When transitions happen, some of us can feel unanchored or destabilized. Change can feel like a leap into the unknown, and with it can come a loss of orientation, identity, or familiarity. In the process of things changing, we may be leaving something we know behind, before whatever we’re replacing it with feels solid or familiar. There’s a gap or void that has to be managed. Even positive change can feel disorganizing. A bridge helps us feel supported while things change, by anchoring us to...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Readers, As we move toward the end of Chanukah, I find myself reflecting on the idea that sometimes we need to gradually create a container within ourselves to hold more and more light. Many of us are familiar with the work of building our capacity to hold pain and struggle (often referred to as a "capacity for containment" in psychoanalysis), learning to lean into the hard times, to regulate our affect, to use relationships and attachments to soothe ourselves, and to build the ability...
3 months ago • 1 min read
Recently, I’ve been immersed in a course on psychedelic harm reduction and integration as part of my journey toward becoming a psilocybin facilitator in Colorado. Although this is a topic I’ve been studying for some time, there are always new angles to focus on or new things to learn. So much of what the psychedelic world calls “integration” is actually at the very heart of ordinary therapy. You don’t need psychedelics to know what it feels like to have a moment of clarity, a spark of...
4 months ago • 2 min read
When Your Defenses Become Your Personality Sometimes the traits we learned early in life to survive — being “nice,” “strong,” “funny,” “independent” — become the very things people love and expect from us. We get praised for them. Rewarded for them. Identified with them. But what if they aren’t just natural parts of who we are? What if once upon a time these traits were defenses — ways to cope, adapt, and stay safe in a world that didn’t always give us what we needed or meet us where we were...
10 months ago • 1 min read
Here are some links to my recent blog posts for those of you who haven't seen them posted elsewhere (the newsletter content in contrast to my blog posts is exclusive for you subscribers!) Whose Desire are You Carrying: https://goldsteintherapy.com/whose-desire-are-you-carrying/ How Therapy Can Detoxify Shame: https://goldsteintherapy.com/how-therapy-can-detoxify-shame/ Why Giving Love Can Feel Harder Than Receiving It:...
10 months ago • 1 min read
Let’s talk about something that doesn’t get said enough:When closeness feels too scary, we don’t push people away to be mean. We do it to survive. To feel safe. To stay in control. We tell ourselves we’re “independent,” or that we “don’t need anyone,” but beneath all that distance? There’s often a much younger part of us saying: “Please don’t hurt me like that again.” Because sometimes, connection hasn’t felt safe. Maybe love came with conditions. Maybe it disappeared when you needed it most....
10 months ago • 1 min read
When Old Wounds Speak Loudly Ever had one of those moments where your reaction felt way bigger than the situation called for? Maybe someone didn’t text back fast enough. Maybe your partner seemed distracted. Maybe a friend canceled plans. And suddenly—before you even understand why—you feel panicked, angry, ashamed, or completely unglued. We often call these moments “overreactions”. But I don’t love that word. Because what I’ve seen again and again—in the therapy room and in life—is this:...
11 months ago • 1 min read
Learning to slow down without falling apart Here’s something I had to learn the hard way (and am still learning): You don’t have to deserve rest. Or care. Or gentleness. But you might need to learn how to let yourself have it. For a lot of us, “doing” becomes more than just a way to get through the day. It becomes a shield, a way to avoid sitting with feelings we don’t know what to do with. Sometimes it’s a survival strategy—especially for those of us who grew up in chaos or unpredictability....
11 months ago • 1 min read
The Parts We Push Away I wanted to share something I often say in therapy—and that I’ve had to remind myself of many times too: Therapy isn’t about fixing you. It’s about making space for the parts of you that got pushed aside just to survive. We all have parts of ourselves we’d rather not look at. Maybe they feel too needy, too angry, too vulnerable, too unpredictable. So we exile them. We hide them away, sometimes so deeply that we forget they’re even there. But here’s the thing: Those...
11 months ago • 1 min read