https://www.psychologytoday.com/profile/1065303

Lyna Tévenaz Jones, 8156 Highland Drive, Sandy, UT (2026)

02/26/2026

The Difference Between Internal and External Differentiation —

Differentiation is a prerequisite for psychic freedom.
With it, one can think, love, and choose—without losing themselves.
Without differentiation, the psyche remains more or less fragile.

But what is “differentiation”?

It is the capacity to remain authentic while being in relationship with another.

Being differentiated is the grown capacity to set boundaries without recoiling from them, to be able to tell what we are responsible for and what is the responsibility of others, to tell from our emotions and the emotional reaction of another and who is responsible for which.

It is the muscle to direct one's life according to the self rather than external influences.

Differentiation is the cornerstone of individuation and becomg who you truly are.

There is often very little said about internal differentiation, which is also a pre-requisite for growing into your true self.

Internal differentiation has to do with what happens in your inner world - it's the dynamics that happen inside of you.
It's the ability to stay tethered inside yourself when someone disagrees or pushes on your boundaries, to stay connected to another without submission to their expectations, to hold your position without attacking, remaining connected even when our childhood trauma holding part feels like shutting down entirely —
to stay yourself even when others don't approve.

Visible differences do not automatically mean someone is internally differentiated.
True differentiation isn't about separating oneself from the world.
It's about being able to remain oneself, in relationship.

02/11/2026

My 17-year-old had an emotional outburst last night, and right then, I was reminded of something.
My daughters' emotions (before I was in therapy and before I became a therapist) used to frighten me, destabilize me.
Not because they were too much per se, but because I was actually afraid of my own emotions.
Their tears, anger, overwhelm — would pull me straight into overwhelm and a sensation of drowning into the void.
My nervous system would spike.
And I would need them to calm down so I could calm down.
That was fear disguised in caretaking, and that was highly ineffective.
But now, my nervous system remains steady when I witness their emotional storms.
Is it still painful to see them move through pain? Absolutely.
When a parent is no longer afraid of their own emotional storms,
they stop being afraid of their child’s
And that changes EVERYTHING.
You become the sturdy lighthouse.
Not because you suppress emotions, but because you know that you've survived your own waves.
Last night, my teen returned to her calm baseline on her own, she too is no longer afraid of her big emotions. She knows she CAN ride the waves, and that perhaps is the greatest gift of my personal inner work.
A child can move through big feelings
when the adult can stay present.

02/11/2026

My 17-year-old had an emotional outburst last night, and right then, I was reminded of something.
My daughters' emotions (before I was in therapy and before I became a therapist) used to frighten me, destabilize me.
Not because they were too much per se, but because I was actually afraid of my own emotions.
Their tears, anger, overwhelm — would pull me straight into overwhelm and a sensation of drowning into the void.
My nervous system would spike.
And I would need them to calm down so I could calm down.
That was fear disguised in caretaking, and that was highly ineffective.
But now, my nervous system remains steady when I witness their emotional storms.
Is it still painful to see them move through pain? Absolutely.
When a parent is no longer afraid of their own emotional storms,
they stop being afraid of their child’s
And that changes EVERYTHING.
You become the sturdy lighthouse.
Not because you suppress emotions, but because you know that you've survived your own waves.
Last night, my teen returned to her calm baseline on her own, she too is no longer afraid of her big emotions. She knows she CAN ride the waves.
A child can move through big feelings
when the adult can stay present.

02/09/2026

Nothing in the psyche simply disappears simply because you tell it to.

We often treat the mind as if unwanted feelings, needs, or desires can be thrown away and forgotten.
But the psyche isn’t an empty container, it is a living system.
What gets pushed out of awareness doesn’t evaporate — it shows up somewhere else.

