by Laura K. R. Kreiselmaier

By 2029, CATHARSIS is up and running in Nashville, TN!  We’ve either built, or found and repurposed, a soulful, spacious building (perhaps a former church?) with some green space around it, plenty of low-stress parking, and public transit nearby.  Sensitive, creative folks are drawn to hang out at our warm, colorful, peaceful, inviting café.  Many of them are pausing for coffee or tea, healthy clean food, and reflection before or after having an appointment for therapy, bodywork, meditation, or medication management.  A hallway from the café leads to restrooms and a door with a keypad to enter the healing center, which includes therapy offices, a sound-proofed music and art space, an interfaith chapel for prayer and meditation, and a meeting room with a round conference table.

We are well on our way to a fully funded board-designated endowment of $22 million that allows us to run much of our operating budget off the interest.  This largesse has arrived in the form of enthusiastic donations from generous foundations and wealthy individuals whose family members have suffered from mental illness and who would love to help create a healing center like CATHARSIS.  Clients pay what they can, and staff are paid generous salaries to retain the best of the best.  We don’t deal with insurance and are there for clients long-term, which is especially life-changing for people with more high-needs diagnoses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. 

Because almost all of the clients are HSPs, most of the staff are as well.  We have a collaborative team approach that includes several psychotherapists (representing different licenses and including at least another Licensed Clinical Pastoral Therapist besides myself), a psychiatric nurse practitioner, a minister/priest, a cleaning/feng shui professional, and at least one bodyworker.  Dr Laura Kreiselmaier leads the center, supported by a thoughtful and highly organized assistant, while also working with a handful of clients.  

Everyone is fully committed to the vision of Clients And Therapist-Healers Activating Relational Synergy In Sanctuary.  Subtly and artfully etched onto the walls of the café is the Harry Stack Sullivan* quote, “We are all much more simply human than otherwise”: a philosophy that de-stigmatizes gifted, suffering people who may have spent years being labeled as mental patients and written off as hopeless.  Taking this philosophy to heart, our annual fundraiser is a musical theatre production in which clients, therapists, and community members can all participate together (and, dare I say, experience catharsis? ;). 

CATHARSIS is a vibrant, joyful place, a magnetic house of healing where people want to be.  Our Divine Audience is transliminal HSPs — that is, clients (and staff!) who are sensitive, creative, and have a mystical side.  From a clinical perspective, we specialize in mood disorders, including those with psychosis-proneness, but we tend to refer clients who suffer primarily from addictions and/or personality disorders to other resources.  Because our services are in high demand as our reputation spreads and there are many potential clients to choose from, we make sure that BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ people are given priority.  We intentionally keep our caseload small and prioritize quality of treatment and relationships over quantity, understanding that the universe is holographic (the part contains the whole and vice versa) and that every time a transliminal “patient” finds healing, the gifts of a potential visionary, artist, wounded-healer shaman become available to the world.

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_{*An American psychoanalyst and psychiatrist (1892-1949) who founded the school of interpersonal psychoanalysis and had unheard-of success rates treating schizophrenic patients at Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Baltimore, MD.  What is left out of most history books is that a key part of his creating a healing environment was hiring gentle, gay male nurses.}