Get Outside Yourself

The Outdoor Psychologist offers a new perspective on mental well-being

There are two archetypes that loom large in Beachtown Bohemia: the Psychologist and the Naturalist. In my parent’s social set in 1970s and 1980s Santa Cruz, there existed a disproportionate quantity of therapists — from Jungian analysts to classical Freudian psychologists to more experimental practitioners and leaders in group work. My father himself had a PhD in Child Psychology and built a career in curriculum development. Half the kids I grew up with in Beachtown Bohemia seemed to be the progeny of therapists— or at least it felt that way. This, I believe, is part of the West Coast’s inherently progressive ethos to examine and improve oneself: “go west” is more or less synonymous with betterment. If you are going to set up shop in paradise, why would you willingly carry around an oppressive load of baggage? Baggage and toxicity feel at odds with the waves, golden hills and climatic bliss of a 72-degree January afternoon on the back deck.

Naturalists are another archetype commonly found in Beachtown Bohemia. When one’s surroundings ache with a cinematic glow, there is a tendency to want to study, immerse oneself in, and protect that magic. Californians clearly did not invent ecology (I’m thinking of the extraordinary work of Aldo Leopold in the Midwest and Thoreau in the Northeast) but we west coast folk have made it a big part of our brand, if you will. In Beachtown Bohemia it’s not hard to find individuals and groups whose cherishing of the landscape is the kernel of their work from The Surfider Foundation to the Sierra Club to the advocacy work of Ventura-based Patagonia. Care for the environment is embedded in our culture.

Curiously, the Psychologist and the Naturalist haven’t explicitly melded into one all that often. Enter The Outdoor Psychologist, a beautiful new community and methodology created by Santa Barbara beachtown bohemian and practicing clinical psychologist Dr. Lena Dicken. The method Dr. Dicken has developed marries the work of these two arenas in an effort to awaken human beings to the healing benefits of time spent outdoors. The mission of The Outdoor Psychologist is to unite psychology, ecopsychology, and new findings in the burgeoning field of neuroplasticity in courses and in-person events designed to guide participants toward an embrace of the nature they are already a part of:

Through the evidence-based contemplative practice I’ve designed, it is my privilege to offer clients a methodology that builds resilience, releases limitations, and reestablishes the self’s inextricable belonging to nature.

- Dr. Lena Dicken, Founder of The Outdoor Psychologist

It’s worth noting that California is responsible for birthing Silicon Valley and all of its attending byproducts (anxiety, distraction, depression) as well as their digital tool antidotes. The Outdoor Psychologist deftly harnesses tech (Dr. Dicken’s introductory offering is a digital course,) yet propels the participant into offline exercises and screen-free exploration in the natural world. In this tech-saturated moment in history, it’s not hard to see the value of this course as catharsis. Alan Watts’ declaration (in The Book) that “we are not in the world, we are of it” was a paradigm shift in 1966 when it was published. The Outdoor Psychologist feels like a Watts-esque awakening in 2025. I love her urgent call to “get outside yourself.”

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In my illustator’s mind, the premise of The Outdoor Psychologist brought forth a graphic brainstorm. Pictured below is a riff on the work of Viktor Frankl (the neurologist, psychologist and holocaust survivor whose book Man’s Search for Meaning left a mark when it was published in 1946. I see Dr. Dicken’s work as an extension of Frankl’s premise that “between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.” Perhaps the most potent way to experience that space is to walk out the door. The neuroscientific data back up this premise, asserts Dr. Dicken: “Our brains change with time spent in nature. It calms our nervous system, helps us be kinder versions of ourselves, and improves mood, memory, and cognition.” What if, in the shard of a post-stimulus moment, we choose connectedness to the world over the endless chatter in our head? That feels rather like evolution.

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