In many cultures, we rightly value emotional restraint, moral coherence, self-control, and positivity. These values help create stability and community. And like all human structures, they have a dual nature.
It’s important to highlight the fact that studies show that, for many, religious life is a profound protective factor. It offers meaning in suffering, shared rituals, ethical grounding, and community — all of which can support psychological stability and resilience.
When self-honesty about desire, anger, grief, doubt, or ambivalence has no place to go, those parts don’t disappear. They go underground in the mind.
This is repression.
Repression can look like impeccable politeness, strict innocence, avoidance of ambiguity, constant purity.
When a culture prioritizes "not rocking the boat" and concealing, shaming authentic feelings and needs, we don’t actually solve our internal conflicts—we simply drive them somewhere else in our mind.

But what is split off doesn’t vanish. It often returns as secrecy, double lives, intense shame, or sudden internal collapse when the pressure becomes too much.
Repression is like holding a ball underwater...keeping it down requires constant effort — and eventually, it bursts through (especially when we least expect it).
This isn’t a moral failure. It doesn’t make a religious culture “bad.”
Repression is often a survival strategy — a way to stay aligned with the people and communities we love.
And it’s also ineffective.
It drains energy, narrows freedom, and limits our capacity to live a whole, integrated life.
Next, I’ll explore how repression can be gently recognized — and slowly released — without rejecting what matters to us.

02/04/2026

Betrayal doesn’t just break trust with another person.
It often disrupts your trust in yourself.
After a betrayal, many people experience:
• “How did I not see this?”
• an internal attack on your self-worth (“Something must be wrong with me”).
• a sense that past danger is still happening now.
• heightened vigilance in your relationships.
• and sometimes a disconnection from oneself even before a separation from the other

The deepest shock isn’t only what happened. It is that the person or system that was supposed to protect you became the source of your pain.

Slow down before trying to understand
One of the most common mistakes after betrayal is rushing to analyze it all. The details. The times. The places.
After a rupture like this, the nervous system is still in shock.
Care begins by:
• reducing major decisions
• pausing confrontations
• limiting repeated retellings that re-activate your wound

Rebuild a sense of inner stability

Betrayal creates the feeling that anything could fall apart without any warning.
Healing often starts with repeated safety anchors:
• regular routines
• predictable rhythms
• spaces with less emotional intensity

Protect your self-worth

Many people turn the pain inward:
“I should have known.”
“I was naïve.”
“I trusted too much.”

This self-blame is often a survival response.
It can feel safer to blame yourself than to accept how unpredictable life can be.
Trust is not a flaw.
It is a human capacity that was misused.

Make room for anger — without acting it out

Anger after betrayal is often pushed down or turned inward.
But anger can be protective: it restores boundaries, it names what was not okay, and it helps your self reorganize.
The work isn’t to explode or suppress it,
but to understand it and hold it with care.

Don’t do this alone

A third presence (therapy, writing, safe conversation) helps:
• bring perspective
• restore time and movement
• soften the inner sense of threat

Healing isn’t about fixing the relationship.
It’s about rebuilding your relationship with yourself as a safe place.
And that takes time 🤗

02/02/2026

I often find myself reflecting on how nature holds so many metaphors for balance—how it restores equilibrium within its systems, and how those same principles can guide our inner life. The skin barrier is such a metaphor.
When life feels overwhelming for a long time, our inner system adapts.
A part of us steps in that pushes harder, stays alert, and keeps everything moving.
It plans and tightens its grip.
It tries to make sure nothing gets out of control.
This part isn’t the problem.
It formed to protect you—by preventing overwhelm before it happens.
In Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, we understand that the mind is made up of different parts—each trying to help us cope and stay safe.
When inner safety has been worn down over time, a protective part often takes over.
It pushes harder, stays alert, and keeps everything moving.
It works very hard to protect you from overwhelm, rejection, shame and other experiences that harmed you in the past.
It's important to know that this part isn’t the problem.
In IFS, the goal is not to silence this part or force yourself to slow down.
The goal is to understand what it has been carrying—and why it believes letting go would be dangerous.
As inner safety is gradually restored, this part no longer has to work at full capacity; it softens and lets your true self hold the reins of your life again.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) profoundly reshaped how I relate to my inner world, replacing self-judgment with understanding.
I am trained in IFS Level 1 and currently accepting a limited number of new clients.
Utah residents only.

