30 May Shrink Rap: Instead of Eating The Rich!
A Telluride local, Dr. Paul Hokemeyer is an internationally recognized expert on treating clinical issues at the nexus of relationships and behavioral health. (Please scroll down for more about Dr. Paul)
The second edition of Dr. Paul’s terrific book “Fragile Power” was published in 2024. Go here to read more about the first edition of “Fragile Power.”
Go here to read more of Dr. Paul’s pearls.
And scroll down to read information we curated from Dr. Paul’s Drayson Mews newsletter.
Fnd a link to the full podcast here: https://words.paulollinger.com/p/the-fragile-power-of-wealth
On the postbox outside the grocery store in my hometown of Telluride, Colorado, you can find the sticker I’ve taken the liberty of posting above.
This sticker, and the contemporary zeitgeist it represents, was a topic of discussion I had with Paul Ollinger, host of the podcast “Reasonably Happy” about my work at the intersection of an identity of wealth and issues related to our individual, relational, and global mental well-being.
While Paul O suggested there was irony in this sticker being placed in one of America’s wealthiest ski resorts, I assured him it was not.
It represents how Telluride has become a microcosm of the pernicious impact acute wealth inequality is having on our individual, relational, and systemic well-being.
In my clinical work as a licensed marriage and family therapist, I’ve found that the most enduring solutions to these ills emerge not from blame or withdrawal, but from what family systems theory calls joinder.
For those unfamiliar with the term, joinder is a clinical technique that involves entering a system with enough empathy, curiosity, and accountability to earn the right to help change it.
From this humanistic – rather than hostile – stance, joinder invites us to step into the relational field that acute wealth inequality has created and find common ground for discussing it. Here, wealth inequality becomes a concern shared by everyone privileged to live in our interconnected communities.
In this regard, a town such as Telluride is no longer just a symbol of what is wrong with the world; it becomes a living laboratory in which we can experiment with more honest conversations, more generosity of spirit, and more equitable forms of community governance.
My work at the intersection of wealth and mental health is ultimately an invitation to this kind of engagement. Through it, we can seek to acknowledge the pain and distortion that the abundance and scarcity of money brings into our lives and relationships, and then to join with one another — in our families, communities, and global institutions — to transform those distortions into healthier, more sustainable ways of being together.
Let us remember that the true measure of wealth is not in what it acquires, but in what it restores.
In the spirit of mental health matters for everyone, everywhere,
Dr, Paul, more:
Paul Hokemeyer, J.D., Ph.D. is the founding principal of Drayson Mews, an international behavioral health firm based in London and author of “FragilePower: Why Having Everything Is Never Enough,” (Hazelden, 2019), the seminal resource for UHNW and high-performance individuals looking for clinically excellent mental & relational health services.
A licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, he is a graduate of the Global Leaders in Health Care program at Harvard Medical School and studied the use of digital technologies to enhance the delivery of mental health and addiction treatment services at the Yale School of Management.
Dr. Paul serves as a clinical consultant to the London based Ispahani Advisory Limited and is a Clinical Fellow at the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In addition to his legal and mental health background, Dr. Paul has extensive experience in the realm of philanthropy through his work as a trustee of a family foundation, and the Palm Springs Art Museum, one of the world’s leading institutions for midcentury design and art.