A young woman once came to me convinced that she was “too much.” Every difficult emotion seemed to confirm that something was fundamentally wrong with her. When she became anxious, she believed she would stay that way forever. When a relationship felt uncertain, she assumed she would never feel secure again. Over time, our work became less about trying to get rid of her emotions and more about learning to relate to them differently. As she learned to meet herself with greater curiosity and compassion, something unexpected happened. The anxiety didn’t disappear overnight, but it no longer defined her. She discovered an inner steadiness that had been there all along, beneath the fear.
One day she said, “The situation hasn’t changed, but I have.” That sentence has stayed with me. Her greatest resource wasn’t that life had become easier. It was that she had begun to trust herself to meet whatever life brought.
I have the privilege of working in two very different roles. In my private practice, I accompany clients on their journey toward healing and greater connection with themselves and others. Alongside that, I work as a case manager at Avnei Chein, supporting individuals and families as they access the services they need to navigate mental health challenges. As different as these roles look, they have taught me the same lesson: healing is deeply connected to resources. One useful way to understand trauma is as what happens when life’s struggles overwhelm the resources available to us. And if trauma is the experience of being under-resourced, then perhaps healing is connected to becoming more resourced.
Internal Family Systems has shaped a core principle of my work: beneath our fears, defenses, and wounds lies an undamaged core, marked by calmness, curiosity, clarity, compassion, confidence, courage, creativity, and connectedness. In my therapeutic work, I have had the privilege of watching clients reconnect with this place in themselves, just as that young woman did. As they do, they often find themselves less overwhelmed by life’s inevitable challenges. They are not simply coping better. They are becoming a resource for themselves.
Healing also depends on what exists around us: safe relationships, stability, quality health care, community programs, and people who know how to help. My work at Avnei Chein has shown me that these are not merely practical supports. They are essential components of wellbeing. Helping someone access the right resources can restore hope, reduce overwhelm, and create the conditions in which deeper healing becomes possible. I remember meeting with parents who arrived looking utterly exhausted. Their teenage son had grown increasingly anxious over the previous year, and his world had become smaller and smaller. He struggled to tolerate being apart from his parents, ordinary transitions became overwhelming, and the whole family had gradually organized their lives around trying to prevent the next crisis.
During our meeting, we spoke about assessments, psychiatric care, school supports, funding options, and community services. We discussed which doors to knock on first, which could wait, and how to coordinate the many professionals already involved. It was not one magical solution. It was a network of small supports that together could begin to make life feel manageable again. As we talked, I noticed something shift. The parents’ circumstances had not changed in that hour, but their sense of isolation had. Instead of feeling that they were carrying the impossible on their own, they were beginning to see that there were people, systems, and resources that could help carry it with them. Hope often begins there.
The longer I do this work, the more I notice that internal and external resources strengthen one another. External support creates the safety that allows inner capacities to emerge, while inner resources enable people to make use of the support around them. One of the most hopeful things I have learned about healing is that resources can be cultivated. They can be discovered within ourselves, strengthened within our relationships, and shared within our communities.