Hello Kathleen,

So many of our patients come to us for help with their chronic depression and anxiety, sometimes long-standing, sometimes debilitating, always a burden.

These maladies are commonly treated as pathologies. We find it much more useful ~ and humane ~ to recognize depression and anxiety as messages from a body-mind system that has come to believe it is alone, carrying a heavy burden often exceeding capacity. The nervous system laboring continuously under this load 'reads' this scenario as a danger and continues to trigger stress reactivity that feeds the vicious cycle. Certainly for many, symptoms are improved with medication. However healing the roots of depression and anxiety requires that we gently and patiently correct the 'set' of aloneness underlying them.

The nervous systems of our reptile ancestors had one of two ways to find safety: fight/fight, or freeze. Our mammal ancestors evolved a beautiful innovation: connectedness. We human mammals are wired to detect safety in connection to others. When secure connection is present, the nervous system signals the body to calmly proceed with digestion and healing and learning. When this connection is missing or threatened, our mammal nervous system is likely to trigger a fear signal. And when that signal is chronic, as is so often and sadly the case, depression and/or anxiety can be natural consequences. And our nervous system gets stuck in home-away-from-home stress setting.

Our challenge: restore the calm setting that is the true home base of our autonomic nervous system. That we do through the regular experience of connectedness, to safe others, and to our interior.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field. I’ll meet you there. ~~Rumi

111 Knox Way,

Ste 110, Chapel Hill, NC 27516

Phone Number: 919-945-0300