La belleza no se puede imponer. Tampoco ser institucionalizado.
Beauty cannot be mandated. Nor institutionalized.
It's an individual decision and pursuit.
Beyond psychology. Beyond therapy. Pure conversation. Stimulating expansion of thought.
CEO, CFO, bishop, clergy, lawmaker, filmmaker, doctor, broker, actor, comedian, musician, artist, venture capitalist, entrepreneur: You, your family, and your organization can benefit from my accumulation of, and sifting through, vast amounts of knowledge, nonsense, and experience.
My studies, research, and work have not only been in clinical psychology (PhD, University of Mississippi; and M.S., Divine Mercy University, since 2009); but also in film production (MFA 2002, University of Southern California); advertising copy (1990s); philosophy and theology (Pontifical Academy of the Holy Cross, 1987-2008), the politics, philosophy, and economics program of the University of Notre Dame (B.A., 1991); and decades of volunteer work mentoring and mentoring mentors.
A decade and a half ago I left amateur mentoring and the film industry to pursue psychology and complete my understanding of the human person. I wanted to understand conditions I knew little about, such as when a man would say difficulties were related to his wife being “bipolar.” I delved deep into that knowledge and accumulated abundant experience treating that and many other conditions.
Today I am working on various initiatives to meet the needs left unmet by official healthcare. One effort is to mobilize lay people to help each other (incapables.org) and use apps (de-escalator.org) rather than wait for the experts to arrive in time. For those who want more education I am developing training programs to equip compassionate bystanders to skillfully support loved ones in adjusting to distressing life events until they can get further help (freshlearnfern.org). My goal is to parallel what CPR has done for physical health, equipping countless non-experts to be a bridge to recovery.
With Consigliere I intend something else. My clients in this endeavor share several factors and specialized needs in common:
- A position of leadership or influence;
- Lack of safe channels for thinking aloud, expressing doubts or concerns, or truly “kicking the tires” without risk of significant repercussions in the form of rumors, media, market value, loss of confidence, or questions about orthodoxy, brand purity, and reliability;
- Unspoken pressures to limit growth, or to fossilize “how we do things,” or neglect (even betray!) the greater mission based on fears and barriers created by history, laws, rules, traditions, and the expectations of an established, defensive, and unforgiving set of customers, fanbase, congregation, investors, gatekeepers, or others;
- Tricky navigation of competing sects and interests;
- Lack of well-formulated arguments for resisting demands and trends that at gut-level are clearly absurd, superficial, or even harmful, yet which are popular and being capitulated to on a widespread basis;
- Fatigue, frustration, and the constant lure of a quiet retirement to one’s own interests.
- Recognition that mindfulness is not the answer, is not some high-level solution but only a basic self-regulation tool for better engaging in the tasks of contemplation, objectivity, and resolution of challenges.
My time in advertising and entertainment have served me well in this endeavor. In those pursuits I learned to cut through clutter and synthesize vast amounts of information into brief, attractive, often humorous, and easily digestible messages. I went from having only 30 seconds or a single visual impression to promote behavior change, to having hours, days, weeks, and even months. And it turned out much less time is often necessary for achieving victories and progress.
When a compassionate person unties a few key barriers or unnecessary yokes, people know how to finish freeing themselves. But there is massive confusion about this, even among the holiest, blessed, or most sanctioned providers themselves. Things like trauma recovery do not actually need much time! Though the subsequent rebuilding of a life can then take some months.
Even suicidality, psychosis, and dramatic upheavals in mood and relationships can all be brought within calm, productive demeanors. There is sadly so much misunderstanding and hype around all of these areas, as well as with the unconscious, all of which turn out to not be very mysterious at all.
The answers are not complicated. But the gatekeepers are! Some are even incentivized to maintain current wasteful structures, which limits broader societal progress. The poverty-to-prison pipeline is alive and well. As with anyone who is “just following orders,” it is hard not to perpetuate the defective status quo since business-as-usual is what passes muster with lawyers, despite the vast betrayal of citizens and patients. The Titanic of healthcare has no real plan for major change; it’s still in the wishful thinking stage about the iceberg.
In the tradition of many Greek and Christian philosophers I help people to: 1) recognize and stop resource-depleting behaviors, 2) promote natural and guided development of internal resources, 3) adopt more intelligent practices, 4) learn to tolerate painful situations rather than make things worse and, 5) live in pursuit of a more abundant life rather than in reaction to external happenings.
I will not say I empower anyone. That concept is foreign to me; power and choice are exercised, not granted. I simply help debug some very good thinkers whose programming has developed unhelpful subroutines that keep them from the life they crave.
Prior to this endeavor.
My training has been second-to-none. To ensure I would never fear any patient condition, after my doctoral coursework I obtained specialized pre- and post-doctoral training experiences twice at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) VA Medical Center, and one year at the VA training hospital at Tripler in Honolulu. I have a great deal of experience with these:
- Acute, chronic, and complex PTSD (trauma);
- Psychosis, bipolar, and other “SMI” (serious mental illness) including among homeless individuals;
- Borderline, narcissistic, schizoid and other personality disorders;
- Crisis triage and stabilization;
- Many of the above with comorbid suicidality, rage, substance use, and disordered eating and purging.
- Distress in relationships (couples, families).
I have worked with leaders, clergy, celebrities, musicians, restauranteurs, entrepreneurs, and US military veterans of all branches, using cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), emotion focused therapy (EFT), cognitive processing therapy (CPT), prolonged exposure (PE), and more.
I have helped individuals at various levels of major corporations such as Apple, Dell, Meta (Facebook), and Visa. I have also helped people with high level security clearances (e.g., FBI) and airline pilots, as well as refugees and those with uncertainty in their immigration standing, in English and Spanish. I have conducted trainings for private organizations and trainees and staff at entities like the Irving Family Advocacy Center near Dallas which also services first responders.
Now my interests have returned to larger issues of human well-being and purpose. Rather than concede to modern limitations imposed on thought, I prefer to integrate my knowledge of psychology with centuries of philosophical, organizational, theological, economic, poetic, comedic, and artistic thought about the individual, relationships, and economic interdependence.