You know the story: Girl meets boy. Girl gets boy. Girl loses boy. When girl begins to feel just a nudge of grief over the end of her relationship, she becomes anxious. Her chest tightens, she becomes nauseous, her head begins to pound. And so she blocks out her terrifying grief with defenses, like negation. (“He wasn’t all that anyway.”) And denial. (“He’ll come running back any day now.”) And instant repression. (“I feel nothing.”). Now girl has a problem: As long as she remains anxious about her grief and it remains negated, denied, and repressed, she remains tormented. Because emotions simply don’t evaporate. They wait for our attention. They wait for our permission to be felt.

This is a common problem my clients encounter. They become paralyzed by anxiety and stuck in a damaging, self-sabotaging quest to avoid their own feelings.

Here’s where ISTDP comes in handy: Together you and I can carefully and bravely face these scary, anxiety-producing feelings so that you don’t need to lean on rickety, destructive defenses to block them. In other words, you can master what scares you most: your own feelings.