Unconditional Love, Acceptance, and Growth

In this episode Jim interviews fellow LCC mental health counselor Curlada Eure-Harris. The “L” in Curlada’s name was given by her father to stand for “Love”. She goes on to explain that she sees her role as helping people learn to love and accept themselves. She talks about the unlimited capability of the human brain to learn, regardless of age, referred to as neuroplasticity. Jim dispels the myth that the brain is done growing and developing in one’s early 20s. While it’s true that the brain completes its process of myelination around that time wherein neurons reach their maximum capacity for speed in neurochemical signaling, that does not mean that the brain is then static in its capabilities for the remainder of life. Rather, the human brain is considered to have unlimited storage capacity and retains functional and structural neuroplasticity for life. You can keep learning for your entire life (devoid of brain disease like dementia or Alzheimer's)

Curlada also encourages listeners to abandon any self-imposed limitations on one’s capabilities and instead embrace a more scientific view that one can learn and grow throughout life. She also references the Human Genome Project to underscore the universality of human experience. There are three dimensions of human experience: Universal, Cultural, and Individual. These three perspectives highlight that in some ways all human experience is shared among all humans (universal), in other ways it’s shared only by those who are in some way local or cultural to them (cultural), and finally, in other ways, is unique and unlike anyone else (individual).

Often the role of a counselor is to help a person process, organize and make sense of their (often distressing) experience as falling into any one or more of these tripartite categories. Curlada references the work of famed psychologist Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs, emphasizing that we all have universal needs, cultural needs, and individual needs

1. Myelination of Neurons, National Library of Medicine
2. Human Genome Project, National Institutes of Health
3. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, National Library of Medicine