Why is it so hard to change? with Dr Ross Ellenhorn

Welcome to episode 205 with Dr Ross Ellenhorn, who is a sociologist, psychotherapist and social worker.

Dr. Ellenhorn is encouraging mental health professionals to be more present with patients and think outside the box when it comes to treatment methods.

With offices in Boston, New York and LA, he offers the types of care that serve and empower anyone who has been diagnosed with psychiatric and substance-use issues and helps them recover outside of hospital, in their own communities. 

In this episode I chat to Ross about his incredible work, how he began working in the mental health space and how that informed his ground breaking approach to working with so called complex states of mind and mood.

We chat about using a human first approach, the medicalisation of the human experience, approaching therapy as improv, the importance of play and curiosity and why human conformity is the illness that gets in the way of being authentic.

Ross has spent many years researching change.  More specifically why as humans we find it so hard to change, even when staying the same is killing us.  We talk about this work; we talk about why we struggle to do things differently and how underpinning all of this is a fear of hope.

I never say this lightly, but this is one of the most powerful episodes that I have recorded.  If you’ve spoken to me in person over the last few weeks, I’ve probably told you about it and I’ve been taking a deep dive in to Ross’ work regularly since we spoke.

There is some incredible thinking points here and I’m sure it will give you plenty of food for thought.  On top of that, Ross is a really lovely man and he was a lot of fun to chat to!

He is the author of two books ‘Purple Crayons – The Art of Drawing a Life’ and ‘How We Change (and 10 reasons why we don’t) and they are available everywhere.

For more information head to www.ellenhorn.com

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Thanks for listening!