​Boundaries.
​
The theme that is ever present within the walls of the therapy room. Pestering us to uphold invisible barriers to what tears us down, undermine our value systems, or inspires the ‘ick’.
I’m not sure what is more burdensome some days, to establish boundaries or to uphold them. If we have a history of chronic people pleasing (such as myself), then our systems have a habit of not so gracefully bumping into them once they are created.
People become cranky when we create boundaries if they have benefitted from us having none.

Sigh.

I exist in a persistent parody related to the sentiment ‘practice what you preach’.
Most days I lean into the humor that I am just another human that is just as susceptible to the human condition. Just in case you did not know, even therapists benefit from therapy.
I could tell you some tales from my own personal experiences of creating a boundary and sitting with the discomfort of others chaotically ricocheting off of of them.  It’s been a marathon of learning that I am, in fact, allowed to protect my peace at the expense of another's discomfort.

I am wired to caretake. To comfort. To aid in the discovery of peace and the pursuit of happiness. So much so that I embodied self-sacrifice for the sake of others. My drive evolved into a qualification of self-worth. To this day, I am quite uncomfortable not rushing to the rescue of other’s discomfort, especially when my boundary is the one to blame.
Friendly reminder that our worth is inherent, not tied to a list of conditions.

Yikes, that’s a doozy to not only preach, but practice.

As I evolve as a *more* seasoned therapist, I feel myself slowly wiping away the clown makeup of imposture syndrome. I am learning that folks seek therapy with those who embrace imperfect authenticity (ethically of course). Therapy is a space to explore the impacts of connection starvation. Loneliness is shame’s constant companion. During the moments of vulnerability that lead into these explorations, I've discovered that folks find comfort in someone real sitting across from them, not forever poised with a poker face.

Here is your reminder that your boundaries are permissible.

We can have them without the condition of a required defense.

Just as ‘no’ can serve as a complete sentence, so can your limits.
Here’s to practicing healthy boundaries, while giving yourself grace for the human moments that accompany the yuck feeling when others express discomfort by bumping into them.
​
*Insert relatability here*

Perhaps one of the most overlooked beauties of humans are the nuances that color every perspective. Just like fingerprints, no two experiences are alike. No matter if everything else aligns down to the dust particles, my perspective will vary from yours.
This beauty is often mistaken for burden.

Viktor Frankl and Irvin Yalom played major parts in the development of Existential Therapy. Within this framework, there are core concepts apart of the human condition:

 freedom and responsibility
(can’t have one without the other)

 awareness of death
(spooky)

 the search for meaning
(midlife crisis being a commonly highlighted one)

and isolation is a part of life
(bummer)

We are inevitably isolated to some degree due to our nuanced perspectives. This isn’t because of lack of trying, it’s just as true as the sky is blue. Our experiences are not meant to match 100%.

This may be the most disillusioned truth to humanity. Why? Because people sure try their darndest to clone themselves in their lenses. This fact alone perpetuates my profession. The goal to healing a lot of the time is self-actualization and individualization.

AKA
finding the courage to honor your own truth.

Generationally, we miss the mark when raising our little people.

I giggle at the irony, because I had a baby that looks very little like me. However instead of harping on this fact, we celebrate. We lean into her vivacious blonde curls and deep blue eyes. We admire the beauty of her unique experiences and the lenses she peers into the world with.
​
We become who we are from the messages we receive.

I could prioritize my parenting to indoctrinate my little monkey into a shadow closely resembling myself or my partner. We could quiet the rustlings of her novelty, shhhing them with shame, guilt, or otherwise “don’t do that, that’s not what Scotts do!”.

However, I see the pain that accompanies this rigidity within the therapy room.

As children, we are wired to be egocentric. We experience the world as if we are at the center. This isn’t out of selfishness, but out of an instinctual drive to survive. This is what perpetuated ‘survival of the fittest’. We had to be the center of our family’s world to survive ‘back in the day’.
Egocentrism does not really begin to fade until we become seven-ish years old. Then it slowly fades over time. Slowly key word.

So it shouldn’t be a shock that when adults box us into becoming their clones or bust, we carry shame from being innately different. Experiencing our perspectives differently, however being told we have control over what is secretly the uncontrollable.

We become who we are from the messages we receive. 

Embrace the differences that are promised with the human condition. Prepare yourself for the reality of nuances. Instead of fearing this, lean in with curiosity. We all have something to learn from one another, no matter the age difference. 

Mommy, what are you doing?

