VM Psychological PLLC

07/12/2026

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07/06/2026

Projective identification is not simply seeing in others what we cannot see in ourselves.

It is a relational process in which unbearable feelings, wishes, fears, or aspects of the self are unconsciously evacuated into another person. The goal is not merely to rid oneself of the feeling, but to locate it elsewhere and, at times, influence or control it from a distance.

What makes projective identification different from ordinary projection is that the recipient often begins to experience what has been projected. The feeling comes alive in the relationship itself.

A therapist may suddenly feel hopeless in the presence of a patient who cannot consciously experience despair. A partner may feel irrational guilt while the other remains strangely innocent. A parent may become overwhelmed with anxiety that a child cannot yet symbolize or articulate.

The feeling is no longer contained within one person. It has become something shared, enacted, and communicated between two minds.

Klein understood this as beginning in infancy, when overwhelming emotional experiences cannot yet be thought about and must instead be managed through relationship. The infant does not simply express distress; the infant attempts to place distress into another who can carry, survive, and potentially transform it.

Bion later expanded this idea, suggesting that psychological growth depends on the presence of someone capable of receiving these projected emotional states without retaliating, rejecting, or becoming consumed by them. When this occurs, raw emotional experience can be metabolized and returned in a form that can finally be understood.

In this sense, projective identification is not inherently pathological. It is one of the earliest languages of human connection.

The problem emerges when projection replaces reflection, when feelings can only be evacuated rather than experienced, when relationships become organized around inducing others to feel what one cannot bear to know about oneself.

The question is often not, “Why am I feeling this?”

The deeper question may be:

“Who is struggling to feel this, and what is happening between us that requires me to carry it?”

Some of our strongest emotions do not originate solely within us. They emerge in the space between people, revealing truths about the relationship that neither person can yet fully speak.

Projective identification reminds us that the psyche is never entirely individual. We become ourselves in the minds of others, and sometimes we discover what another person cannot yet know by noticing what suddenly appears within our own emotional world.

07/06/2026

Your Body Is Talking. Might it have a narrative?

Not everything shows up as a thought.

Sometimes it shows up as a tight chest before a difficult conversation. A knot in your stomach when you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. A lump in your throat when there’s something you wish you could say but can’t quite find the words for.

We live in a culture that encourages us to think our way through everything. But some experiences aren’t asking to be analyzed. They’re asking to be noticed.

Over the years, I’ve come to believe that many of the sensations we fight against are carrying information. Anxiety, grief, anger, fear, vulnerability, they often show up in the body long before they show up in language.

That doesn’t mean every ache has a deeper meaning. But it does mean that when something keeps showing up, it may be worth getting curious instead of immediately trying to get rid of it.

A simple question I often return to is:

“What am I noticing in my body right now?”

Not to fix it.
Not to judge it.
Just to listen.

Sometimes healing begins the moment we stop arguing with our experience and start paying attention to it.

Vinnie Mangiapane, MA, LLP
VM Psychological PLLC

06/16/2026

“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul, there is no such thing as separation.” — Rumi

06/11/2026

Not every loss can be transformed into something useful.

The reality of grief is different from what others see or guess from the outside. Platitudes and pat explanations will not work here.

There is not a reason for everything. Things happen that do not have a silver lining. We have to start telling the truth about this kind of pain. About grief, about love, about loss.

Because the truth is, in one way or another, loving each other means losing each other. Being alive in such a fleeting, tenuous world is hard. Our hearts get broken in ways that can’t be fixed.

There is pain that becomes an immovable part of our lives. We need to know how to endure that, how to care for ourselves inside that, how to care for one another.

We need to know how to live here, where life as we know it can change, forever, at any time. We need to start talking about that reality of life, which is also the reality of love.

Your survival in this life post-loss won’t follow steps or stages, or align with anyone else’s vision of what life might be for you. Survival won’t be found, can’t be found, in easy answers or in putting your lost life behind you, pretending you didn’t really want it anyway.

In order to survive, to find that life that feels authentic and true to you, we have to start with telling the truth. This really is as bad as you think. Everything really is as wrong, and as bizarre, as you know it to be.

