On this episode, we have talked about archetypes, myths, and depth psychology. We have also explored the pivotal roles of  Ecopsychology & Terrapsychology on our wellbeing. 

Depth psychology offers a rich and holistic approach to understanding human psychology, emphasizing the importance of exploring the hidden aspects of the mind in order to achieve greater self-awareness, psychospiritual growth, and a deeper understanding of the human soul. Archetypes and myths are some of the key elements that are often used in depth psychology. 

Archetypes provide a framework to understand and transform the deep and universal aspects of the human psyche. Through exploring archetypes, we can find the story of our lives and realize that we are not alone in our experiences. 

One way to find our archetypes is through reading myths and stories. The myths of all cultures are a precious source of wisdom and inspiration.

Through reading myths, one can come across stories and patterns similar to ones’ own life.

This discovery can lead us to understand and if we choose to; transform our stories.  

This is an episode that gets us excited to discover our personal myth and if needed, rewrite it in our own way.

About the Guest: 

Dr. Craig Chalquist is a professor, author, deep educator, a loreologist, a storyteller and consultant who writes and teaches at the intersection of psyche, story, and imagination, with one foot in the academy and the other in the world.

Throughout his career as a former university professor, he has designed and launched more than forty psychology, philosophy, mythology, and ecotherapy courses for graduate and undergraduate students. 

He has a Ph.D. in depth psychology and has also practiced as a “Marriage and Family Therapist” for nine years.

He is currently working on a Ph.D. in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at CIIS. 

He is the founder of the world’s first ecotherapy certificate program, and has written many books about different topics including, Ecotherapy, myths, alchemy, depth psychology, spirituality and Terrapsychology. 

Dr Chalquist also has a podcast called” The Lorcast”. 

To learn more about Dr. Chalquist’s works please visit www.Chalquist.com

Episode’s Transcript:

Leila: Hi and welcome to The Bright Shift Podcast. I am Leila, founder of Bright Shift and your host. Bright Shift is an online platform where we offer online therapy workshops and meditation sessions to individuals and workplaces. You can find us at brightshift.co.

Today, we’re going to talk about archetypes, myths, and nature, and their importance in our lives and our psychospiritual journey. I have a very special guest, Dr. Craig Chalquist, who is a professor, author, deep educator, a loreologist, a storyteller, and consultant who writes and teaches at the Intersection of psyche, story and imagination, with one foot in the academy and the other in the world.

Throughout his career, as a former university professor, he has designed and launched more than 40 psychology, philosophy, mythology, and ecotherapy courses for graduate and undergraduate students. He has a PhD in depth psychology, and has also practiced as a “Marriage and Family Therapist” for nine years. He is currently working on a PhD in philosophy, cosmology, and consciousness program at CIIS.

He is the founder of the world’s first ecotherapy certificate program and has written many books about different topics, including ecotherapy myths, alchemy, depth psychology, spirituality, and Terrapsychology.

To learn more about Dr. Chalquist’s work, please visit chalquist.com. Dr. Chalquist also has a podcast called, The Lorecast, which is a very interesting and insightful podcast.

Dr. Chalquist, welcome to the Bright Shift podcast. It’s a great pleasure to have you here.

CC: Thanks so much. It’s an honor to be here. Appreciate being invited.

L: I like to start with asking you, how do you define the archetypes? And how can we identify our own archetypes?

CC: Yeah, great question. Very important one, too. That word archetype is used so differently, even within Carl Jung’s kind of intellectual community. So we all have different ways of talking about it. One thing that shows up a lot in the definitions is that an archetype is a primary pattern that occurs everywhere. And an example of that would be the image of a spiral.

And so when Carl Jung wrote about spirals, psychologically, he talked about how in our lives, we go through many different phases, and we revisit old themes, like kind of working our way up the spiral, turn by turn, and encountered things before that we’re familiar with. And hopefully, we do it at a higher level each time we do, you know.

And a spiral is something that always, also shows up in the natural world. So the spiral of water going down the drain, or a spiral galaxy. And I was interested to find out, too, that spiral galaxies, by the way, they tend to last longer than other kinds. Because as the arms move through intergalactic space, they scoop up hydrogen.

So the spiral galaxy is like this self-nourishing being. And the reason why I’m mentioning it is because it reminds me of Jung, talking about individuation and gaining the capacity to nourish ourselves as we go through life.

