Posts by Christine Hutchison
The Way Out of Intellectualization
Lately, I’m finding lots of calm, rational, heady conversations stretching along my newsfeed. “I feel that Black Lives Matter makes an error in judgment when they….” “The Women’s March really doesn’t account for….” “Let me just play Devil’s Advocate here….” These are almost always white people, almost entirely male. They represent a common psychic defense:…
The Way Out of Psychic Numbing
“The Oakland fire happened basically right in my backyard,” my friend and co-doctorate-student Helena told me as we were waiting for class to begin. “And while it was so horrible,” she dropped her voice to a whisper, “I haven’t really felt anything about it. Maybe I would if I knew the people who were inside.…
How Abusers Get Away with It
Most psychotherapists work with people who have been abused, either recently or long ago. Some work with the abusers themselves, through court mandated treatment or, extremely rarely, because an abuser has has self-referred and is committed to their own recovery. In both instances, one cornerstone of therapist training is recognizing how abusers are able to…
Why Did White Women Vote for Trump?
Oh god it happened. It happened and women like me, white women, made it happen. Within my liberal bubble, I keep using the phrase “I don’t understand.” I don’t understand how more than half of the white women in this country could have cast their vote for someone who makes the world less safe for…
Ask for Help!
On this, the eve of the most horrifying presidential election in my lifetime, I would like to take this opportunity to admit that I cheated my way through my Civics class in High School. I took those classes by “correspondence.” In that age this meant you received a textbook in the mail, and you mailed…
How do White Female Therapists Address Racism?
“I won’t be able to make it today,” my colleague texted last month, referring to our planned lunch. “My client load is 80% people of color and each one has been coming in with heavy, weary, and angry souls due to state of the world. It’s been a lot of processing for me, while understanding…
The Myth of Independence: Why You Should Be More Needy.
Frederick Douglass, in a speech given on Independence Day in 1852, said: “I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common.” Independence is a great American myth. Frederick Douglass understood…
What happens in therapy offices when sexual assault is in the news?
Co-written by Rochelle Greenhagen and Christine Hutchison Anger. Disgust. Fear. Outrage. Grief. Helplessness. Deep sadness. When an event happens as evocative as the Stanford Rape case, it touches on our own wounds and causes us to respond in ways that reflect our own experience. And many people have that experience. One in four women have…
Stop Explaining Yourself
When I first started going to therapy, in one session I was wrestling with my guilt over not wanting to pick up a friend from the airport the following Sunday. I hated airport runs, especially in Seattle where the airport is a bajillion trafficky miles away from the city. I told my therapist, “I’m going…
The Impact of Growing up with a Narcissistic or Borderline Parent
People come to therapy for varied reasons that almost always have their roots in patterns of relating that they learned at a very young age. I’ve found that a huge proportion of therapy clients grew up with a parent who had traits of either Narcissism or Borderline Personality disorder. This is not usually something people…
Sleepless in San Francisco: An Interview with Scooter (aka Drew Ackerman), Creator of the “Sleep With Me” Podcast
I fell asleep last week to the drone of a man who calls himself Scooter telling me about a new recipe he was trying out, cheddar bacon soup. It took him thirty-five minutes just to finish narrating his trip to Trader Joe’s. I zonked out as he recounted going through the checkout line of a…
The Muppet Christmas Carol and Psychotherapy: Stories of Transformation
I’ve watched The Muppet Christmas Carol every December with the same group of friends for seven years. This tradition started when we all lived in Seattle, and, after a few years of Skype-watching it together, we are all miraculously semi-settled in the Bay Area (at least for now). This year we got together with some…