Alexithymia

Alexithymia

Sometimes it’s hard to think back to how I used to be. I doubt I’m the only one like this, but once I learn a new skill or a new way of being—once I’ve really integrated it—it’s like it’s always been there or like the new me is the way I’ve always been.

We’d like to think so wouldn’t we… Alas not the case, I was once not at all anywhere near the emotional genius that I am today. Humility aside, I worked so, so hard to get here. I specifically remember in my twenties being absolutely mute while trying to describe my feelings. I couldn’t identify them. I couldn’t even maybe necessarily feel them!

I have a particular memory of being with someone I was dating where they were pouring out their heart to me and I was paralyzed unable to respond or contribute to the conversation. I said nothing, and I can only imagine how unseen they felt and how awful that was for them.

There was an ocean between us. I later learned, it was the ocean of what’s called Alexithymia—the inability to recognize, identify, and describe one’s own emotions. Many, many clients come to me with this same struggle.

My work in individual therapy helped me to begin to articulate my feelings. To get out of my head and go from thinking to feeling. To stop acting out my feelings and instead tolerate feeling them. And once I was able to do all that, to then communicate about my emotional experience to others.

There were a few other things that also helped me along the way (see future blog posts). I’ll talk more about this at length at some point, but I spent five years as a member of a Modern Analytic group. [ PSA: I am currently running a Modern Analytic group at HoneyB Wellness in Baltimore which has openings! ]. Modern Analytic Groups are phenomenal for helping clients learn how to put their thoughts and feelings into words as they arise in the present moment and in relation to one another.

If I could go back in time, I would tell my dating partner that while I was scared by their trauma and their pain, and I also was frightened by my own limited capacity for emotional intimacy, I was excited about getting to know them better and I loved spending time with them. If I’m being honest, it is so healing to think about telling them that now, even while only in my heart or mind. <3

Flight Risk

Flight Risk

Psychodynamic therapists often consider that it takes 3 months to build a healthy attachment. This applies to the first three months of any relationship—therapeutic or other. In the first three months of therapy, the therapist and client are working to build trust and safety to begin the work of going deeper.

My therapist told me at some point far into our therapy that early on she had considered me a flight risk. I was surprised by that, but if I’m being honest, looking back I can see how she might have thought that due to my string of broken relationships I’d left behind me in my 20’s that she might very well have been one of those.

It’s important early on in therapy to talk to some clients about that feeling that might come up around not wanting to continue the therapeutic process. When we make space for questioning the process, we also make the process feel safer. When we name the doubt or the desire to flee that might come up, we make it easier to stay when it does.

While my therapist may not have told not have told me early on that she considered me a flight risk, I do remember her telling me that there would come a day where I might not want to continue therapy even though it might be in my best interest to do so. If I am being honest, I tried to kill off my therapist—metaphorically speaking!—on many occasions during my therapeutic journey.

I remember feeling like I was climbing a mountain of health and wanted to summit alone. I’m not sure if that’s because I wanted all the glory and didn’t trust someone not to take it from me, or because I felt like to feel truly worth of the success, I felt I had to have done it all on my own, or because it didn’t feel safe to receive love, help or support from others—maybe a combination of all of those things.

One of the biggest wounds I healed on my therapeutic journey is my ability to stay in relationship. To stay when the going gets tough, and to feel safe within the boundaries of healthy attachment. The fact that these kinds of attachment wounding can be healed in therapy, is one of the greatest gifts of the process.

A Good Fit

A Good Fit

Let me back up. Before talking about my expectations for therapy, maybe I should mention how I found my therapist. This is often a big undertaking! Prior to starting therapy for the first time, we often have to overcome inhibitions about wanting or needing therapy. A lot of factors go into having a positive experience in therapy. One of the most curative factors in therapy is the relationship between the therapist and the client. It is essential to find a good fit!

Personally, I remember the exact moment I decided to seek help. I was in Egypt standing at the base of the pyramids—taking in one of the seven wonders of the world—and feeling profoundly lonely that I had no one to share it with. I had been living abroad for some time, and in that moment, I knew I wanted to come home and get to work on my inner life. I felt strongly that if I didn’t work on my inner life and build the resources I needed to learn how be in a healthy relationship, I would spend my life alone or repeating patterns in dissatisfying relationships.

