i.
The difference between letting go and giving up.
On the quiet work of release, and why it rarely looks the way we expect it to.
Vol. 01 · Issue 01 · July 2026
Undercurrent.
This month's essay — Dr. Maya Ellsworth, Psy.D.
The slow work of becoming a person you can live with.
Read the essayA reader's orientation
Start here.
ii.
What actually happens in psychodynamic therapy.
A plain language account of the method, the relationship, and why the slowness is the point.
iii.
The pursuer and withdrawer cycle, and why you keep having the same fight.
The choreography of a couple's most familiar argument, and what it hides about what is actually being asked.
Table of contents
Explore by topic.
01
Couples and relationships
The Invisible contracts we keep with the people closest to us.
02
Anxiety
Reading the body's alarm system without trying to silence it.
03
Trauma and healing
The long, non-linear work of becoming safe inside yourself again.
04
Inner work
Shadow, defense, the parts of ourselves we'd rather not look at directly.
05
Parenting and family
The inheritance of patterns, and the chance to interrupt them.
06
Identity and meaning
Who we've been told we are, and the self that keeps insisting underneath.
The archive
Recent essays.
DBT Skills Are For Everyone: Why This Therapy Isn’t Just for Crisis
When I tell people I run a DBT skills group, I usually get one of two reactions. Either a blank look — what's DBT? — or a careful, slightly alarmed pause, because the person has heard of DBT and associates it with something serious. A diagnosis. A hospitalization. Someone they knew in college who was going through a really hard time. Both…
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About Undercurrent
Undercurrent is the in-house publication of Coastal Therapy Group, a relational psychodynamic group practice with offices in Encinitas, Carlsbad, and Vista. The essays are written by our clinicians, psychologists who spend their working hours listening closely to the stories people tell themselves, and thinking about what those stories are quietly doing.
Nothing here is a substitute for therapy. If something you read makes you curious about the work of being known, we would be glad to hear from you.