Betsy Perluss, Ph.D.

07/02/2025

Reflections on being a psychotherapist…

🪷When I remember that I am supported by an infinite source of support and universal love (even if it is invisible to the human eye) my work flows with effortless ease.

🪷I let go of believing that I am responsible for other people’s growth. My work is to offer as clear of a mirror as possible. This supports my clients to hear and see themselves with greater clarity which fosters the self-awareness that serves as a pre-cursor to growth. I deeply trust my client’s innate capacity for growth.

🪷It is not my job to rescue, fix, be perfect, or to always be liked. My job is to be present.

🪷When using a diagnostic term (like PTSD, Complex PTSD, Anxiety, OCD, or Depression, etc.), I remember that these are only clusters of symptoms that are useful if billing insurance or helping us clarify ways of working together. Diagnoses are not to be used as a way to define all of who we are or to limit what is possible for our future.

🪷I get to practice softening my defenses in service of being open and available rather than being “right.” As a result, I get to practice humility on a regular basis.

🪷I have the great honor or bearing witness to other humans who, like myself, are navigating this world imperfectly. I learn that my ability to offer grace to myself when I make mistakes supports me to do the same for others. And, this is how we grow together.
🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Image: a snapshot of working with another person, she volunteered to have our session recorded for training purposes. It was a gift to be in sacred relationship.

05/23/2025

“Healing practices map distressing experiences and afflictions onto metaphoric representations drawn from culturally authorized narratives and ontologies,” offering possibilities for transformation through “ritual practices or metaphoric reframing.”

Far from cultural add-ons, these traditions reveal how Western psychology’s assumptions about mind, health, and healing may be too narrow to serve a diverse world.

03/22/2025

Dear Friends, I am pleased to announce the completion of my revised webpage. Please take a look and if you feel inclined, sign up for my occasional newsletter. Next step is updating the blog. A big thanks to Andrea Palframan (https://andreapalframan.com) for her artistic flare and patience. You can find me at https://betsyperluss.com

“The Privilege of a Lifetime is to Become Who You Really Are.” – C.G. Jung Jungian Analyst & Wilderness Guide Are you committed to a journey of self-discovery? I will guide you through Jungian psychotherapy, grounded in Earth-centered and embodied practices. Exploring individuation, dreamwork,...

09/03/2024

Joe and I had a lovely time at Pacifica this last weekend, where I had the fortune to teach in the Applied Jungian Somatics program:https://extension.pacifica.edu/applied-somatic-jungian-psychology-2/. Thanks for Elizabeth Nelson for the invitation and the PGI staff for hosting us so generously. A gift to revisit the place where Joe and I first met, see friends, and visit the ocean.

07/16/2024

We still have spots in our Becoming Human Program for those interested in how this teaching can serve as a nature-based therapeutic model. No previous experience necessary.

05/31/2024

Unrecognized trauma perpetuates trauma. Therapy is political.

"Rather than use the term “post-traumatic stress disorder,” many have called to reframe the view of such suffering. Some have called it chronic traumatic stress disorder, and others, including Palestinian scholars, have referred to it as feeling broken or destroyed. This is not just a matter of semantics. These alternatives show that it is not enough to offer therapeutic options that place the abnormality within individuals and not within the circumstances they are experiencing. Is it not actually quite normal and understandable to feel broken or destroyed when everything you have ever known is reduced to rubble?"

What Palestinians have been experiencing is beyond the framework of today’s mental health care.

04/29/2024

Arrived in Barcelona to help launch our first European Month Long Training. Thank you Diana and Xavi for hosting us and for all your hard and beautiful work at https://www.transalquimia.org/spain-month-long-training. After this year, Diana and Xavi will carry the Month-Long forward in the European bioregion of Northern Spain, making this training available to those closer to home. This dream started during the Covid lockdown, and is now coming to fruition.

03/25/2024

Well, this makes it feel official. Seven years of hard work, intense analysis, and lots of travel. All worth it.

03/25/2024

Our Four Shields of Dreaming and Dreamwork program in Death Valley turned into a beautiful time of hosting the dream images within the threshold of solo time in nature. I was so amazed to witness the depth and insight that emerged from allowing the dream images to steep in story within the four shields. We will be hosting this again next year for sure!

01/28/2024

So wonderful to be teaching eco-psychology back on campus again at Pacifica Graduate Institute. First time back in person since Covid. I forgot how much I missed it.

10/09/2023

In 2001, I had a dream that Carl Jung gave me the keys to his office. Since then, I have always imagined I would someday pursue the path of Jungian (analytic) training. However, at the time, I was too shy to speak it aloud. Many years later, with multiple twists, turns, and sacrifices, I have finally completed my training. As of Saturday, October 7th, 2023, I am a certified Jungian Analyst. Oddly, the completion feels less like an ending and more like a beginning. In some ways, I know less now than I did seven years ago when I began the training process.
Nevertheless, I am elated to be done with the “preparatory” work for what I hope to be a lifetime practice of engaging the mysteries of psyche. One of my main draws to Jungian psychology, and depth psychology in general, is that it provided me a path to a more profound relationship with the world and Nature.
My thesis also took me on an unexpected ride. Following a dream that came to me during a wilderness solo, I was given the image of the pearl, which eventually led me to ancient feminine initiation rites and, very unexpectedly, Gnosticism. The title is The Precious Pearl: The Redemption of the Feminine Soul.
After years of being underwater, I will come up for air now. I am looking forward to being more social.
Below: Art by Tino Rodriquez.
"The deepest experience of the creator is feminine, for it is experience of receiving and bearing."
Rainer Maria Rilke🌹🥀🌞https://www.facebook.com/tinorodriguez

09/03/2023

Laurel Howe's book was released today by Chiron. Laurel was my analyst for many years and sadly she passed away in April, 2023. I miss her dearly. Lucky for us, she sent in the final manuscript for her book days before her passing.

The animus remains a baffling, misunderstood force in women’s psychology, but the fairytale “Fitcher’s Bird” brings his ambivalent, wizardly power and his psychic aims as the spirit of individuation into view, reaching into rich alchemical symbolism to do so. The tale and its alchemical back...