 Ever feel like you’re trapped in an emotional loop? It’s not just you, it’s your brain playing tricks on you.
Neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor describes the chemical lifespan of an emotion in the body as roughly 90 seconds. Once the initial physiological trigger flushes out, the wave crests and passes. This is a natural, chemical process. If you're continuing to stew on it, this is your choice. So why do we stay angry for hours? Because we keep "re-triggering" the loop by obsessing over the story. To break the cycle, try these two steps:
0 Comments
 Let’s clear the air: behaving like a jerk, having an big ego, or being difficult does not make someone a narcissist. I hear this term misused a lot on social media, sometimes in session: clients wondering if they're a narcissist or if their partner's a narcissist. I can count the true narcissists I’ve treated in my practice on one hand because they rarely come into therapy.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a rigid, deep-seated pathology defined by a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, a constant need for admiration, and a profound lack of empathy. It’s not just "selfishness"; it’s an inability to conceive of others as anything other than extensions of themselves, often paired with an entitled disregard for boundaries. This is very different from having narcissistic traits and, NEWS FLASH, we all have a little bit of something, which is what makes us interesting. While the diagnostic criteria for NPD remain the same, how it shows up in daily life often falls into two distinct categories:
Here's a litmus test: if you're lying awake at night worrying that you’re a narcissist, you aren’t. People with actual NPD rarely question their impact; they're too busy protecting a fragile, bloated ego. If you’re feeling shame, guilt, or a genuine desire to change your relational patterns, you aren’t dealing with pathology - you’re dealing with the fallout of being raised by someone who was. Stop pathologizing your healing and maybe make room to address the complex trauma that's running the show.  We use the term "overreacting" to dismiss emotions that feel uncomfortable, inconvenient, or triggering. I’ve learned that from the perspective of the person experiencing the emotion, there's no such thing.
When we label someone (or ourselves through self-gaslighting) as "overreacting," we're imposing an external metric on an internal experience. What an observer sees as an "overreaction" is almost always the tip of the iceberg. The person is rarely reacting solely to the present moment; they're reacting to the cumulative weight of their past experiences, unmet needs, and protective instincts. The nervous system is not "too sensitive," it's perfectly calibrated to a person's history. When we judge a reaction as "too big," we silence the underlying truth it's trying to communicate. Instead of judging, maybe we can be curious with the "overreactor" or ourselves when we're having those big emotions. Next time you feel the urge to label an emotional response as an "overreaction," try asking: What is this reaction guarding? What information is it trying to relay? Every reaction is data. When we move from judgment to investigation, we stop silencing our experiences and start honoring the complex, protective work our nervous systems are doing every day.  We’re told that having a healthy mind means staying grounded in reality. But people tend to define reality way too narrowly, often basing it solely on their own limited, subjective experiences. When someone opens up about being transgender, they’re often hit with the argument that they’re just "confused," "going through a phase," or experiencing some kind of mental glitch.
How hurtful it must be to be told that your own lived experience isn't real? Beyond the hurt, that argument is a massive misunderstanding of both how psychology works and what it actually means to be human. Being trans isn't a cognitive distortion; it’s about having the courage to live your truth, even when the world around you is obsessed with labels you never asked for. To really understand why being trans is a valid, authentic experience, we’ve got to stop gatekeeping reality and start looking at the difference between a simple error in logic and the deeper truth of who someone actually is. My intention is to help broaden your sense of reality with some straightforward definitions and an invitation to consider that your perspective might not be the only "right" one. What is a Cognitive Distortion? They're automatic, maladaptive patterns of thought, such as catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, or overgeneralizing, that cause someone to interpret events in a way that is inaccurate or harmful to their well-being. What is Transgender? Being transgender refers to having a gender identity that differs from the sex assigned at birth. Major medical and mental health organizations - including the American Psychological Association (APA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) - agree that gender identity is a foundational aspect of human diversity, not a pathology nor a flaw in logic. The Clinical Consensus vs. The Surface Reality Being transgender isn't a matter of opinion; it's a clinical consensus. Medical professionals look for evidence-based outcomes. When they observe that gender-affirming care significantly improves mental health and reduces distress, they acknowledge that the identity is real and the need for alignment is genuine. Reality isn't just chromosomes or birth assignments; it's also our internal, subjective experience. If a person feels a profound, persistent, and authentic sense of being a gender other than the one assigned to them, that internal experience is their reality. Ignoring that internal truth is often what leads to the mental health distress (dysphoria) that society frequently mislabels. Why Dysphoria Isn't a Distortion People often confuse gender dysphoria with a cognitive distortion, but they are not the same. Dysphoria is the distress caused by the mismatch between one's body or social role and their internal identity. It isn't an error in thinking; it is a painful emotional response to a concrete, felt disconnect. The 'fix' isn't to force a trans person to fit into a binary role that's comfortable for society - this is both impossible and harmful - but to support them in living as they truly are. It's about allowing them to bridge the gap between their internal identity and their outward life so their authentic self can finally shine through. Being trans is a complex, beautiful aspect of the human experience that our scientific understanding has finally caught up to. We don’t call a person’s deep-seated personality traits or career passions distortions just because they don't align with someone else's expectations. Gender identity is no different. It's a core facet of who someone is, and recognizing that is a mark of both scientific rigor and human empathy. We usually enter therapy with a clear goal: “I want to be less anxious” or “I want to stop arguing with my partner." But if you’ve ever sat in a session and felt like your therapist was speaking a foreign language - or worse, felt like they were criticizing you when they were trying to help - you aren’t alone. Sometimes, the hardest part of therapy isn’t the work itself. It’s the invisible roadblocks we build between ourselves and the changes we claim to want.
