The Quiet Insistence of the True Self: Noticing Glimmers in the Dark
My Counselling Memoir - Frost’s Fork and My Client’s Crowded Roads
The text came through at 3:25 PM on a Thursday. A poem. No preamble, no explanation—just the words and a simple “I wrote a poem. Thought I’d share it with you.”
I stared at my phone for a moment before opening it, aware of what a small miracle this message represented.
For most of her life, this young woman couldn’t imagine being here. Not metaphorically here, not “struggling to find her path” here, but actually here—alive, on this earth, breathing, taking up space. The suicidal ideation started young and stayed persistent. Some kids have imaginary friends. She had elaborate exit strategies.
I’ve known her for close to a decade now. I’ve written about her before. When we started working together, she was fourteen, and the question wasn’t “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It was “Do you want to grow up?” For years, the answer was no. Or at best, “I don’t know.”
Now she’s twenty-three. Twenty-three. Let that sink in for a second.
She’s bright in ways that don’t begin to cover it. Capable feels like an understatement. Objectively talented in ways that would make other people’s parents ask what her secret is, because she carries a depth and wisdom that honestly makes me feel like I’m the student sometimes. The kind of person you would meet and immediately sense an authentic connection, leaving you with the positive impression of having had a truly great interaction.
But here’s the twist: when you spend the first two decades of your life convinced you won’t make it to adulthood, and then you do, the question changes from “Will tomorrow even come?” to “Now what?”
And that “now what” can be just as paralyzing as the darkness that came before it.
The Poem
Here’s what she sent me:
I keep saying I’ll start tomorrow, like tomorrow is a place I’ve ever been.
I stand in a circle of roads, all bending into undergrowth I cannot see.
Frost stood at a fork and called it choice. Two paths, yellow leaves,a pause long enough to look.
Mine don’t split neatly. They crowd.
Some look safe.
Some look lonely. Some look like chaos, I already know how to survive.
He said the roads were worn the same. I don’t believe him.
Because some paths feel heavier before you even step on them.
Because wanting is not the same as choosing. Because standing still costs something.
He kept one for another day, knowing he wouldn’t come back.
Every path I imagine branches into more paths I cannot follow.
I envy the simplicity of his bend in the woods, the quiet confidence of a man who chose and later called it meaning.
I am jealous that he stepped; that the story began only after his foot hit the ground.
Maybe the road only becomes a road after you walk it.
And maybe tomorrow isn’t a promise—It’s just a direction I can face without moving yet.
I sat with it for some time before responding. There’s introspection here. Wisdom. The kind that makes your chest ache because you recognize it. But there was something else too—something I’ve been trained to notice. Glimmers. Everywhere.
In AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy), we talk about glimmers as those tiny moments of light that break through the darkness—micro-experiences of hope, connection, or vitality that signal the Self-at-Best is still in there, still fighting (Fosha, 2000). This poem, written at 3 am in the midst of a spiral, was a glimmer. She reached out. She created. She allowed herself to be seen.
“I love that you shared this with me,” I wrote back. “For context, are you referencing Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “I was journaling at like 3 am this morning. I was spiralling about my life, and I unintentionally wrote the words ‘roads not taken’ while I was journaling, and then I was like, hey, it’s like that poem. Then I went and looked up the poem and felt inspired, I guess.”
The Line That Got Me
There are moments in this work when a client hands you a key without realizing it. For her, it was this line:
“Some look like chaos. I already know how to survive.”
Our brains—mine, yours, hers—would rather choose the pain they know over the potential joy they can’t predict. It’s not stupidity. It’s our survival instinct gone haywire in a world where actual threats are rare but perceived threats are everywhere (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). We evolved to avoid uncertainty because uncertainty used to mean death. Now it just means discomfort, but our amygdala hasn’t gotten the memo (LeDoux, 2015).
The familiar path, even when it’s making us miserable, feels safer than the unknown one that might actually lead somewhere better. That’s not a weakness. That’s neuroscience. But it’s also a trap.
