Home: A Process

This November, MHT is participating in the Miry’s List Friendsgiving Fundraising Drive. The money goes to programs that support refugee families that have been resettled in the United States. In tandem with these efforts, our clinicians are writing posts reflecting on what home means to them.

“That process of coming home to my inner world and to an expanded vision for my self in the outer world was one very much marked by stumbling and meandering.”

There was a process of coming home to my self that I was immersed in during the time that I ‘discovered’ the stack of books in my photo. I use quotations here for discovered because the books all somehow found me - through recommendations from trusted people in my life - more so than I found them. Each of their authors helped me to get in touch with my desire to become a psychotherapist after traveling along a much different career trajectory for years. That process of coming home to my inner world and to an expanded vision for my self in the outer world was one very much marked by stumbling and meandering.

I was (and will always be, I think) enamored with the idea that so much about the human psyche is unknowable - and yet since childhood I have had a hunger for knowledge about what makes us tick, grieve, or love. How does one become a person? What does it mean to be alive? What makes this life so painful and yet so rewarding at the same time? Many open-ended questions! These four books scratched some itches, but moreover, they initiated me into a deeper dialogue with ideas that had been swirling around in my head without much of a home to play in. It was a moving experience to encounter others, either from the past or present time, that were contending with these questions in such nuanced ways. It’s that sensation of finding something so right and so precise — it’s almost uncanny. Or the feeling of making a new friend when you have a moment of “No way, you too!? Wow, I thought I was the only one who _____.” Somehow the language that I found in these books reflected to me that I wasn’t alone and helped me remember that my mind was in relationship to other minds. They articulated things that I knew to be true in my gut, but unable to name with language before. This is what home signifies to me: it is a series of movements informed by resonance and reciprocity. And it’s a place to be known and understood - a place to be in dialogue - a place to be in process in a way that allows space for us to get to know ourselves and others over and over again. 

Taz’s Library (left to right):

-Quiet by Susan Cain

-Far from the Tree by Andrew Solomon

-Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach

-We’ve Had One Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse by James Hillman and Michael Ventura

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HERE'S HOW YOU CAN PARTICIPATE IN FRIENDSGIVING WITH US:

Give! Visit our Miry’s List campaign page and make a donation. It's that simple and no sum is too small. Truly.

Follow! Be sure to follow us on Instagram and our blog throughout the month of November. We will be reflecting on what it means to be welcomed, received, and known.

Share!  Help us spread the word. You can do this by sharing our social media posts or links to our Miry’s List Friendsgiving Fundraiser page.

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A little about Miry’s List:
Refugee families come to the United States seeking a safe haven from violence and persecution in their home countries. They leave behind family and friends, as well as virtually everything they own. Many Americans, seeing these families in their communities, wonder: What can I do to help? Miry's List provides a mechanism for people to directly help new arrival refugee families with the things that they need to get started in their new lives – from diapers to beds to cleaning supplies and toiletries. To learn more, visit miryslist.org.

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Taz Morgan, MA, is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist, IMF #99714, working under the supervision of Gabrielle Taylor, PhD. She has trained in Depth-oriented psychotherapy and works with adolescents, adults, and couples. 

Fear No Dragons

Envy is one of those complicated emotions; it can sneak up and slap you in the face, stalk you stealthily, or slowly simmer for years. Often it demands to be hidden, and brings along its friends doubt, shame and worthlessness. Something about envy has the impulsive feeling of a small child’s cry, “I WANT!”, while the adult in us may look on asking why, and wonder what will soothe this want. Envy has regular haunts – social media, for example, is a favorite hang-out – and often seems to want to emphasize our separateness or distance from others. It compares, contrasts, measures.

“When greeted openly and without judgement, envy will likely be able to tell us things we didn’t realize before, help us to identify parts of ourselves that need attention and nurturing.”

I often find it useful to consider where an emotion is felt in my body; perhaps in the pit of my stomach, in the tightness or droop of my shoulders, in my clenched fists or shaking knees, or hovering in my chest breathlessly. These somatic responses provide helpful clues for understanding more about my emotions. If envy lies coiled in my stomach, is there fear and hunger connected with it? If in my clenched fists, is it connected somehow with anger? If envy makes my shoulders droop, is there a feeling of hopelessness along with it?

Envy alone does not inspire, but it can motivate. While envy’s language is the primal “I want”, “I lack”, “I need”, it isn’t simply those states alone. Another clue! Envy itself demonstrates that emotionally we’ve grown up enough to add the aspect of self-inhibition. We no longer simply move from ‘want’ directly into grasping, with little thought between. The want exists, but we hold back. Clearly this in many ways is a positive social development, however if it also means inhibiting awareness of our want it may be self-harming. Hidden in the dark, envy is able to coerce and dominate us without our knowledge. Envy is not a pleasant feeling, and we therefore often shun it, run it out of town before asking where it came from. When greeted openly and without judgement, envy will likely be able to tell us things we didn’t realize before, help us to identify parts of ourselves that need attention and nurturing.

Envy, when partnered with more sophisticated friends such as acceptance, gentleness, and compassion, becomes transformed. In this transformed state, envy may even spur us into positive action. Through such compassionate reflection we strengthen our own agency, our ability to act in the world and to understand and meet our own needs, balanced with those of others.

I’m reminded here of quote from Rainer Maria Rilke which seems to perfectly capture the paradox of envy: 

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”  ― Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Perhaps, indeed, we can learn to greet envy as a helpful acquaintance able to point us towards unrealized paths in our lives.

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Natalie Cargill, MA, MFT and Art Therapy Intern, has two decades of professional experience with children, adolescents, and families, and is passionate about helping them thrive. As a therapist, Natalie works with clients of all ages, approaching therapy with both individuals and families through relational models, seeking to understand attachment patterns, and the systems that impact them.