Developing Meaning
A podcast about healing trauma and finding meaning.
Have you ever wondered what your therapist has figured out about life's big questions?
Join psychiatrist Dr. Dirk Winter as he speaks with colleagues, therapists, and other healers about what they have learned from their clinical work about how to heal trauma and build more meaning and purpose into our lives.
Developing Meaning is NOT CLINICAL ADVICE and is NOT AFFILIATED WITH ANY INSTITUTIONS. It is intended to play with ideas that are emerging, fringe, and outside of the mainstream in order to discover the meaning of life.
Produced by Dirk Winter and Violet Chernoff
Developing Meaning
Latest Episodes
#28: Inside an IFS Ketamine Retreat with Ted Riskin and Amy Borsky Duffer, A Psychiatrist’s Audio Diary.
This episode is a companion audio diary to my interview with Ted Riskin, recorded while participating in one of his five-day Internal Family Systems (IFS) ketamine-assisted group retreats in Asheville, North Carolina. Over the course of the ret...
#27: Ted Riskin - Befriending Anger, Moving the Cat, and the Healing Power of IFS Group Ketamine Retreats.
In this episode, I sit down with Ted Riskin — social worker, IFS expert, and pioneer of group ketamine retreats — after spending a week at his beautiful home in Asheville, North Carolina participating in one of his experiences. From his unusual...
#26: How Breath Can Heal Trauma and Restore Meaning - Dr. Patricia Gerbarg
Note: This conversation with Dr. Patricia Gerbarg was recorded in August 2025.In this episode, we explore how breathing patterns reshape the emotional brain, restore a sense of safety, and allow meaning to return to daily life w...
#25: A Past Year Review Has Consequences (I Quit My Job and Started a Clinic - Yikes!)
In this New Year’s episode, I explore the very real consequences of last year’s Past Year Review. Most notably, I decided to retire from a beloved community mental health clinic and launch Park West Integrative Psychiatry — sparked by a desire ...
#24: Past Year Review (PYR) and Setting Intentions for Beginner's Mind, Questioning Assumptions, and Consilience in 2025. (REPOST)
Happy New Year! It's time to do a meaning inventory in order to set intentions for 2026. Toward that end I am re-posting my meaning inventory from last year. Our next episode will delve into how these unfolded and are leading ...