already sense does not relieve us of the anxiety associated with the truth. The unconscious knows and signals us again and again until we attend to the issue. Talking with a safe and trusted other can bring us to a knew perspective and relief from compulsive repetition.

Words reveal our inner lives in ways that often surprise us. It’s not just what we mean that matters but also the words we use, the phrases we associate with our feelings and memories, and when we say what. Learning to listen to the connections in what we say can help us decode the mysteries of our struggles in a way that ordinary social listening cannot.

And most of all, words are all we have. We all long to be understood by the other, but what’s in our minds and hearts is invisible, never known directly, and always changing. Discovering the inner world in ourselves and in the other is an always changing process of intrigue and deeper intimacy. Being intimate with ourselves allows us to generate the language we need to speak of ourselves to those we love. And once we feel that we have spoken and been heard, we understand that there is so much more we might want to say.

If you haven’t found your voice, or you find it difficult to open up to others, or even if you just want to experience the hidden knowledge embedded in the unconscious, speaking freely is the way to go. Not sure how to do this? A psychoanalyst can help.

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Contamination Fears in Relationships and Toxic Shame

While most of us associate fears of contaminating others with physical illnesses like the chicken pox or the Zika virus, many people harbor similar kinds of fears about being emotionally damaged or infected in ways that can spread to others if not carefully contained within the self, kept secret, and controlled.

In much the same way that we might try to avoid contact with others when we’re sick, for fear of spreading illness to those we love and need (whether for fear of hurting those we love, or of damaging those we need), certain emotional states, moods, and feelings can lead us to avoid emotional contact with others for fear of tarnishing our relationships with parts of ourselves that feel contagiously messy, weak, damaged, dirty, or bad.

The idea of “emotional contagion” is not new to therapists who work with families, or even to social psychologists (such as Melissa Dahl, who talks about emotional contagion in the work setting in her article Is There an Antidote for Emotional Contagion?). Families high in emotional contagion are those in which emotions spread like fire, one person’s emotions triggering similar emotions in others and in the environment itself. One person panics, begins talking in a loud and anxious voice, and the next person becomes anxious in turn, etc. Moods spread from one person to the other, and anxious or angry feelings are often amplified and heightened by the response of the environment, rather than modulated by it.

But here I’m really talking about something else; a more pervasive feeling that some people carry around that their very “self” is bad, damaged, and destructive somehow. This is more of a false belief about one’s self rather than a behavioral pattern in the environment. There is a fear of being innately toxic to others, an inner shame, that leads to never-ending attempts to hide one’s true self from others, to hold feelings and emotions inside rather than expressing them, and to avoid potentially humiliating feelings of exposure. In essence, I’m referring to a disorder of hiding.

Sometimes early experiences of trauma or shame can lead to this feeling of toxicity, but other times it is simply experiences that one has that are secretly believed to be crazy or weird, such as obsessions, compulsions, panic attacks, etc.

The side effects of this kind of core belief are not simple. Holding everything inside and controlling what comes out in this way can lead to tension headaches, stomachaches, or other physical ills caused by holding everything in rather than letting things out and using others to help regulate states of tension, stress, and emotional reactivity.

Other potential negative effects are more mental in nature. You may find yourself overanalyzing everything, being kept up at night with racing thoughts, ruminating and having trouble making decisions; all effects of overusing the mind (in your somatopsychic economy) to try to contain everything all the time and to stop your inner experiences from leaking out.

And then there are the psychological costs, like feelings of being an impostor or a fraud because so much of your experience is hidden all the time, or fears of being spontaneous or speaking freely for fear of what might happen if something unexpected gets revealed.

Relationships can be affected too. While your partner may be longing for emotional connection and for the emotional openness it takes to have that connection, your fear of damaging the relationship if you really open up can frustrate the partner you want to please so much. In a funny way, it can make things even harder if your partner seems super contained themselves; in control and unflappable. I have worked with numerous couples where one partner was afraid to show his/her deepest vulnerabilities despite being with a partner who was kind, accepting, and non-judgmental- and who really wanted to know. It was the fact that the partner seemed so intact that actually reinforced the other’s sense of being the damaged one, and that made it so hard to share despite the partner’s love.

One of the reasons why therapy can help so much in this kind of situation is because of the “boundedness” of the therapy space. Therapy is a place where things can be talked about without the typical repercussions that might occur when talking in one’s real life; thoughts and feelings that are shared can stay safely in the room, and that which gets spilled out can be quarantined off from causing damage, spreading, and metastasizing beyond the therapy space. And this sense of safety is often enhanced by the notion that a therapist’s room is somehow equipped to deal with things like unruly emotions, painful confessions, fears and conflicts that feel too scary to talk about ordinarily for fear of burdening the other, rocking the boat, or losing the respect of someone you love.

Of course therapy is not the end point for the process of learning to see oneself as less toxic, to be less afraid to be open and free, and to share one’s vulnerabilities more comfortably in intimate settings where it’s safe to do so. (There are some relationships where showing our full selves is a bad idea!). But therapy is often a crucial beginning step; a first step in having some space that feels contained enough to handle that which is being held inside and where unhealthy beliefs about the self can finally be questioned and released.

If you found this post helpful, you may also be interested in this video on dismissive attachment:

“How to recognize dismissive attachment behaviors in yourself and others”

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Frontier States and the Creative Process

Words like “borderline” and “schizoid” have at times gotten bad rap for their associations to things like instability, identity confusion, fear of commitment, and giving mixed messages to or avoiding those we love. Yet in-between modes such as these are often the inspiration or fuel for our most important discoveries and meaning-making moments.

As creatives know so well, perched at those divides where hard choices must be made about whether we want to be in, out, or in-between, exist some of our most opportune moments for discovery, integration, and self-expression. Living inside the box may seem easier at times, and it’s nice to fit in when we don’t have to give up too much of ourselves to do so. It can be lonely to be on the outside of two places, looking in on both. But there is something to be said for the vantage point that exists at that edge between one reality and another.

As David Brooks so aptly describes in his NYT article “At the Edge of Inside”,
“now more than ever we need people who have the courage to live on the edge of inside”. And it does take courage to stand in that space between one thing and another, without giving in to the impulse to either act as if we know what we don’t, or to limit ourselves by what we do know.

Therapy can be an especially rich ground for finding an “edge of inside” that works for us. Therapy allows us to tap into childhood states of mind without allowing them to overtake us. It’s a place where regression can be fused with progression, where we can stand outside ourselves while looking in at the very same time, and where we can use the “protectedness” of the space to express realities that may need to be spoken but aren’t ready to be actualized.

We all need places where it’s safe to venture out while still maintaining our ties to the familiar; incubators for our best ideas and unknown selves to grow into what they need to be. Under the best of conditions, we find ourselves in facilitating environments and relationships that allow us to be in two places at once, and that nurture a sense of permission to move back and forth between a sense of belonging and a pushing of the limits. At other times, we need to create that space for ourselves. But no matter what the conditions around us are, frontier states leave all the possibilities open.

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