Sigmund Freud described denial as one of the ego’s defenses against intolerable psychological pain. His daughter, Anna Freud, expanded this idea, suggesting that denial can sometimes be a necessary and even adaptive part of healthy development rather than simply a pathological symptom. We often think of denial as something to overcome, but from a psychological perspective, it can also serve as a temporary shelter until we are emotionally prepared to face a more difficult reality.

Psychoanalytic theorists have traditionally understood denial as an intrapsychic defense, while relational and family therapists like me are often equally interested in the stories families create together. Families don’t simply pass down memories; they pass down narratives. These shared stories help regulate anxiety and shape how family members understand themselves, one another, and the events that define them. They are rarely outright lies. More often, they are incomplete.

Exploring Family Narratives in Ann Patchett’s ‘Whistler’

Ann Patchett’s enchanting new novel Whistler can be read through this lens. At its heart, the novel explores one family’s shared narrative and what happens when its members become emotionally ready to revisit the unfinished parts of the stories they have carried since childhood.

Our protagonist, Daphne, is immediately lovable and relatable. The novel begins when she unexpectedly encounters an important figure from her past, setting into motion a gradual reexamination of her childhood alongside her sister, her husband, and several other key figures. Rather than uncovering shocking secrets, Daphne slowly revises her understanding of experiences she has carried with her for decades. The story unfolds less like a mystery than an emotional excavation, with each conversation peeling back another layer of meaning.

The Psychological Purpose of Incomplete Family Stories

What makes Whistler so psychologically compelling is that Patchett never suggests Daphne’s childhood understanding was false. As children, we construct narratives that help us make sense of experiences we are not yet developmentally equipped to fully understand. Families often do the same. The stories they tell—and sometimes the stories they avoid telling—serve an important purpose. They help contain anxiety until everyone is capable of tolerating greater complexity.

As Daphne revisits a dramatic accident from her past, she isn’t simply discovering facts that were hidden from her. She is developing the capacity to hold a fuller, richer, and more nuanced version of the truth. Equally important, the other members of her family are becoming ready to do the same. Together, they co-create a new understanding of themselves and of one another.

One of Patchett’s many strengths is that she allows this transformation to unfold without judgment. There are no villains, no saints, and no tidy psychological explanations. Instead, she portrays deeply decent people doing the best they could with the emotional resources they had at the time. As readers, we are invited to extend the same compassion to them that therapists hope to extend to the individuals, couples, and families we have the honor to work with.

Revisiting Old Narratives for Healing

Therapy often brings people back to stories they have told about themselves for decades. We sometimes imagine that healing comes from uncovering long-hidden secrets. More often, it comes from developing the emotional capacity to revisit familiar stories with new eyes. The facts may not change, but our ability to hold them does.

Perhaps that is Whistler’s greatest psychological insight. Sometimes healing isn’t learning that our childhood story was wrong. It’s becoming emotionally ready to discover that it was incomplete.

1. How much communication is healthy?

Families often focus how MUCH to communicate and that’s a quantity question, when we need to focus on quality – we need to ask our college-bound kids what they think will work for them and how we can support them. We need to keep in mind that to them, texting is communicating and we need to honor and embrace if that is the main way they want to stay in touch. Remember, connection and independence are not opposite concepts, strong relationships make independence easier for our kids.
We parents basically spend eighteen years teaching our children how to leave us. That’s actually the job. Success isn’t measured by how often your child calls home. It’s measured by whether they know home is a secure place they can return to while building a life that’s increasingly their own. We need to encourage roots and wings and if we do not celebrate their wings we will badly damage the roots.

Try thinking about it this way, you’re gradually moving from being your child’s manager to becoming one of their greatest consultants.

The goal isn’t to help your child need you less or more. The goal is to help them know they can need you differently.

2. Managing the emotional transition

When students head off to college, entire family constellation changes. It can feel like the family is shrinking when really, everyone is growing. Siblings who are still at home are taking up space in new ways and contouring new relationships with each other. There’s more time for one-on-one outings and experiences, and the rhythms of family life are evolving and full of opportunity. If you are struggling to adjust, keep in mind that change, even healthy change is uncomfortable because it is unfamiliar. Even healthy changes are an adjustment but challenge yourself to embrace the change. If you, the parent, find yourself struggling, embrace new hobby or return to an old one, find new ways to place your energy because our kids worry more about us than we realize. And we obviously don’t want our college students worrying about us during such an important time in their lives.

