How CATHARSIS Got Its Name
The vision statement-acronym that "arrived" in the night
The idea for an endowment-based, nonprofit, holistic healing center where clients could receive top-notch mental health care regardless of their ability to pay first came to me 11 or 12 years ago during graduate school.
I was earning a PhD in Religion, Psychology, & Culture and found that I really enjoyed practicing therapy, even more than teaching. But I also knew that I was having mental health struggles of my own (as were many of my colleagues) and was indebted to Vanderbilt’s Psychological & Counseling Center for providing the help that I needed free of charge—a privilege that was not available to most people. As a therapist myself, I was aware that since I had a private practice without institutional support, I could only realistically offer low-fee services to a handful of clients. And my brother-in-law at the time suffered from a more severe form of mental illness; he fared better than most with his diagnosis, but I saw the limits of the U.S. medical model in providing siloed care and lacking the infrastructure to treat patients as whole, valued people.
It seemed to me that we need an entirely new model of mental health care, both environmentally and economically . . . I thought I had a sense of how it could be done, but many life events took precedence during the intervening years between then and now, and it always felt like something to pursue “in a later season.”
Fast-forward to late 2023, when I started to experience glimmers of the same “divine discontent” with my therapy career as I had back in 2007 with my music career. I still wanted to continue practicing therapy, just as I will always be involved somehow with music, but there was a sense that I was being called to make a change and step into something more.
I kept thinking of that vision from grad school about starting a center. Yet I couldn’t settle upon the right name for it . . . Names have always been important to me; I’ve named my houses and cars, in my early teens I chose my first name (Laura) over the nickname I was called as a girl (Katy, from Kathryn), and I love knowing the deeper meaning behind names, much to the delight of my linguist husband. As I pondered the possibility of a holistic mental health center, I doodled and played with different words, hoping to form an acronym, trying to capture the energy of what I envisioned, but coming up short.
. . . Until, one night this past January, I awakened around 2am. That had started happening sometimes, and usually there was some sort of “download” I would receive from Spirit: once I jotted it down, I could go back to sleep.
To my great excitement, the name for the center came all at once, and it was indeed an acronym—CATHARSIS, which stands for Clients And Therapist-Healers Activating Relational Synergy In Sanctuary. The thing I love most about it is that the first word is not therapists or creative or even healing, but Clients. The whole point of the vision for CATHARSIS is for Clients to come first!
To read more about the signifance of each word in the acronym, please click here: https://catharsisnashville.org/what-is-catharsis/
The name also fits because catharsis is itself one of the greatest gifts of both creativity and therapy. Originally from the ancient Greek notion of the release offered through drama, the word catharsis means “the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions, primarily through art”—or, “a purification or purgation that brings about spiritual renewal or release from tension.” That is exactly the outcome that we hope for!
As we’ve shared the name and the vision for CATHARSIS, we keep seeing people’s eyes light up as they catch the energy of what we are wanting to create. It seems that the name is Divinely inspired, so much more than I could have come up with on my own. In a later post, I’ll also share about how our core values also line up with the CATHARSIS acronym.
We (Laura and the CATHARSIS Nashville Board) hope you find the name as inspiring as we do, anchoring in our vision in a multilayered way. Soon we will also have another form to share with you, as our logo is nearing completion!