Introduction
Welcome! Whether you're here to learn more about what this clinic has to offer or simply interested in additional perspectives on what it means to live well, thank you for taking the time to explore this blog. Curiosity is an excellent starting point for the journey we're about to take together. In this introductory post, I preview the aims of this clinic and what you might expect to experience if you come along for the ride.
The chief aim of the clinic is to teach you to suffer less and flourish more. The term "suffering" here is used not in the colloquial sense of "severe distress", but instead refers to the additional and needless psychological pain our minds inflict upon us in the course of ordinary living. Some discomfort, pain even, is unavoidable in life. But a significant percentage of the pain that we experience, perhaps the majority, is self-inflicted. For example, say someone you love passes away. It is natural, healthy even, to experience the emotion of grief at the loss of this valued relationship. However, when we add to the pure experience of grief in any way, for example by constructing and buying into the thought that "I can't live without my loved one", we suffer. It turns out that all of our minds are quite good at generating this kind of self-inflicted pain. This is more readily apparent when we are in the midst of difficult life circumstances, but the human mind is more than capable of producing suffering even when things are seemingly going well, hence the imperfect correlation between life circumstances and happiness. The good news is that suffering is a sort of mental habit that anyone can unlearn with time and practice, allowing for greater happiness when external circumstances are favorable, as well as greater resilience to the misfortunes that everyone is likely to encounter at some point, whether it's job loss, a physical illness, or separation from a loved one.
On the flip side is flourishing. Flourishing is living your best life. This looks different for everyone, but it generally involves an action component and a feeling component. The action component has to do with how you spend your time - people who are flourishing spend increasingly large amounts of their time being present and engaged with actions that they find inherently meaningful. This in turn leads to a deep feeling of satisfaction with one's quality of life. As with suffering, anyone can learn to flourish by first developing a clear understanding of one's values (a tricky term that we'll define in a future post), then acting upon these values on the regular.
Unfortunately, our modern environment is set up in a way that impedes flourishing and promotes the mind's capacity to suffer. This is a bold assertion that I'll attempt to prove in more detail in future posts, but for now it will suffice to list a few prominent examples demonstrating this. Our environments are designed to keep us sedentary - our furniture is comfortable, made to sit on for long stretches of time. We often get from place to place by means of transportation that involve more sitting. Our postures are continuously being strained by the screens we use for work and leisure. The result is that being physically fit requires the continuous application of conscious effort rather than being built into the fabric of our lives. Likewise, our food systems are saturated with inexpensive, hyper-palatable, highly processed foods that are designed to sell themselves rather than to nourish. Eating healthfully requires a conscious effort to carefully research and source foods that are nutritive and flavorful, while ignoring the treats that beckon around every corner. Modern work is increasingly dominated by abstract jobs that lend to feelings of purposelessness and alienation. We live in the age of social media, but true community and social connection remain elusive. It takes a tremendous amount of willpower to work against these systems as currently constructed in order to flourish, and for most of us, maintaining this willpower consistently proves impossible.
However, we are fortunate to live in a time when information is abundant, and truly effective, sustainable practices exist for flourishing within our modern context. These are taught in my clinic along two parallel paths that clients walk simultaneously to strengthen the eight foundational pillars of health. The first path is learning how to cultivate one's internal environment in order to suffer less and be more resilient to challenging external circumstances, without needing to resort to frequently taught but often counterproductive psychological tactics such as avoiding, ignoring, suppressing, or positively thinking. This approach strengthens the first pillar of health, termed Sustainable Resilience. The second path uses the best available evidence on human flourishing from various disciplines including longevity science, functional medicine, and psychology to shape one's external circumstances into an increasingly favorable form. This approach strengthens the remaining seven pillars of health, which are Sleep, Nutrition, Movement, Social Connection, Sense of Purpose, Psychological Richness, and Financial Freedom.
I firmly believe anyone can benefit from therapy of this sort. Conventionally, therapy is thought of as a treatment for "mental illness", but this viewpoint is limiting. I also have strong reservations about the dichotomization of the human experience into "health" and "illness". There is no point beyond which someone is "healthy" and up to which someone is "ill". There is only the continuum of experience, which at any given time sits somewhere on a spectrum reflecting how well the contents of our minds (thoughts, feelings, and behaviors) align with our values and our environments. I view therapy as an important tool for gradually improving this alignment, thereby cultivating resilience to hardship and promoting flourishing. I have yet to meet the person who couldn't benefit from and get better at both of these things, which are not firm destinations, but part of an ever-evolving process.
