For most of us, inner peace is best understood by it’s absence. We know we don’t have it. Or, at least that’s what we’ve told ourselves. A cultural narrative circulates about this elusive thing called inner peace and it goes something like this: you’ll be enlightened, fully self-actualized, have everything you want (or better yet, you won’t want anything) and you’ll never feel badly. The disappointing truth is that nothing like this exists. True inner peace is much more simple, though not easy. Inner peace is a state of mind that involves various layers and components. It is borne out of a mature genuine form of self-love along with a deep understanding that most phenomena — our emotions, thoughts, and life circumstances — are subject to impermanence.

Genuine self-love is a high merit. It is an emotional state that comes from self-understanding, self-acceptance, and self-compassion (picking up on a theme yet?). This emotional state needs to be experienced, rather than learned through the analytical parts of the brain. It is a fundamental sense of goodness inside. It develops in the context of healthy, meaningful relationships when we feel safe enough to become vulnerable and are still accepted and appreciated. Loving and being loved is a transformative experience. This, paired with the awareness that each moment is impermanent, result in higher affect and self-regulation capacities, and therefore creates a more enduring state of inner-peace.

At Wright Institute Los Angeles we strive to provide meaningful therapeutic experiences that are required for cultivating self-love and inner-peace. We aim to create a genuine and safe space for you to expose your whole self, including the parts you’ve decided are unloveable so that you may feel deeply understood and accepted. Our mindfulness-based program help you with developing the awareness that each moment is impermanent and therefore increases your ability to tolerate all of the feelings inside of you. Our Self-Regulation Project promotes high level self-regulation through providing an honest environment and a containing space that can hold and transform your pain and suffering.

I’m Dr. Maryam Vadjed Samiei, one of the therapists you could see at Wright Institute Los Angeles where we offer Affordable Therapy for Everyday People!

Maryam received her doctorate degree from California School of Professional Psychology. She believes in creating a safe therapeutic space where the patients feel safe enough to expose various aspects of oneself and feel accepted and understood. Maryam strives to help individuals live life to the fullest through self-understanding and development of a mature and compassionate relationship to oneself. Her clinical areas of interest include trauma, mood disorders, and couple therapy.