America in Therapy

In this episode of Skin and Soul Beyond the Pale, Gwenm Carsley sits down with psychotherapist and author Phyllis Leavitt for a deep conversation on abuse, learned helplessness, family systems, boundaries, power, and repair.
Together they explore how what begins in the home does not stay in the home. The child who becomes symptomatic, the family that cannot repair, the absence of healthy boundaries, the silence around pain, the pull toward blame, helplessness, aggression, and disconnection — all of it echoes outward into culture, community, and nation. Phyllis brings decades of therapeutic insight to the question of what happens when individuals and societies lose their capacity to listen, to tolerate difference, to stay in dialogue, and to heal.
This conversation moves through trauma, witness helplessness, nonviolent communication, accountability, belonging, and the power of love not as sentiment, but as a real force in healing. It is a conversation about what breaks us, what hardens us, what keeps us repeating harm, and what becomes possible when we begin to repair.