My approach

Relational, experiential counseling with mindfulness and curiosity.

My approach to counseling springs from an appreciation that each of us has a common aspiration that is varied in its expression: aspiring for contentment, belonging, and fulfillment.

  • Contentment as a sense of ease and creativity

  • Belonging as having mutual relationships valued, appreciated, and care-full

  • Fulfillment as finding, enacting, and adopting a meaningful purpose in life.

In counseling, we discover together what barriers may exist to your own self-actualization of these three factors.

Mental suffering often comes when we adapt to life by developing protective and limited strategies in response to distress, thus veering from a natural and healthful trajectory. Counseling can help heal the wounds these strategies were formed to protect and open up new channels for living and self-expression.

I have a particular focus on working with men who feel they are missing deep connection with themselves, their partners, and with other men. Through either individual counseling, or the weekly men’s group I co-lead, the men I work with experience more authentic and meaningful relationships with themselves and with others.

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My approach

Counseling is relational: your relationship with yourself in your world, my own relationship to my self, and the relationship we form together. My person-centered and existential orientation to counseling sprouts from the rich soil of Gestalt Therapy, which brings curiosity, exploration, and present-process into the healing you wish to see. From this ground, I also utilize Hakomi mindful somatic psychotherapy in understanding the wisdom your body and felt experience hold. To help transform painful emotions or traumatic experiences, I also use Emotion-Focused Therapy to access emotions that promote well-being which often lie underneath more painful ones. Bringing mindfulness into our relationship, informed by Buddhist Psychology and my near-decade as a Buddhist monk, can also be an effective support to access and understand your experience. Curiosity and acceptance are the two pillars my counseling approach rests upon. Most of all, I trust in and rely upon your holistic experience and organic wish for well-being.

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Counseling services

Counseling can be effective for a range of challenging issues. Some of the areas I focus on with individuals include:

  • Anxiety

  • Depression

  • Trauma and the impact of traumatic experiences

  • ADHD

  • Men’s issues

  • Unfulfilling relationships

  • Attachment wounds

  • Addiction or substance abuse

  • Life transitions (career, divorce, retirement, parenthood, etc.)

  • Life purpose and direction

  • Identity development / consolidation

  • Grief and loss

  • Spiritual identity

  • Buddhist Psychology

For relationships, these areas include:

  • Communication difficulties

  • Challenges around money

  • Broken promises

  • Emotional or attachment wounds

  • Poly and open relationships

  • Sexual challenges

  • Marriage discernment

  • Co-parenting

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Commitment to Social Justice and Anti-oppression

The identities I hold (White, cisgender, able-bodied male) mean that I experience privilege in a world socialized towards these identities. I am committed, both in my personal life and role as a counselor, to engage in social justice and anti-oppression work. In our counseling together, I will work to understand the systems and context present in your life so as to understand marginalization you may experience and support you in your right to be fully you. In understanding your world, I won’t ask you to educate me; instead, I will do my own work and bring curiosity to your experiences. This commitment also means that I will bring identities into our work to ensure that the ones we hold don’t interrupt your healing work. I am an LGBTQ and trans-affirming counselor, and I continue to work on my White identity development. (Here are some recommended resources for other White people.)

“Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with the one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.”

— Maya Angelou