Isak de Vries

Whether the collapse is “out there” or “in here,” it often seems the world is collapsing. Many of us seek therapy because the sense of losing our mind, our self, our loved ones, or our livelihood is terrifying, and the real threats of catastrophe are debilitating. Knowing what we want becomes increasingly difficult, and we struggle to take shape and hold on to ourselves in the presence of others. We fold up or fold in to protect ourselves and our relationships, but then aloneness, desperation, panic, and self attack set in. We no longer have to deform or warp ourselves to survive what seems unsurvivable. This is where we care for what needs care, and where we pick up the debris, turning it this way and that until we’re reworked into something more than we could have been before. We have many words for the psychic, emotional, and self injuries we endure – bi-polar, psychoses, depression, anxiety, borderline, PTSD, abuse, addiction, grief – and working together we learn to unclot the wou