So the spiral is an example of an archetype. Also, basic themes like death, rebirth, God images, images of the Divine that show up across cultures, those are all examples of archetypes. Initiation is one.

L: Are they repeated patterns?

CC: I think they are. And they’re big patterns, they’re existential in the sense that they’re big patterns that occur when we go through major stages of our lives.

So some years ago, when my dad died, there was, it was a time in my life where there was a lot of things I was letting go of simultaneously. And also, sitting with the grief of losing him and going through his things, and looking after my mother and all of that. And it was as though Death, for me had assumed, it, like a capital D. Yeah, it was a field that I was in. That’s how an archetype works. It’s not just a label or anything like that.

And also, when I hear mothers talking about giving birth to a child. You know, the theme of Birth with a capital B is very archetypal for everybody who’s involved, but particularly for the mother.

L: OK. So o even events in our lives, they can have an archetypal theme to them, right?

CC: Oh, yeah, absolutely. As an academic, I’ve often gone to graduation, and we all put on our robes, and our hat, and all that. And there’s plenty, you know, we laugh about it when we’re not doing it. But once we’re there on the stage with all of our graduates, it takes fun that’s really serious and wonderful, magical aura, because they’re what we’re launching them, you know.

L: Yes. How about the, how can we identify our own archetypes?

CC: Yeah. One thing I always do with myself, and I’m actually doing it right now because I’m coming up on, I think, a stage of transition in my own life, especially with my career. I asked myself, what are some of the themes and patterns, and images that keep popping up all around me, in my dreams, in things that look random on the outside, but really don’t feel random? You know, they all kind of fit the pattern.

So there’s a lot of images of transition happening for me right now. And in fact, next week, I’m flying out to the Leadership Conference. I’m going to be presenting on something called, The Enchanted Leader: People who lead through inspiration. And that’s part of it and a lot of things happening.

So identifying where we are in our lives, and whether we’re at a turning point, that’s a big indicator that something archetypal is happening. But also, young thought that we, in addition to these archetypal situations that we get into, young thought that we all, each of us come in with an archetype that we’re kind of born into it.

So just as we have a physical self and a social self, and perhaps a spiritual self, Jung said, well, we have a mythic self, too. We have an archetypal self. And so when you think about Jung as an example of that, there’s all kinds of imagery of the magician, the wizard, the alchemist that just clings to him all through his life. And that’s the one he identified with.

I always call it the mage to kind of sum up all the different expressions of that magical archetype that I think he expressed. Some people would be the hero, some people would be the love and beauty goddesses, or wisdom, which by the way, is usually feminine and the world’s folklore. I think of somebody like Sheherazad, for instance: discerning, clever, wise, eloquent, knowing exactly what’s happening. Seeing under the appearances, that’s, all of that’s involved in wisdom.

So to sit with, well, you know, what’s, where does my life keep coming back to? Where are the themes that I keep going to? Am I more heroic or more of a trickster? I think a lot of comedians identify with that archetype, so.

L: Do we have multiple archetype present in our lives at any given time?

CC: So the thing that makes this complicated is that, I think we move into different archetypal situations through life, and particularly at the turning points. But in addition to that, there’s the one that we identify with. So to use an example from Jung, again, he was pretty consistently a mage, a kind of wizardly figure through his whole life. But, you know, his career early on, looked very different from his career later.

Early on, he was more like the healer figure, which is also archetypal. So that was, especially when he was getting in psychiatric training. And then, toward the end of his life, he was more of a teacher figure. So it’s both.

L: OK. And they can shift?

CC: Yup. Mm-hmm.

L: Why do you think we need to discover our archetypes? What values does knowing our archetypes add to our lives?

CC: Yeah, that’s such an important question. So I’ll use an example from Jung’s casebook. He had a new patient who came in, afraid that he was losing his mind. And he said, “I’m having these incredible bizarre dreams and nightmare with these monstrous figures in them. I don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve never had dreams like this before.”

So he described one particular dream to Jung. And Jung got up, they were sitting in Jung’s library. He got up and he pulled down an old book from alchemy, which some people think of as the ancient attempt to turn lead into gold. And that was part of it. But alchemy is actually a very long wisdom tradition, and it’s in many parts of the world: China, the Middle East, lots of different places, in Egypt.

And so Jung, the image was familiar to him. So he flipped through the book and he held it up and said, “Does it look anything like this?” And it was an exact match for what was in this guy’s dream. And Jung said, “See, other people have had this experience. It’s not just you. You’re not alone in this.” Right.

