Emotional anguish – depression, anxiety, PTSD - is as old as the human record itself
A cuneiform tablet from the Sumerian Third Dynasty (2100 BCE) describes the aftermath of a war in Mesopotamia in which civilians lived in chronic panic, insomnia, and “the weeping of bitter tears.” The fourth-century BCE Greek tragedian Sophocles, himself a soldier, wrote the play Ajax, in which the eponymous hero returns from the Trojan War a disordered veteran showing classic PTSD symptoms. Ajax eventually kills himself in an attempt to escape his overwhelming suffering.
In the last quarter century my colleagues and I have developed a suite of integrative tools to address these timeless forms of human suffering
Some of our tools themselves harken back to the earliest origins of our species. Cognitive-behavioral therapy has roots in Buddhism, the teachings of Jesus and the Greek Stoic school of philosophy. Archeological evidence links the origins of our evolving mind/body methods to the 1500 BCE Indus Valley civilization in present-day India and Pakistan. It seems that the entire time humankind has been suffering emotional agony the path to healing and wellness has lain beneath our feet.
My approach to recovering the happiness that is our birthright culls the best from East and West, from ancient wisdom and modern cognitive science. All methods I offer patients are solidly evidence-based: not tools I just consider good ideas but approaches that research data has demonstrated to be effective. And because different people respond to different approaches, I offer patients more than 60 different integrative tools they can pick up and experiment with themselves to find which will help them in their particular life challenges. We collect fine-grained data in the course of our work together – e.g. measuring symptoms before and after each session – so that we can follow the data forward, finding the shortest route to your happiness, peace, relational satisfaction and engagement of living in a way that is most life-giving to yourself and those around you.