OFF SCRIPT THERAPY: When You Are Off Script And I Am Off Script, We Are Alive To Each Other

I wrote this book because our mental health matters, because our country's mental health matters, and the mental health of humanity matters, and because, as a culture... we can do better.

I wrote for the person who seeks hope that healing is possible. I wrote for the student who wonders if real healing is possible in psychotherapy. I wrote for the therapist who seeks inspiration. I wrote to remove the stigma we attach to mental illness. I ask that we start looking at mental illness as a mental health challenge that points to the healing we need on the way to enlightenment. I ask that we start talking about mental health challenges as "symptoms" and drop the label "personality disorder."

I also wrote to bring unity within the world of psychotherapy. Psychotherapy has many schools and associations with little communication between them. How can a fragmented psychotherapy bring healing to human beings who feel fragmented?

I wrote for the future of psychotherapy.

I wrote from experience as a client, a student, a psychotherapist, and a yoga teacher and lecturer. I wrote also as a human being seeking my own healing when doctors could only tell me that whatever I had was due to stress, and when well intended and kind therapists often did not provide what I wanted.

The word Script in "Off Script Therapy" refers to both the psychiatrist's prescription and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our lives. These stories are often unconscious and tend to run the show from behind the scene, often with painful results, until we make them conscious.

I take the reader on my own journey, reminding each of us that our deep subjective experience matters. My journey quickly opens the discussion to the fascinating human experiment we are all a part of, and to what happens when we enter into a relationship with Life. As I reflected on my experience, I realized that some things were personal, but others could be generalized. I started to get a clearer picture of human nature, It led me to compare what I was learning with what was available in psychotherapy, and in the world of healing. And I also started to get curious if science could confirm some of what I was discovering. I invite you to take this journey with me as I believe it can help you on yours!