My two-year-old chirps for the 4000th time. She’s arrived at the ‘why’ stage a bit early, but nonetheless enthusiastic. I feel as if I am living in an old-fashioned flip book, each of my movements are met with the questions “What are you doing?” and “What’s that?”
The developmental nerd in me rejoices at her curiosity, knowing how meticulous she is at building her knowledge base about the world around her. Just this week she has announced that her favorite color is pink (Lord help me), and she has mastered the decision-making method of Ee-Knee-Me-Knee-My-Knee-Mow. Her advanced proclivities for expressing her mind leave me cackling at the pure innocence and proper syntax on a daily basis.
Then there’s the other part of me. The part that doesn’t dawn the professional hat and steps away from the education well. The part that is so privy to distraction. Think about this bill, toy about what to do with this relationship. Don’t look out the window too long or that existential dread of what our world is becoming might swallow me whole. How will we make the calendar work?

How will it all work?

Maybe children are onto something with this whole verbal processing thing. Perhaps we as adults have become way too internalized about tending to processed information. We exist in such a ‘hush’ culture, it wouldn’t surprise me if our mute nature about the things that actually matter are derived from the utmost craving to play the part and fit in.

My daughter is not destined to fit in.

She was born into a world where her voice will be her most powerful tool. To fit in is to accept defeat, and her light is much too bright to be snuffed out because others’ egos that are much too fragile.

Insert loud eye roll here.

I have had enough with the egos. The delicate egos that grip onto crooked power to ensure their selfish safety. The ones who would greatly benefit from proper therapy, however their fear overrules their abilities to sit in the greater good that would come about from their discomfort in the growing pains.

Growing pains are the key to our best selves.

I always tell folks in the therapy room that growing pains don’t only exist within our legs. Those are just the most tangible pangs of discomfort. To live is to commit to evolution. Pathology arises from our balking at what comes with the humanness territory. When we resist change, we resist healing. We resist the authenticity that pairs with accountability. The wisdom that comingles with humility. We are all destined to be humpty dumpty. Rise, fall, break, evolve. Rise and repeat.

Mommy, what are you doing?
​
I am evolving with you, my little love. Let’s lean into those growing pains together, and know you are never alone.

Somedays I wonder where my voice went. Did I say everything that there was to say?

Words used to bubble onto the paper as if my soul could not contain them any longer. My fingers danced across the keyboard with fluidity, dancing to the melody of the prose begging to hit air. I was diligent with my writing for a handful of years, submitting them to different places to share my prosaic tidbits and tangents. I hustled for a sliver of a portfolio, I carved out a blog, I hopped on some podcasts. I even wrote a children’s book.

So where did that linguistic melody run off to?

A reoccurring theme within the eclectic walls of my therapy room comes and goes with the seasons. It’s that dance of ‘Oh I finally made it to that destination I’ve been hyper-focused on!” to the “Now whats?” and the “What ifs?”

It’s humorously frustrating when I am just as human as the clients that share this office with me. Somehow, life did a lot of living and I stumbled and tripped on a handful of “now whats?” and “what ifs?”. Homebuying, tumultuous pregnancies, thrusts into first time parenthood, and all the twists and turns in between can do that do a girl I suppose.

Phew.

The chaos feels like a fever dream some days. The memories of my once late preemie squishy baby are challenged by this curly-haired ray of two-year-old sassy sunshine looking up at me with wonder spilling from them. The once new home now has twinges of longing for revamped newness. Careers are resettled. My once insecure identity as a parent is cemented into my soul by tight toddler hugs and rapidly growing vocabularies.

Now I just feel caked in a thick layer of dust. Coughing from the impact of the landing from the chaos to my new normal.

I don’t think I wrote for a year.
A whole year my soul lay stagnant grasping at survival straws, leaving the pen and paper firmly behind.

I felt as if I had to shed my old self to step into my new, more parentified, hardened by trauma, but resilient because of it self. Yet, though quiet perspective, I am learning that there is no such thing as a new and old self. There’s just the self that has evolved. A narrative that has shifted. Just because we’re in a new chapter does not mean that previous ones have been lost.  
I know this because I did a pretty decent job at outrunning the writer in me. I boxed her up with the rest of me that I thought I had to pack away for the sake of becoming a good parent, a responsible adult, a dutiful wife, and a working mom. I hid that box in the back with the rest of what I perceived as selfish joy.

Come to find out, that’s the opposite of the thing I was wanting to accomplish.

