Doctor takes in mind, body, planet

Counselor helps find sustainable paths through modern life

By Lee Williams

Pamplin Media Group, Oct 9, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

L.E. BASKOW / PAMPLIN MEDIA GROUP

Dr. Thomas Doherty maps out the influences on an individual’s environmental identity. His “ecopsychological” practice focuses on helping clients visualize — and realize — lifestyle changes.

For sustainable living, we tell ourselves,“Think globally, act locally.”

But how do we act personally?

Adopting each and every suggestion for greener living, immediately upon receiving it, is unrealistic for working adults, who have to manage jobs and families. And as in any realm of behavior, drastic changes may not be lasting ones.

Over the past decade, a new discipline, ecopsychology, has begun to bloom. The goal is to help trace individualized, realistic paths to enduring sustainable lifestyles.

“The environmental movement is the largest grass-roots movement in the world right now, and we’re not out to give people more information,” says Dr. Thomas Doherty, who is initiating what is very likely Portland’s first ecopsychological practice from his offices in the Hollywood District.

“There’s a glut of information right now,” Doherty says. “So the question is, What to do with the information? How can we sift through it all to make it personally relevant, and find sustainability on an everyday level?”

Doherty is part of a loose movement whose members, in general, believe mental health connects to the environment. This founding principle then can guide personal sustainable actions.

Counseling can take the form of counselor-led support groups, personalized life coaching, or traditional therapy with a “green-minded” counselor. Practical tools to help achieve one’s personal green goals can be as simple as introducing green spaces into everyday routines (Portland is blessed with numerous parks for such escapes) to embarking on “news fasts” — that is, curtailing the daily barrage of doomsday-themed environmental stories that emerge from the media.

News can add to stress

Some ecopsychologists embrace anti-consumerism. Doherty’s system, which he calls “Sustainable Self,” aims for a slow and mindful change. His approach has four basic planks: recognize that the environment is an issue; center yourself and accept the limits of what you can do and control; celebrate and nurture victories and accept faults; and then take action, however small, daily.

Daily battles can be overwhelming, he says, and even seem futile given the media attention devoted to massive issues such as global warming.

“I struggle all the time. An ethical life is a challenge,” Doherty says. “We’ve just had a child, and our family is back East. How do we visit our loved ones without flying? And with politics, I fall into the same bind as everyone else. I’ll open the newspaper or turn on NPR and listen to a news story, and my heart rate is up, my blood pressure is up, and I start to talk to myself,” he says. “I go back and try to practice what I preach: recognize, validate, center and accept, nurture and celebrate. … Maybe that’s in part why I came up with it, because it’s so necessary for me to do.”

Doherty grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., and completed his undergraduate studies at Columbia University in New York City. Urban settings to be sure, and he admits he was no outdoors man.

“I’d never slept in a tent until I was 21,” he says.

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