I grew up a self-conscious bookworm in a tense, glamour-oriented household
where I worried so early about my relational deficits that by 3rd grade you couldn’t get me to play Old Maid. By 5th grade, I was planning my face-saving lifeplan:
“Someday I’ll write for The New York Times and no one will notice there’s
something wrong with me.”
This mindset
got me into The Columbia School of Journalism and turned me into a prize-winning
reporter managing her own sense of invisibility crusading for the
disadvantaged. I actually was
offered a job at The Times when I was
25…..about the same time The Universe offered a competing option: An assignment to write an exposé of a
spiritual group gave me an unexpected glimpse of feeling whole--independent of
any achievement or anyone’s particular affection. When an important editor told me I had written something
“incredibly mediocre,” and astonishingly, I felt no familiar diminishment, I promptly left journalism and decided
to spend the rest of my life exploring ways to access and sustain the identity
that made that possible.
A psychotherapist now for over 25 years,
I see myself as a kind of transpersonal scout, helping people let go of
external structures that no longer fit and orienting them to what it means to
live a life based on their own insides. A phrase I like in this regard is “Trust in Being,” and while the phrase
is probably not unique to them, I really heard it from some wonderful teachers in a group called Waking Down in
Mutuality.
While I
was learning psychoanalytic theory at Hahnemann Medical College, I was also
studying Buddhism and secretly teaching clients to meditate. The tension
between solid developmental approaches and my draw to the Mystical has been
part of my journey. For years I
taught Law of Attraction classes to Main Line moms, but understood enough about
unconscious programming to consider The
Secret as not telling the whole story. Personal growth, to me, examines the
interplay between family-of-origin conditioning and one’s understanding of how
The Universe operates. Many of us operate
as if we are living in an Unfriendly Universe-, and my hope is that Talk
To Me Like I’m Someone You Love will show you how—right in the
messiness of life—to feel both discomfort and Something Friendlier in the
wings.
I believe that we are all just
beginning to learn what it means to be
human…that we have many different parts,
and the trick is to feel these parts without
losing our Inner Grown-up. I believe
I bring clarity and heart to the therapeutic process,
and that my openness about
my flaws and limitations will serve my clients and readers
as well as my
strengths.
I live, think and practice in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. I'm a good match for: individuals struggling to be authentic....partners figuring out how to be true to themselves and deeply connected.....corporations longing to support people getting to be real in the workplace.....therapists wanting to integrate their formal training with their own metaphysical bent. I am amicably divorced, have a 26-year-old daughter in Oregon and continue to practice walking my talk with the people in my life I now love. I can be reached at 484-278-4747.
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"I gave up journalism when I saw that getting a few million readers upset over the world’s grievances was only adding more pain to the world. I figured I could do more for world peace helping people address the grievance they have with the person they likely woke up with this morning."
Nancy Dreyfus, Psy. D.
"It’s amazing what can happen to that impossible person in front of you when you throw a little goodwill their way. When people see my written messages, they invariably ask, ‘Why didn’t anyone think this up before?’ And I tell them, ‘Because relationships are so hard... and this is so easy."
– Nancy Dreyfus, Psy. D.