01/28/2026

What looks like confidence on the outside—ease, assurance, mastery, charm—
is not always a sign of inner safety or genuine confidence in self.

One can appear very self-assured, yet live in a state of constant alert.

Some forms of “confidence” don’t come from feeling secure inside, but from early adaptations that once made survival possible.

01/26/2026

Our natural down-regulation isn't built into our life anymore, hence our constant state of anxiety (atop the current dreary and frightening political climate) -

Our nervous system was not meant for constant activation; it evolved to alternate between arousal and rest.

From an evolutionary and psychobiological standpoint, the nervous system was built to move in cycles: moments of heightened arousal in response to danger, followed by discharge, settling, and a return to baseline. Activation was meant to be temporary, situational, and bounded by a clear ending. What we are living in now is something altogether different, going against a 400-million-year-old wiring.

Modern life gives near-constant threat cues—images, headlines, notifications—without conditions for processing them. The brain reacts to both real and symbolic threats through the same pathways, repeatedly activating the body without completion.

Over time, this causes chronic dysregulation. Some stay in sympathetic overdrive—anxiety, vigilance, irritability, a sense of urgency. Others collapse into numbness, exhaustion, disengagement, or withdrawal. These are not flaws, but outcomes of a system forced to stay alert without rest.

There were once cultural structures that unintentionally supported regulation. News arrived at specific times, in contained formats, and was followed by a return to ordinary life, in-person conversation, silence, digestion, and sleep.
Growing up in France (hence the image below), I remember when the news would come on at 1pm for 30 minutes and at 8pm for 30 minutes when I was growing up.

Today, information is constant, uncontained, and algorithmically amplified to keep attention near-activated. Dysregulation is now called responsibility, awareness, or care.

A regulated nervous system isn’t disengaged. It is the foundation for thought, choice, and sustainable action, free from panic. Restoring regulation means creating inner conditions to meet reality rather than being overwhelmed by it.

Sometimes, the most responsible act is to intentionally pause information intake, allowing your nervous system to complete its cycles. This intentional break helps sharpen perception, clarify values, and enable action from a place of coherence rather than overwhelm.

We can remain informed while also deliberately creating short islands of rest and respite throughout our day—allowing the nervous system brief periods to recover and regulate.

01/22/2026

What a Healthy Self Needs (from a Self Psychology perspective).

Self Psychology is a way of understanding how a person becomes a solid “someone” inside themselves.
Not just how they behave.
Not just how they think.
But how they feel like a real, continuous, coherent self.

It was developed by Heinz Kohut, who noticed something important: people don’t fall apart because they’re weak or defective.
They often fall apart because their sense of self didn’t get enough support while it was forming, and so external winds such as criticism, rejection and perceived rejection, disappointment, and other difficulties will cause havoc in their internal world.

The core idea (the heart of it):
We are not born with a finished self.
We born with a potential self that needs good enough relationships to grow a strong self.

And perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can give our children is not to make sure that they are happy 24/7 but to help them develop a sturdy self from the inside out to weather the storms of life.

That's partly why most self-esteem advice don't really work on the long-term: they assume that if you think better thoughts about yourself, then you’ll feel better.
That model treats distress as a cognitive problem (it partly is).

But Self Psychology shows something else:
low self-esteem is usually a structural problem, not a belief problem.
You cannot “think” a self into solidity
if the self was never adequately held, mirrored, or stabilized.

In the slides below, I share the basic psycho-emotional nutrients a self needs ☺️

01/21/2026

A Clinical Reflection Following the Orange County Therapist Murder -

A recent news story involving a therapist has been widely circulated. My heart sank when I learned that a fellow psychotherapist was murdered at her job site.

That tragedy deserves to be addressed without exaggeration and without projecting fear.
Extreme violence, when it occurs, does not reflect on the quality of the mental health care provider in general.

In such cases, the extreme violence perpetrated on a mental health professional often suggests a subjective collapse, an inability on the part of the client to symbolize separation, sometimes of a profound disorganization that goes beyond the therapeutic bond itself.

