You Are Not Your Diagnosis

I had a client who regularly reminded me of her diagnoses to justify her behaviors and struggles.  “I have bipolar disorder, and therefore I… “ ,  “I have autism, and therefore I…. “.   I’ve heard other mental health professionals rail against giving people diagnoses.  They’ve argued that it isn’t helpful, because labeling people, makes them feel limited by their diagnosis.

I told my client:   You are not your diagnosis!

I remember how relieved I was when

Read More

Reviving from Failure to Thrive

John would lock himself in his apartment for days, not talking to anyone.  After not being able to reach him for days, his mom stopped by his apartment and found pizza boxes and empty cans of coke and pepsi strewn throughout the apartment.  The place reeked with his body oder, moldy food and urine.

John had been struggling with severe mental health challenges for entire life.  In addition to depression, he had autism and oppositional defiance disorder.  He had a habit of alienating everyone he met, and so he was lonely and uninterested in life.  He was 385 Ibs, sedentary, and had diabetes.

Read More

Seven Questions to Create a Meaningful Life

For decades, I was taught that I needed to accept what I could not change and have the wisdom to know the difference.    Despite years as a graduate student in Neuroscience and post doctoral fellowships in psychiatric epidemiology at the most prestigious medical schools in the country, whenever I saw a doctor or counselor at these same institutions, more often than not, I would be either told my problem wasn’t real, or that I just had to learn to accept it.

I had become disillusioned with Western medicine when I realized how little coursework my colleagues were getting in nutrition and lifestyle management, and how much coursework was dedicated to pharmacology.   There seemed to be an underlying motive in Western medicine that made me uncomfortable, 

Read More

How Ancestral Trauma and Behavior Affect Us

A client of mine has Parkinson’s disease.  While eliminating underlying causes, we discovered she had repressed anger that she had inherited from her great-grandmother.   In asking questions of her subconscious, I got that her great-grandmother was angry about her illness.  I then discovered her great-grandfather shared the same ancestral trauma around his wife’s illness.  My client who had traced her ancestry then revealed 

Read More

Why It is So Important to Take the Time to Just Be

My friend practices Vipassana meditation and is off to a meditation retreat this weekend.  He invited me to go, but I still have a lot of unpacking to do, and I don’t feel like I can get away for a whole weekend.

This conflict remind me of the conflict between being vs. doing.

I used to be hyper focused on doing.  My list of things to do has always been longer than I have had time to complete.   But because I didn’t take the time to renew, I wasn’t enjoying life, and I wasn’t very productive while working.

Read More