You see, my little girl watches EVERYTHING we do. She listens to the ways we speak about our experiences, ourselves, and our wants and needs. Packing up the essence of me was robbing her of witnessing a mother who saw and valued her own worth, celebrated her own humanness, and modeled permission to be responsible and pursue her happy.

Plus, the writer in me was peeking through every time I came to work. Cultivating safe spaces requires me to allow the prosaic melody to flow through relatable metaphors, compassionate validations, and humanizing normalizations.

I am still working on the layer of dust that’s formed.

But
I am making an effort at pursuing my happy. I am dusting off my once hidden away boxes of me, and I am leaning into the spaces that help me feel free.
​
That’s just the writer in me. 

Most therapists ultimately find their way into niches, the glorified ‘you made it!’ standard of the mental health practice. As interns, we are encouraged to adopt the ‘dabble’ mentality as we find what facet of focus emphasizes our curiosity. This is what encourages us to become masters of our trade. Or so it goes.

Neurodiversity is my chosen niche, however I feel somedays it’s a peephole into an expansive, chaotic world where one diagnosis has the capability of presenting so colorfully different from the other, even though they share the same lettering. ADHD, Non-Verbal Learning Disability, and Autism Spectrum Disorder pepper my notes, and are woven into the predominate population that I work alongside with.

It’s peculiar that I have spent so little time utilizing this platform to share therapist tangents from this niche. Although I identify fiercely as an Ally to the Neurodivergent community, I have a strong desire to respect the privilege I carry as a Neurotypically-titled adult. Please note as I speak on my behalf of my Neurodiversity therapeutic experience, I am not speaking from a place of inherent experience, only a pupil from the outside looking in.  

Autism is not a cluster of behaviors, behavior is simply a symptom of the struggle. The struggle is the singular perspective that reacts to the full picture of stimulus presented. There is an existential belief that we all experience the world from different shades of perspective, so in that Autism is refined by the shades of individualization.

Compulsive lying is a mask of ingrained desire to connect through saying what has been taught as ‘correct’.

Thematically, I notice those struggling to experience success long enough to recognize what is different from survival mode. Routine navigations in a world with varying and consistent dumpster fires. While there is a strength in singularly attending to one fire at once, this inevitably results in a perceived failure of achieving ‘correct’ use of time and resources. Ultimately, there is vacillation between panicked and pressured productivity and Autistic burnout. Research has shown Autistic burnout results from the sensory and emotional overload that correlates from long-term masking and suppression of autistic traits.

“Out of compliance “
“Quirky”
“Commonly misses the mark”

I’m routinely dumbstruck at how threatening variation is. ‘Different’ carries such heavy stipulations. It’s the kind of awkward smirk I get when a couple is arguing so passionately about change they’d like to see in the other, yet it’s the change that is so desperately needed in themselves. The solution seems so plain and concise.

We are all varying shades of different.

Even the folks that can be tucked away so inconspicuously into the box of ‘normal’. The box so dutifully deemed standard, yet carries own dents, scrapes, and scuffs. Those who assume the power to define normal are largely ones to talk.

It’s that smirk again.
I have met some pretty remarkable people through the work that I have the honor of doing. They radically shift my perspective for the better. The kinder. The more empathetic. Autism, nor any other diagnosis interrupts their remarkability. 

We are all worthy of burning the scuffed up, dented box of stifled and poorly defined normal.

Why?
It’s simply the boogieman beneath your bed. Somewhere in myself I can empathize with missing a mark or ten, deviating haphazardly out of compliance, and possessing a quirk or two.  Normal exists on a spectrum, just as Autism does. No two ‘normals’ coexist. Perhaps that is why it’s so dangerous. So easily manipulated.

The next time someone presumes the power to cultivate a definitive normal, remember to pause and smirk, fully knowing the truth about that particular boogieman. 

I haven’t done this in a while. I’ve let my tid-bits and tangents shuffle through my mind without much thoughtful attendance. A nod of acknowledgement perhaps, but there’s far too much to do to carve out space for anything more.

Yet this hypocrite sits on her phone for at least two hours every night drowning out all noises, even the internal ones.

It feels rotten to admit that those two hours are sometimes the highlight of my days. The two hours I am subconsciously trudging through the mud toward. No one needs me. No one is outwardly suffering within my physical vicinity. Nothing else needs to be tended to or cleaned up or soothed. My mental and emotional exhaustion outweighs my cravings for authentic attunement.