It’s a moment when two different things are true at the same time: if you are not hearing from your college student, that is healthy – they are launching and this is necessary growth. AND if you student is homesick, this is not a sign that they are not ready for college. It’s often a sign that they came from meaningful relationships and are adjusting and it is almost always temporary.

As family therapists we emphasize the ability to stay connected while also becoming your own person. College is one of life’s great opportunities to practice exactly that. The healthiest families aren’t the ones who never miss each other. They’re the ones who can stay deeply connected while giving one another room to grow.

1. Shift from chasing happiness to cultivating meaning.
Happiness is a feeling — and feelings naturally rise and fall depending on circumstances. Meaning is steadier. It’s built through relationships: showing up for the people we love, contributing to something larger than ourselves, and staying connected even when life feels chaotic. When we focus less on “Am I happy?” and more on “Am I living in alignment with my values and my relationships?” we often find a deeper, more durable sense of well-being.
2. Invest in connection, not just self-improvement.
Our culture encourages us to pursue individual achievement, optimization, and personal happiness. But as a marriage and family therapist, I see every day that well-being rises and falls in the context of our relationships. A five-minute call to a friend, a shared meal with family, a laugh with a neighbor, participating in a faith based community, or contributing to something beyond yourself often does more for lasting happiness than any productivity hack ever could. Instead of asking, “Am I happy?” try asking, “Am I connected?” Connection creates resilience — especially in stressful seasons.
3. Remember that emotions are relational, not just individual.
From a systems perspective, none of us exists in isolation. Our moods, stress levels, and sense of well-being are shaped within the emotional systems we live in — families, partnerships, workplaces, and communities. When one person becomes calmer, clearer, or more grounded, it often positively influences the entire system. Small relational shifts can ripple outward, improving not only our own well-being but the emotional climate around us.
4. Redefine happiness as engagement.
The most fulfilled people are not necessarily the most cheerful. They are engaged — in meaningful work, in their relationships, and in their communities. Engagement gives us a sense of purpose, and purpose stabilizes us when circumstances are uncertain.
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, wrote that happiness cannot be pursued directly — it “must ensue.” In other words, happiness tends to follow when we orient our lives around meaning, connection, and contribution. It is a byproduct of healthy priorities. Even in a chaotic world, prioritizing meaning and connection is still an available and healthy ongoing choice.
5. Don’t underestimate humor.
Humor is one of the healthiest regulatory tools we have. Shared laughter lowers stress, softens conflict, and reminds us that we are not alone in our struggles. In families and relationships, humor often signals safety and connection — a momentary release that helps people regain perspective and move forward together. Humor is one of life’s most potent medicines.

So when a client tells me a book moved him, I listen. When several clients mention the same book, I consider it part of my continuing education. And when my adult daughter brings Heart the Lover by Lily King on vacation and can’t put it down, I pay attention.

I came to this novel without having read King’s companion book, Writers & Lovers. I will likely circle back. But Heart the Lover stands beautifully on its own—a work of elegant prose that captures both the innocence and the psychological complexity of young adulthood.

We follow a protagonist whose name is withheld until the final pages, a choice that feels psychologically intentional. Identity, after all, is not fixed in youth—it is constructed, tested, defended, and revised in relationship. Within an intoxicating circle of collegiate friends who both intimidate and inspire her, she becomes “Jordan,” a version of herself that feels braver, sharper, more socially fluent. She falls into a love triangle that ultimately crystallizes into something deeper: a connection between two ambitious, idealistic young people who want their lives to matter.
What unfolds is tender and devastating in equal measure. King captures something rare: the almost sacred intensity of first adult love. It is fragile. It is precarious. It is infused with longing and projection. And it is often unsustainable—not because the love is false, but because the people inside it are still becoming.

That is where the novel feels especially relevant to my work as a therapist.

Heart the Lover is not simply a romance. It is a study in development. It shows how profoundly we are shaped by our families—by what was spoken, and what was not; by what was expected, and what was silently demanded. The characters are intelligent and sincere. They want to love well. But wanting and being ready are not the same thing.

