Science of Life Centered Therapy
By Shivam Dubey, MD FAPA

After a recent scientific discussion and podcast conversation with Andy Hahn, founder of Life Centered Therapy, I spent time reflecting on this model through a neuroscience and psychiatry lens. What stood out is that Life Centered Therapy aligns closely with what modern brain science is increasingly showing us about how symptoms form and how real healing occurs.

From a scientific perspective, Life Centered Therapy is best understood as a nervous-system–informed, integrative model that targets root-level dysregulation rather than surface symptom suppression.

At the core of Life Centered Therapy is the understanding that the human brain and nervous system are adaptive systems. When an individual experiences chronic stress, trauma, emotional neglect, or overwhelming life events, the brain reorganizes itself to survive. This reorganization involves well-described neurobiological mechanisms: heightened amygdala threat detection, altered hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis activity, changes in autonomic tone, and long-term neuroplastic encoding of defensive patterns.

Anxiety, depression, dissociation, emotional numbing, chronic tension, and even certain physical symptoms are not random malfunctions. They represent learned neural responses shaped by past experiences. Life Centered Therapy treats these symptoms as meaningful outputs of an adaptive system, not as isolated pathologies.

Scientifically, this model integrates several key principles.

First, it acknowledges bottom-up processing. Many emotional and stress responses originate in subcortical brain regions and the autonomic nervous system, not the rational cortex. Insight alone cannot override a dysregulated system. Regulation must precede cognitive reframing.

Second, it recognizes memory as both explicit and implicit. Traumatic and emotionally charged experiences are often stored as implicit somatic and emotional memory rather than narrative memory. Life Centered Therapy works with these implicit layers, allowing unresolved neural and emotional loops to complete.

Third, it leverages neuroplasticity. When the nervous system is guided into states of safety, awareness, and coherence, new neural pathways can form. Old threat-based circuits weaken, and flexibility returns. This is not theoretical; it is consistent with decades of research on experience-dependent brain change.

Fourth, it integrates meaning and context. Human brains do not heal in isolation. Relational safety, emotional attunement, and coherent meaning-making are essential for long-term neural stability. Life Centered Therapy explicitly works within this biopsychosocial framework.

What makes this approach scientifically compelling is that it does not position healing as “positive thinking” or symptom control. Instead, it facilitates a reorganization of the nervous system toward regulation, coherence, and choice.

From a psychiatric standpoint, this explains why many individuals plateau with medication or cognitive strategies alone. Without addressing how the nervous system learned to survive, symptoms may temporarily improve but often return under stress. Life Centered Therapy fills this gap by working at the level where patterns were originally formed.

In simple terms, Life Centered Therapy is not about becoming someone new. It is about allowing the nervous system to update itself based on present safety rather than past threat.

That is the science as I understand it: adaptive brains, encoded patterns, neuroplastic change, and healing through regulated awareness.

Shivam Dubey, MD FAPA

Psychiatrist and Neuroscience Educator

https://lifecenteredtherapy.com/