Who is Kourosh Dini?

It's not that I couldn't do well. It's that my attention wasn't so easy to guide. If something caught my interest, I could be in it for hours. But when bored, details might get lost.

For many with ADHD or what I like to call a "wandering mind," the spirit of play is strong. It’s what makes our worlds turn. It’s how we dive deep and come up with amazing creations. It’s also what makes it so hard to engage when our heart just isn’t there.

Yet somehow, I've not only survived. I've come to do rather well.

I am deeply indebted and grateful to my friends, family, and therapists, all of whom have been supportive throughout the years.

But one strength came from somewhere less obvious: an insistence on playing music.

Music is a path of both study and play:
To give shape to sound, we study structure.
To fill sound with heart, we play.
To harness power, we practice their harmony.

While the specifics are certainly different for each wandering mind, the fundamentals of play, care, and structure are undeniable.

Again and again, my clients find a similar pattern. Vitality and a sense of success appear as we practice this connection between self and world, whether we start from wishes and fears, lists and projects, or scatter and focus.

I could not become the psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, author, and musician that I am today without learning how to practice this harmony of work and play.

For some, productivity is simply about staying on top of our day-to-day.

But for many, it runs much deeper. It's about meaningfully engaging our work and relationships.

The difference is our sense of play and our agency to guide it. Because when we learn how to guide play and our internal worlds, we can find the mastery and the meaningful work of success.

Particularly for those with ADHD, wandering minds, anxiety, depression, and more, this practice can be a struggle.

But with guidance, we may find a meaningful productivity that goes well beyond efficiency or even “symptom relief.” We find a flow that clears paths to and for the people and places that matter to us.

As a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, I help people one-to-one to find their unique paths in life, to find what is productive to them.
Too often, we look at depression or anxiety as problems that are just there. But they tend to come from somewhere, often because we have troubles meeting the world in a way that works for us. I try to help others individually to overcome such difficulties to find their own voice, and begin building the worlds they want.

If you’re interested in a free PDF of my booklet Choosing a Therapist, check it out here.

As a musician, I write music. If ever there were a direct practice of finding play in structure, it is in art. I have loved music since the age of 5. The music I write is a blend of relaxing and thoughtful, and I share the works on a part of this site.