"These pains that you feel are Messengers. Listen to them. Turn them to sweetness."--Rumi

I swore I would never become a psychotherapist. My dad was a psychologist; my step mom, my grandfather, my grandmother and my uncle were all psychotherapists or psychiatric social workers. To follow the pattern seemed somehow unhealthy. However, I became interested in understanding people and psychological issues in my early 20’s. To seek my fortune, I moved from Boulder, Colorado to New York. The only place I could find that would allow my girlfriend and me to keep our German Shepherd Akita mix was located in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. It was there that my world-view changed. I learned a lot from living in what locals had named the "wild, wild, West". It is odd that living in such a violent place, I would learn about the necessity of staying peaceful in the face of violence and soft around angry, armed young men. But I am here. I think the fact that I survived in a world where there was one murder a week and one robbery a day suggests that my method is effective, tested. This knowledge has been around for millennia and was discussed during some of the most violent times in history. Buddha, Marcus Aurelius and Saint Paul explained the concept that would later be called cognitive therapy. I was impressed by the power of this psychological knowledge. I used it to increase my personal awareness, to give myself greater freedom and more positive choices.

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