Many young adults carry into romance unresolved family dynamics, unexamined fears, and unconscious loyalties. The capacity for intimacy requires differentiation—the ability to remain oneself while moving toward another. And that capacity often lags behind longing.

What I admire most about King’s writing is her portrayal of the approach–avoidance dance so common in love: the simultaneous pull toward closeness and retreat from it. In one scene, the narrator waits at baggage claim for the man she loves. Her anticipation is electric; her body is alive with sensation. Yet she recognizes a quiet truth: if he fully understood the depth of her love, it would terrify him.
That moment captures something universal. Intimacy exposes us. To be loved is to be seen. And to be seen can feel dangerous when we are still uncertain of ourselves.

Alongside this exquisite rendering of young love, King writes with unusual clarity about existential awakening. Her characters metabolize pain in real time. They feel it in their bodies. They struggle with it. And through it, they become more conscious, more deliberate, more themselves.

As both a therapist and a mother of adult children, I find myself moved by that arc. Youthful love is rarely tidy. It can be misguided, misaligned, or mistimed. And yet it is formative. It shapes the nervous system. It clarifies values. It exposes vulnerabilities that must eventually be integrated.
In that way, heartbreak is not the opposite of growth. It is often its catalyst.

And perhaps that is why so many of my clients—and my daughter—pressed this book into my hands. It does what good fiction does best: it illuminates the private terrain of becoming.

Thank you, Spencer, for sharing such important, honest insights that highlight your clinical skills, your humor, and your emotional intelligence.

Millennials who grew up as bedroom kids notice they are raising living room kids.

Last weekend, at a friend’s suggestion, my husband and I watched the 2013 film The Lunchbox—a surprisingly moving and unexpected love story that unfolds through something almost quaint by today’s standards: handwritten notes.

The premise is simple and quietly heartbreaking. Ila (Nimrat Kaur) wants to recapture her husband’s dwindling attention. Sensing they’ve fallen into a rut, she hopes that elevating his daily lunch—once routine, now carefully spiced and lovingly prepared—might awaken his affection.

The film is shot on location in Mumbai, where the city’s legendary dabbyawallas deliver fresh, homemade lunches from household kitchens to offices across the city through an astonishingly precise delivery system. In a rare error, Ila’s lunch is mistakenly delivered not to her husband, but to Mr. Fernandes (Irrfan Khan), an older, isolated widower nearing retirement after more than thirty years as an insurance claims officer. His work is methodical, lonely, and as monotonous as his personal life.

When Ila’s husband complains about “her” cooking—which is actually the mediocre takeout Mr. Fernandes typically receives—Ila realizes her lovingly prepared meals are landing in the wrong hands. She slips a note into the lunch container to explain. When Mr. Fernandes replies, a tender and witty correspondence begins. Over time, the two strangers become confidants, sharing longings, disappointments, and the small details of their inner lives.

(With today’s explosion of food delivery apps and single-use plastic, the dabbawallas’ clean, reusable metal lunch containers feel like characters in their own right—and a quiet, compelling alternative vision of care and sustainability. But that may be another movie, or at least another conversation.)

The Lunchbox understands that loneliness is a disease of both heart and soul—and that it can exist both inside and outside of a romantic partnership. Ila’s aunt insists that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and the film plays gently with this idea. Ultimately, though, it is the written word—not the food—that becomes the most loving gesture of all.

There is something deeply nostalgic about how true the film feels. It reminds us that not so long ago, writing—slow, intentional, written by human hands—was a primary way we reached for one another. In a world now dominated by instant, disposable messages, The Lunchbox offers a quiet reminder: being seen, named, and responded to may be the most sustaining nourishment of all.

While many hoped that the end of the COVID-19 pandemic would bring a collective lift in mental health, it’s clear that many people continue to struggle emotionally. I was honored to speak with Marisa at Good Day DC on World Mental Health Day about the importance of turning away from social media and toward community.

In times of stress, many of us instinctively reach for our phones. We scroll to self-soothe—yet the opposite occurs. Social media use can heighten anxiety, activate the nervous system, and disrupt sleep, all of which worsen symptoms of anxiety and depression. We are wired for connection, and we heal in relationship, not in isolation.