So what Jung was doing was, first of all, reassuring him that he wasn’t crazy, because he was having experiences that people have had forever. He could have pulled down a book of Chinese alchemy and probably found a similar image, you know, or in lots of different, lots to different forms of alchemy, but, you know, it has spread all over.

But in addition to that, it’s also a way of making meaning of something that feels bigger than we are, because archetypes are bigger than us. So I’m thinking of the experience of, you know, if you ever fall in love… But let’s say that whatever culture you come from, let’s, there’s no culture that’s like this. But just to have the theoretical example, let’s say you grew up in a culture that knew nothing about falling in love, right? You think you were nut. You’re worried that you’re losing your mind. “Oh, I’m obsessed with this person,” and blah, blah, blah, you know. And if someone came along who had that experience, they could say, “Oh, no, you’re just in love. Everybody goes through this, you know.”

So, and when you’re in it, it’s bigger than you. You can feel it. Right? So I think that’s one of the things that Western psychology really needs to learn. Not a lot, not only about other cultures, but also about this archetypal view that sometimes it’s not personal. It’s bigger than that. So that’s, that’s a huge help, I think when people realize that.

L: Yes, absolutely. So I think maybe we can find clues and guidance through looking at the archetypes, which, it brings my next question, I know that you have and are working a lot with storytelling, lore, as in with myths. So I’d like to know, what is the role of myths in finding our archetype? And how do myths and stories help us, in general, psycho-spiritually speaking?

CC: Huge question. One thing is that myths, in the West, they tend to be dismissed as either superstitions, or there’s a lot of people who’d say, “Oh, we have scientists explain that.” Right? You know, we know why the Earth moves, and why there’s the ocean, and why there are stars and all that, you know. But that really is a quite literal minded way of thinking about myth. It’s actually misunderstanding.

In cultures, where myth comes from, they’re used as wisdom stories. It’s understood, kind of like we use fiction. It’s understood that they’re not to be taken literally that, you know. And indigenous Americans talk about thunderbird being up in a cloud when there’s a lightning storm approaching. They don’t mean there’s a literal bird up there flapping its wings, emitting lightning, you know. So there’s something deeper in the story, and that’s what Jung noticed.

So myths, in a way, they take the archetype. They’re based in archetypes, but they make it more specific. So Joseph Campbell talked a lot about the hero archetype, but the hero appears differently in many different cultures. So there’s many faces of the hero and the heroine, of course.

And likewise, with Jung, he, in a letter to a friend of his, he said, he actually specified for us what form his personal archetype took. He said, “I identify with Faust, the alchemist from German folklore. And when you look at parallels between the story of Faust and Jung’s life, they’re absolutely uncanny.

And it’s like that for all of us. So our personal myth, it’s grounded in some archetype, but it fills it out more, and it gives us the story. Archetypes don’t really have stories until they turn into myth, seems like.

L: OK, so one great way to find our archetype is to read myths.

CC: Yeah.

L: Mm-hmm. And I think I’ve heard you once on your podcast that you mentioned it’s good if you read your own myths in your own culture. But do you have any book recommendations, like for different cultures, which kind of books we can read to find our archetypes?

CC: So I would, I think I would start with collections that include myths from all over the world. And I’ve been surprised by how few of those are. There are some out there, and I wrote one of them. I have a book called, Myths Among Us, and it borrows from many different cultures, different stories. I think I’d start there.

And I would also just go to the bookstore, whether online or in person, and, you know, or do a search online, like type in what your culture is, and then type in folklore. And it should pull up a lot of stuff. There’s a lot of people collecting local and regional folklore these days, and it’s really rich. So that’s, I think that’s what I would do.

But there’s something about, something that the psyche does, the deep layer of the mind where, when we start looking for this, it tries to meet us. And so you’ll be looking at what myth books, and all of a sudden, there’s one that’ll kind of jump out at you. So it’s like the story wants to be known, which is a great help, because there’s so many myths in the world, we can never read them all or hear them all, so.

L: Yes. Yes. I’m thinking, would you say that if I’m reading a myth, and I start to relate to it, and then I don’t like the ending, or I don’t particularly like that archetype. Do you think reading about that archetype, reading that myth can perhaps help me to maybe change the ending?

