Amy Anderson, LCSW

03/29/2026

This is a powerful message. So many people don’t understand this about therapy.

After my book signing today , I met up with a friend who asked me why therapists can’t recognize narcissists. Or why they seem to take their side. I get this question often. Sometimes the question is: “does therapy work?” Or “does it do more harm than good?”

Therapy is a business. Therapists provide a service and clients are customers of that business. Like all businesses, when you hire someone for a service, you’re seeking something.

Some people hire a therapist to face themselves. They want to hear difficult things. They want practices outside of sessions. They want somatic work to actually heal their body. They want a person outside of a situation to give them feedback. And they grow because of it.

Therapy helps so many people. It helps people who want to help themselves.

No therapist can control, change, or get through to a client who does not want to change. No therapist can force someone to do the work.

People with high narcissistic traits have high levels of shame and disconnection. They’re disconnected from family, from friends, and from themselves. Their therapist becomes a validation source. Someone who is paid to listen to their narrative and to confirm things they want confirmed. An attuned therapist immediately knows when a client doesn’t want to be pushed. They know when they don’t want to be activated. They know when a client just wants to talk to a listening ear. This is what someone with a high level of narcissistic traits will seek in therapy. For them, therapy helps strengthen their narrative, even if that narrative isn’t reality.

They’re not trying to heal themselves. They’re trying desperately to have someone mirror back to them that they are victims of circumstance. That they did not play a role in what they’ve experienced. And most importantly, they will often misunderstand or weaponize things their therapist says because they’re not trying to heal. They’re trying to be right

03/27/2026

Beautifully said Adam!

02/27/2026

An ADHD diagnosis often brings clarity.

It can also bring grief.

Clarity about patterns that once felt personal. For instance, difficulty initiating tasks, emotional intensity, time blindness, inconsistency, burnout cycles. Understanding that these experiences have a neurological basis can soften years of self-criticism.

And yet, clarity doesn’t erase history.

There may be grief for the support that wasn’t offered earlier. For feedback that felt shaming. For relationships strained by patterns neither you nor others fully understood at the time. For the ways you learned to overcompensate in order to appear competent.

For high-performing adults in particular, a diagnosis can disrupt a carefully constructed identity. The systems, urgency, perfectionism, and self-pressure that helped you succeed may look different through a neurodivergent lens.

Relief and grief are not opposites. They often emerge together when the narrative of your life shifts.

02/25/2026

When stress is high and schedules are full, boundaries can blur. Conversations become reactive. Small bids for connection get missed. Protective parts take over. And distance grows quietly.

This week’s blog explores an integrative framework for strengthening connection through:

• Gottman’s bids for connection
• Internal Family Systems (IFS) self-leadership
• DBT-informed grounding before difficult conversations

Boundaries in relationships aren’t about building walls. They’re about knowing which part of you is speaking, regulating before responding, and engaging from intention rather than reactivity.

Self-leadership creates space for partnership.

Read the full article at the link in bio.

If you’re a high-performing couple in San Diego looking to deepen connection with a structured, trauma-informed approach, I offer therapy through Amy Anderson Therapy.

02/23/2026

When trauma and betrayal intersect, repair requires careful pacing. Safety and stabilization must come before deep disclosure or problem-solving. The attachment injury has to be addressed directly, not bypassed.

Healing in these cases involves attending to both layers: the relational rupture and the developmental wound it reopened.

If you’re navigating infidelity in the context of childhood trauma, trauma-informed couples therapy can help create the structure and safety necessary for meaningful repair.

I provide couples therapy in San Diego, CA for partners working through betrayal, attachment injury, and complex trauma.

02/20/2026

Couples often describe their struggles as communication problems.

They’ll say they keep having the same argument. That conversations escalate quickly. That one of them feels unheard, or the other feels criticized.

Sometimes the issue is communication.

But often, what’s creating the friction is a difference in values that hasn’t been fully named.

When those differences remain implicit, the conflict tends to focus on tone, timing, or delivery. It feels like someone isn’t listening. Or someone is being too reactive. Or someone is avoiding the real issue.

But underneath, each partner is often operating from a coherent internal logic, shaped by family history, culture, identity, and lived experience.

Value incongruence isn’t always obvious. It rarely announces itself clearly. More often, it shows up as circular conversations and a growing sense of misalignment that’s hard to articulate.

02/18/2026

Difficulty with focus, forgetfulness, emotional reactivity, zoning out, or struggling to follow through can have multiple roots. Neurodivergence shapes the way the brain processes attention, stimulation, and regulation. Emotional neglect shapes the way we learned to respond to our own needs and feelings.

From the outside, those patterns can overlap.

The difference isn’t always obvious, especially if you grew up in an environment where emotions weren’t noticed, supported, or responded to consistently.

Understanding where a pattern comes from matters. Not for labeling, but for treatment. ADHD and emotional neglect require different kinds of support, and sometimes they coexist in ways that are easy to miss.

I wrote a new blog post exploring how to think about these differences with more clarity and less self-blame.

02/16/2026

When alcohol, chemicals, or compounds have been part of a relationship for a long time, they’ve likely shaped more than just behavior. They may have influenced tone, timing, and the emotional distance between partners.

It’s also common for older resentments or unresolved grief to come forward during this period, not necessarily because something new is happening, but because there is less distance from what has already been there.

For some couples, this shift brings clarity. For others, it feels destabilizing before anything begins to settle. The communication itself hasn’t necessarily worsened. The emotional landscape has changed, and the relationship often needs time to adjust to that change.

If you’re navigating this in your relationship, couples therapy can offer a space to slow it down and understand what’s happening between you. I provide couples therapy in San Diego, CA for partners working through recovery and communication changes.

02/14/2026

For many neurodivergent couples, intimacy builds through shared focus, structure, and experience, not necessarily through long, emotionally intense conversations across a dinner table.

Trying something new together. Solving a problem side by side. Learning how the other person thinks under pressure.
Sharing stories about where you come from and what shaped you.

Those moments often reveal more than a perfectly planned evening ever could.

When you’re navigating a board game together, experimenting with clay in a pottery class, or exploring a piece of your cultural history, you’re not just going on a date. You’re observing how you function as a team. How you handle frustration. How you encourage each other. How you recover from small missteps.

Intimacy doesn’t always look romantic. Sometimes it looks collaborative. Sometimes it looks curious. Sometimes it looks playful.

02/11/2026

Meet Orion! 🐶

Our newest team member at Amy Anderson Therapy, and yes, he’s officially certified in cuddle sessions. 🤍

02/09/2026

Valentine’s Day can feel complicated in blended families.

When you’re co-parenting, navigating multiple households, honoring different cultures or traditions, or holding loyalty to children from previous relationships, love doesn’t always fit into a heart-shaped box.

For many blended families, Valentine’s Day brings up:
• divided schedules and shared custody realities
• guilt about where time, attention, or money goes
• kids’ school Valentine’s parties, class lists, and invitations
• questions about who attends which events, and with whom
• children adjusting to new partners or family structures
• cultural differences around romance, affection, or celebration
• the pressure to “make it special” while managing real life

If Valentine’s Day feels heavy, tense, or emotionally layered this year, that doesn’t mean you’re doing anything the wrong way. It means you’re navigating real relationships, real families, and real transitions.

02/06/2026

Almost every couple says, “we need to work on our communication.”

But communication isn’t just talking more.
It’s not winning arguments or “being right”.

Real communication is feeling safe enough to be honest without bracing for impact.

It’s being able to name what’s happening inside you before it turns into distance, defensiveness, or shutdown. It is about knowing how to listen when your partner is overwhelmed, and how to speak when you are.