Whether your sense of community comes from a place of worship, an artistic pursuit, volunteer work, or time with family and friends, consider making community a priority. Time in community gives us more to bring back to our day-to-day lives—and it’s something we lost during the pandemic. It’s time to reclaim it.

Families, relationships, and communities shape us in ways both obvious and invisible. Jonathan Spector’s This Much I Know explores how our personal histories, inherited beliefs, and the stories we tell ourselves collide—sometimes painfully, sometimes with unexpected insight. In this beautifully acted play, competing truths coexist, challenging us to sit with ambiguity and consider how context shapes conviction.

Therapists understand that children can grow up in the same family and yet experience profoundly different childhoods. A couple can weather the same adversity and later remember it as if they lived through two separate realities. In therapy, two competing truths can share the same space—though it is rarely an easy space to inhabit.

The question of competing narratives frames This Much I Know, which recently left a successful run at Theater J in Washington, D.C., for New York’s 59E59 Theaters. A superb trio of actors fluidly inhabit multiple roles through subtle shifts in costume, accent, and setting, creating a world where memory, identity, and ideology overlap.

We first meet Lukesh (Firdous Bamji), a psychology professor whose dry humor and knowing detachment come through as he asks the audience to silence their phones and launches into a lecture on confirmation bias. His wife, Natalya (Dani Stoller), wrestles with the aftermath of a traumatic experience, channeling her turmoil into research for a book about her grandmother—who fled Russia and was rumored to have been a childhood friend of Stalin’s daughter.
Natalya leaves Lukesh early in the play, while Harold (Ethan Rapp), a university student, faces a reckoning of his own when a news story exposes him as the son of a prominent white supremacist. He insists he doesn’t share all of his father’s beliefs, but no professor will sponsor his thesis—except Lukesh, who reluctantly agrees. Their charged exchanges about truth, bias, and belonging become the play’s intellectual core, while Natalya’s search for her grandmother’s story, and her portrayal of Stalin’s daughter, add layers of haunting symmetry.

Questions of ownership, blame, the butterfly effect, genetics, and epigenetics weave through the dialogue. This Much I Know resists easy answers and refuses to label narratives as right or wrong. Instead, it invites the audience to sit with ambiguity—to consider how context shapes conviction, and how difficult it is to break free from the gravitational pull of family legacy.

Like therapy itself, the play offers no tidy resolution. It asks us to tolerate complexity, to listen for truth in stories that contradict our own, and to recognize that understanding—like healing—requires curiosity more than certainty.

“Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other’s gold.”

That lyric came to mind as I watched ART, the hit Broadway revival now playing at the Music Box Theatre. The show, starring Bobby Cannavale, James Corden, and Neil Patrick Harris, layers a conversation about art and taste into a deeper meditation on what it means to sustain friendship over time — to keep the “gold” even as life offers us plenty of “silver.”
Set in Paris, Serge (Harris) is over the moon about a new piece of art he’s just purchased and can’t wait to show it off to his longtime friend Marc (Cannavale). Marc’s reaction is tepid at best — and when he learns the staggering price Serge paid for what appears to be a minimalist white canvas, he’s downright offended. He confides in their mutual friend Yvan (Corden), and from there, a witty, poignant debate unfolds about taste, loyalty, and the strain of changing perspectives within lifelong friendships.

We all have those friends who’ve known us forever — the ones who remember our childhood pets, our parents, our first heartbreaks, and our most embarrassing moments (like maybe spraying fart spray in the high school hallway just to see what would happen). As we grow and our lives diverge, those relationships can be tested. ART captures that tension with humor and heart: What do we do when a friend’s choices seem shallow, foolish, or foreign? Can affection outlast judgment? Can shared history withstand wounded pride?

I still remember my high school chemistry teacher — a man with wild, Einstein-esque hair who looked like his last experiment had gone awry — telling our class that the most important thing to remember wasn’t chemistry, but friendship. He reminded us that these early relationships, though sometimes distant later in life, are embedded in who we are. Like gold, they don’t tarnish easily.

Corden steals the show as Yvan — the most humble of the trio and the least “successful” by conventional standards — yet he’s also the most soulful. His frantic monologue about an upcoming wedding invitation is one of my all-time favorite moments in theater. It’s a reminder that friendship, like art, isn’t about perfection or prestige. It’s about recognition — seeing and being seen — and remembering the gold that endures even as we collect new silver along the way.

