Lucy McLellan Licensed Counselor

Opening

I fell in love with the stage as a child and spent my early career as an actor. Acting is the practice of reaching for another person's inner life until it becomes credible from the inside. My work as a therapist turned out to be continuous with this work rather than separate from it.

I've been in clinical practice for twenty-five years, most of it with people working on what they bring into relationships.

What I kept noticing

People could describe their relationship patterns precisely and still fall into the same dynamics on leaving my office. They understood what was happening and yet changed nothing.

That directed me inwards, toward the body. Toward what happens in the seconds before a conversation goes wrong, and what makes it possible to do something other than the thing you always do. Insight shows you the pattern. It doesn't give you the ability to interrupt it. That's a different kind of work, and it's most of what I do now.