Leyla Aylin Kuntsal | Work Beneath the Work | Unique Take on Therapy for Therapists

I love working with therapists

(and all kinds of people in helping or healing professions)

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You’re therapeutically savvy. Emotionally sophisticated.

Deeply relational.

You’re good at this kind of work.

And chances are, the work you’ve done has changed you.

You’re probably not the same person you were when you started.

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And you might also recognize yourself a little here:

Doing more of the relational work in relationships.

Feeling unmet or disappointed by other people’s limitations.

Being more affected than you’d like by what someone else does, feels, understands—or doesn’t.

Wishing others were more empathetic or emotionally intelligent.

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Some of the very things we’re good at and rewarded for in this field

—even some of what we’ve learned about healing, growth, and healthy relationships—

can subtly reinforce the patterns we’re trying to get freer from.

Attunement → hyper-attunement

Empathy → emotional over-responsibility

Insight → struggle to inhabit our simple selves

Communication → management

Discernment → evaluation

Perceptiveness → relational hyper-vigilance

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We can unintentionally recruit our gifts to protect us.

And sometimes we don’t know how much we’re over-carrying, until we no longer have to.

Things can be so much less complicated.

Less to track.

Less to manage.

Less to figure out.

Less riding on what another person does or doesn’t do.

We become freer to just be.

To remain rooted in ourselves—unhooked, and so much more available for ourselves, and real intimacy.

I frequently hear from therapists that it can be hard to find therapists or therapy for therapists.

Although I now work in a non-therapy capacity helping people, I’ve always loved working with therapists.

For a decade, I’ve worked individually with therapists, coaches and other practitioners—

a focus that grew without intention, as they kept finding their way to me.

Today I work with therapists worldwide helping them get untangled and unhooked.

I've been there, too.

I know there's a lot more possible on the other side.

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