Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Chris Lee.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My life is one big mistake, but not one that I’m ashamed of, hold resentment for but one that I’m truly proud of. My life as a mosaic of mistakes that finally allowed me to see the reality of who I was meant to be, not who I was expected to become.
6 years ago, I had a plan, and honestly a pretty good one. Finish up my doctorate by the age of 25 open a practice, white picket fence, fall in love, 2.3 kids, 1.4 dogs. A vision of stability. Fortunately for me something, someone, larger than myself also had a plan, call it destiny, fate, or a mosaic of mistakes, it all began with a bike ride.
I had just finished up a neurophysiology lab practical that made me feel dumber than a box of rocks at a diamond party. So, like any proper 22-year-old, I got on my used 21-speed bike and rode through Atlanta traffic to get to the one store I could afford, Walmart.
Today was going to be different, I was really going to live. So, I headed over to the clearance aisle got me some month-old dark chocolate, then to the wine department where I picked up something called “three owls” each owl representing a dollar and a joke in our apartment after 1 bottle you’d be “who, who(ing)” everyone you knew.
I packed up my loot and started my 2-mile ride home. Lucky for me it was clear sailing until it wasn’t. I was in the final 1/2 mile when a black SUV blew through a stop sign and hit me into a ditch, and there, my life changed direction.
I woke up and the sun was going down, I found my bike next to me, and in a half walk, half crawl made it home, where my brother who was also completing his doctorate found me.
He cleaned me up and we were soon on the way to the ER where I’d be diagnosed with internal lacerations, bone bruising on my pelvis and sent home on bed rest for 3 months at a minimum.
There is a certain degree of humility required to have your older brother pick you up and help bathe you for a week, I didn’t possess that so I was just tremendously humiliated.
Over the next 2 weeks, I would watch my toned and tan body fade into grey skin and fatigue from holding a book. Depression sank in as I watch the world continue to shift and move around me, while I was stuck in a prison of my own mind, body, and emotion.
Then it happened, on day 15 my life would again be flipped upside down. It was the afternoon and from my bed, I could hear people coming home from work. Then my phone rang, a number and name I hadn’t seen in months. I picked it up to a frantic old family friend yelling into the phone that I needed to get my brother home immediately, and he hung up.
I called and called and called eventually my brother picked up, I told him about the weird phone call and he agreed to come home.
Soon I started to get a weird feeling in my gut and I would find out why when he got home.
I heard my brother’s truck, heard him come up the stairs, and then it was silence. He ran into my room and held me tight, I could feel the warm tears on his face. Then he looked at me and said “Dad’s gone…”
We later found out that our dad, out of nowhere, had killed himself. He had been suffering silently with depression for years we would discover and it eventually overwhelmed him, my best friend, my rock, gone. No goodbye, no letter, only emptiness, a void.
They never teach you the important things in school it seems, what do you do at a funeral? How much is too much when it comes to crying, why do I constantly feel hungry but can’t eat. What do I do with this grief in my heart?
Months past and my body healed the best it could, when i had gotten the news of my dad passing, I went to the hospital and had all the equipment removed.
I took myself for walks every day, painful walks but the physical pain would take away from the emotional pain, and anyone who’s ever suffered deep emotional pain understands that slient agreement, whether you hide it in the gym, running, or ridding you get it.
Then one day, another call came, this time one that at the time I couldn’t see but now know was a saving grace in my life. I had been dating a woman at the time and suddenly to my doctors and our amazement, we were having a baby. I was now 23, broke, broken, and scared.
After that news I had a dark night of the soul, the emotions bubbling up to the surface, my tensions running high and I felt myself break, but not down, no this wasn’t that, I felt myself breaking in. Like cracking the code to an old lock, I felt myself open up and pour out. The anger from losing my dad, the loss of my health, the unknowns of what parenthood would look like, all of it came out, but it wasn’t bad, or good for that matter. It just was and in that moment that I made a declaration to myself and my daughter that “every day I would be better than I was yesterday” and for 5 years now I’ve kept that promise.
My life is not a 9-5 practice but instead the world of neuroscience, mental health, and worthiness has opened up to me. I’m an extremely proud single father to my amazing daughter Phoenix who loves dancing every morning in the kitchen as we make breakfast and talk about our day. I’m blessed to live in the house of my dreams in an extraordinary location near Hilton Head Island.
Every day I wake up blessed to be living in this amazing mistake.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I specialize in neuroscience-based self-regulation strategies. At my core I’m a scientist and when I made a choice to get better that meant I was going to use science as my vehicle to do so, mental, physical, emotional, and social. I help skeptical minds use science to embrace change with biometric feedback so they don’t instantly have to rely so heavily on trusting their own minds right off the bat. These tools and tactics are extraordinary because they allow individualization and they scale from a single person to 20 or more teams with each member being a case study for human optimization.
What are your plans for the future?
Right now, I’m loving watching this technology and systems grow, more than anything I love watching my daughter grow up. Being a dad lights me up more than anything else in my life, our coffee dates on Fridays or watching her eat through our farmer’s market bags, it’s an amazing life we get to life and I’m grateful every day. Professionally, we are working on bringing biometric training into South Carolina prison systems to teach our challenged members of society self-regulation systems as well.
Pricing:
- Monthly Membership $77
Contact Info:
- Email: Connectdrchris@gmail.com
- Website: www.drchrislee.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/drchrislee
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNSfeZ1wvzfzu0cmn0y96Wg
- Other: https://linktr.ee/drchrislee
Image Credits
Lauren Tingler
