The Illyrian

  Sentimental Lady: Why Music from Around Age 10–11 Hits Different This isn't some rare personal glitch — I don't think I'm unique here. But I notice it most when I'm driving alone and a random song from the early-to-mid 70s comes on the radio. The timing matters: that music lines up almost exactly with me at 10 to 12 years old. And look, I'll say it up front — proudly and a little shamefully — the music that levels me is what we now call "yacht rock." Easy-listening pop-rock, 70s and early 80s, frequently performed by one-hit wonders. Think Piña Colada Song . Not exactly top-shelf musicianship. I know this. I don't care. The one that gets me every single time, from the very first note, is "Sentimental Lady" by Bob Welch. That shimmery guitar picking, one strum, then his airy, slightly wistful voice: "You are here and warm, but I could look away and you'd be gone..." And just like that I'm back there — sun-warmed, inn...

  Two Ways to Survive At a biological level, we're organized around one imperative: survive. But "survive" splits into two very different strategies — prevent death, or promote life. And I think most of us, often without knowing it, build our whole orientation to the world around one of these more than the other. It's not a personality quirk. It's closer to a foundational stance — laid down early, usually before we had language for it — that quietly runs underneath everything else: how we read a room, who we trust, what we call risk, what we call opportunity. The Threat-Oriented Stance For some people, the dominant organizing principle is threat detection and avoidance. Life gets filtered through the question: is this dangerous? The world shows up as unpredictable, or at least unreliable. Energy goes toward vigilance — toward control, toward minimizing exposure. Even neutral situations get scanned for the harm that might be hiding in them, physical or emotion...

Connect to Become Free We begin without edges. At the moment of conception, there is no self pressing against an other, no inner world sealed off from an outer one. There is only the womb — a seamless, breathing equanimity, self and world indistinguishable, one warm continuity. Then birth arrives like a verdict, and everything that was whole is suddenly separate. This is the wound we spend our lives translating. Psychology has long argued over our primary will. Is it pleasure, as Freud believed? Power, as Adler insisted? Meaning, as Frankl found in the ruins? But trace the arc of a human life from its very first moment and something older reveals itself — older than desire, older than ambition. It is the  Will to Connection : the primal, reparative drive to recover what was severed, to find again the world we once inhabited from the inside. This is not mere sociability. It is structural. We do not simply  meet  people — we  build  them inside ourselves. Object R...

We arrive where we started — and know it for the first time We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. T.S. ELIOT  ·  LITTLE GIDDING, FOUR QUARTETS When I read these lines as a psychotherapist, I don't read them as poetry about place. I read them as a precise description of what happens when someone does the real work — in a therapy room, on a long journey, or alone in a canoe on a quiet lake. The exploration Eliot names is the inner kind. The Hero's journey. Not a journey away from life, but a journey  into  it — into the parts of ourselves we have been too busy, too defended, or too frightened to meet. And then we return. The house is the same. The family, the town, the same relationships waiting. Nothing external has shifted. But the person walking back through that door has been reorganized from the inside. Every room is met differently. Every old wound, every long...

NEITHER DID A Treatment (Draft) THE WORLD A therapist's office. Neutral colors. Good furniture. The kind of room designed to make people believe they are safe enough to tell the truth. This is where it begins. This is where, in retrospect, everything was already in motion. THE MAN IN THE CHAIR A new client. Late forties. Successful in the way that doesn't quite satisfy. He comes with the presenting problem men like him always bring: anxiety, a sense of drift, a marriage that has gone quiet in the way marriages do when two people have stopped being curious about each other. But beneath that, something is alive. He is having an affair. He offers this not with guilt but with a kind of bewildered gratitude, as though something has happened to him that he doesn't yet have the language for. She sought him out, he says, or he found her... the details are slightly inconsistent in the way that matters. He describes her carefully and lovingly. The specific gravity of her. The way she...

It takes one second, maybe less, to make the wrong decision. This decision then sets into motion a chain of events that are unconscious to the person who stimulated this reaction. Let me explain. A person turns to light a cigarette. In that fraction of a second they lose the ability to bring their moving vehicle to a stop colliding slightly with the vehicle in front of them. The impact is slight. So slight that the 16 month old infant sleeping her car seat remains sleeping. The slight impact resonates. First there is the shock and realization of the collision. Then there is anger and anxiety. Police are on the scene. Reports are written, insurance is exchanged. Thank you for the ticket, my new insurance card was at home. Time…is ticking. They never seem to rush. Take precautions and go to the hospital. It is 11 pm . More time. The emergency is busy – that’s a surprise. Go to this desk than that one and then come back here. What is your name and health card number? Do you have any...

  Stay in Your Lane On differentiation, vigilance, and the highway inside the nervous system I was driving on the highway the other day. I changed lanes-cleanly, safely and as I did, I automatically glanced at the driver in the next car. It wasn’t dramatic. It was fast. Reflexive. But I caught it. Why did I look? Was I looking for connection? Validation? Approval? At first I might have said yes. I’ve long thought of myself as someone who makes eye contact because I’m relational, connective, attuned. But this felt different. If I’m honest, it wasn’t about being validated. It was about scanning for invalidation. A microsecond check: Are they irritated? Judging me? Threatened? About to challenge me? And then, just as quickly, another voice inside me said: “Stay in your lane.” Not literally. Psychologically. What I meant was: Narrow your view. Hold your ground. Mind your own business. Don’t go fishing for cues about  how you’re being received. ...