Austin, Texas: The City That Lets Us Become

There is something psychologically interesting about Austin.

For generations, people have found their way here from other parts of Texas carrying a familiar feeling: I don't quite fit here.

They come for different reasons. Some come for the openness. Some come for the beauty, the hills, the water, the live oaks, the strange and wonderful landscape that surrounds the city. Some come for the universities, for the intellectual energy, or for the possibility of becoming someone different from who they were expected to be.

And some simply come because, somewhere inside themselves, they sense that there might be a place where they can finally exhale.

Austin has long been that place.

A Texas City With a Different Psychological Climate

Since its earliest days, Austin has functioned as a kind of microcosm of the American experience, but with a distinctly Austin twist.

Give us your disenfranchised.

Give us your artists.

Give us your unconventional thinkers.

Give us your marginalized communities, your outsiders, your dreamers, your academics, your musicians, your entrepreneurs, your seekers, and those whose lives don't fit neatly into the expectations of the communities they came from.

Austin has historically had an unusual capacity to say, in its own way:

Come on in. You can be who you are here.

That doesn't mean Austin has always been perfectly accepting. It hasn't. No city is. Austin has its own prejudices, divisions, economic inequities, growing pains, and contradictions.

But psychologically, something important has happened here for more than a century.

People have come here and found enough room to become themselves.

A Second Mother

Perhaps that is one way to understand Austin.

For some people, Austin becomes a kind of second mother.

Not a perfect mother. Not an idealized mother. A good enough mother.

The British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott used the idea of the "good enough mother" to describe a parent who provides enough safety, consistency, nourishment, and freedom for a child to develop a sense of self.

The good enough mother doesn't determine who the child will become.

She creates the conditions in which the child can discover it.

In that sense, Austin has served this function for countless people.

You come here and find your voice.

You come here and become educated.

You come here and discover your creativity.

You come here and meet people who recognize something in you that perhaps nobody back home recognized.

You come here and experiment with an identity, a career, a relationship, an idea, or a way of living.

And sometimes, after years of trying to become the person other people expected you to be, you finally begin to discover who you actually are.

That happens in Austin.

A Respite in a Conservative State

Texas is enormous, diverse, complicated, and filled with communities that possess their own histories, values, traditions, and expectations.

For many people, those environments are deeply nurturing.

For others, they can feel constraining.

Austin has long offered a different psychological climate within that larger landscape, a respite for people who may never have felt that they completely fit elsewhere in Texas.

It has provided a place where unconventional doesn't necessarily mean unacceptable.

Where eccentricity can become creativity.

Where difference can become identity.

Where questioning can become intellectual curiosity.

Where a person who has spent years feeling like an outsider can discover that perhaps they weren't fundamentally flawed.

Perhaps they were simply in the wrong environment.

That distinction can be psychologically transformative.

Sometimes healing begins not with changing ourselves, but with finding a place where the parts of ourselves we've been trying to suppress are finally allowed some oxygen.

Austin as a Second Chance

This may be one of Austin's greatest gifts.

It gives people a second chance.

A second chance to grow.

A second chance to develop.

A second chance to become.

A second chance to discover that the person you were told you were isn't necessarily the person you have to remain.

And Austin has been remarkably good at this for more than a century.

Its hills and rivers provide sustenance.

Its universities provide intellectual stimulation and a push toward development.

Its artistic and cultural communities provide permission to imagine.

Its diversity provides opportunities for connection.

And its history of welcoming people who live outside conventional boundaries has created something psychologically valuable: space.

Space for different identities.

Space for different developmental stages.

Space for experimentation.

Space for eccentricity.

Space for failure.

And perhaps most importantly, space to try again.

The City Has Changed

Of course, Austin has changed.

Anyone who has lived here for any length of time knows that.

The Austin of today is not the Austin of twenty, thirty, fifty, or one hundred years ago. The city has grown enormously. Its skyline has changed. Its traffic has changed. Its economy has changed. Its relationship with the rest of Texas and with the rest of the country has changed.

But perhaps growth doesn't necessarily mean that the essential psychological function of the city has disappeared.

Perhaps her arms are simply wider now.

Austin has expanded its reach to encompass technology, business, medicine, education, entrepreneurship, and new frontiers that could scarcely have been imagined by earlier generations.

It has become a launching pad.

People arrive with an idea, a dream, a business, a talent, or simply a desire to build a different life.

They find a fertile place from which to launch.

And perhaps that is another characteristic of a good enough mother: she doesn't keep you forever.

She gives you enough safety to eventually leave.

She helps you develop enough confidence to take the leap.

She lets you become your own person.

And if you're lucky, you can always come home.

Thank You, Austin

For those of us who have practiced psychotherapy here, we have had the privilege of watching this process unfold in people's lives.

We see people who arrived carrying wounds from somewhere else.

People who were told they were too sensitive, too different, too ambitious, too creative, too unconventional, too intellectual, too emotional, too much or somehow not enough.

And then, slowly, something changes.

They find community.

They find purpose.

They find their voice.

They build relationships.

They create businesses.

They fall in love.

They leave relationships.

They go back to school.

They make art.

They become parents.

They become leaders.

They become themselves.

Sometimes, they simply become comfortable being the person they already were.

Austin doesn't do all of that for them.

No city can.

But a city can create conditions.

It can provide room.

It can offer possibility.

It can give someone enough safety to begin the difficult work of becoming.

And perhaps that is what Austin has been for so many people across generations:

A second home.

A second chance.

A place to put down roots after discovering that the soil where you started wasn't quite right for you.

A place that says, You can stay awhile. You can figure this out. You don't have to have it all figured out yet.

And eventually, perhaps, a place that says:

Now go. Become whoever you are meant to become.

Thank you, Austin.

For giving us another home.

For allowing us to be ourselves.

For giving generations of outsiders a place to belong.

And for helping so many of us repair some of the wounds we carried here.

Ready to Begin Your Own Becoming? 

If you've recognized a piece of your own story in this — the feeling of finally having room to become who you are — schedule a consultation with our Austin therapists. We've spent over two decades helping people do exactly this work.

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