Other Stuff About Me

I like to sing, and to write songs and poetry. My songwriting style is kinda Joni Mitchell, kinda Indigo Girls, kinda Stephen Sondheim. Janelle Monáe's Dirty Computer is my absolute favourite album; it gave me the courage to make some pretty big changes in my life as a queer enby. "It's Quiet Uptown" from Hamilton helped me "learn to live with the unimaginable" as an adoptee. This all fits with my somatic approach to work which clients, knowing that healing goes so far beyond words and thinking.

I love to walk in the woods or on quiet streets, and look at birds and big trees.

I'm obsessed with standup-comedy: It can just take anything vile or depressing and turn it into truthful, bellowing, irreverent hilarity. Ali Wong, Aamer Rahman, Hari Kondabolu, Taylor Tomlinson, Sammy Obeid, Chelsea Peretti, John Mulaney and Trevor Noah are some of my favourite artists.

I mention my affinities for watching birds and comedy in particular because they weren't always "my things;" they were things I brought in when I realized I needed more balance--or dialectics-- in my life. For those of you who are into the Enneagram, I'm a four, which means I lean toward the more intense things of life. I really like that aspect of myself, and I have learned to complement that intense-and-serious aspect of myself with the quietude of nature and the levity of comedy. When the artist and organizer parts of myself reach synthesis with the bird-contemplating and guffawing-at-Ali-Wong parts of myself, something clicks into place for me: something full, strong and free. DBT calls this type of synthesis a dialectic: something greater than even the two parts combined. I aim to nurture dialectics in my own life and in the lives of my clients.

I like to do all of the above things mindfully. For mindless leisure (i.e., a thing I enjoy doing mindlessly on purpose), I love medical shows! Especially Grey’s Anatomy and The Resident. Sign me up for the intoxicating theme music and fake code blues any day. This kind of mindful mindlessness (aka purposeful distraction) is an important skill in DBT. When we learn to dissociate on purpose, it gives us so much more freedom and control about what we pay attention to and when.

Alejandra Lindan, MMT, RP (they/them)

Registered Psychotherapist #001976

alejandra@lindan.ca