What is a Psychoethical Life?

Your worth is not in question. Your conduct is the practice.

Most of us can see clearly what other people do — and stay far less clear about our own part. We stay caught in stress, reactivity, self-neglect, and repeated relational difficulties — patterns we thought we’d already understood, returning under different names.

The psychoethical path begins from a different place: your worth is already given — it cannot be earned and cannot be erased. What can change is conduct: how you speak, what you normalize, what you excuse, what you avoid, and what you repair. In this course, we hold dignity and accountability together — building emotional competence, self-regulation, discernment, and personal agency, so your choices align with your deeper values and create the conditions for sustainable wellbeing.

Sound Familiar?

The patterns have names

The Guide’s word for these is not broken — it’s workable: not yet clean, but with enough honesty and willingness present for real movement to happen. That movement is what this group practices.

The Practice

Four movements of the work

What to Expect

Each session includes

Why It’s Worth It

What changes as conduct becomes cleaner

• You give a clean no — which is usually more loving than a false yes — without punishment, collapse, or over-explanation.
• You ask directly for what you need, without hinting, pressure, or hoping someone guesses.
• You stay steady under criticism — able to hear what’s true without collapsing or counterattacking.
• You put down what was never yours to carry, and pick up what is.
• You repair strained relationships — and recognize when release, not reconciliation, is the wiser path.
• You end each day with honest self-review — without self-attack, and without self-excuse.

How to Join

Medical enrollment

This series is conducted as group medical visits — real medical appointments in a supportive group setting, with Marianela Lavena, MD as the attending provider. You enroll once for the complete eight-session series — one continuous cohort that begins together on September 9. Each meeting is then registered administratively as a group medical visit; our office will guide you through that part.

*Group visits are medical appointments billed to your health insurance, subject to your individual plan’s coverage and benefits. HMO plans require a referral from your primary care provider for coverage. If we don’t take your insurance: $200 for the full eight-class course ($25 per class). Questions? See our FAQs or contact us.

Your Guide

Meet Pamela Cole

Pamela Cole is an organizational consultant, teacher, and writer whose work brings psychological understanding and ethical responsibility into a single developmental path. Over five decades, she has worked with individuals, leaders, teams, and organizations across a wide range of industries and human situations.

Her work is grounded in more than fifty years of Twelve Step recovery, together with extensive training in organizational development, emotional competence, contemplative practice, and the study of comparative religion and philosophy. She is the creator of the psychoethical framework — which distinguishes the worth that is given from the conduct that must be practiced, repaired, and refined.