“What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

~ Mary Oliver, poet

My Background

Even in the best of circumstances, it is still difficult to be a human being. We all suffer at times though there are of course very different kinds of suffering. Without consciously knowing it, I have always wanted to understand how to lessen our common human experience of suffering and emotional pain.

I was drawn early on to understanding emotional life. In medical school, although finding the human body amazing, I was less interested in bodily illness than in people’s emotional struggles. I therefore chose a psychiatry residency. I hoped to learn how to become an excellent therapist. Even that many years ago, however, psychiatry was already very biologically oriented. I could feel my internal objection to what seemed like the underlying premise – that all human suffering could be addressed and cured with medication. I did not want to practice general psychiatry, which meant just such a focus on evaluation and diagnosis and then medication. My residency did not teach very much at all about the practice of therapy so I on my own I sought out teachers of therapy in my community.

After a few years in private practice, consulting with various teachers and therapists, I slowly learned that psychodynamic and psychoanalytic approaches were rich and fascinating and very effective for most people. I decided I wanted to learn this deeper form of therapy and began a rigorous 5 year program at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute. This was a wonderful experience. It included my own personal analysis/therapy. Contemporary psychoanalytic approaches are no longer stereotypically Freudian. The therapist is more active and relational. Other methods are embraced and integrated as well, including cognitive and nowadays, mindfulness practices.

In parallel with my love of therapy came a deep interest in meditation. I began going to meditation retreats many decades ago, before it was as known and accepted as it is today. I have continued my commitment to it all along, less so time wise while raising a family, much more so now. It is another powerful way to understand and learn to work with our minds.