Blog post #1: My therapeutic approach: hermes and hades

Greetings, and welcome to my blog! I intend for this to be a space where I can share my thoughts and perspectives on psychotherapy, my approach to the therapeutic relationship, and what inspires and informs my work. I’d like to start by discussing my therapeutic approach, and how I think about psychotherapy. To help me with this, I’d like to enlist two beings, the Greek gods Hermes and Hades. From my studies in Greek mythology and astrology, I understand Hermes as the god of communication. He is associated with twilight, liminal spaces, and the in between. He is the only god who is able to travel between Olympus, the human world, and the underworld. He is also known as the psychopomp, the guide of souls to the underworld. To me, he holds a very special and unique power - his transitional ability. Hermes has the ability to be with you in the many transitions of our lives. I believe it is in these transitions that we must face our complexities and difficulties. Maybe it is a new addition to the family, a loss in your life, a drastic change in your environment, a transition in your inner emotional landscape, or a reckoning with your identity. Each of these spaces can feel overwhelming, tender, or seemingly impossible to navigate. Here is where Hermes offers his guidance - he has the ability to move the narrative, to find new perspectives, to find a way through.

While Hermes is able to guide us through transitions, he is not able to stay in the deepening process of the therapeutic journey. This is where we meet Hades, the god of the underworld. Though initially scary and frightening, he offers something none of the other gods can - the ability to sit in and navigate through the darkness. Hades shows up where Hermes has to go. In my experience within psychotherapy, it is often in these spaces of darkness that we meet the rich inner worlds of our psyche, imaginations, and unconscious. We are able to meet the different parts of us that were hidden because of trauma, pain, and neglect. However, we are often told these spaces within us are scary, they are disgusting, they are not right, they are not normal. This is where Hades allows us the guidance and space to explore these rejected parts of us, and the parts that are not allowed to live. If we can tolerate the discomfort, if we can hold the judgment, then the portals can open to the rich inner landscapes that make us alive and human.

blog post #2: frankenstein: who decides who is loveable?

The story of Frankenstein has been told and retold through the decades. The story often revolves around a horrific monster that terrorizes those around it, and ultimately must be stopped or destroyed. In the original text by Mary Shelley, she paints a more complex narrative, a story of an unloved body that must reckon with rejection from its creator. As Dr. Frankenstein sees how ugly and disgusting his monster is, he attempts to abandon it, hoping it will never haunt him again. The monster struggles to cope with this rejection, and subsequently murders a those close to Dr. Frankenstein as a means of expressing his anger and rage. Another angle is that the monster was attempting to negotiate with its creator for love and connection. However, Dr. Frankenstein refuses this wish and dies. The monster, unable to find peace, happiness, or love, commits suicide in the end. 

In my mind, there is a shadow of a question that haunts this story. Who gets to decide who is loved? The monster in Frankenstein does not know he is horrific until his creator has decided it so. The monster just believed he existed, as anyone else. Through this narrative, it is the creator, the family, the external environment, that holds the power to define someone’s identity and worth. In working with clients, this story emerges again and again. In some cases, the creator is the family member or the caregiver. Sometimes, the client has not lived up to the image or expectation that their caregiver has placed upon them. Other times, the client does not fit into the box that their family has deemed “correct,” or “normal.” Outside of family, it is also the collective culture that deems something is “wrong” with you. And other times, it is the peers who reinforce these norms and rules about how one should be in this world. Whichever the scenario, clients fall victim to becoming the monster, wandering the world and wondering what they must do to feel and receive love. 

Who is this monster? Perhaps it is the part of us that doesn’t feel like it belongs, whether it is within the family, the workplace, our friend group, or the broader society around us. Perhaps it is the part of us that has a desire or dream, but it is too “scary,” “too much,” that the fear of judgment overwhelms the possibility of even pursuing the idea. Maybe it is the creative part of us, or the part of us that has a sexual desire, but none of it fits into the “status quo” of our surroundings, or how we even see ourselves. In my experience in psychotherapy, if we can pause the assumptions and judgments, and just see the monster for what it is, we are revealed things about ourselves we would never find. Sometimes, it is not as scary as we think. Sometimes, we learned what was right or wrong from people who just followed the rules, blinded by their own stereotypes and expectations. While I recognize we can’t just do whatever we want with no consequences, the monster in Frankenstein offers us another perspective in connecting with our inner worlds, the worlds that we had to hide to survive our environment, but also reveal to us our truer, richer, and enlivened selves. The monster reminds us that sometimes there is nothing innately “wrong” with one’s existence, but that perhaps it is in the environment, the family, and the external that one should direct their questions and curiosity. The monster, like a portal, provides yet another gateway into the depth of our psyche, whether or not it is “correct” or “normal.”