My Perspective

My Perspective

My name is James Seymour, MD, SEP. I am a board-certified psychiatrist who has practiced for 43 years in a variety of settings. I do not see myself as an expert in the field of psychological trauma. I see myself as a continual learner. I think we are all in the same situation. We know the things we know. We try to put into practice what we know at the time to help our clients and patients. We keep on learning through trainings, supervision, consultations, and increasing time through work with our clients and patients to become better facilitators of trauma recovery.

We all have different perspectives depending upon our backgrounds and training. My training over the years has mostly been in psychodynamic and somatic modalities. We have life experiences and perspectives we also bring to our work. I want to let you know where I come from. In other words, why would you really consider what I have to say? My perspective on life informs how I view trauma recovery. I believe love is the greatest power in the universe.

This is what I tell my patients. The world we live in is extremely difficult. Our world has always been full of suffering, pain, illness, trauma, hunger, grinding poverty, relationship failures, and sometimes overwhelming grief and loss. This world is also full of violence, war, slavery, oppression, rampant child abuse, sadism, genocide, and power often in the hands of those with malignant narcissism and sociopathy. And at the end, we all die. No one really knows what, if anything, happens after that.

And yet,

We live in a world of wonder, full of life, love, connection, beauty sometimes beyond comprehension, tremendous awe, bravery, self-sacrifice, joy even in small things, hope, faith, meaning and purpose. So, I do not see mental health as learning to be happy. I see it as assisting the people we work with to have more access to hope, faith, love, joy, connection, peace, meaning and purpose amid whatever tragic circumstances they find themselves in.

As therapists we all know we are limited in the degree we can help our clients and patients. But we try. We try with all our hearts, our strength, our knowledge, our empathy, our compassion, and our goodwill. And if we can teach them how to better access, love, joy, peace, and purpose we will have helped in a meaningful way and that is no small thing. Thay is why we do this work.

A note about this website. There is little content now. Due to illness, I have been slow in completing tasks. There should be new content added each day now which I hope can be helpful to you.