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Moving from Mental Illness to Peak Performance
What if your normal level of stress, anxiety, or depression didn’t have to be normal?
Do you feel like you’re using work, alcohol, or something else to outrun the uncomfortable thoughts in your head?
And how can we use our stress and darkness to help us live a more full, rewarding life?
Before Keith Kurlander became a founder of the Integrative Psychiatry Center, he struggled with serious mental health issues. He ran away from the promise of a highly lucrative life on Wall Street to find relief on a path which took many, many turns.
He worked with everyone from yoga teachers to therapists to meds to shamans to psychedelics to you name it. He tried it. But none of those approaches alone worked for him.
These days he’s dialed in his brain, his body, and his behaviors and his life is back on track.
So what worked? What had him go from struggling to get off the couch to being a husband and father leading two companies today?
Today we explore his story and the reality that all of us deal with some form of mental illness on some level. Here’s to all of us realizing that maybe, just maybe we don’t have to hide, outrun, or settle if we don’t want to.
In this interview:
- What if everyone has a bit of mental illness?
- Trying to outrun our inner critic, dark thoughts, emotions
- Moving from mental illness to peak performance
- The stigma of struggling with anxiety and depression
- Do we have to blow up our lives in order to make a change?
Plus:
- Running away from Wall Street and a lucrative career
- Keith’s experiences with mental illness and bipolar disorder
- Seeking relief through spiritual growth
- How ayahuasca effected Keith’s brain
- Keith’s experience with meds
And:
- What approaches help us heal mental illness
- What is integrative psychiatry and why is it so powerful?
- Why you need to be the authority of your path
- Integrating psychedelics, ketamine, and functional medicine with traditional therapies
And then:
- Betraying ourselves and pushing down that inner voice
- Wound worshipping and getting stuck in “healing”
- Mental disorders are chosen because we get something from them
- What is spiritual bypassing?
- What to ask yourself if you’re tired of feeling stuck
Click here to learn more about Keith Kurlander’s work:
Integrative Psychiatry Institute
About Keith Kurlander
Keith has two decades of combined experience as a licensed professional counselor in private practice, business administration and teaching at the undergraduate and graduate level. He is the Co-Founder of the Integrative Psychiatry Center and Integrative Psychiatry Institute along with Will Van Derveer, MD. He also created the Higher Practice Podcast, an educational resource for mental health professionals.
His career path started over twenty years ago with an incredibly difficult personal crisis. During his sophomore year of college, he was consumed by agitation, insomnia, chronic illness, mental chaos, and relationship problems. He was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder as well as a host of other issues. At first, he thought this was a life-long sentence, but over time realized that instead, this was the impetus that led him on a personal, spiritual and professional quest to conquer his own challenges and help others to do the same.
During his early twenties, he became immersed in the study of yoga and fascinated with the intricate link between the body and mind which eventually led him to study Transpersonal Counseling at Naropa University.
In his one-on-one work, he focuses on coaching people with their mental health, relationship issues and business ventures. He typically works with entrepreneurs, business leaders and mission-oriented individuals. He believes knowing one’s purpose and the ability to act on it is the fastest path to wellness and fulfillment. As a coach and business owner, he’s determined to bring revolutionary tools to people around the world in order to help them reach their potential.
Education and Trainings:
BA Business Administration, University of Massachusetts, Amherst 1997
Gestalt Institute of the Rockies, Golden, CO 2004
MA Transpersonal Psychology, Naropa University; Boulder, CO 2005
Certified Yoga Instructor, Amrit Yoga Institute; Ocala, FL 2006
Somatic Experiencing, Level I, Golden, CO 2011
Demartini Method Facilitator, Houston, TX 2019
Demartini Values Facilitator, Houston, TX 2019
Click here to learn more about Keith Kurlander’s work:
Integrative Psychiatry Institute