It finally happened last night, where my own emotionality outweighed my desire to sink into mind-numbing social media escapism. I was sitting with my head on my husband’s chest after we got our tumultuously teething toddler down for the night. The tears started from no solid pinpoint and the anxiety lingered throughout today. Being a human really gets in the way of being emotionally tight-lipped.

Building up a dam to the emotional turmoil that ricochets within my heart is far easier than allowing myself to feel the damn thing. I don’t have time to sit with the ache of my chronic fear and trepidation when there are so many other sources of pain surrounding me. So many people in and out of the therapy room are sputtering for air from the obstacles and challenges that grip their throats.

My whole career is built on a platform defined by the notion of ‘safe space’. A space in the world where others can come and hang up their masks and defenses at the door. To feel safe enough to peek at what lies beneath the armor and drives the misery, anxiety, depression, compulsion to drink, cut, argue; the list is endless.

The world is not safe. This is nothing new. The boogieman has crept around corners and within alleyways for as long as humanity has existed. Yet, the type of unsafe that is hammering into people is unnervingly unfamiliar. Rights that some argue come with humility are being revoked like angry parents snatching a child’s toy from their grasps without much rhyme or reason.
 As a therapist, my client’s well-being is my number one priority. I was raised by the book of ethics and nurtured by the hands of professionally powerful human rights advocates. Yet here I am, tears rolling down my face as I look at the wreckage of an ocean’s worth of demolished presumed safety.

I am not writing these words to ask for validation or understanding. I just keep thinking about those who sit across from me with pain echoing behind their eyes. I have become way too savvy at seeing pain others try so desperately to keep quiet from the outside world. It’s not safe to feel unwell right now. It’s difficult to shake the modified natural selection that is swirling in the air. Buck up, button up, and whatever you do, do not look vulnerable.

Vulnerability is dangerous.
Because its antidote is empathy.

I think that’s what I crave. I crave for empathy to lose its derogatory connotation. I crave for the fixers to pause their agenda to see the pain behind so many eyes, their own eyes even. It’s so hard to sit with so much pain in and out of the therapy room.

I’ll be OK.
We will be OK.

Even my tumultuous teething toddler with the patience of a fly will be OK.
​
There’s just so much relief in letting words hit the air.
Letting uncomfortable emotions escape the confides of your lips. Your feelings are safe within the cozy walls of my eclectic office. Your experiences, your pain, your perspectives are all inarguably yours to hold and process. Let’s just let it all hit the air. Let’s start there. 

It’s raining.
​ For the past few days there have been periods of steady, rhythmic rain drumming against the windows that box me in. I love this sort of downpour. It quiets the world in ways that fly under the radar of cultivating discontent.

There has been so much discontent lately.
The kind that’s sticky and alludes to unfiltered pain. The sort of dissatisfaction with life’s happenings that oozes from others desperate for a place to put it down. Frantic word vomit sputters onto those unarmed, unequipped, and many times unwitting.

I tell my husband frequently that I wish I possessed the skills to be mean. To be able to bluntly shut down something that is not serving me, and to be able to relentlessly attend to my own needs above others. Something in the universe disarmed this ability within my soul and added an extra splash of empathy. My empathy for other’s experiences outweighs my own needs time and time again. It’s chronically exhausting.

Lately I feel like Lucille’s sign ‘Psychiatric Help 5 cents’ has been nailed to my forehead. Those I know in different ways have been showing up with such forceful, palpable pain it’s slammed me into a chokehold of holding space. Disarming internal bombs before they detonate. Panic whipping wild within their eyes.

Their eyes.
Windows to the soul when in a romantic setting, but geysers of trauma in a realistic sense lately.

I just want to hide.

The work I do is raw, vulnerable, heavy, and inevitability dark. There’s hardly a day that escapes from the reminders of how woven tragedy is into our DNA. I’ve been trained on how to compartmentalize and hold space, but y’all, I am just a human.

When I leave work, I am breathing through a bendy straw. My chest is tight, and my heart is shaking off the ache of others. My mind hurriedly attempts to leave all the ick at the door. I am thumbing through the pages of my memories or current events that donate levity to my soul. Thankfully, my daughter and husband are good at these contributions.

I know I know.
“You need to be better at holding boundaries.”

But how do you hold boundaries in the moment of distinct agony?
How do you death grip your bendy straw when the other’s straw broke in half?
How do you turn away from the eyes that haunt you long after the gaze has been broken?

These are the moments my soul cries out for Sadie. The creature who traded my bendy straw out for a proper snorkel. It feels so silly to still grieve an animal as hard as I do. But who would really know?