CC: Yup. That’s, I think it’s actually, when we’re living in myth and the archetype behind it, the more general archetype behind it, that we, unless we engage with it consciously and creatively, it’s just living us. And we don’t really have much control over where the story goes. So it’s necessary actually to do that and not just read the story, which is important, but to act, but to start reworking the story so that we can bring our own personal contribution to it.

Jung mentions in that letter, he mentions Faust a lot of times, because he identified with him. The Faust story is a tragedy, and it ends with Faust, going to hell. He is the original person who made a deal with the devil, and then the devil directs him down into hell afterwards. Jung’s life didn’t end like that. And that’s because he worked with that story. He tried to redeem it. So to the degree that we can do that, we change the story.

L: Great to know that. And I think you have a course about our names as well.

CC: It’s a, the course is on personal myth, and it’s at the Jung platform. But as part of that, we do look at our names. That’s a really good way to try to get an understanding of our myth, to look up not just what our names are, but the etymology of our name, and to actually go back for a while.

So there’s one that comes to mind that pops up a lot. So there’s a lot of people around, especially in the West named, John. And if you look up that name in a baby dictionary, I think it says something like God’s grace or gift of God, or something like that. And you have to go further. And if you do with a name like that, you come across a Mesopotamian god named, Oannes, who have brought the gifts of civilization to human beings.

So it’s not only more than Western than outside the West, but it’s ancient. It’s way old with our culture is. So you start, when you do that, you start getting a sense of the story and the archetypal feel of the mythic elements behind the name. So that would be a way of doing it too.

And for some of us, it’s pretty quick. And some of us have to work and work, and work to figure out what the myth is. I was teaching a class in higher ed years ago. And there was, we were actually talking about this very subject. And one of my students said, “Well, you know, there’s certain patterns that come up a lot in my life. Like, I embrace women’s causes. I prefer the company of women to men. I don’t understand men at all. I’m an athlete, I like to be out in the woods a lot.” She was a hunter, too, I think.

And then, as she was speaking, her cell phone went off. And she went to turn her phone off, and she looked at who was calling. And the name that popped up on her phone was Diana, and she went, “Ahh! That’s what my myth is.” We’ve just been talking about Diana in class, the Greeks call her Artemis. Nature personified. So some people get it really bad like that, and others have us doubt.

L: Yes. I’m struggling to find my own myth, to be honest. Since I’ve heard that on your podcast, I’m keep thinking about my myth, trying to find it, but I have a difficult time. I think I should read more myths. Is there a thing called over-identifying with an archetype? If there is, how can we avoid that?

CC: Oh, yeah. That can happen not only individually, but culturally as well. So there’s entire cultures that do it. And this, the country that I’m in, the USA is a great example of that. We love the hero out here. It’s all we think about. It’s all we talk about. It’s absolutely disastrous to over-identify with, because the hero and the monster work together.

Whenever you hear a story about a hero, a monster immediately shows up. And when there’s a monster, the hero shows up. We idealize the heck out of the hero. And even Joseph Campbell is guilty of that. But when you read hero figures in people’s folklore, ours and everybody else’s, what you find is that the hero is this tyrannical figure who needs a lot of training not to be dangerous.

So some of these hero figures all through history, Gilgamesh, Cú chulainn in the Irish world, Heracles in the Greek world, you know, they’re dangerous. And ancient storytellers understood that. They were, they would tell hero stories, sometimes as a kind of warning. Like, these were the people we avoid, you know. They’re just bringing everything down, you know.

So I think there is a lot of conversation out here in the USA about, starting to be a lot of conversation about getting unstuck from the hero. And one way to do that is to realize that there’s many other archetypes available for dealing with people. More peaceful ones, especially, right?

Like, I’m thinking of a, there’s an old Welsh story with a character who, his name is Manawydan. And he’s not a typical hero. In fact, he’s much more of a mage figure. And he has a friend who reminds me of the entire USA, called, Pryderi. This is a hero figure, who is reckless as hell. And Pryderi charges into this castle, because it’s not supposed to be there, and he disappears. And then his heroic mother goes in after him and she disappears.

And so Pryderi’s wife is crying, and she’s like, “Now, what do we do?” And Manawydan says, “We wait, we work, and we think.” And he is very patient and reflective, and he realizes that the whole kingdom is under magical attack, and that it’s going to take a wizard’s solution.

So he’s not only not reckless and heroic, and impulsive, but at the end of the story, where Pryderi would have just continued the family feud that’s going on, he settles it. He brings reconciliation, and he brings people together to talk to each other. So I think that’s a much better model.

