Welcome to my website – a website devoted to healing the pain of emotional (mental) "illness."  Our words, "heal" and "health," have an ancient Greek root the same as the words “whole” and “Holy.”  Our health is holy, sacred; We are holy, sacred.  Of course, much of what these words, "Holy" and "Sacred," mean is beyond our limited human capacity to understand. But, watching, we can learn to trust Life, understand suffering, and heal ourselves and our planet. 

Medicine should be a "holy" profession with healing, not profit, as its goal.  Sadly, that's not always the case.  I am a retired doctor.  Reading my bio, you will learn that I became a doctor because of my own mental suffering, which started in early childhood.  I wanted to understand. I was lucky to train in neuro-psychiatry when most research focused on understanding neurobiology -- before the profit motive of the pharmaceutical and biomedical companies took over.

After my education, it was my patients (listening to their stories of pain and courage) that taught me a new way to understand mental illness. They came to me because they were suffering. Most knew "something" was deeply wrong: that they were "cut off" from experiencing a joyful Life.  Their perceptions were right. And trusting those perceptions taught me so much.  I learned that the life-long struggle of so many people trying so hard results from normal adaptation to (abnormal) adverse childhood experiences (ACES).   I came to understand that, although we are all born (genetically designed) to live lives of joy, 3 distinct but often overlapping kinds of childhood hurt neurobiologically cut us off from feeling and trusting that joy.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) is a useful coding manual for insurance company reimbursement: it is not written to explain the reasons (the medical, biological, social, and institutional reasons) why we suffer.  This website is written to do just that.  The task requires a new vocabulary, a new way of "looking."  

Whether called "depression," "anxiety." "major depression," "bipolar depression," "dysthymia," "ptsd," "panic," "negative symptom schizophrenia," or whatever, safe, effective treatments not only correct the childhood neurobiological damage but clarify exactly how childhood pain causes neurobiological damage.

How did our beautiful species come to so hurt our children?  I've learned there's no one to blame -- but much to understand if we are going to heal. That, too, is discussed here.
 
This website is dedicated to those who so generously gave me their stories.

          

                                     Links at the top of this page will take you to other pages on the site.