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You’re self-aware and
relationally sophisticated.

You care about growing and meeting life and relationships with greater maturity.

You’ve done a lot of work on yourself. Your life is better for it.

And some of our sophistication can unknowingly keep us from ourselves.

Understanding, attuning, empathizing, communicating, analyzing, discerning, seeing, intuiting.

These can all be profound capacities.

And they can also become things we build around our center instead of building our center itself.

And because these capacities are considered virtues in therapy and wellness culture,

the protective ways we use them can be hard to see—and even rewarded.

And so we can find ourselves in some of the same dynamics we’re trying to outgrow,

even as we become much more skillful at navigating them.

After we’ve done so much work,
the work often becomes simpler.

But it’s hard-won simplicity.

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Because doing less can ask more of us to show up than doing more ever did.

It asks us to...

Find Our Center

find, build and remain in our own center, regardless of circumstances or other people.

Face What's Real

See more clearly what, and who, is actually here, without needing to control things to feel okay and steady.

Inhabit Our Experience

inhabit the simplicity of our own experience and choose from there.

Discover our freedom

discover the freedom and choices that are actually ours.

Less entangled = More connected.

(To yourself and others)

Less need to leave ourselves. Less to protect. Less to do.

And when we stand in our own center,

less pulled by external forces and other people,

more of us becomes available to actually meet what is here—and who is here.

Ourselves, others.

This is intimacy. And freedom.

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We sometimes don’t even know how much we’ve been carrying or how much work we’ve been doing—

until we let it down.

This is a simpler, lighter,

more inhabited way

of living and loving.

Interested in working together?

Contact me, or fill out my inquiry form, here.

Book a complimentary 15-minute phone call to see if we're a good fit.

Rates + Session info here

I'd love to hear from you.

Writing, The Work Beneath

You’re Self-Compassionate. But Are You Warm With Yourself? What is the temperature of your inner life?

I know so many of us work on self-kindness, self-compassion, self-acceptance, self-regulation, self-worth… But I don't know that I've ever been asked if I was warm with myself. Or if these things resided inside a climate of warmth. I came to find that often these qualities, that one might assume were warm, were for many…lacking in warmth. Warmth is something we know viscerally. It’s physiological. Relational. Somatic. Warmth in being held against a warm, caring body. Warmth o

The Vulnerability Myth: Why Being Received Well Isn’t the Same as Being Intimate—and How Confusing the Two Costs Us Real Intimacy

Vulnerability is a big word in the healing world. And yet we—even the most emotionally intelligent of us, even the therapy community—often unintentionally champion a definition and experience of vulnerability that is…well, the opposite of vulnerable. I saw it again the other day, in a comment that had nearly a thousand likes on a therapy page on social media. He said that the men he knew don’t struggle to open up, but rather they struggle to trust the share won’t be used agai

We’re Taught to Correct Self-Abandonment With More Self-Abandonment: How being psychologically savvy in relationships can become another way we lose ourselves in relationships

I saw a very popular article recently about all the ways we self-abandon in relationships. Where did you ignore your gut feelings? Or Ignore the red flags? Where did you tolerate disrespect? Where did you coach them instead of setting a boundary? Where are they not doing their work? Where did you accept less than you deserve? The problem is, however, that this is still self-abandonment, just now with greater psychological precision and vocabulary. …notice where the center of

Leyla Aylin Kuntsal

You’re self-aware and
relationally sophisticated.

And some of our sophistication can unknowingly keep us from ourselves.

After we’ve done so much work,
the work often becomes simpler.

But it’s hard-won simplicity.

Find Our Center

Face What's Real

Inhabit Our Experience

Discover our freedom

Writing, The Work Beneath

You’re Self-Compassionate. But Are You Warm With Yourself? What is the temperature of your inner life?

The Vulnerability Myth: Why Being Received Well Isn’t the Same as Being Intimate—and How Confusing the Two Costs Us Real Intimacy

We’re Taught to Correct Self-Abandonment With More Self-Abandonment: How being psychologically savvy in relationships can become another way we lose ourselves in relationships

Subscribe to my newsletter

Leyla Aylin Kuntsal

You’re self-aware and relationally sophisticated.

And some of our sophistication can unknowingly keep us from ourselves.

After we’ve done so much work, the work often becomes simpler. But it’s hard-won simplicity.

Find Our Center

Face What's Real

Inhabit Our Experience

Discover our freedom

Writing, The Work Beneath

You’re Self-Compassionate. But Are You Warm With Yourself? What is the temperature of your inner life?

The Vulnerability Myth: Why Being Received Well Isn’t the Same as Being Intimate—and How Confusing the Two Costs Us Real Intimacy

We’re Taught to Correct Self-Abandonment With More Self-Abandonment: How being psychologically savvy in relationships can become another way we lose ourselves in relationships

Subscribe to my newsletter

You’re self-aware and
relationally sophisticated.

After we’ve done so much work,
the work often becomes simpler.

But it’s hard-won simplicity.