The amazing thing about us humans is that we are hardwired to heal and thrive, not just to survive (Fosha, 2000; Fosha et al., 2009). Beneath the anxiety, beneath the paralysis, beneath every defence mechanism we construct to keep ourselves safe, there’s a fundamental drive toward growth, connection, and transformation. The “Self-at-Best” isn’t something we have to create. It’s something we have to uncover.
What AEDP calls “transformance strivings”— the innate push toward healing, authenticity, and vitality—is always operating in the background, even when we can’t feel it (Russell & Fosha, 2008). It’s the force that made my client pick up a pen at 3am instead of just scrolling through her phone. It’s what made her share the poem with me instead of keeping it hidden in a journal. It’s the quiet insistence of her true self saying, “I’m still here. I still matter. Help me find my way back.”
I told her what I tell myself on bad days: We can’t wait for the road to appear before we start walking. To break free from indecision, you have to recognize that safety doesn’t equal happiness. Familiarity is just a habit, not a shelter. And action—messy, imperfect, terrifying action—precedes clarity, not the other way around (Prochaska & DiClemente, 1983).
You can’t think your way into a new way of acting. You have to act your way into a new way of thinking.
And I told her to keep writing. Because she’s so damn good at it.
What Happened Next
“Thanks,” she wrote back. “I haven’t been writing much lately. I’ve been finding it really hard to organize my thoughts, but I figured I should at least try because maybe it would help me feel better. I wrote about a bunch of different shit, but I kept circling back to this feeling of being completely paralyzed by everything. Then I reread that post of yours, [What I’d Tell My Younger Self About Purpose (And Why You Need to Hear It Too)]. I journaled a little more after that, and somehow I stumbled into writing this poem.”
This is where it gets good. This is where I could see the transformance strivings in action.
Despite the struggle, despite the overwhelm that was scrambling her ability to organize her thoughts (a common defence mechanism when emotions get too big to handle—see Anna Freud’s original work on defence mechanisms, later refined by Di Giuseppe and Perry (2021, 2024), the healthy part of her—what we might call the Self-at-Best—exerted agency.
She didn’t write because it was easy. She wrote because some part of her, the part that is “wired for healing and growth,” knew it was necessary (Fosha, 2000). That’s transformance. That’s the deep biological and psychological drive toward wholeness asserting itself even in the middle of a crisis. That’s hope choosing itself over lethargy, meaning over emptiness.
Viktor Frankl (1946) called it the will to meaning—the deep human drive to make sense of suffering by engaging with it rather than fleeing from it. AEDP takes it further and says this drive isn’t just philosophical, it’s neurobiological. We are built to move toward health when given even the smallest opening.
And the fact that she kept “circling back” to the paralysis? In AEDP terms, that’s not rumination. That’s her system trying to process and integrate a difficult emotional experience (Fosha et al., 2009). She was willing to stay with the feeling rather than numb it by self-harming, scrolling past it, drinking it away, or burying it under a sea of drugs. She faced it. And facing it—really sitting with discomfort instead of avoiding it—is the beginning of transformation (Linehan, 1993; Hayes et al., 1999).
The glimmers are everywhere:
The impulse to write at all
The decision to reread my previous post, inspired by her (seeking connection)
The willingness to share something so vulnerable
These weren’t accidents. They were her transformance strivings reaching toward healing.
“Well, that’s so cool,” I wrote back. “So, despite the struggle and difficulty in organizing thoughts (which is a common defence mechanism or symptom of overwhelm), the healthy part of your self—what we might call the Self-at-Best—exerted agency. You didn’t write because it was easy; you wrote because a part of you knew it was necessary for regulation. I see that as a massive triumph of hope over lethargy.”
I wanted her to see what I saw. In AEDP, we don’t just help clients experience their emotions. We help them notice and savour the experience of their own healing capacity (Russell & Fosha, 2008). We point to the glimmers. We name the transformance strivings. We say, “Look. You’re doing it. You’re already healing. You’re already more whole than you think you are.”
