Andy Lane Counseling

03/20/2024

A couple openings are available at my office on Wednesday mornings! Please email me at andylanecounseling@gmail.com if interested!

07/29/2022

When we’re afraid, the only part of us that’s afraid is our ego.

What is the ego? It’s our compass for navigating success/failure, time/space, and how to survive. Its sole purpose is to keep the status quo and make sure we are comfortable and safe.

However, life is not comfortable or safe. So the consequence of only being comfortable is flatland and no personal growth. In fact, CG Jung called our ego “the tiny self” because its entire purpose is to limit incoming information with a new scary, high tech defensive strategy called “fear”.

Damn. So what do we do? Well we need this weird thing called “fear” to guide us.

Fear is our indicator of where we aren’t comfortable. And often that’s where the goldmine of growth resides.

Fear is a terrible, terrible compass. And wherever it points us toward is often exactly what we need most.

Use fear as a friend. An awful friend who is usually right. See it as merely a guide. Comfort has a place when we need to come home, but…

Go with your fear. Live life on life’s terms. Then come home to reflect and remind yourself that you are one day braver than you were yesterday.

04/19/2022

Hello friends both new and seasoned! Here is a picture of my house— the Biltmore Estate. If you zoom in you can see all of the potential clients on my wait list hanging out while I laugh casually at the camera between sessions.

Just pullin your leg! But while I have you here, I thought I’d do a little reintroduction.

I’m Andy, a therapist here in Austin, Tx. I talk to people about their daydreams and their night dreams. We meet weekly and talk about the story of their lives. Then I put on my proverbial editor hat and we write the story they want to live. As I like to say, the first half of life is biographical, but the second half is autobiographical.

My stuff is Jungian. It’s Narrative. It’s Existential. But really it’s just Andy.

So the answer is *no*. Those aren’t my potential clients on my wait list. But I DO live at the Biltmore Estate. Cuz that’s the story I’m writing RN and life itself has no rules.

12/15/2021

The holidays are here and there’s a ton of things a family member might do or say that really get under your skin.

But don’t give your power away.

There is a paper thin line between avoidance of very needed discussion and simply not letting someone ruin your day because they do that one thing. over. and. over.

Be aware of symptoms that trigger your complexes and distill them with a smile— not today Krampus!

The question really is “who is in charge of your emotional state?” Who holds that power? Don’t give it away. 🧙‍♂️

09/24/2021

Probably the biggest contention I have with the New Age movement is the idea that we don’t need an ego— we do. But the ego just means “my ability to navigate the world of people and things and my perception of myself throughout that process”. So you can have an overinflated ego and think you’re hot s**t or have an under-inflated and think you’re worthless. Neither are accurate.

So throughout the beginning half of life, we NEED to learn how to make it in the world of people and things. However, when we grow, we need to understand that our ego (or compass to navigate) ISNT who we are. It’s just a compass. It’s learned.

The goal is separating the True Self, from our understanding of who we are. Who were you before you were born? Who were you before you knew gravity, smells, or sounds? That’s the Self. Someone who says “I know exactly who I am” is surely in fig 1. They can’t understand the difference between a pattern and their natural Self. Someone who says “oh I’ve developed that pattern, but I know that I’m always learning” is in the further stages.

As Terry Allen put it “My Ego ain’t my amigo anymore.” But maybe I’ll rephrase that as “My Ego ain’t my only goal anymore.” The goal is to accept our compass and ourselves behind the compass. And maybe we’ll walk away a little more balanced.

09/02/2021

Hello friends here’s your end of the week 👏kick 👏in👏 the👏 ass. The two least productive days of the year are yesterday and tomorrow. How long have you been staring at that one thing on your to-do-list? Have you re-written it each day hoping it might one day be scratched off?

One of the greatest aha moments I’ve ever had was realizing that often I will trick my mind into thinking that if I repeat *writing down* something on my to-do list, it feels like I’m one step closer to doing it—when in fact I’m just *mistaking a thought as an action* in itself. I can’t count the amount of times that I wrote down “deep clean the cat’s litterbox” and the act of daily putting that on my to-do list makes me feel like I’ve considered the task, therefore I’m all good…almost like a daily “fix” for productivity.

In reality its just a poor substitute for actually doing the action itself. 😰

So rather than saying you will get to it one day, do yourself a favor and live right now. Perhaps tomorrow you’ll be grateful.
👽😷🤖

06/22/2021

Your problem is portable. And what I mean by this is— we take all that has happened to us throughout our day-to-day and, if unaddressed, throughout our lives.

The body holds trauma and has its own agenda for the timing of a panic attack. Similarly, you may dream of your unresolved conflict with your mother well after she dies. These two examples show that there’s more going on beneath the curtain than our ego’s try and let on.

Way more beneath the curtain. But if it’s true that our lives are about becoming “more you than you thought you could be” (which I happen to believe is why we’re here), then pushing these things down is only self destruction and antithetical to our reason for why we’re here. It results in a life lived blind, unexamined and limited.

There’s a scene in the Wizard of Oz where Toto pulls back the curtain revealing that the wizard is a human. Dorothy shouts “you are a very bad man!” To which the man behind the curtain replies “No my dear. I’m a very good man. I’m just a very very bad wizard.”

We’re only fooling ourselves. Let’s not be bad wizards.

06/07/2021

🧙‍♂️👽🖖

02/16/2021

“The art of losing isn’t hard to master.”

A poem fitting for a pandemic.

Poem text and context: https://www.brainpickings.org/2021/01/31/elizabeth-bishop-one-art Recorded by for Brain Pickings.

01/29/2021

This episode o the Therapist Happy Hour we talk about the baggage we bring to new relationships. How much of our attitudes toward our partners are projections from our inner world? And how much is actually living in the moment? Good talk! Happy weekend everyone!

We talk about relationships and all of the "Stuff" we bring on the adventure