You Don't Have to Let Them Go
Grieving does not require severing the relationship. Continuing bonds research says the opposite. A Carlsbad psychologist on staying connected to the person you lost.
Undercurrent.
What we are writing now
The series.
Our clinicians write in clusters: one essay that lays out the whole idea, then shorter pieces that go deeper into one part of it. Start at the top of a series and work down, or read any one on its own.
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01
Growing around grief
Why grief rarely shrinks, what grows around it instead, and the specific things that help: being witnessed, a changed connection, permission, and a body that can carry it.
- Start here Grief Doesn't Go Away. You Grow Around It. 8 min
- 01 All Grief Needs Is a Witness 6 min
- 02 You Don't Have to Let Them Go 7 min
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02
Culturally responsive care
What it takes for therapy to hold culture, family, and immigration history as part of the clinical picture instead of background detail.
- Start here Culturally Sensitive Therapy: What It Feels Like to Be Understood 7 min
- 01 Cultural Competence vs. Cultural Humility in Therapy: What It Means to Be Truly Seen 5 min
- 02 Living Between Two Cultures: Bicultural Identity and Your Mental Health 5 min
- 03 The Second-Generation Experience: Honoring Your Parents While Building Your Own Life 4 min
- 04 Finding Healing and Belonging: Embracing Mental Health for Asian Americans 8 min
- 05 Working with an Asian American Therapist: What Cultural Understanding Can Make Possible 4 min
- 06 Culturally Compassionate Care for Asian American Clients: Insights for Therapists 9 min
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03
Acceptance and commitment therapy
ACT explained from inside the room: the six processes as they actually show up in a session, one essay at a time.
- Start here What Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Actually Is, From Inside the Room 4 min
- 01 Cognitive Defusion: How to Stop Believing Everything Your Mind Says 4 min
- 02 Acceptance Is Not Approval 4 min
- 03 When Trying Harder Makes It Worse: Understanding Experiential Avoidance 4 min
- 04 The Difference Between Letting Go and Giving Up 4 min
- 05 What Are Your Values, Really 4 min
- 06 ACT for Anxiety: Why Fighting Your Anxiety Keeps It Alive 4 min
- 07 ACT for Chronic Pain: When the Goal Cannot Be Getting Rid of the Pain 4 min
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04
The cycle and the mind
How the menstrual cycle shapes mood, and where the ordinary premenstrual week ends and something that deserves treatment begins.
- Start here The Menstrual Cycle and Your Emotional Life: What the Medical Model Leaves Out 9 min
- 01 PMS vs PMDD: How to Tell the Difference 5 min
- 02 Why Your Emotions Change Before Your Period, and What They Might Be Telling You 5 min
- 03 Feeling Like a Different Person Before Your Period 4 min
- 04 When “It’s Just Your Period” Isn’t the Whole Story 4 min
- 05 Therapy for PMDD and Premenstrual Distress: What It Can and Cannot Do 3 min
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05
Psychoanalytic diagnosis
What it means to understand a person by their level of personality organization and character style rather than their symptom list, and why that changes how the work is done.
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06
Loving across difference
What interracial and intercultural couples carry that other couples do not, and what the research says actually helps them thrive.
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07
Defenses and the unsaid
The moves a mind makes to keep itself comfortable, read closely and without judgement, from a psychodynamic frame.
Recently published
Recent essays.
When Trying Harder Makes It Worse: Understanding Experiential Avoidance
Experiential avoidance is the effort to escape uncomfortable inner experiences, and it quietly drives a lot of suffering. A Carlsbad psychologist explains.
All Grief Needs Is a Witness
David Kessler says grief must be witnessed. Here is what that actually means, why the people around you went quiet, and what to do about it.
Therapy for PMDD and Premenstrual Distress: What It Can and Cannot Do
What therapy can and cannot do for PMDD and premenstrual distress, and how it works best alongside medical care rather than in place of it.
Grief Doesn't Go Away. You Grow Around It.
Most people come to grief therapy hoping the grief will shrink. It usually doesn't. What changes is the size of the life around it. A Carlsbad psychologist on growing around grief.
Schizoid personality: closeness as a wish and a fear
Schizoid personality is organized around wanting closeness and fearing being engulfed by it. Jean Jho, PsyD explains the pattern, how it develops, why it is not introversion or avoidant personality, and what helps in therapy.
Masking, Social Anxiety, and People-Pleasing: Which One Is It?
Masking, social anxiety, and people-pleasing look alike from outside and need different treatment. Lisette Montañez, PsyD on how to tell them apart, and why it matters.
