You've spent thousands of dollars. You've lost sleep. You've researched treatment programs, sat in therapists' offices, read every book, worried constantly, and rearranged your life around someone you love. Of course you want them well. But wanting them well and being ready for what "well" actually requires are two different things. Most families never get asked to tell them apart.
A recovery built around someone else's goals doesn't hold. It can't. That's the only way someone actually gets well: their purpose has to be greater in their life than whatever they've been reaching for.
Psychotherapy was built by men in an era when women couldn't practice it and were dismissed as hysterical when they needed it as much as anyone. Women transformed the field. The workforce became 75-82% female. The defaults shifted. Nobody planned it. Now 44.8% of men drop out of therapy. The field calls them resistant. We think the room changed and nobody noticed.
In this work, we often talk about what avoidance does to the people around the avoider. The kids who flinch, the partners who give up trying. We talk far less about what the avoider forfeits. Not the harm they cause. The life they never quite get to have.
The language that comes to mind feels worn out or overused. "Avoidance" gets used until it means almost nothing. "Denial" gets used more and means less. Underneath the words sit two different things, and a person in troub
We were proud to co-host NYCFL’s recent Open House, an opportunity to bring together colleagues, referents, and community partners to experience the program’s evolving vision and the momentum underway.
