Notes On… The Right, the Left, and the In-Between

There’s a certain kind of client I keep seeing more often lately. Thoughtful, heartful, politically aware. And yes, exhausted. Not from apathy, but from trying to carry too much truth. They sit across from me with a kind of emotional vertigo, torn between the urgency of one world and the nuance of another. Between loyalty to community and loyalty to conscience.

I get it. I feel it too.

We talk constantly about red and blue, conservative and progressive, but rarely do we talk about what lies beneath those labels. When I step back, not just politically, but psychologically, I begin to see deeper layers. The Right often mirrors something primal: the id at work. It’s body-based, wired for survival, drawn to order, tradition, and control. It clings to the familiar, not always out of malice, but out of fear. Beneath the rage, I often hear grief.

The Left, by contrast, tends to embody the superego, the voice of conscience, critique, and moral precision. It demands a better world, and rightly so. But when wounded, it can harden into rigidity, perfectionism, even punishment. It can forget that healing and justice, though intertwined, are not the same.

And then there’s the In-Between. Not the “both sides” posture, but the people, maybe like you, who are learning to stay present in the tension. Who wants to grieve, not cancel. Who wants to protect trans kids and still ask their Christian parents what they’re afraid of, without resorting to shame?

The In-Between is the ego at its most grounded. It mediates between urgency and inquiry. It listens not to validate every view, but to understand the wound beneath it. It knows when to call out, when to call in, and when to say, “I don’t know.”

Let me be clear: this is not a coded political statement or an endorsement. I’m not speaking as a strategist. I’m speaking as a therapist. These are observations.

Week after week, I see people unraveling, not just from policies, but from polarization itself. Families torn apart over ballots. Clients ashamed they’re not “angry enough,” or overwhelmed by how much they feel. Because politics isn’t just about governance, it’s about identity, fear, grief, and belonging. It touches the unconscious.

I worry when I see moral absolutism on the Left, not because I don’t believe in accountability, but because I do. I want us to hold each other to high standards without becoming the very fundamentalism we claim to resist. It’s possible to stand for justice without turning into a mirror of what harmed us.

Hatred, like trauma, mutates. It can wear the language of revolution just as easily as tradition. Any movement that tells you who to hate without inviting you to reflect on what you're grieving, projecting, or avoiding may not be a movement that truly heals.

I’m not interested in a politics that demands purity. I’m interested in a politics that makes us more human. One that allows for contradiction, for growth, for real conversation, not just trials on timelines.

And yes, not all perspectives are valid. Some are violent and must be challenged. But we can’t lose the capacity to ask, “Why do you believe that?” That’s not enabling. That’s understanding. And understanding keeps us from becoming unrecognizable to ourselves.

That’s the work. That’s the invitation. And in this moment, it might be the most powerful place to stand.