My Story
My journey to becoming a mindfulness-based psychotherapist began when I was fourteen and decided to enter Saint Francis High School Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio. My twin and I left our home in Santa Fe where my Mom had a Day Care Center, and my father taught in a private Catholic High School. The academic training to become a Franciscan priest was very rigorous. Because of my quiet personality, fellow students would come and talk to me. They would confide about their academic struggles, the times when they were homesick or didn't know how not to be bullied. I had a gift of being present and listening with all my heart. My father died my freshman year of chronic bronchitis and emphysema. I found solace in my spiritual studies but was overwhelmed with leaving my Mom and my academic struggles. I entered into counseling that year with a priest, poet, and mentor Father Murray Bodo who taught me that compassion and paying attention to my inner voice were two of the most important strengths that I needed to develop. He mirrored unconditional positive regard and empathy. He empowered me to set boundaries with other students and learn how to take care of myself.
Because I struggled with elite college preparatory courses, I often had to study at night in the stairwell under the Exit lights. When I would go to back to bed, I had to turn off my mind so I could survive on six hours of sleep. I began to practice a sitting meditation focusing just on my breath. I was in a dorm with fifty other students, and I found that as I focused on my breathing I could turn off my busy mind and the noises from the other students. This nightly ritual was beginning of my Mindfulness Meditation. It was a nightly practice that I started at the age of fourteen.
During my next three years at Saint Francis Seminary, I excelled academically, became a long distance runner, and led the contemporary music ministry group. During the summer months, I worked with a man who owned apartments in Santa Fe. King became a friend and "father figure" to me. I worked with King and his adopted son Tony, building bathrooms, extra rooms to his apartments, making traditional adobe mud bricks and adzeing trees to make wooden vigas for the ceilings. He taught me patience, endurance, and gave me a great deal of self-confidence. He taught me to be colorblind and honor the traditions of different cultures.
During the summer nights of my high school years, I hung out on the Plaza in downtown Santa Fe. It was the late 1960s and early 1970s and the Vietnam War, Peace Demonstrations and drugs were the signs of the times. I soon befriended some of the first homeless drug addicts in Santa Fe. They were often shooting up or coming down. Some were close to death. What could I do at the age of 16 or 17? During these years I learned what Ram Dass meant when someone asked him "How can I help?" "By being present, no words, no actions, just being present." I sat and listened; I found their blankets or their cigarettes. I called upon their friends; sometimes I would call one of the priests from the Cathedral. I sat with addiction, with suffering, with sadness, loneliness, and hopelessness!
In 1974 I entered Duns Scotus College in Southfield, Michigan. DSC was the College Seminary for the Franciscan Order. I had a double major in Theology and Philosophy and continued with the Music Ministry, which now included female musicians. I fell in love with Jennipher a fellow member of the music ministry. She and I started playing for weddings, funerals and a 5 pm Saturday Mass for a local parish. We spent all of our free time together. I was smitten! Fr. Murray was now at Duns Scotus, and he suggested that I take a week retreat to discern if the priesthood was my calling in life. He suggested my relationship with Jennipher was taking a "vacation from my vocation." I spent that Easter week at New Jerusalem Community, the Charismatic Prayer Community founded by Richard Rohr, OFM and John Quigley, OFM. I spoke to a couple that I had known for some years and other members of New Jerusalem. My process of discernment in making a major life decision is something that I teach many of my patients. I decided to leave the seminary at the end of that year and either attend Saint Mary's College in Southfield, Michigan or join New Jerusalem Community in Cincinnati and live in one of their households.
During this time Jennipher became more distant. She stopped playing for weddings and the 5 pm Mass, blaming it on her schizophrenic mother's deteriorating condition. I received a "Dear John" letter the week before I left Duns Scotus informing me that she needed to move on and that she was transferring to a college in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Retrospectively, during that summer I experienced many panic attacks and some clinical depression.
I relocated to Cincinnati and lived in a household with five other members of New Jerusalem. I worked as an orderly at Franciscan Terrace, a retirement community for Franciscan priests and nuns. I provided primary care for most of the male residents who needed assistance with showering, grooming, and other activities of daily living. My interactions with many terminally ill residents planted the seed for my love of Medicine, Palliative Care, Hospice and working with patients who had Alzheimer's disease. After work, I would spend time with Sister Hippolyta who had metastatic melanoma on her nose. Sometimes I would read her the Psalms, other times I would just sit with her. During these hours I started to focus on being mindful and staying in the moment. She was on a morphine drip and in a great deal of pain. I learned to honor pain and be present with someone who was dying. I was with her when she took her final breath on October 5, 1976. She gave me the gift of staying in the moment and being mindful of her physical pain, her emotional pain, and the depth of connecting deeply with her by just being there.
