What Therapy Helps Us Loosen
On patience, process, and what becomes possible when the knots begin to give.
By Janeth Nuñez del Prado, LCSW | Desert Bloom Psychology & Consulting.
THE MOMENT THAT STARTED THIS
I tend to think in metaphors. I experience the world in images and associations — and sometimes a session will offer me one that stays.
Recently, a client had a moment I won’t forget. She experienced something that would have once triggered her— an old pattern, an old wound — and this time, something different happened. There was a sliver of space between the stimulus and her response. And in that sliver, she recognized what was happening. She named it. And she moved forward in a way that was aligned with her values rather than driven by her history.
The spark I saw in her in that moment felt like the feeling of finally loosening a knot in a necklace that had seemed impossible to untangle.
That sliver of space — that pause between reaction and choice — was where her healing lived.
THE METAPHOR
Healing can feel like slowly untangling something restrictive — rather than fixing something broken.
The necklace is still beautiful, even when it is tangled. The knots create restriction and constriction. But they do not diminish the worth of what they are wrapped around.
People often come into therapy feeling overwhelmed by how tangled their necklace feels. The first question is often: where do I even start?
I tell them: wherever feels right.
Sometimes people start with the knot that is causing the most distress — the one pulling the tightest, the one that has become impossible to ignore. Sometimes it helps to begin with something smaller. A knot that feels more manageable. Untangling a smaller knot can do something important: it builds motivation, confidence, and faith — faith in themselves, and faith that this relationship, this space, is one where they will be safe and accompanied in the process.
Both approaches are valid. The necklace does not care where you begin. It only asks that you begin.
EVERY NECKLACE IS DIFFERENT
I think about this often — how different each person’s necklace is. The tangle that brings one person so much pain might feel entirely different to another. How the material matters, and the history, and the hands it has passed through.
Some necklaces are silver.
Some are gold.
Some are braided.
Some are handmade.
Some are passed down through generations.
Every necklace is beautiful. Every necklace has worth. Every necklace is worth the patience it takes to untangle.
WHAT BECOMES POSSIBLE
We may not always arrive at a place where every knot is gone. Healing is not always that complete — and that is not failure. Some knots loosen but leave an imprint. Some become part of the texture of the necklace itself, woven into who we are and how we move about the world.
But I have seen, time and time again, people who come in feeling as though they will never be free of the constriction of their tangles — leave with a freedom of movement and choice that follows them through their lives.
And that freedom becomes something they can pass forward.
Not the knot.
The capacity to untangle.
The new heirloom.
This piece is intended for informational purposes and is not a substitute for individualized mental health care.