“And the idea that you kept ‘circling back,’” I continued, “means you were willing to stay with the feeling rather than distract yourself. You faced the ‘paralysis’ head-on. This ‘facing it’ is a striving toward processing the emotion rather than burying it. You said you felt ‘completely paralyzed,’ yet you managed to produce a poem that articulates that paralysis with stunning clarity. Pretty cool.”
There’s a concept in AEDP called “metaprocessing”—the practice of reflecting on the emotional experience of having just had an emotional experience (Fosha, 2000). It sounds meta because it is. But it’s powerful. When we help clients notice their own capacity for healing, when we highlight the moments where their transformance strivings showed up, we’re essentially teaching their nervous system, “You can do this. You are doing this. This is what thriving feels like, even in small doses.”
“I guess I didn’t really think about it like that,” she replied. “Like that, the act of writing at all is facing the paralysis in some way. That is kind of cool, haha.”
And there it was. Another glimmer. A shift from “I’m completely paralyzed” to “That is kind of cool.” From helplessness to curiosity. From collapse to capacity. And a “haha” as if to say, I feel lighter knowing this.
This is the work. Not fixing her or telling her what to do, but helping her recognize the healing that’s already happening. Helping her see that she’s not broken, just scared. And that beneath the fear, her system is already reaching toward wholeness.
Because we are wired to heal and thrive. Not despite the pain, but through it.
The Unabashed Truth (My Loving Push)
Here’s what I want you to know if you’re reading this and nodding along because you feel it too:
The paralysis is real. The overwhelm is valid. The fear that you’ll choose wrong and ruin everything is not irrational in a world that tells you every decision is permanent, and every misstep is catastrophic.
But the truth is: You are hardwired for healing. Beneath every defence, every moment of collapse, every 3 am spiral, there is a part of you that wants to grow, wants to connect, wants to matter. That part is called your transformance strivings, and it never shuts up. It might whisper. It might only show up as a tiny impulse to write something down or send a text or get out of bed when everything in you says to stay there. But it’s always there.
The road only becomes a road after you walk it. You don’t need to see the whole path. You don’t need perfect clarity. You don’t even need confidence. You just need to notice the glimmers—those tiny moments when your true self breaks through—and follow them. One step, and then another. Trust that meaning will emerge from movement, not the other way around.
Your brain will fight you. It will offer you the familiar chaos, the safe misery, the well-worn grooves of what you already know how to survive. And you’ll be tempted to take it because at least you know what that pain feels like.
Don’t.
Pay attention to the glimmers instead. The impulse to create. The willingness to share. The tiny “haha” that slips out when you realize you’re stronger than you thought. Those aren’t accidents. They’re your system reaching toward health. They’re proof that you’re wired to heal, not just to endure.
Tomorrow isn’t a place you’ll ever arrive at by standing still. It’s just a direction you can face. So face it. Write the poem at 3 am. Send the text. Apply for the thing. Have the conversation. Take the step.
And if you stumble? Good. That means you moved. That means your transformance strivings are doing their job. That means you are building your “identity capital”. That means you’re not paralyzed anymore.
Now keep going. Your Self-at-Best / Best Self is waiting.
References:
Fosha, D. (2000). The Transforming Power of Affect: A Model for Accelerated Change. Basic Books.
Fosha, D., Siegel, D. J., & Solomon, M. F. (Eds.). (2009). The Healing Power of Emotion: Affective Neuroscience, Development & Clinical Practice. W. W. Norton & Company.
Frankl, V. E. (1946). Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press.
Freud, A. (1936). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. International Universities Press.
Di Giuseppe, M., & Perry, J. C. (2021). The Hierarchy of Defense Mechanisms: Assessing Defensive Functioning.
Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (1999). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: An Experiential Approach to Behavior Change. Guilford Press.
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263-291.
LeDoux, J. (2015). Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety. Viking.
Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. Guilford Press.
Prochaska, J. O., & DiClemente, C. C. (1983). Stages and processes of self-change of smoking: Toward an integrative model of change. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 51(3), 390-395.
Russell, E., & Fosha, D. (2008). Transformational affects and core state in AEDP: The emergence and consolidation of joy, hope, gratitude, and confidence in (the solid goodness of) the self. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 18(2), 167-190.
