Mark Pechovnik, LCSW

The essence of good mental health is the ability to regard ourselves with a warm and caring heart. Too often, we fall into ruts of self-criticism, defensiveness, blame and get lost in cycles of shame that alienate ourselves from others and from ourselves. Through therapeutic work, we can reconsider the way we relate to ourselves and our inner experiences, normalizing what seems sick or broken, going deeper into parts of our inner life, creating more internal space, more external tolerance and moving forward with clear and concise choices about who we are and how we want to be in this world. Self-doubt often cripples us from making decisions or following through with our commitments. We can find ourselves stumbling over thoughts, unsure of how to move forward. Or we might discover that our lives have become small, our resources diminished. Oftentimes, it is our own internal script that blocks us from the health that is waiting to emerge. It's a story of our brokenness or worthlessness that doesn't allow us to have the feelings that are eager to come forward and animate our lives. Through the therapeutic investigation and opening up to our inner landscape, we find more space, more decisiveness and more confidence in ourselves. Ultimately, we develop a sense of humor about what and who we are that allows us to live lives of great clarity, clear differentiation and confidence, not that we will no longer make mistakes, but that we can recover from mistakes quickly.

As both a psychotherapist and a Zen priest, I am deeply engaged in the question of what it is to be human and how it is that we get caught in cycles of suffering and pain. I have great confidence in the inherent health of every human being. Sadly, that health is often obscured by the unconscious use of sundry ego-defenses and self-defeating behaviors, learned from a time when those strategies were, in fact, helpful. Whereas psychological work helps identify and work with our defensive strategies, spiritual work points beyond them. Psychology asks, "How am I functioning?" Spirituality asks, "What is larger than me?" In my mind, both psychological and spiritual work are essential ingredients in a healthy adult. Alone, psychology has no calling. Alone, spirituality does not teach me how to mature as a human being. I'm excited to work with people of all faiths and, indeed, no-faith. It's through our dialogue with each other that your own truth will be discovered and the means by which you can live a life that is authentically yours.