ACT for Chronic Pain: When the Goal Cannot Be Getting Rid of the Pain
When pain will not fully go away, ACT helps you reclaim your life from it. A Carlsbad psychologist on acceptance and commitment therapy for chronic pain.
What Makes Interracial Relationships Different, and What Helps Them Thrive
Couples who come from different racial or cultural backgrounds are doing the ordinary work of a relationship plus a second job that mostly goes unacknowledged. The five pressures that make it harder, and what the research says helps.
Table of contents
Explore by topic.
The archive
Every essay, newest first.
- Working with an Asian American Therapist: What Cultural Understanding Can Make Possible
- You Don't Have to Let Them Go
- When Trying Harder Makes It Worse: Understanding Experiential Avoidance
- All Grief Needs Is a Witness
- Therapy for PMDD and Premenstrual Distress: What It Can and Cannot Do
- Grief Doesn't Go Away. You Grow Around It.
- Schizoid personality: closeness as a wish and a fear
- Masking, Social Anxiety, and People-Pleasing: Which One Is It?
- ACT for Chronic Pain: When the Goal Cannot Be Getting Rid of the Pain
- What Makes Interracial Relationships Different, and What Helps Them Thrive
- Humor as a Defense Mechanism: The Joke That Helps You Keep Going
- When “It’s Just Your Period” Isn’t the Whole Story
- What EMDR Is Actually Like, From the First Session to the Last
- The Second-Generation Experience: Honoring Your Parents While Building Your Own Life
- The PDM-3: A Clinician's Guide to the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual
- Why Your Emotions Change Before Your Period, and What They Might Be Telling You
- What Are Your Values, Really
- Living Between Two Cultures: Bicultural Identity and Your Mental Health
- ACT for Anxiety: Why Fighting Your Anxiety Keeps It Alive
- Projection: When the Feeling Is Yours but the Address Is Wrong
- Acceptance Is Not Approval
- Cultural Competence vs. Cultural Humility in Therapy: What It Means to Be Truly Seen
- The Difference Between Letting Go and Giving Up
- Feeling Like a Different Person Before Your Period
- Splitting in Psychology: Why the Mind Sees All Good or All Bad
- Understanding Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: A Different Way of Seeing People
- Cognitive Defusion: How to Stop Believing Everything Your Mind Says
- Culturally Sensitive Therapy: What It Feels Like to Be Understood
- What Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Actually Is, From Inside the Room
- PMS vs PMDD: How to Tell the Difference
- The Menstrual Cycle and Your Emotional Life: What the Medical Model Leaves Out
- Defense Mechanisms, Explained in Plain Language
- A Faith That Unfolds: A Developmental Perspective of Faith in Adolescence
- Why Trauma Symptoms Can Show Up Years Later in Women
- DBT Skills Are For Everyone: Why This Therapy Isn’t Just for Crisis
- Can AI Replace Therapy? Why a Digital Face Will Never Be Human
- What Words Cannot Hold: A Therapist's Reflections on Emotional Awareness
- What Is a Process Group? Inside Real Talk, Our Adult Interpersonal Process Group
- What Does It Mean When We Say “Relational Psychotherapy”?
- Self-Compassion for When We Screw Up
- Finding Healing and Belonging: Embracing Mental Health for Asian Americans
- Culturally Compassionate Care for Asian American Clients: Insights for Therapists
- Healing From Religious Trauma
- Understanding Transference in Therapy
- Understanding the Shape of Your Grief: Secondary Losses and Mediators of Mourning
- Keys to Understanding the Grief Process: Introduction to Worden’s Four Tasks of Mourning
- To Give Advice or Not to Give Advice: How to Be Present With Our Loved Ones in Their Suffering
- Ways to Support Your Partner With Depression
- Why Is My Anxiety Getting Worse? Four Reasons, and What Actually Helps
The Letter
Quiet, monthly reflections, in your inbox.
One thoughtful letter a month. A new essay, a few lines worth sitting with, and nothing else. Unsubscribe anytime.
We write once a month, never more.
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About Undercurrent.
Undercurrent is the in-house publication of Coastal Therapy Group, a relational psychodynamic group practice with offices in Encinitas, Carlsbad, and Vista. The essays are written by our clinicians, who spend their working hours listening closely to the stories people tell themselves and thinking about what those stories are quietly doing.
Nothing here is a substitute for therapy. If something you read makes you curious about the work of being known, we would be glad to hear from you.