After living in Brooklyn for twelve years, my husband and I did a wonderful and somewhat reckless thing: we bought an old farm with a falling-down house and some land in much need of tending in the Catskill Mountains of Upstate New York. For a few years now, we’ve been slowly fixing up our old home and learning to steward the land around it. 

I’ve since learned that one of the most special things about this region, Delaware County, is its abundance of water. On our own land alone there are at least three natural springs, and I marvel at the gift of this resource–one that emerges unbidden and pristine from below the earth’s surface to sustain the life above it. The spring up on my hill that provides my drinking water also flows into a creek that wends its way off of our land to join countless other creeks that feed the rivers and reservoirs of the region. These countless sources form the New York City watershed: the vast, interconnected system that provides the city with its famous drinking water. 

The word wellspring refers to this literal fountainhead, but it also means “an abundant and continual source”—a perfect metaphor for the deep, enduring inner resources we tap into in therapy. In modalities like Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), healing often emerges from what’s called the Core Self—a wise, compassionate inner presence that’s always there, even when obscured by the defenses and protections we’ve built up over the years. Like a spring beneath the surface, we can tap into this Core Self as an abundant, continual source of clarity and renewal. 

In 2024, I founded Wellspring Therapy as a place to provide excellent therapy as well as a place for emerging psychotherapists to have support, training, and community as they learn to do this important work. The Wellspring team includes practitioners in both Upstate New York and New York City, serving clients in the whole region. Just like the watershed, we’re part of an interconnected system–each of us integral parts of a life-sustaining whole. 

—Catherine McCarthy, founder of Wellspring Therapy