Lack of healthy boundaries and mutual enabling of distorted patterns of relating has long been the regular foundation of relationships; familial, friendly, and romantic. This is breaking down, evidenced by younger generations going no contact with parents, and women (in particular) choosing to be single.

Women have typically been required to have no boundaries with loved ones in order to be acceptable and accepted. This required abandonment of self is quite common in familial relationship. Family is allowed to behave however they wish to you and must be accepted and relationships maintained regardless.

There is a mass phenomenon underway whereby people are prioritising their own wellbeing, seeking therapy and other means of self evolution, and rediscovering their own inherent self worth. They are choosing not to remain in places, groups, connections where they are taken for granted. This is leading to learning and enforcing healthy boundaries, and refusal to participate in destructive codependent patterns. It is a quiet internal revolution, underlying a slightly less quiet interpersonal revolution.

An individual making the decision to prioritise their mental health and internal wellbeing is like a stone dropped into a quiet pool. It sends out ripples. The more people doing it, the whole surface starts to dance and the ripples never cease. Enough pebbles and the entire pool rises. This is collective change in action.

It all starts within the individual. Never underestimate the power of becoming a better, healthier, more authentic you.

My previous career was in public health/population research and epidemiology… the macro, the big picture, the patterns. Then I turned back towards my other great fascination – the psyche – and became a psychotherapist… the micro, the individual, and also of course, the patterns.

Patterns within and patterns without. Patterns upon patterns, inside other patterns; intrapersonal, interpersonal, extrapersonal. Through study and training, self-work and self-exploration, I began to understand the universe within; vast as is the universe without. Often too, uncharted, much even unknowable.

And us, the ego, the conscious sense of self, as the nexus between the two. Creatures of profound alchemy that we are. Who we believe our self to be is just the surface.

Psychotherapy for me always exists within this frame.

Photo by Егор Камелев on Unsplash

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