Psychological takeaway:
Friendship is one of our most powerful emotional regulators. It anchors us in identity, softens anxiety, and reflects our capacity for differentiation — the ability to stay connected without losing ourselves when disagreements arise. ART reminds us that the tension between closeness and individuality isn’t a flaw in friendship; it’s the heart of it.

On the surface, they’re frothy and absurd: wealthy women in fabulous wardrobes, meticulously designed mansions, murder mysteries, and eccentric philanthropists. But look closer, and they’re each telling a deeper story about trauma, birth order, and the bonds that form between sisters who survive dysfunctional families in very different ways.

Chaos Enters the Penthouse
In The Better Sister, Nicky Macintosh (Elizabeth Banks) makes a dramatic reentry into her younger sister Chloe’s life by showing up, un-welcomed, to her pristine Manhattan penthouse. A murder investigation is already underway—Chloe’s husband, who also happens to be Nicky’s ex-husband, has just been found dead. Chloe Taylor (Jessica Biel) is an influential media figure with a picture-perfect life and an image she’s desperate to maintain. Nicky, by contrast, is messy, contrarian, and undeniably inconvenient.

Meanwhile, in Sirens, Devon DeWitt (Meghann Fahy) is released from a night in jail and returns to care for her ailing father. She discovers that her younger sister, Simone (Milly Alcock), has sent an elaborate edible arrangement which is much more performative than helpful. Furious, Devon grabs the display in her car and sets out to confront her sister. She finds Simone at the legendary “Cliff House” working for Michaela “Kiki” Kell (Julianne Moore), a hyper-stylized billionaire philanthropist. Simone has abandoned her upstate New York identity for headbands, cheekiness, and florals. Her tattoos have been removed and Devon finds her almost unrecognizable.

Devon and Nicky are cut from the same chaotic cloth. Both speak in cringey, grammatically obtuse sentences, wear the wrong clothes, and offend nearly everyone they encounter. Law enforcement doesn’t know what to make of them, and their younger sisters—Simone and Chloe—vacillate between embarrassment, protectiveness, and avoidance. They’ve both tried to leave the past behind. But the past, in the form of their big sister, has other plans in store for them.

As a therapist, I often see how unresolved trauma shows up in family relationships. What’s psychologically compelling about Sirens and The Better Sister is how they depict strikingly similar responses to childhood trauma. Both shows invert the familiar sibling stereotype. In many families, the older child plays the achiever, the responsible one, while the younger rebels. But in homes shaped by trauma, especially when the mother is absent or compromised, it’s often the eldest daughter who bears the brunt of the father’s rage. She becomes the shield. And that role comes with consequences—depression, addiction, a deep sense of unworthiness.

In both of these current popular shows, the older sister copes through acting out, numbing, and self-destruction. The younger sister copes by striving, perfecting, and escaping.
Both sets of sisters come from profoundly abusive or neglectful households. The fathers are violent, controlling, or cruel; the mothers are absent, weak, or complicit. In both stories, the older sister—despite her flaws—tried to protect the younger one. But as adults, both younger sisters survive through secrecy, deception and feigned perfection.

Camp with a Core
Sirens and The Better Sister are not high art. They’re over-the-top, glossy, and often ridiculous—streaming’s version of a beach read. But that doesn’t mean they’re devoid of meaning. When the sisters in both shows are forced to confront one another, old wounds resurface. They lash out, shut down, try to run. But in fleeting, tender moments, the emotional core glimmers through: a look, a shared memory, a flash of loyalty or sorrow.

In families marked by danger, siblings often become the only witnesses to the full story. They remember what others can never fully understand. Their bond may be fraught or fractured, but it’s also forged in shared survival. One may long to forget; the other may be paralyzed by what she remembers. That tension, and the love that sometimes endures beneath it, is where these shows find their emotional resonance.

I can’t recommend Sirens or The Better Sister for their realism, narrative logic, or emotional nuance. But I can say this: the messy connection between sisters shaped by trauma is something these shows surprisingly get right. The glitz may be superficial—but the emotional truth, in moments, rings loud and clear.