Become

Whole

Childhood Challenges

Before age 18

- physical, sexual, emotional, or verbal harm

- historical or cultural harm

- maternal unavailability or illness

- neglect, etc.

Wholeness

- freedom from impairments

- reconnect parts with the whole

- relationship among all living beings

- interdependent relationship with all of nature

Eudaimonia

- Aristotelian principle of living well

- virtue ethics

- action as an end, not a means to an end

- one's natural and unconditional empathic regard

for all life, including one's own

Salutogenic

A focus on health and healing, not disease and treatment

Practice-Based

A focus on community, not replicability and efficacy of a treatment.

Sustainability

A focus on cost-free, abundant availability, consistency, and long-term effectiveness.

RESEARCH, THEORY, & POLICIES:

W.E. is conducting ongoing research studies with adults and children who have experienced childhood challenges and are seeking sustainable wholeness. One study was completed in 2022. Another is scheduled for 2023. More details will be made available here within the coming months. These studies for the basis for radical theories and policies to generate sustainable (cost-free, abundantly available, consistent, and long-term wholeness following childhood challenges). This changes have significant implications for future generations.

Please reach out to us if you are interested in becoming a co-researcher.

COHORT / INDIVIDUAL HYBRID THERAPY:

W.E. is recruiting members for the next cohort. If you are an adult with childhood challenges who is interested in resolving those struggles once and for all, then you are ready to engage W.E. Instead of only one-on-one therapy, a cohort of 10-15 members will be guided through the process and given an opportunity to become an ambassador of W.E. for future community members with childhood challenges.

Please reach out to become a member of the next W.E. Cohort.

Deepa's Origin Stories

Deepa is an East Indian woman whose journey began with an ancestral diaspora from India to Guyana (1860s), then Guyana to Minnesota in the United States (1990), and now to Hawai'i (2014). These diasporas reinforced three important practices: adaptation, acceptance, and to actualization.

About Deepa (she/her)

Adaptation

To adapt, Deepa has been taught how to live curiously with one's environment. Curiosity is a source of observation and learning. Deepa has shared countless hours in laboratories, morgues, temples, classrooms, forests, trees, oceans, trenches, planes, meditation, therapy sessions, and books. By remaining curious in each of these environments, she has observed and learned about the patterns of birth, life, death, and rebirth that have become integrated in her personal and professional endeavors.

Acceptance

To accept, Deepa has been shown how to live compassionately with one's challenges. Compassion is a source of empathy and forgiveness. Deepa has shed immeasurable tears in witnessing human destruction of animals, plants, forests, land, the planet, each other, and self. By practicing compassion for these intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal challenges and the individuals involved, she has become empathic and forgiving for the sake of addressing the unbalanced cycles of destruction.

Actualization

To actualize, Deepa has been guided to live congruently with one's purpose. Congruence is a source of integrity and authenticity. Deepa has examined a wide swath of protocols, practices, and procedures in psychology, neuroscience, biomedicine, spirituality, and anthropology. By examining these niches, she has come to disagree with certain fundamental philosophies that dichotomizes the mind from matter and humans from nature. This disagreement has led her to dissolve the dichotomization, thereby granting her access to a world of oneness. This world has given her insights on the ontological and epistemological questions of nature and knowledge. It has also taught her about methodology and axiology of actualization.

Her Professional Objective

Deepa serves her community on the Big Island of Hawai'i as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT). She is known for her work with adults and children with childhood challenges. However, rather than pathologizing behaviors, relationships, emotions, and thoughts (BRET) as diseased, disordered, or dysfunctional, she teacher her clients to see health-based (salutogenic) possibilities. One such salutogenic possibility is the intentional converting of angst into actualization. The conversion cultivates the framing of challenging circumstances as painful but necessary fodder for actualizing one's purpose and potential.

To embrace angst as fodder for actualization, Deepa teaches her clients how to attend to their emotional and energetic centers within. By attending to these centers, angst is located, acknowledged, and prepared for an existential transformation. This trifecta is the crux of Deepa's work with over 200 clients in the past few years.

Regardless of their historical context, age, race, ethnicity, gender, class, education level, or socioeconomic background, Deepa's clients who have completed or are completing their transformational journey by converting childhood pain into adulthood gain. Former clients are actualizing their purpose and potential by pursuing academic goals, engaging in TedTalks, developing mental health careers themselves, authoring books to share their stories, and so on.

Psychotherapy in Hawai'i

One-on-one therapy sessions

W.e. Cohort model

3-month group-individual hybrid therapy sessions

Public Presentations (Virtual or live)

Tailored engagements for professionals

Training for researchers and Policymakers

Practice-based research and policies for sustainable wholeness

Training for Mental Health Providers

Practice-based sustainable wholeness protocols

Blog and Community Building

A space to share thoughts, feelings, and ideas to generate co-flourishing

2022 - Working with the spirit

Integral and Transpersonal Psychology

Deepa earned her PhD in 2022 and became a part of a radical group of human beings who are filling the gaps in modern society. This phase of her development has aligned with her personal development and cultural identity detailed the nuances of the spirit, namely interpretations, purpose, and actualization of one's potential. These nuances are paving a transpersonal and transcendental pathway for sustainable wholeness for human and beyond-human engagements. This integrated phase of her development has prompted an existential responsibility to be the change by becoming the change — to transform her angst from childhood challenges into adulthood actualization of her purpose and potential.

2008 - Working with the mind

Marriage and Family Therapy and Psychology

Deepa earned her Master's degree in 2008 and became a licensed mental health professional. This phase of her professional development detailed the nuances of the mind, namely emotions, interpretations, and relationships. These nuances paved an internal path for deeply understanding the metaphysical consequences of a person's biological, immunological, relational, generational, and sociocultural inheritance.

