Flourishing curriculum · Pittsburgh

A life worth living

Linehan named the goal of DBT as a life experienced by the person living it as worth the trouble of living. The phrase is hers; the rest of the curriculum on this page is not. Where DBT works on the conditions that make life unbearable, the four traditions arranged below work on the conditions that make life worth what it costs. Positive psychology supplies the evidence base. Humanistic psychology supplies the relational ground. Existential psychology supplies the reckoning with what cannot be fixed. Fundamental well-being supplies the recognition that, beneath all of the above, something is already steady.

I. The four traditions

What each lineage contributes

Each tradition has a different question and a different method. Held together, they cover ground no single one of them can. The wheel below pairs them as a weekly cycle so that the practices stay in conversation with each other rather than in competition.

Positive Psychology

Seligman, Csikszentmihalyi, Fredrickson

The empirical tradition. Twenty-five years of randomized trials on what increases sustained well-being, organized around Seligman’s PERMA framework: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment. Its strength is the evidence base. Its limitation is what evidence cannot measure.

Humanistic Psychology

Rogers, Maslow, Jung, White, Banks

The human-science tradition, in the broad Diltheyan sense that includes depth, narrative, and relational-cultural lineages. Rogers named the three conditions under which growth occurs in another person: unconditional positive regard, empathic understanding, congruence. Maslow mapped the developmental concerns whose neglect surfaces as symptom. Jung named the shadow — the disowned material that returns through projection until it is met directly. White and Epston worked with the stories people tell about themselves and what those stories make impossible. Amy Banks operationalized Relational-Cultural Theory through the neuroscience of connection. The lineage assumes the organism already knows what it requires; the work is removing what blocks the knowing.

Existential Psychology

Yalom, Frankl, May, van Deurzen

The depth tradition. Yalom’s four givens — death, freedom, isolation, meaninglessness — are the conditions every human faces, and the symptoms that bring people to therapy are usually a flight from one or more of them. Frankl found in the camps that meaning could be made even where comfort could not. The work here is not removing suffering but standing inside it without flinching.

Fundamental Well-Being

J. Martin, Adyashanti, Loch Kelly

The contemplative tradition. Jeffery Martin’s research on persistent non-symbolic experience maps a phenomenological territory long described in Buddhist, Vedantic, and Christian-mystical literature: a baseline shift in which the sense of being a separate doer attenuates and well-being persists across pleasant and unpleasant. The map is descriptive, not prescriptive; the practices are trainable.

II. The thirty-two

The full curriculum

Four traditions, eight modules, thirty-two practices. Reading clockwise from the top is the four-tradition weekly cycle, so that a week of work touches all four lineages at the same depth. Reading outward through the rings is the eight-module program, in which each tradition deepens from foundational practice at the center to integrative practice at the perimeter.

Four traditions arranged as a weekly cycle, eight modules deep. Each cell opens to a practice; the curriculum advances outward, from the foundational practice at the center to integrative work at the perimeter.

Curriculum at a glance

Four traditions, eight modules. Each cell is a clickable practice.

Tradition	M1	M2	M3	M4	M5	M6	M7	M8
Positive Psychology	Three Good Things ●	Character Strengths	Savoring ●	Active Constructive Responding	Hope Theory ●	Flow	Best Possible Self	Post-Traumatic Growth
Humanistic Psychology	Unconditional Positive Regard	Empathic Understanding	Congruence	Hierarchy of Needs	Self-Actualization	Shadow Work	Narrative Re-Authoring	Relational-Cultural Connection (CARE)
Existential Psychology	The Four Givens	Mortality Awareness	Freedom and Responsibility	Existential Isolation	Meaning-Making	Authenticity vs Bad Faith	Boundary Situations	Tragic Optimism
Fundamental Well-Being	Witness Consciousness ●	Equanimity	Self-Narrative Recognition	Letting Go of Doership	Non-Dual Awareness	Effortless Action	The Locations	Integration

III. How to read the wheel

Two axes, one practice

The mandala has two readings. The first is by tradition: hold any quadrant constant and the eight modules are an arc through that lineage from entry to integration. The second is by week: hold any ring constant and the four cells of that ring are a single week’s practice across all four traditions. The week-axis is the rhythm; the depth-axis is the program.

M1 Entry. Three Good Things, Unconditional Positive Regard, the Four Givens, Witness Consciousness. The first practices in each tradition, written so a person new to the lineage can begin without prior reading.
M2–M4 Building. Character strengths and savoring; empathy and the hierarchy of needs; mortality and freedom; equanimity and self-narrative recognition. The practices that establish each tradition’s working vocabulary.
M5–M7 Deepening. Hope and flow; the humanistic arc from self-actualization through shadow integration into narrative re-authoring; meaning-making and authenticity; non-dual awareness and effortless action. The practices in which each tradition begins to test its own claims against lived experience.
M8 Integration. Post-traumatic growth, relational-cultural connection, tragic optimism, and living from fundamental well-being. Each tradition’s account of what it looks like when the work has become the way someone lives rather than something they practice on top of how they already live.

IV. The current state

What is published and what is coming

The wheel is wayfinding. Three Good Things is the first of the thirty-two written, chosen because Seligman’s 2005 trial gives it the cleanest evidence base of any single positive-psychology intervention and because the practice is simple enough that a reader can run the protocol the same night. The remaining thirty-one are stubs that hold their place in the curriculum and accept email signups for when each one goes live. Cells with a thicker stroke on the wheel are published.