I completed my bachelor's degree in Theology at Xavier University and entered the Master's program in Clinical Psychology. During this time I left Franciscan Terrace and started working at Jewish Hospital where I trained as a Cardiac Monitor Technician monitoring cardiac telemetries in Intensive Care, the Cardiac Care Unit, Cardiac-step down unit and Pulmonary Intensive Care. I became intrigued with not only the physiological factors that led to Coronary Artery Disease but the psychological factors as well. Why do individuals continue to self-sabotage their health by not changing heart risk factors?
I worked with one of the preceptors in the Department of Family Medicine and developed the Family Heart Questionnaire®, a ten question Cardiac Risk Factor Questionnaire based upon a Likert scale to evaluate high cardiac risk factor behaviors. During that year it was given to every person admitted to the Jewish Hospital Cardiac Care Unit and the Cardiac Step-Down Unit. I completed all of the coursework, the research study and the defense of my Master's Degree thesis.
In 1984 my wife, Cynthia was transferred to Los Angeles with American Airlines. We spent 18 months apart while I finished my MA at Xavier University. In September of 1985, I was accepted to California School of Professional Psychology in the Ph.D. program in clinical psychology with a specialization in health psychology. During my first year of the Ph.D. program, I asked my Cognitive-Behavior Therapy professor if she had any work that I could do in her practice? Initially, she said no, but within a month I was co-leading an Alzheimer's Caregivers Support Group. Facilitating this group was a natural fit. My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1980, and I saw the slow, insidious onset of dementia and her eventual placement in the Catholic Care Center, in Wichita, KS.
Three months later Dr. Zarit announced that her husband had accepted the Chair of the Department of Gerontology at Kent State. I started co-leading the group with Joyce Kuppinger, MFCC. I have been at the Center For Adult Development, a private group practice since 1985.
During my second year of graduate school, my Practicum focused on working with terminally ill patients and their families at Hospice of Pasadena. I also led Bereavement Support Groups. In my third year, I completed more clinical hours at Temple Hospital in downtown Los Angeles. I worked primarily with homeless patients and single-parent families providing short-term therapy. I also provided Consultation-Liaison Medicine to the trauma unit and first responders from the hospital.
In my third year of the Ph.D. program, I started working on a pioneering research program for my doctoral dissertation. When I would visit my Mom, and I would see that blank stare or her inability to finish a sentence. I often wondered if she was aware of what was going on with her cognitive decline and loss of memory. Each visit I noticed the gradual decline and how upset I was the first time that she did not know who I was.
For my dissertation, I interviewed and filmed 18 individuals about their own subjective experience of having Alzheimer's disease. I also interviewed their spouses/partners. I transposed the taped interviews for my dissertation and began pioneering research on the phenomenological experience of having Alzheimer's Disease. During my last year of academic study for the Ph.D. program, I started to apply for internships to accrue hours for licensure. I applied to 16 programs. My wife had transferred to New York to pursue an acting career and study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I interviewed at Harvard Medical School, at Yale University School of Medicine, at Loma Linda Hospital, and at Cedar's Sinai Hospital.
My first call was from Yale University School of Medicine asking if I would accept a full-time fellowship at their affiliate hospital Waterbury Hospital Health Center. I accepted and we relocated to North Haven, CT. I worked in the Partial Hospitalization program facilitating groups and providing individual therapy for patients with prolonged psychiatric disorders. I also worked in the Cardiac Care Unit and the Trauma Center providing consultation-liaison medicine to physicians, nurses, patients, and their families who had complications from cardiac events/surgery. I also worked in the Trauma Center with a psychiatrist providing psychological services to trauma victims and debriefing with physicians and staff for trauma involving multiple individuals. I was present for a great deal of physical, psychological pain and loss.
I flew back to Los Angeles in 1989 to defend my dissertation: A Phenomenological Study of Early Stage Alzheimer's Disease Patients. I received my Ph.D. in 1989 and continued my fellowship at Yale University School of Medicine until 1991.
We returned to Los Angeles in 1992, and I rejoined my current practice The Center For Adult Development. During the next few years, I started Caregiver's (Spouses and Adult Children) Support Groups at Mission Lodge an Extended Care Facility in San Gabriel, CA. In December of this year, I terminated facilitating the support groups after twenty-five years of service. Twenty-five years ago I became the Employee Assistance Director for Pasadena City College. For many years I led bereavement support groups for Saint Luke's Hospital and Holy Family Parish. I also came full circle and was the Director of Counseling Services for Hospice of Pasadena from 1996-2003. I also continued my work in trauma and loss and began to facilitate Parents of Murdered Children groups. I have worked with numerous local physicians in consultation-liaison medicine for their geriatric patients and those with chronic debilitating diseases. Last year I became a certified Hypnotherapist. I am pursuing the American Hypnosis Associations: Hypnosis and Pain Management-Certification Course.
