What’s Your Secret? Asking About Strength, Not Symptoms |
When I first meet a patient, I ask a question that often catches them off guard:
“What’s your secret?”
Specifically, I’ll ask, “Given everything you’ve described—the stress, losses, or hardships that brought you here—what’s your secret to having made it this far?”
It’s a disarming question, but a powerful one. It changes the entire frame of therapy and narrative from “What’s wrong with me?” to “What’s strong in me?”
Traditional psychiatry and psychology have long operated within a disease model—identifying symptoms, diagnosing disorders, and reducing pathology. But human beings are not machines to be repaired. Mental health is not merely the absence of illness; it’s the presence of strength, adaptability, and meaning.
That’s why I ground my work in resilience and positive psychology—fields pioneered by psychologists such as Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. They remind us that wellness is not achieved by avoiding pain but by nurturing the human capacities that allow us to recover and........