L: OK. And so countries, they would have collective archetypes, right?

CC: I think so. I’m sure ours does, and people from other countries who study Jung have said something similar. Yeah, I think so.

L: And I think those archetypes also they have like a major impact on art on cinema and literature?

CC: Yeah. Yup, absolutely. Yes.

L: I know that you teach depth psychology for many years, and a lot of work that you do, it’s also related to depth psychology. So I would love to hear from you how and why you think we should do psychology in a deep way?

CC: Psychology in a shallow way has some benefits. But when I was in college, many years ago, behavioral psychology was really popular. Behavioral and a little bit of the cognitive part mixed in with it. And the way that it was held in class by my teachers was that if people have the same behaviors, all we have to study is the behavior. We don’t need to inquire into their inner world.

But it should be obvious to anybody but academic intellectuals who study psychology, that, you know, the same person does one thing for completely different reasons. Then somebody else does the same thing, right? There are people who, for instance, I’ve seen this in students every now and then where they’re getting ready to graduate, and they self-sabotage so they don’t graduate.

So you know, sometimes that self-protection in an unconscious level, sometimes that’s a family legacy. Like, a couple of students of mine, who are women, they came from families where the women in the family going back many generations had a habit of putting off education and tending the family. And that got built in to the family unconscious as an expectation.

So they were meeting that expectation without even knowing it was there, until they studied what was happening on their mother line, you know, going all the way back. So I think we need depth psychology and deep psychology, because that’s what studies the unconscious, whether it’s the personal unconscious or collective unconsciousness, or what have you, or cultural consciousness. And that tells us what’s really going on. And that’s what’s necessary to understand, I think.

L: Mm-hmm. How would you say for someone who’s not very familiar with depth psychology? What can they expect if they work with a depth psychologist that is so different from other like mainstream psychologists?

CC: Oh, yeah. You can expect to be asked about your dreams, which, from the standpoint of depth psychology, are a communications from the unconscious. And they’re difficult to understand for one thing, because they’re in symbolic language. So there would be some work teaching you to think symbolically, to think metaphorically, the way literature and art do.

So for people who are very rational and very, maybe intellectual too, dreams are sometimes difficult to understand, because they don’t speak literally. So looking at dreams, that might be one thing. Another would be doing some sort of work with the imagination. Jung called it active imagination, and it’s kind of like, going into a daydream state, but inviting different parts of you in for a discussion.

And Jung spends a lot of time doing that. And he talks about this in his autobiography, which I recommend. It’s called, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. And oftentimes the, what he called the little people inside himself, different parts of his psyche, surprised him by telling him things he didn’t know. So those will be a couple of ways to start getting into this.

L: Great to know. And I love the idea that in your work, there is so much care and emphasis on the role of nature and environment, and how they can impact us in so many different ways, especially psychologically. You have written books about this topic, and have created courses and training programs. And this is a topic that I also really deeply care about. So could you please tell us what is ecopsychology and Terrapsychology?

CC: Sure. The word ecopsychology started in California actually in the 1990s. And the idea behind it is to have psychology and ecology talk to each other. It comes from the insight that we’re always from some specific ecosystem that were part of the natural world, even though we like to think of ourselves, especially in the West, is separate from it.

And so ecopsychology says no, let’s do psychology as though we were part of all this, and see what happens then. So it’s very basic, the ecopsychology, all forms of it, to say that our health, our physical and mental health depends on the health of the ecosystems we live in. And that it’s impossible to be fully healthy and fully human on an ailing planet.

So care of humans, psychologically, and care of the planet go together for ecopsychology. And there’s a lot of work being done in that, too, and a lot of evidence to support it. There’s a ton of science, for instance, that says that when we reconnect even a little bit with the natural world, you know, it decreases anxiety, improves mood, makes us healthier, and all kinds of benefits.

Terrapsychology is a bit of an offshoot from ecopsychology and depth psychology. And Terrapsychology expands the conversation and says, all right, we are part  nature. No question about that. But what about the roadways and the buildings? And what about our houses if we live in a house, our cars if we drive a car? What about all of that, you know, the built environment? How does that show up inside of us too? And so we like to study all of that as well.

L: Terrapsychology can sound a little bit like feng shui to me.

CC: Like, yeah, I think, I think feng shui was on to this. I’ve had conversations with my Chinese students and colleagues about this, and I think some of the insights that come from it, I mean, they were onto this way before we were. Yeah, like millennia.

