Kirutz · The Key Roots of Suffering
The peace you keep reaching for is a state you already are.
I can show you where it lives.
Vancouver, WA and surrounding Washington State
You’ve tried everything and still can’t find the peace
Here is the thing almost no one says out loud: most of us spend our whole lives believing that the next thing will finally do it. The promotion. The marriage repaired. The right book. The morning the anxiety just isn’t there.
I call that the Great Delusion – the quiet belief that your current strategy is the one that’s going to make you happy, if you just work it hard enough.
You’ve worked it hard. You’ve read the books, watched the YouTube videos, gone to therapy. And you still wake up reaching for something that doesn’t land.
What you actually want is underneath the thought
Sit with the anxiety for a second. You’re at church, surrounded by people you know, and your chest goes tight. Why can’t I get calm? It’s stupid. So we climb down, rung by rung.
Rung oneWhy can’t I just get calm?
Rung twoThey’ll see something is off in me.
Rung threeThey’ll think less of me.
The bottom rungI just want to feel okay. I just want to be happy.
Trace any distressing thought down far enough and it ends in the same place. We climb down it together until you can see the bottom for what it is.A thought. Not reality.
The memory still runs and you think you should be over it
Years ago your husband cheated. You’re still married. You’ve done the work, and most days are fine. Then a song plays, or you pass a restaurant, and the whole thing runs through you again like it’s happening now.
I should be over this. Why can’t I get past it? So you add a second layer of suffering on top of the first: the pain, and then the shame about still having the pain.
What’s actually happening is that a part of you is still hurt and is asking to be heard. Not banished. Heard. I do this with you in writing – a dialogue between your core self and the part that’s suffering. That’s where it starts to soften.
You made it and the emptiness came anyway
You did everything right. The income, the title, the life that looks like the one you were supposed to want. I thought when I arrived I’d have everything. I do. I just don’t feel like it.
This one confuses people the most, because there’s no obvious problem to point at. Nothing is wrong. And something is still missing.
Here’s what I’ve come to understand after years of this work, including my own recovery: you were chasing external change, hoping it would produce internal peace.
It runs the other direction. Peace is the core you already are – sitting underneath all the noise, not a place you arrive at. I know where the levers are, and I can show you where it lives.
Collin HansenLMHC · SRT · PBTT
Hi, I’m Collin.
I’d rather sit across from one person and actually help them than perform for a room.
I’m a clinical mental health counselor, and I’m not a very outgoing guy. My own recovery taught me this terrain from the inside – the daily kind, the unglamorous kind. So when I tell you this takes real effort, I’m not quoting a textbook. You’re going to work your ass off (pardon the pun). I won’t pretend otherwise.
Over nine years I built a method I call Kirutz. It pulls together cognitive inquiry, mindfulness, parts work, and the structure of a 12-step practice – all pointed at one thing: reaching the core state of peace that’s underneath your thinking. It’s one-size-fits-all in the sense that the core is the same in everyone. The path down to it is yours.
Cognitive inquiryMindfulnessParts work12-step structure
I’ll teach you the recipe – the daily practices that keep you in contact with that core whether you’re working with me or not. And I’ll sit with you while you learn to feel a hard feeling, understand it, and let it move through you until it passes.
What changes when you live from the core
Imagine the situations that normally bring you distress. Now imagine being in those same moments – able to address them directly, or simply let them pass in peace.
The tight chest in the pew
You notice it. You feel it, you understand what it’s asking, and you let it move through you. Then you turn back to the conversation in front of you.
The memory that used to run for an hour
It surfaces. You meet the part of you that’s still hurt instead of shaming it, and it quiets sooner than it used to.
The empty success
You stop waiting for the next arrival to fix it, because you’ve found the thing you were actually reaching for the whole time.
Clear. Steady. Carrying less.
These are the real results of the Kirutz process.
The same core, met from wherever you’re standing
You’ve Been Reaching a Long Time
The work is learning to recognize it and live from it. That starts with one conversation – on a line where you don’t have to explain yourself to anyone but me.
