To answer the question “who am I?” requires that I tell you about myself, or what I’m about. We do this mostly through story. Below, you will find a few brief stories describing in a general way what I was like, what happened, and what I’m like now in various areas of my life. For now, allow me to provide some of the broader strokes.
I am a psychologist, scientist, and professor. I am a storylistener and a storyteller. I’m not so much a “people person” as I am a ‘person…person,’ preferring time spent with individuals or small groups, rather than large crowds. To say that I’m a “dog lover” would be a tragic understatement. Few things excite me more than time spent outdoors. I am a lover of wisdom. I am a husband and a father. I strive to be a worker among workers, a friend among friends, and a useful member of my family and community. In practically all things, I’m not yet what I ought to be, but I’m better than I used to be.
Perhaps the greatest asset I bring to my work with clients is my extensive personal experience with hardships and failure. Every story must start with a really bad first draft. It’s not the content that makes a story good or bad, but how it’s told. In the beginning, I struggled because I couldn’t piece together my life in a way that made sense.
Disordered feelings and behaviors were the byproducts of a disjointed story. In my life, I have faced severe illnesses of mind, body, and soul, including depression, multiple addictions, and autoimmune diseases. I’ve dealt with sleep disorders and other mysterious conditions, for which I was prescribed many medications that only worsened my health. I have endured numerous relationship woes, as well as legal and financial hardships.
It wasn’t until I learned to coherently piece together my story within a larger narrative that wasn’t solely about me that I began to straighten out spiritually, mentally, and bodily. Today, I am exceedingly grateful for all my setbacks and failures, as they are precisely what make me useful to those with whom I work, which affords meaning in my suffering. Through this work, I am permitted to share my experience and continually refine the drafts of my story.
My academic pursuits have been driven by a deep desire to make sense of my own experiences, understand myself, and find recovery. So, it’s impossible to separate my academic work from the rest of my story.
My research focuses on better understanding the neurobehavioral correlates of the emotional improvements that occur in and through the process of recovery from alcohol use disorder. I am ultimately interested in bridging the gap between neuroscience and narrative science to better understand the neurocognitive underpinnings of adaptive identity change in the context of recovery.
There was a time in my life when I rejected anything resembling spirituality. I simply could not accept the notion that change could come about in the material world through unseen, immaterial causes. This was especially true when it came to handling my own problems. I was all about self-help and self-improvement. In other words, I was all about SELF. Looking back, I can see that this philosophy really came from a deep-rooted belief that the world is unsafe and other people are not to be trusted. And so, I leaned more and more on my own intellect and understanding. What’s the use in believing in things unseen, or expecting them to somehow work out in your favor? What evidence is there for a purpose outside of my own? Isn’t this just setting myself up to be let down in the long run? Yet, the more I tried to rely on my own ability to reason my way through life’s problems, the worse they seemed to get. Maybe this strategy of abject self-reliance works for some people, but I am not one of them. I have come to learn that when I believe and act as if my life is all about me, I get very sick, emotionally and physically. When there is nothing outside of myself to live for, no purpose outside of myself towards which to grow, my soul grows back on itself – it becomes ingrown. This type of soul-sickness has been referred to as the “bondage of self” within an “existential vacuum.” I craved relief from this bondage, which I got temporarily through drugs and alcohol. But, I found that the more these substances do for you, the more they’ll do to you…
It’s ironic. I used to reject the notion of spirituality because I couldn’t understand how something without physical substance could change something in the material world. Yet, I seemed to have no problem accepting this possibility in the opposite direction. One of the best definitions for addiction I’ve heard is “the attempt to solve a spiritual problem with a material solution.” Ultimately, my problem was a spiritual one, because it resided deep within my innermost self, unseen and unseeable. Regardless of what I gave lip-service to, this was the only reality I really cared about – my own experience of suffering. And though it was invisible, I came to learn that my suffering had everything to do with how I saw myself in the world. I used to believe that more knowledge meant more power and perhaps more ability to save myself from the experience of myself. Yet, considering how abysmally I had been managing my own life, it began to seem like a stretch for me to think that I was (or ever would be) all-knowing or all-powerful. Simply put, I realized that I was not God. And it was through the realization and acceptance of my own finitude and the limitations of my knowledge that I acquired enough humility to concede the possibility of a Reality beyond what I could perceive or comprehend. As I let go of the belief that I had to have all the answers, or that I had to somehow be a finished product, I felt free for the first time. As I continue to let go of what I think I know and relax my focus on what I think I see, I occasionally catch a glimpse of the spiritual dimension of existence that I used to scoff at. And it’s within that dimension that my life’s purpose reveals itself, as though it has finally come out of hiding. That purpose is to live out this spirituality of falling and getting up again, no longer trying to become more than human, but rather, more human…
As a clinician, I’ve treated individuals struggling with all types of addiction and other common co-occurring disorders like depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, and insomnia. My experience ranges from directing addiction treatment programs in men’s correctional facilities to providing individual therapy. As the Clinical Director of treatment programs in correctional facilities, I drew from the insights from my research and personal experiences to develop and implement a novel therapeutic curriculum that would help clients learn to make sense of their own experiences through storytelling and storylistening. This approach fostered profound shifts in self-understanding and enabled lasting remission for many clients. In my ongoing clinical work, I consistently observe the relationship between addictive symptoms and low personal meaning in life and sense of self-identity. In my private practice, I focus primarily on men’s issues in recovery, particularly those related to finding meaning, purpose, and identity.
