The Philosophy Blog
Dive into the ideas behind REWIRE therapy.
This blog explores the underlying principles and concepts that shape our approach to relationships and mental well-being. If you’re curious about the “why” behind the methods we use, or want to reflect on the bigger picture, this is where you’ll find in-depth discussions and thoughtful insights.
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“You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” — Marcus Aurelius Let’s be honest. The liquid phase that the world is in right now– the uncertainty and potential for catastrophe…its distressing right now. Politics. Culture. Economics. Communities. Science. Higher ed. Personal Relationships. Most people I know are experiencing a low-grade hum of anxiety. Even if things are technically fine in their...
Here we go…me talking about wisdom seems an unwise thing to endeavor…but I’m risk it anyways. ____ Every generation thinks it’s the wisest one yet. There’s a name for this tendency: chronocentrism—the belief that our era sees most clearly, understands most deeply, and has finally figured life out. It’s the voice in us that says, We’ve evolved past all that. We’re smarter now. We know better. And on...
A new vision rooted in abundance, not scarcity. Meet Adam. Adam was 14 when something started to shift. It wasn’t dramatic—just a quiet sense that things were off. He spent more time alone. Drifted from his friends. His grades were fine. He was polite, responsive, even cheerful when adults asked how he was doing. There was no clear signal, no obvious distress. So nothing happened.Because the system didn’t...
We All Want Easy Connection… But That’s Not What Lasts Most people love the idea of effortless relationships — the kind where everything just clicks. No tension. No work. Just chemistry and comfort. Sounds nice, right? But in real life, it doesn’t usually work that way. The relationships that matter most — the ones that really last — are the ones we show up for. Not once, but...
Meet Kathleen. She’s 21, a junior in college, and came to my clinic feeling stuck—lonely, unmotivated, and searching for meaning. When I asked what brought her in, she paused and said, “I don’t know where to start. I know I’m struggling with anxiety and depression, and I need some skills to help. But I’m also struggling with my relationships and my sense of purpose.” College, she hoped, would...
The Fight Beyond the Firehouse Cory spent years running toward danger, extinguishing chaos, and saving lives. But when his marriage collapsed, he disclosed to me that he had finally met his match—finding this to be a “trauma that truly broke me for the first time.” The rhythms of family life—coaching his kids’ soccer games, big Sunday breakfasts, bedtime stories—were suddenly gone. In their place, an overwhelming void settled...
John’s Struggle to Attain and Maintain the Perfect Life John had it all—at least on the surface. A meticulously planned life, an optimized schedule, and a clear focus on eliminating stress. His guiding philosophy was simple: control the chaos, avoid discomfort, and life will run smoothly. “I can think and optimize my life in all ways, until all stress and pain eventually subsides.” He pursued happiness like a...
Liz’s Story: The Price of Achievement Liz had always been an achiever. From the moment she set her sights on becoming a physician, she knew the path would be grueling. The long nights of studying, the relentless demands of medical school, the brutal schedule of residency, and the all-consuming nature of fellowship—it all required an unwavering focus on one thing: medicine. While her peers in their 20s and...
The Homecoming That Felt Like a Ghost Story Brian stepped off the plane, greeted by the patriotic cheers of neighbors, the warm embrace of his wife, and the excited squeals of his children. A decorated Army veteran, his homecoming should have been a moment of triumph. But as the noise of celebration faded, an unsettling hollowness crept in. On the outside, Brian was home. Shouldn’t he be happy?...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Psychologist, Professor, Dad, Husband, Tillman Scholar. To start building better mental health and a joy filled life today, by taking our free relationship assessment http://plan.rewirewellness.co Introduction: Alex’s Journey through the Disease/Symptom Model Alex, a 28-year-old software developer, has struggled with anxiety and depression for years. Diagnosed during his parents’ divorce at age 16, he has diligently pursued therapy and medications for over a decade....
John’s Story When John came home after two combat tours, he thought the hardest days were behind him. In the military, his life had been defined by trust and purpose. His unit felt like a family—one built on mutual reliance and shared goals. But civilian life felt like a different planet. Small talk at parties didn’t compare to the life-and-death bonds he’d formed with his comrades. Work seemed...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, psychologist, professor, relationship expert, and Tillman Scholar. To begin transforming your relationships today, download the free guide and take the free assessment at REWIRE Wellness. My patients and research subjects describe loneliness as a void, an emptiness that creeps into our days and settles into our nights. But what if we viewed it differently—not as a punishment, but as a biological signal, much like...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar To start transforming your relationships today, download our free guide and check out the REWIRE app. Sophia, a 22-year-old recent college graduate, is navigating her first job and adult responsibilities. Most evenings, she unwinds by scrolling through Instagram. Her feed is filled with polished snapshots: her college roommate celebrating a promotion, her high school friend beaming on...
(Parenting Part 3) By Dr. Andrew Smith, Dad, Husband, Pat Tillman Military Scholar, Therapist, Professor, Researcher, Relationship Expert For those ready to dive deeper into building resilient relationships and crafting a redemptive narrative for your family, check out the REWIRE Free Guide and the REWIRE App—tools designed to support you in creating intentional, transformative connections. Human beings are storytellers. Across cultures and eras, storytelling has been our primary...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Psychologist, Professor, Dad, Husband, Tillman Military Scholar. To start building a more balanced and joy filled approach to parenting, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app Parenting is a profound journey that blends moments of deep joy with challenges that stretch us beyond what we thought possible. It’s a role that continuously asks us to grow, face our flaws, and celebrate our strengths. How we...