2000 - Working with the Body

Histotechnology

Deepa earned her undergraduate degree in 2002 and became a member of the pathology laboratory. As a histotechnician, she retrieved and prepared biomedical specimens for diagnosis by a pathologist. She later assisted in autopsy and necropsy procedures for both histopathology and research. This phase of her professional development detailed the nuances of the physical body, namely death, disease, and diagnosis. These nuances paved the path for deeply understanding the organic vessel that carries the necessary organs for life, procreation, thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and relationships. This experienced fueled her curiosity of the brain and so she later earned a Bachelor's degree in Psychology in 2004.

Working with the community

Supervisor, Instructor, and Presenter

Deepa serves her community as a supervisor and graduate school instructor to future therapists. She has provided one-on-one supervision to unlicensed Marriage and Family Therapy MFT) interns and taught at a Master's level institution for MFT.

Deepa facilitates public presentations. She has presented on Imposter Syndrome for the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at California Institute of Integral Studies, co-hosted a keynote on Inclusive Leadership for American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), served as East Hawai'i Chapter Representative for Hawaiian Islands Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and so on.

Working with the Historical Context

Therapist

Deepa works as an LMFT to guide individuals and their families towards wholeness. Not only do her clients reorient to their family of origin, but they also orients as a part of the whole—as a member of a large systemic family.. Therapy with Deepa vanquishes the victim-villain-rescuer paradigm (pathogenesis), and re-establishes a collaborative and co-creative healing space (salutogenesis). Therapy is less about pathology labels and more about salutogenic initiatives. In her years of experience, this radical approach promotes sustainable wholeness for all involved.

Working with the eudaimonic potential

Researcher

Deepa conducts research with adults and children with childhood challenges to better understand their interpretations of lived experiences. In 2022, she conducted a qualitative study called Wholeness-Based Eudaimonia: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study of Nature Reconciling and Co-Flourishing with Adults with Childhood Challenges. The results from the study highlighted a dire need radical reconciliation with the natural world. She has since converted the results of the study into a practice-based model for sustainable wholeness, called Wholeness-Based Eudaimonia (R).

Working with the community

Dance Instructor

Deepa's love for dancing started at a very early age. She later learned that both maternal and paternal ancestors also shared a loved for dancing. As service to my community in South America and Minnesota, she became a dancer and, later, a dance instructor. Deepa noted that dancing aligns her physical form with the metaphysical lifeforce all around. Deepa describes her dance experiences as a lifting out from her body and a projection into a deepened state of oneness. Dancing has become her spiritual, mental, and physical ritual for reconciling with fellow members of the whole and for sustaining wholeness.

Working with the Historical Context

Advocate

Deepa's personality traits are that of an introvert, and when needed, an extrovert who is intuitive, feels deeply, and has a tendency to evaluate actions and intentions of those around me. These traits have been common in individuals throughout history who convert angst into actualization, such as Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Marcus Aurelius, Barack Obama, Princess Diana, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Maya Angelou, and Adolf Hitler. These traits have ignited a burning desire to be the change she wishes to see in the world. Deepa admits, "I am blessed to have worked in numerous communities to bring awareness, equality, and peace back into daily lived experiences. I am no Mother Teresa yet it sure is powerful to have similar personality traits as these incredible souls to guide my life's work and purpose."

Working with the eudaimonic potential

Truth-Seeker and Truth-Seer

While we each have the freedom to define our personal truths, Deepa has consistently been guided the same conclusion—we are one. This tenet of oneness has been transmitted generationally and culturally as Advaita Vedanta and Sanatan Dharma by her ancestors. It is a practice in seeing the light in all (Namaste) and we are one (Tat Tvam Asi), which in Hindi means thou art that. To hone the tenet of oneness, Deepa has had to learn it and live it. In doing so over the decades, she has come to know people, plants, places, animals, elements, and planets as all a part of, not apart from, nature. The images that follow are a few of Deepa's previous projects.

Elizabeth A. - 2022

Your positive attitude and bright energy permeates into your work.

J.R. - 2018

You [Deepa] make me cry. It's a good thing. Our work has worked!

L.T. - 2019

I don't know how you do what you do, but it works. Keep doing it.

K.V. - 2022

Deepa doesn't just tell us [her clients] how to achieve wholeness; she walks with us. This makes the work meaningful and lasting. Thank you, Deepa!

R.S. - 2017

Can't I take you with me when I leave Hawai'i? Our work has helped me find my true self. For that, I am so happy and grateful.

Jennifer Radke, SMS - 2014

"I have had the pleasure to get to know Deepa over the years and explore her passion for mental health. Deepa is kind, genuine, and sincere. She truly cares about people and listens without judgment. For these reasons, and many others, I believe Deepa will be an outstanding therapist." - 2014

C.K. - 2018

You understand my struggles as a Hawaiian even though you are Indian. Thank you for putting voice to my struggles as a BIPOC.

2022

Deepa Ram-Souza, LMFT, PhD

drs@iamwe.one

1-808-427-2842

www.IamWe.One

A Closing Note From Deepa

To those who came and left, those who are here, and those who are coming;

to those who are suffering, struggling, and surviving life's challenges;

to my family, friends, and clients; to elders and children alike;

to my mentors, teachers, guides, and truth-whisperers; and

to all my relations who slitter, fly, swim, crawl, hop, climb, walk, or flow:

I dedicate my life's work to each of you.

Thank you - Mahalo - Dhanyavaad - Obrigado - Gracias

Acknowledgement