Annelisa

There comes a point in every healing journey when insight is no longer enough. We can name our trauma, trace our lineage, map our attachment style . . . and still feel the ache of a child who has never been met. Awareness without experience only sharpens the edges of self-knowledge. At some point, the heart needs to be held. The Birth of the Inner Parent In the wake of adultification, the psyche is left with a missing figure . . . the true inner parent. Winnicott called it th

Most couples don’t come to therapy because they’ve fallen out of love. They come because they’re drowning and confused and lost. They can't figure it out anymore. They aren't employing the tools they know they could be using . . . they want to, but don't . . . or can't. Beneath the arguments about time, money, sex or parenting lies a deeper story: two adultified children still doing the only relationship dance they know how to do. How Adultification Begins In a healthy family

Grown up, But Living From the Child’s Survival Strategy My lovely, 40-year-old client, a therapist herself, sits in my office, shoulders squared, voice steady. “I’m fine,” she says. “I just don’t understand why I can’t feel fine.” Her life looks enviable . . . reliable income, caring partner, healthy body, beautiful son. Yet beneath the smooth surface runs a subterranean panic: What if it all falls apart? What if they finally see I don’t know what I’m doing? This is the para

When Growing Up Becomes a Performance I have a client who is 47, accomplished, and respected in his field. He meditates daily, journals before bed, attends couples therapy every other Tuesday. By all appearances, he’s a grown man. Yet each morning he wakes to the same silent verdict: not enough. No matter what he builds . . . great career, beautiful family, social identity . . . his foundation keeps trembling. There’s always another summit to scale, another wound to outgrow,

Humee Hum - The Other is You Performed by Mirabai Ceiba Spotify https://open.spotify.com/track/1MWDQSB6vmVPjF9SAQINvt?si=5fdbc12cccc441a1...

Beloved, you keep handing me pieces of myself I swore I had lost long ago. Sometimes you offer them gently, as a flower opening in the...

John Welwood saw intimate relationship not as a refuge from life’s difficulties but as a crucible for awakening. “A relationship...

From Projection to Presence John Welwood often described intimate relationship as a crucible of transformation. “Relationship is a fierce...

Facing The Unbearable ™ John Welwood gave us a phrase that continues to ring with truth: spiritual bypassing . He described it as the...

There’s a fantasy that we’re supposed to know what to do with our lives. And if we do not then this is clear evidence that something is...

If You Want Me To Stay By Sly and The Family Stone https://open.spotify.com/track/2BydLQAh7CUIFvSEqAMc4x?si=fe63718be5604730If ...

You did not come here to fold your wild soul into a shape someone else could name. You did not come here to bargain with your ache, to...

We are taught to repair relational rupture with the language of goodwill. Apologies. Acknowledgments. Promises to do better. And for many...

By the time couples realize they’ve drifted, the dance is already well-rehearsed. Not necessarily in words or fights or silence, though...

The Drift They’ve done the work. They’ve been to therapy; maybe even trained as therapists; often both of them are therapists. They can...