Every therapist keeps secrets - not out of malice or pride, but necessity. Therapy demands silence about the things we see most clearly. You cannot help a couple by telling them what to do; you help them by helping them discover what they are already doing, and why. If I were to tell my couples what I actually think during sessions, they’d likely never come back. Not because I dislike them, but because therapy, real therapy , dismantles illusions - those fragile constructs of

Years ago, when I first started my career, I worked in the child and adolescent wing of a large psychiatric hospital. One of the patients I was tasked with supervising was a 12-year-old young boy named Michael. He was part of the half-day treatment program. Michael thought he was a dragon. This idea took hold of him when he was 6, and he quickly became completely convinced of it. Through years of imaginative mental creation and psychological gymnastics, he’d constructed an en