When we start there, we can begin to talk about living with grief, living inside the love that remains.

06/11/2026

One of the things I often tell clients is that our parents and early caregivers provide the first blueprints for our emotional world.

Before we ever knew the words attachment, trust, love, shame, grief, or belonging, we were learning what relationships feel like. We were learning whether our tears would be met with comfort, whether our excitement would be shared, whether our needs would be welcomed or become burdens. These experiences become the architecture of the self. They shape not only how we see others, but how we come to see ourselves.

As adults, we often find ourselves living inside these old blueprints without realizing it. We may long for closeness while fearing it. We may expect rejection before it arrives. We may work tirelessly to earn a love that was never meant to be earned in the first place. The past has a remarkable way of introducing itself into the present, often disguised as anxiety, conflict, loneliness, or the feeling that something is missing.

Depth-oriented therapy offers an invitation to slow down and listen more carefully. Together, we begin to notice the patterns beneath the patterns. We become curious about the stories carried by our reactions, our relationships, our dreams, and our emotional wounds. Over time, what was once unconscious can become known. What was once repeated can become understood.

This is one reason I value multiple sessions per week when it is clinically appropriate. Human beings do not change simply because they gain insight. We change through relationship. More frequent contact creates space for the deeper layers of experience to emerge and be worked through as they unfold. The therapy room becomes more than a place to talk about life. It becomes a place where life itself is encountered, explored, and transformed.

The most beautiful part of this work is that the blueprints we inherited are not the final draft. They may explain us, but they do not define us. Healing often begins when we discover that we are allowed to build something new while honoring where we came from.

“We are all, in some way, trying to find our way home to ourselves.”

06/10/2026

Starting psychotherapy can feel like a big step. For many people, it means sitting down with someone and speaking aloud thoughts, feelings, memories, and questions that may have been carried alone for a very long time.

At VM Psychological PLLC, I approach psychotherapy with curiosity, compassion, and a deep respect for the complexity of each person’s story. Rather than focusing only on symptoms, I am interested in understanding the person behind the symptoms. Together, we explore patterns, relationships, emotions, losses, strengths, and the meanings that have developed throughout your life. Often, healing begins not by forcing change, but by creating space to understand yourself more fully.

I believe that every behavior, emotion, and coping strategy has a history. My role is not to judge or tell you who you should be, but to walk alongside you as we make sense of your experiences and discover new possibilities for growth, connection, and healing.

Therapy is not about being broken. It is about being human. Sometimes the most courageous thing we can do is become curious about ourselves with the same compassion we so readily offer to others.

If you have been considering therapy, I would be honored to be part of that journey.

VM Psychological PLLC
Helping people make meaning of their experiences, strengthen relationships, and move toward a life that feels more authentic and fully lived.

05/23/2026

05/22/2026

What irritates us in others often says less about them and more about the parts of ourselves we have not yet sat beside long enough to understand. Sometimes judgment is a defense against recognition. Sometimes the qualities we reject most fiercely are the very ones we were taught were unacceptable in ourselves. Jung was pointing toward something uncomfortable and very human…that self-awareness is rarely born from perfection. More often, it emerges through friction, projection, envy, defensiveness, and the moments that unexpectedly stir us. The people who irritate us can become mirrors… if we are willing to look carefully enough. So as the saying goes… “What Suzie says of Sally says more of Suzie than of Sally”.

05/19/2026

Becoming who you truly are sounds beautiful in theory.
But Jung knew it is rarely graceful.

It often means grieving the versions of yourself built for survival.
The self that stayed quiet to be loved.
The self that performed strength while secretly drowning.
The self shaped by family wounds, expectations, fear, shame, or the desperate need to belong.

Individuation is not self-improvement.
It is self-reclamation.

And the deeper truth?
Many people will celebrate your healing only until it disrupts the role they needed you to play.

To become yourself is to risk disappointing others.
To stop abandoning yourself.
To face the unconscious honestly enough that your life no longer becomes directed by old injuries pretending to be destiny.

That is the privilege.
And the cost.