Why Nashville is the Perfect Place for the First CATHARSIS

An HSP healing center for Music City

As you may recall, CATHARSIS is not just our name—it’s also an acronym containing our vision statement: Clients And Therapist-Healers Activating Relational Synergy In Sanctuary.

The vision for CATHARSIS involves putting things together in a new way. Here in Nashville we are blessed to have many high-quality mental health resources . . . There are numerous counseling centers, some of which are at churches. There are holistic “IOP” (intensive outpatient) treatment centers that take a body/mind/spirit approach and include medication management. There are therapists in private practice who offer sliding-scale rates. There are places such as the Mental Health Co-op that provide free services according to need. There are spaces for creativity such as Art & Soul. And there are plenty of cafés!

But, to the best of my knowledge, none of our resources combine all of these elements in one beautiful place. It has simply not been done . . . yet. :-)

One of the challenges we are encountering as we seek out donors for the endowment that will make CATHARSIS possible is that, understandably, many people want to see results before they make a sizable financial contribution.

However, there is not a way to do a smaller-scale CATHARSIS without it losing the synergy of the model, because the place itself is part of the healing formula for the HSPs we are called to serve. The holistic environment, the integration of the treatment team, the quality of the therapy, and the community relationships formed in the process are the key ingredients for this synergy. And while we anticipate that some of our clients will be able to pay market rates for these services, we also want to help many who are not.

So, we need to raise significant capital first, or possibly to have a location provided through someone’s generosity.

And I believe Nashville, TN, is the perfect place to launch this new way of doing mental health care.

We are widely known as Music City and fortunate to be home to many artists of all kinds, most of whom are HSPs, many of whom are also transliminal. (If some 50% of all therapy clients are Highly Sensitive Persons, I suspect that this number is even higher here in Nashville.)

We are also a healthcare hub, with multiple hospitals, medical schools, and HCA headquarters, yet have limited resources for holistic mental healthcare that is affordable long-term for people of ordinary means.

With our location at the “buckle of the Bible belt,” we have an appreciation of the role of G*d and spirituality. There are many churches and other faith communities, many generous people who want to help. While we may use different words to describe it, many Nashvillians experience a sense of Divine calling on their lives.

And on a practical level, thanks to Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s vision and the work of many, we’re finally about to have real improvements to transit that will make our city much more accessible (which is one of our core values, what the second “A” stands for). All of the above “goodness of fit” criteria would be a moot point if we built CATHARSIS and our key clients weren’t able to get there.

Nearly 25 years ago, during my first semester at Belmont, our Honors class was studying The Ancient World and we took a field trip over to the Parthenon. (How amazing is it that we have our very own life-sized Parthenon?!?) When I saw the beautiful, giant statue of Athena, I was so deeply moved. She is strong and calm, fierce without being angry, thoughtful and boundaried and prepared. The embodiment of Wisdom, she is looking out for the wellbeing and protection of her city.

There is something about this glorious Athena that captures the soul of Nashville, known not only as Music City but as “the Athens of the South.” We value learning and the exchange of ideas, wisdom and the arts; we want to be a polis that makes possible a good life for all our citizens.

In our time, that means solving the twin crises of mental health “disorders” and loneliness. And that is where CATHARSIS comes in, to serve our fellow HSP Nashvillians who are struggling in ways that can be helped.

You may notice that in the title I said “the first CATHARSIS” . . . our vision is for other cities to want to have CATHARSIS centers, too. It is a model we believe can replicated, and Nashville is the perfect place to start.