Sometimes, other’s view of me makes me feel so disposable. Like my depth doesn’t have a place because it doesn’t appear to be hemorrhaging. Most of the time, I am used to this, and I am at fault for giving in. But other times, I crave to be seen. I have a deep need to remember the good. Not just for levity, but for survival.

We all do.
It’s within humanity’s blueprint to play. It’s tethered to the foundation of resiliency to catch our breath in the face of the unimaginable. Even our mechanisms for crying demand we ‘come up for air’, as we can only heavy cry for 10–15-minute intervals before our system drags up to the surface for a break. Seriously. It’s kind of neat.  

It is vital to our livelihood to remember the good. Even if it feels like utter bullshit in that moment.
​
Because here’s the thing.
It’s temporary. Every single bit of this life. That feeling, that job, that situation, that age. None of it is doomed for permanence. Even when permanence is begged for. Life is a tumultuous rollercoaster crowded by twists, turns, drops, and highs you never fathomed. It’s up to us to decide how we lean into the turns, or shy away from the chaos.
 

I miss the newspaper.

My childhood memories are sprinkled with sleepy barefoot walks down the driveway. Memories of my nose crinkling as I gingerly picked up the soggy blue plastic that kept the paper crisp despite the morning dew and Florida stickiness. Toddling back into the house, carefully freeing the paper from its confines, and shuffling the ‘life’ section from the rest of it. I’d hand the bulk of the ‘boring stuff’ to my dad, while plopping down in the adjacent seat at the kitchen table with my waffles, the comics, and horoscopes.

These memories dance through my mind as I sit perched in a fake leather chair, HGTV blasting in my right ear in a surgery center waiting anxiously for my dad to toddle out from hip replacement surgery.

Time is such a wild phenomenon.
While it’s constructs are completely manmade, its themes and tempo perpetuate the fragility of it all. Something about its constructs rob us of intentionality to truly marinate in a moment as quiet and routine as leafing through the paper with your father on a sleepy morning before he shuffles you to school. On the mundane car ride he haphazardly flips through your hastily scribbled out flashcards, quizzing confidence into your Spanish-challenged soul before a daunting quiz.

After four years of Spanish do you think I retained a thing?

Nope.

Did I pass every year with As and Bs?

Yep.

How?

The dutiful and lighthearted commitment of my sweet Papa on these drives to school. He was just as foreign language challenged as I was (and still am), so his meanderings through the pronunciation of words made it impossible to fight a smile and helped my perfectionistic soul not take life so seriously.

This surgery is my first, existential reminder of the fragility of my parents. As amorously privileged as this is, my parents have been projected as invincible superhumans within my narrative. What a blessing it is that it took thirty-one years for the realization that my Papa is undeniably as human as I am.

But still, big yikes.

Spirit oozes from my father, the legacy of those before him ebb and flow from his wisdom. Even when faced with debilitating pain, you’d never known the toll. His dedication to fatherhood has been unwavering, yet untraditional. Just as his father danced to the melodies of time without a desire to control it, my father danced to the melodies of raising a daughter. His grip on my will never tightened. His voice never rose. Fear was never a part of enforcing the rules.

Somehow, along the journey of time, my Papa shared the spirit within the tempo of time’s gift. He showed me how to soak into the small moments, lean into gratitude of joys big and small, and to never underestimate the power of a genuine smile.

Today, and so many days before it, he’s tap dancing to the melody of fearlessness. Because at the heart of it all, fear distracts our spirit from the gifts of time.

When we lead with fear, we sidestep the beauty in the journey. The bravery of our growth. We deny ourselves the opportunity to see the beauty in all the unusual places.

So, here’s your reminder to reacquaint yourself with the quiet moments. The subtle ones that fly under the radar due to our own daunting tasks of time. Shake off the tradition of fear and stress to conform to constructs that inevitably wear out our spirits.
​
Smile at the silly.
(Like bears!)
Seek out the comics.
Feel it to heal it.
And look for the beauty. It’s out there, I pinky promise. 

Being a therapist is strange. Everyday promises anything but monotony. What will I bear witness to today? What will folks bring into the space? A retched experience with a boss, a horrific, sudden loss of a parent, extra flatulence, a treasured pet snake… the possibilities are colorful.

Today it was a fist fight.

A sibling had apparently met their quota of sly comebacks and the other’s patience had had enough. A sucker punch and some odd swings later they were wrestled apart.
This sounds like something that should phase someone right?

Yet, I sat in my grey, cozy chair unflinching.