 When you grow up in an unsafe and/or chaotic environment, survival means trusting your abusers over yourself. Years later, this manifests as self-gaslighting. Rooted in childhood trauma, cPTSD makes your own reality feel like the enemy. You minimize your pain by thinking, "It wasn't that bad; it could've been worse." When triggered, you blame yourself for "overreacting," transforming a normal emotional response into personal failure.
Self-gaslighting is the ultimate survival mechanism turned inward - an echo of your past abusers hijacking your inner voice. Healing begins when you stop questioning your reality and start validating your younger self. But sometimes there are social constructs rooted in insecurity that invalidate inner child work. Well, inner child work is very valid and there are a number of interventions that effectively work to heal those younger, wounded parts through limbic system engagement and memory reconsolidation. Internal Family Systems and reparenting are two that come to mind. The ultimate goal is to become an emotionally regulated adult, which has 5 parts: 1) High distress tolerance and regulating your emotions - you can handle life's curveballs without it spilling over onto others or causing conflict in your relationships, 2) Taking responsibility for your actions and emotions - you hold yourself accountable for how you feel and not placing blame on anyone for "making" you feel that way, 3) Differentiating yourself from others' mood states - someone gets upset, you don't have to join them, 4) Holding complexity and nuance - moving away from black and white thinking and getting comfortable in the gray, and 5) Vulnerability over defensiveness - staying connected, rather than disconnecting. When we start to build insight into the ways we self-gaslight, we begin to get familiar with the younger parts of ourselves that we buried alive and never had the chance to emotionally mature. We become a fully fledged adult when we start validating and getting to know these parts. It's called integration.  Courtesy of Adam Zubek-Nizol. For survivors of childhood trauma and those with cPTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder), trust isn't a choice, it's a luxury. When parents are sources of unpredictable hurt rather than safety for their children, the developing brain adapts to survive. It learns a painful baseline rule: people are dangerous and the world is unsafe. This survival mechanism manifests as a grueling war. Externally, it looks like hypervigilance - constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, having to read between the lines, and people pleasing or fawning (even with safe people). In psychotherapy, clients may come in with symptoms of borderline personality disorder, OCD, depression, and/or substance abuse issues, which are all rooted in childhood trauma. Internally, the war is even more isolating. Chronic self-doubt forces survivors to constantly second guess their intuition and emotions by asking, Am I actually hurt, or am I just overreacting? First, there is no such thing as an "overreaction." What's happening there is self-gaslighting, but that's another blog entry! Self doubt may also look like replaying conversations over and over again or projecting what we think about ourselves onto others. A lot of survivors prefer to solve their problems on their own because it requires less interpersonal work and when your internal landscape is a minefield, navigating life can be EXHAUSTING. Because these profound attachment wounds happen in relationships, they can't be resolved in isolation, they must be healed IN relationships with other people. As a therapist, I consider it a privilege to hold space for this exact wounding. By providing a reliable, steady, and unshakeable environment, the therapeutic relationship becomes a laboratory for building trust. It offers the room clients need to untangle their fears and explore their internal worlds without the threat of rejection or judgment. Over time, this consistency directly challenges the old trauma narrative and ways of interfacing with the world. This is one of the many reasons healing doesn't happen over night. It's practicing trusting someone and learning that not everyone is a threat. To witness someone slowly lower their armor and risk vulnerability is awe inspiring, and it's a slow, messy, and non-linear process. But watching a survivor bravely take those first steps - not just in trusting me, but to finally trust themselves - is a powerful testament to human resilience.  Starting therapy is a massive first step. It takes vulnerability, time, and financial investment. Unfortunately, there’s a misconception about what actually happens when we meet. Many people come to therapy with the implicit expectation that the therapist is a mechanic, and they are the car. The goal? Drop off the car, let the expert tweak the engine, and drive away fixed. But true, transformative psychotherapy doesn't work that way. A much better framework for understanding therapy is comparing it to hiring a personal trainer at the gym.