L: Yes. I think both of them are like ancient practices, ecopsychology and Terrapsychology.

CC: Absolutely.

L: And does ecopsychology, does it have like a therapeutic aspect to it, in the sense that, like  if I see someone who practice this modality? What would they recommend? What are the practices like in ecopsychology or Terrapsychology?

CC: So that’s for a Terrapsychology has been used mostly to, for exploration. And it doesn’t really have a treatment or a healing methodology connected to it, specifically. Ecopsychology does, and that would be ecotherapy, applied ecopsychology.

And so ecotherapy practitioners, and I’m thinking about how my friend, Linda Buzell works. She is still deeply involved in all this, even though she’s trying to retire, but it’s not quite working, because she’s just really passionate about all of it. And so, she is a licensed psychotherapist as well.

And so, for her practice, when she was still actively practicing psychotherapy, her house has a big green space behind it. It’s basically a permaculture food forest. And so she would take people out in the back, and they would have a session outside for one thing, instead of just inside. And then she would do things like ask them about their relationship with nature, and what does it bring up for you and how much time do you actually spend anywhere in nature.

It doesn’t have to be the back country or the wilderness or anything, but just like outside in the park, or on the beach, or whatever. And then she would ask them about their schedule, because a lot of us are so busy that we don’t get time to be with nature itself, plants, animals, anything. So, she would work with that.

One of the things we found in ecotherapy is that sometimes when we’re feeling a bit depressed or anxious, or other unpleasant states, we tend to think it’s personal, it’s just me. But then when we do one of these interventions that are just, you know, being outside more, gardening without gloves or something, it clears up.

So I got rid of the depression that way when I was in training as a psychotherapist. I was working with somebody who just, who wasn’t even an ecotherapist, just a really good gardener. And she said, “You should garden without gloves. It’s good for you.” And I did, and my depression immediately lifted. So it isn’t always a cure for depression, but there’s research being done on it right now that indicates that in some cases, that seems to be.

L: Yes. That’s amazing. And I know there is a philosopher, I don’t remember the name, but he said, one of the major problems of this century is that we human beings, you know, we are living far from nature. And that’s one of the major contributing factors, you know, to our psychological problems. And I couldn’t agree more. And so,   really interesting approach.

And I like to add just one more thing about ecopsychology. I come from the school of thought that we believe everything is alive and has consciousness in nature. So…

CC: Oh, yeah.

L: Yes. So all the plants, the sea, even the air, or planets, the stars, they all have energy and they’re alive, and they have consciousness. That’s why when we interact with them, you know, it’s an exchange of energy. And I think it’s very much related to the concept of ecopsychology. Like, when we walk into nature, we are receiving a certain kind of energy.

CC: Yeah, absolutely. I would, I’d go even a little bit further and say, the rocks and the buildings, and the cars, and everything else that you just mentioned, it, the name animism comes up a lot in these discussions. And it’s, for a while, it was discredited. But now, philosophers are starting to get really interested in it here in the West. In other cultures, it’s always been vital. And you know, I am myself a card carrying animus. I think everything’s alive, so.

L: Yes, absolutely. I believe in that too. If someone wants to learn ecopsychology, what can they do?

CC: I would recommend Ariana Candell’s program. She’s great. She trained with us, we know each other. So Ariana’s program, if you look up Ariana and ecopsychology, that should come up. So her program, Lewis and Clark College in the States has a program. They’re starting to spread out as people realize that they’re effective.

And then there’s, if you go to either in person or online, if you look up ecopsychology, there will be books that come up now. So there’s, you can read about it, too.

L: That’s great. And as we are approaching the end of our podcast, I would love to know, is there anything else that you would like to add?

CC: We’ve been over some interesting ground. I think the only thing I would add is that the more I practice things that I’m interested in, both personally and professionally, and the older I get, the more I keep coming back to how story seems to wind up at the center of so many things, and especially the stories that we tell ourselves about who we are and where we belong and things like that. And my impression is that if there’s something ailing us, if we can change the story, that’s a big step toward changing things on the outside as well. So I think that’s the thought I will leave people with.

L: What a great addition, Dr. Craig. It’s been really wonderful having you on this podcast, and I really enjoyed listening to you. I’m sure our listeners will find this conversation really interesting and useful. Thank you for being here.

CC: Well, thank you so much for inviting me. I appreciate our conversation.

L: Sure.