Let’s be honest, sometimes it takes time to act on our epiphanies. At least a year passed between that moment of startling insight at the pyramids and my first therapy session. Initially, l knew I wanted help but I didn’t know how to get help. Coincidentally, I met a young woman who had been open to me about working with a therapist. I remember being impressed by how smart she was (Harvard educated!), but also how anxious. I remember thinking to myself that if this therapist could help her, maybe she could help me, too.

I always recommend people go with their gut when selecting a therapist. Pay attention to how you feel about them while looking at their website or reading their biography or looking at their Psychology Today profile, or how you feel around them sitting in their office, having that first conversation. Don’t discount those urges or feeling drawn towards or pushed away from someone. It doesn’t have to make rational sense!

I remember vividly sitting in that first consult as a client and thinking to myself that while I didn’t really like this therapist sitting in front of me—I thought she could help me. I even remember thinking that not liking her might be a good thing for me. If I had liked her, I reasoned at the time, I may have wanted her to like me and have had a difficult time being honest about what was going on for me. As counterintuitive as all that sounds, my gut reaction was dead on. Over time I grew to like her, and she did really help me. I stuck with that therapist and the rest is history…

9 Months

9 Months

One of my fondest memories from early in my therapy journey as a client is of telling my therapist that she had 9 months to fix me. I forget what was driving my timeline. I think at that point that was all the time and money I wanted to commit to the cause. It is expensive paying for therapy out of pocket—and a huge time investment! Somehow, I had decided 9 months was as long as I would need to change my bad habits to good and “fix” my life.

I look back on that memory so fondly and humorously now because it was ultimately 8 years that I devoted to that therapeutic relationship and task of self-growth at that chapter of my life. Without a doubt my therapeutic journey transformed me—it taught me deeply and profoundly who I am, and helped me reclaim my childhood memories and repair my familial relationships. It was truly worth every dollar spent and every hour invested!

When I think about therapeutic work metaphorically now as a therapist, I think of 9 months in terms of a gestation period. I often feel that at the end of the first 9 months of treatment, the client and I are birthing the first therapeutic “baby” from our work together. Maybe that looks like some deep insight gained, or a certain knowledge going from “head” knowing to “heart” knowing, or maybe it looks like the early beginnings of shifts in consciousness or boundary setting, or having grieved a profound loss from the past, confided a long held secret, or even seeing oneself more clearly.

I don’t remember what my first therapeutic “baby” was in my own treatment as a client all those years ago. Something tells me that it may very well have been attaching to my therapist and softening my timeline…

The Wounded Healer

The Wounded Healer

Hello! My name is Courtney. I thought I would begin my journey here with you today on my private practice website blog by telling you a little bit about me and my journey to become the woman that I am today.

At Pacifica Graduate Institute, a depth psychology program which focuses on the many ways we can raise consciousness through the therapeutic process, I was steeped in the paradigm of the wounded healer. The wounded healer is based on the idea that we are one and the same, you and I, traveling this road of life together. The idea that one of us is “sick” and one of us is “well” is based on the medical model and dehumanizing. In fact, you and I are on this road of life in which there is no hierarchy. I can serve as a guide to you through healing work around your wounding in relation to, or as a result of the work I have done to heal my own wounding.

The wounded healer paradigm resonates with me strongly because my own desire to become a therapist grew out of my work as a client, then patient in psychoanalytic/dynamic terms. I was a dedicated psychodynamic psychotherapy client for a period of eight years from 2005 - 2014, with a concurrent 5 years as a client in a Modern Analytic Group.

As I did my own healing work throughout my journey, I recovered and reclaimed parts of myself that make me the therapist I am today. While Pacifica introduced me to the concept of the wounded healer, it was alive within me from the moment I took my own first step on the healing path. I always tell my clients that the wound is the gift. From our deepest woundings, we can ultimately cultivate our greatest gifts.

In my case, hypervigilance became powerful intuition; a wide chasm of unclaimed feelings transformed into a deep sense of empathy; an overdeveloped sense of my own importance became an acceptance of humility; an unending striving led to embodied compassion, and the sense of not being enough became a knowing that we are each inherently worthy.

I hope to continue to tell you more about my healing journey and how it transformed me through these blog posts. Your healing journey may be mirrored in my own. I love this work, and I love the idea of us doing it together. Join me in claiming your gifts and redefining yourself and your story…