Your Therapist is the Trainer, But You Lift the Weights Imagine paying for a personal trainer, walking into the gym, sitting on a bench, and watching the trainer do squats for an hour. You wouldn't expect your own legs to get stronger. Therapy's partnership lies within the relationship and we're already doing an immense amount of heavy lifting behind the scenes. We're running a high-powered cognitive engine, simultaneously tracking somatic cues, monitoring the client's emotional window of tolerance, and filtering the conversation through various clinical modalities. We're constantly cross-referencing the client's current behavior with historical family dynamics and intrapsychic patterns, all while analyzing our own countertransference to understand their relational world. It's a complex act of real-time parallel processing, where we must synthesize chaotic data and strategically map out therapeutic interventions, all while maintaining a deeply attuned, authentic human presence. Your job is to do something different between sessions. If a client’s role is purely passive by venting about the stressors of the week without engaging in the deeper work, it’s the equivalent of watching the trainer workout. Don't get me wrong, venting has its place. Expressing pent-up frustration in a safe, non-judgmental space can provide immediate, short-term relief. However, venting isn't the same as processing, and rarely leads to change. If you work out with a trainer for one hour a week, but eat poorly and remain sedentary for the other 167 hours, you won't see results. Therapy's no different. The 50 minutes we spend together each week is the laboratory. It’s where we analyze the data, practice new ways of thinking, regulate the nervous system, and map out strategies. The actual implementation happens outside the room when you take the insights from our session and apply them to your real life. It’s practicing that boundary with a coworker, pausing before reacting to your partner, or sitting with a difficult emotion instead of numbing it. If you aren't practicing interfacing with life differently between sessions, the needle won't move. A therapist can't "fix" you because you're not broken. You're a human being operating out of deeply ingrained survival strategies and behavioral habits that may no longer serve you. My role as a therapist is to guide you, challenge you, keep you accountable, and help you see your blind spots. But the ultimate goal of therapy is self-agency. Therapy's magic happens when you're ready to move past the surface level of just talking about your problems and work on building the life and relationships you actually want.  "What are we actually working on?" - a question that comes up sometimes in therapy and is often prompted by the expectation that progress should look like a checklist. Because our field is increasingly influenced by medical models and insurance-driven documentation, there is this pressure to quantify every minute with a billable intervention. This can lead both therapists and clients to feel that if they aren't actively doing a specific task, they aren't making progress - a large reason why I stopped taking insurance.
However, the most profound work in psychotherapy often happens in the space between tasks. Psychotherapy is rarely linear. It's subterranean, focusing on the slow, essential work of presence rather than output. When we prioritize the pressure to "fix" or "solve" over the process of understanding, we risk turning therapy into a coaching session, bypassing the deeper work of self-integration (when different parts feel disconnected or even at war with one another and move toward a sense of wholeness). Rolling with it - the act of moving away from the linear treatment plan to meet the client where they're at today - is not a sign of aimlessness. It's a form of clinical attunement. When a client veers off the official plan, they're often signaling that their nervous system has a more urgent priority than the one documented on paper. If we force clients back to a plan they aren't ready to address, we risk sending the message that their current reality is secondary to a clinical goal. While a session might look like a simple conversation, we're often mapping the emotional reflexes that have governed reactions for years; building the internal capacity to sit with discomfort without needing to escape; and weaving together the fractured parts of ourselves into a more self-compassionate narrative. True growth doesn't always show up on a productivity tracker. It shows up in how you hold yourself, how you recover from a bad day, and how you eventually choose to show up in the world. We’ve all had those days where we show up to an appointment and think, I have nothing to say. But in the therapy room, silence isn't just a lack of words, it’s often a protective shield.
While it’s tempting to wait for your therapist to "find" the problem, the most transformative work happens when you, the client, bring the raw material. Here’s why:
Showing up is half the battle but speaking up is where the healing starts. |