(Parenting Part 1) By Dr. Andrew Smith, Psychologist, Professor, Pat Tillman Military Scholar. To develop the tools and skills to start growing in your parenting, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE ap Just this week, I did the thing that I hate…again. I lost my patience with my preteen daughter. She was running late, again, searching frantically for a missing school project she’d assured me was already packed, and...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Psychologist, Professor, Pat Tillman Military Scholar. To build the trust foundation in your relationships, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app Trust is foundational to any healthy relationship—it’s the bedrock that allows us to feel safe, connected, and secure. In the REWIRE process, we take trust seriously. Rather than seeing trust as an all-or-nothing concept, REWIRE reframes it as multidimensional and ever-evolving. You can trust...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar Marriage is one of the most significant commitments we make in life. While love is often the focus in conversations about marriage (and should be!), there are also deeper aspects to consider when you’re contemplating a lifelong commitment. Whether you’re preparing yourself for a more enduring commitment or are already in a serious relationship and thinking about...
(Marriage Part 3) By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To build your skills to improve your marriage, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app Today’s post focuses on practical skills and actions for improving your marriage. This is the third essay in a four-part series on marriage using the REWIRE approach. REWIRE is an evidence-supported, scientifically designed, and tested intervention that...
(Marriage Part 2) By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To build your skills to improve your marriage, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app Humans are natural storytellers. From one perspective, when we scale out to the history of the universe, our existence seems insignificant and fleeting. However, within our lives, our relationships, and the time we share with those we...
(Marriage Part 1) By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To build your skills to improve your marriage, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app Among all the relationships we experience, marriage is truly unique. At times, it can be a source of deep pain, loneliness, and disappointment. At other times, marriage offers profound connection, security, and beauty. To add complexity, it...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To improve your skills in these areas, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app We are constantly hearing about values—largely through organizations and companies promoting their business or mission statements. But values aren’t just for companies and marketing. They aren’t just buzzwords or corporate jargon. They can serve you as an individual like a compass—guiding...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To learn more about how REWIRE can improve your relationships, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app Over the past 15 years, I’ve been deeply immersed in studying and building psychological and community-level interventions, with a focus on three key areas: (1) social functioning and relationship health, (2) social cohesion and polarization in communities, and...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To improve your skills in this area, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app Unbeknownst to us, from the minute we enter relationships we are engaged in a pattern of interaction with another person. Give and take. In our patterns, we are unconsciously teaching others how we want to be treated and communicated to, and...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To improve your skills in these areas, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app I often hear this from patients, in one form or another: Unreciprocated effort. Even the best of us experience this as a primal form of pain at some point. Even among those of us who are good at not keeping a...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To improve your skills in boundary setting, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app Boundaries are such a buzzword in our current culture. In my work as a therapist, this is one of the most recurring areas of focus. Boundaries are also exceedingly complex to develop and carry out in healthy ways, serving as a...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To move away from victim mentality and towards an empowered way of living in relationships, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app In conflict, the classic stalemate occurs when one side waits for the other to take responsibility. From father to son, mother to daughter, girlfriend to boyfriend, husband to wife, brother to sister, nation...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To improve your life through better relationships, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app Today my post is focused on a more universal aspect of suffering and meaning that I’ve seen play out over the years: self-focus. I have had several ‘reinventions’ of my therapy practice over the years, from seeing military veterans, first responders,...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To improve your skills to put these concepts into action and improve your life, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app American authenticity in the year 2024 means saying what you think and what you feel, no matter the consequences. This is how one’s courage, honesty, and expression of freedom are currently being measured. You...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To improve learn the skills to improve your relationships, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app Depending on your values system, power is either a dirty word or something of high value, to be desired. I won’t bury the lead here– today my goal is to communicate about the simple truth of power and influence...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To learn the skills to break unhealthy relationship patterns, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app In 2016, my family and I backpacked in a truly otherworldly place- the Lost Coast Trail on the Northern California coast. By day we walked and explored tide pools, filled with all manner of crustaceans and aquatic life. By...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To learn the skills to improve your relationships, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app When I think about how to improve relationships and social connection problems in my life, my community, the world…the barriers feel daunting. The first problem in the change equation is me. I’m stubborn and reluctant to change, focused on me,...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To learn the skills to start improving your relationships now, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app Our brains are expectation and prediction machines. We are wired to do anything within our power to keep our relationships predictable on the day to day basis. On the flip side, from an emotional standpoint, we spend a...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To start transforming your relationships now, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app Human beings are story tellers. We use stories to entertain, teach, warn, and convey history. Synthesis of 2,000+ works of fiction show that nearly all stories take a form that falls into six main emotional arcs, or plotlines.1,2 Here are a few...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To start the process of transforming your relationships now, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app The technology boom over the past 10 years has improved our lives in so many ways. Want to avoid the tedium of grocery shopping? Order online for delivery by 4pm. Want to avoid the misery of picking through plumbing...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To start the process of transforming your relationships now, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app I live in the north country, where winters are long and hard. When spring starts to come on, people begin emerging for the slightest sliver of sunshine. It might only be 43 degrees, but you’d be surprised at how...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To start the process of transforming your relationships now, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app I often present my scholarly work at national conferences, and was recently in the audience at a symposium on the topic of social support and recovery from traumatic events. Scholars of national repute presented various studies from around the...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To start the process of transforming your relationships now, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app In today’s fast-paced world, values often appear in business and organizational mission statements, but they are equally crucial in our personal lives. Personal values like honesty, authenticity, gentleness, and persistence guide our actions and choices, helping us break painful...
By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To start the process of transforming your relationships now, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app For more than a decade, we’ve been living as unwitting participants in the greatest social rewiring experiment in the history of the human race. As we have traded authentic analog connection for virtual existence, our isolation from one another...