“Yikes” was the monotone, stand-alone reaction that floated through my thoughts.
Later that night I remembered the family session and recalled (ethically appropriate) parts of the story to my husband. The inflections embedded within the narrative mimicked one that would mirror a story read in the newspaper about a neighbor lady’s flower garden. A space filler, something worth commenting on but hardly thought provoking.

My husband looked at me with a smirk and said something along the lines of “You should have led with that story when talking about your day.”

In that moment I realized how detached I had been to my day. Something so far from ordinary had become my threshold for normalcy.
Yikes.

I am fairly certain my newly adopted survival technique of muted attachment isn’t a recommended one. I chatter every week about the necessity of ‘healthy’ self-nurturing yet here I sit, leaning heavily into the purgatory of detachment. This fog first set in after the cacophony of pregnancy and postpartum complications I transparently experienced a bit ago. Looking back, it’s quite a phenomenon of how well I was able to ‘pretend’ to function last summer when I was nothing but a faded shell of a well-witted human. I’d put on a mask made of hurriedly- crafted porcelain, only to hurl it toward the wall the moment I exited the therapy office.
I was a mess. A tattered, questionably existing, mess. Cheers to therapy, a fierce tribe, a loving husband, and the promise of change that time doles out.

But the fist fight woke me up to the work I still have ahead of me. My soul is still under construction. My identity hardly resembles a put-back-together-humpty-dumpty. I had quickly glued some pieces in place and accepted that as ‘good enough’.

Aren’t we worthy of more though?

The ‘good enoughs’ aid in our pursuit of survival, yet leave us wobbly on the ledge of anything more. Survival can bring about short-term contentment when that ledge overlooks a calm, comfortable day. Yet, when the winds pick up, we realize how tired we are from holding on so tightly when the weather was nice.

The point of this tangent is to remind you (and me) that our happy doesn’t belong in the ‘good enough’ category. It’s OK to feel tired of wrestling with your hurts, your icks, and your shame spirals. It’s OK to pause the pursuit of joy in trade of a respite.

However, don’t let the respite morph into your normal.

Or else you’ll find yourself snapping out of it in the face of a fistfight.

Duck!

There is a common collection of questions one might ask when getting to know another.

“What do you do for work?”
“Where did you grow up?”
“What sports team do you root for?”

Amongst this ritualistic curiosity typically comes the question “What TV shows do you like?”. Most everyone has one simmering on the surface. Some gravitate toward dry humor such as The Office. Others find comfort in cringy reality TV and the ridiculousness the cameras tend to catch. Then there are folks like me who have a show running on repeat for the rest of forever. Without a doubt that show is Friends. It’ my lullaby, my Sunday morning cartoon, and the cozy noise that hums in the background of a particularly lonesome or lazy day.

I had a handful of friends painfully reach out to me Saturday night to gently share the news of Matthew Perry’s death. Their pensiveness was endearing, and it’s made me thoughtful of our connections to the actors and actresses that play such subconscious (or sometimes all consumingly conscious) roles within our life stories. Media is as blended into our identities as the colors of our eyes. Quotable moments of movies, episodes, and blurbs circulate our thoughts. They are the essence of our generic coping tools.

I didn’t discover Friends until I was in college. Each character was differently relatable, and each episode brought such random and cozy comfort. No matter the chaotic rhetoric of the day, Friends was undeniably always there for you. Twelve years later, and the motely crew continues their jovial meanderings as my bedtime story.

When we think of secure attachments, it’s the consistent and reliable presence of a caretaker within our early years. Our attachment styles predict our tendencies to form certain types of relationships within our adult lives. For many, attachment styles stray from secure and lean more into the insecure styles led by anxiety, avoidance, or overarching disorganization. Not only did Friends showcase each type of attachment style, but they did so in an approachable and relatable manner. In a way, the cast was present for so many people when others in their lives were not or could not be.

(Hop over to Different Spectrums Podcast to listen to the episode where I had the delightful honor of exploring attachment styles within Friends with lovely humans if you’re curious.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpyWBgZezio&ab_channel=DifferentSpectrumsPodcast

Motion pictures in all forms have the potential to provide security. This is something that is an innate human craving. We need connections for survival. When our realities contribute uneasy insecurities, it is valid that we turn to worlds that offer stability. Predictability. Endings we can expect.

Matthew Perry was one of those contributors to peace. So many sought solstice within the confides of his humor. His projected spotty self-esteem. His profound love. His masked pain.
Rest easy Friend. Enjoy a hot cup of joe with Gunther for us.