Some very fragile psychic structures, there can be a confusion between the therapeutic bond and the real bond.
They may experience the therapeutic bond as an absolute bond, sometimes an imagined, restorative fusion of the insufficient original attachment bond.
It means that, for that individual,
the inner structures that normally transform psychic pain into meaning were no longer functioning.

The therapist then becomes, tragically and unjustly, the last available figure onto which an unbearable inner chaos is projected.

When the therapeutic framework ends-or is experienced as refusing an impossible reparation-violence can erupt.
That cannot be avoided by more kindness nor more empathy - it can only be contained by solid boundaries.
There is a structural limitation of certain psychic organizations.
It is important to remember that this type of event remains exceptional.
It does not signify the failure of therapy, nor does it indicate an inherent danger in in-depth work.

It serves as a serious reminder that psychological care cannot fix everything, nor can it contain everything on its own.

After that tragic act of violence, some essential questions for us mental health professionals to consider:
Is my framework clear, stable, and truly protective—for the patient and for myself?
How do I assess a patient's capacity to symbolize separation, refusal, and endings?
Do we sometimes ask therapy to repair what falls under the social, legal, and medical domains?

01/20/2026

Why anxiety feels harder to contain today.

Clinically, what distinguishes humans is not only our capacity to imagine — but the fact that imagination itself can become an autonomous generator of anxiety.
An animal reacts to a present danger.
A human being can remain physiologically on alert in response to a danger that is symbolic, anticipated, or mediated — sometimes absent altogether.
In collective anxiety, this process intensifies:
individual imagination plugs into social imagination, then fear circulates through images, narratives, notifications.
What we don't realize is that the nervous system processes these signals as immediate and close and real.
The body does not distinguish between a threat that is lived and one that is seen, read, or endlessly repeated.
Also.
Screens, dopamine, and nervous system fatigue plays a significant role.

Our regulatory systems are exhausted.
Prolonged exposure to screens — constant alerts, crises, and stimulation — leads to:
dopaminergic desensitization, reduced tolerance for emotional tension, and increased intolerance of uncertainty.

For you this may look like fear that feels more intrusive and out of control, an anxiety that becomes more diffuse and a longer return to calm.

It is not that dangers are objectively more numerous. It is that the psyche has fewer resources to metabolize them.

Collective anxiety lives in immediacy and urgency.

The human psyche regulates through slowness, real-life rhythms, safe repetitions.
Creating simple rituals (morning, evening, transitions) helps re-inscribe time in the body.

01/20/2026

Why anxiety feels harder to contain today.

Clinically, what distinguishes humans is not only our capacity to imagine — but the fact that imagination itself can become an autonomous generator of anxiety.
An animal reacts to a present danger.
A human being can remain physiologically on alert in response to a danger that is symbolic, anticipated, or mediated — sometimes absent altogether.
In collective anxiety, this process intensifies:
individual imagination plugs into social imagination, then fear circulates through images, narratives, notifications.
What we don't realize is that the nervous system processes these signals as immediate and close and real.
The body does not distinguish between a threat that is lived and one that is seen, read, or endlessly repeated.
Also.
Screens, dopamine, and nervous system fatigue plays a significant role.

Our regulatory systems are exhausted.
Prolonged exposure to screens — constant alerts, crises, and stimulation — leads to:
dopaminergic desensitization, reduced tolerance for emotional tension, and increased intolerance of uncertainty.

For you this may look like fear that feels more intrusive and out of control, an anxiety that becomes more diffuse and a longer return to calm.

It is not that dangers are objectively more numerous. It is that the psyche has fewer resources to metabolize them.

Collective anxiety lives in immediacy and urgency.

The human psyche regulates through slowness, real-life rhythms, safe repetitions.
Creating simple rituals (morning, evening, transitions) helps re-inscribe time in the body.

Lyna Tévenaz Jones

02/26/2026

02/11/2026

02/11/2026

02/09/2026

02/04/2026

02/02/2026

01/28/2026

01/26/2026

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