I am deeply honored that you are considering me as your counselor. I have experienced how difficult it is to choose a counselor and my hope is to make that choice as easy as possible for you. Despite my best efforts to give you the information you need on this page, the information that’s important for choosing a counselor is different for everyone. I have decided to focus on Austin-the-counselor on this page but, if you would like to ask me any questions about Austin-the-person or about counseling with me before making your decision, I would be happy to answer your questions. Since becoming a counselor, I have worked in a variety of community counseling settings. I have worked with clients from ages 3 through 80 and with individuals, couples, and families. With that breadth of experience, very little shocks or surprises me and I have gotten a pretty good sense of where the types of counseling that play to my strengths as a counselor overlap with the types of counseling that are helpful for my clients. This sense (along with learning about lots and lots of research into what helps people find and maintain mental health) has led to the following guiding principles that shape all the counseling I do: 1) The client is always in charge. People are complex and come with years of history that I can never know all of. I know a lot of things but you will always be the one who decides what you want to get out of counseling, how we work towards that goal, whether or not what we’re doing seems to be working, and when we’re done. I will support you in all of those decisions: I will give you information about different possibilities and what’s likely to work, I will help you understand how you feel about different options and possibilities, I will even tell you what I would advise doing but the final say is always yours. 2) Change and health happen through relationships. I could write a book about how I know this is true and would be happy to have the opportunity to convince you of it but for here I will focus on two implications that it has on counseling. The first is that the work we do in counseling will touch on how your relationships impact your health. No matter what you come in for, there are always relational implications of change and relational factors that contribute to whatever it is that you came to counseling to change. The second implication is that the relationship between you and me matters. Change can only happen in counseling because of that relationship. It’s my responsibility to make our relationship a place where you feel heard and accepted and that is always my first priority because nothing else we do really works without it. 3) Counseling should be efficient. Counseling has significant costs in time and money. I think the benefits far outweigh the costs but if I can give you the benefits while helping you save on the costs then I want to do that. Also, people come to counseling because they are experiencing pain. I want to end that pain as quickly as possible. So I choose approaches to counseling that generally work more quickly. That being said, I don’t want to you to feel better for three to six months and then need counseling again because we only worked on symptom relief and didn’t bring healing to the underlying causes. That doesn’t seem very efficient to me. So my goal is to provide as long-lasting and complete help as possible in as little time as possible.
What can clients expect to take away from sessions with you?
Take-aways from sessions vary a lot depending on what brings you to counseling and where we are in the process. The thing that shouldn't change is that you will come away from session feeling understood and encouraged.
What treatment methods and tools do you utilize?
In addition to traditional talk therapy, I primarily use Emotionally Focused Therapy (https://iceeft.com/what-is-eft/) and EMDR (https://www.emdria.org/about-emdr-therapy/).
Explain to clients what areas you feel are your biggest strengths.
I believe that my biggest strength as a counselor is my ability to provide shelter during a storm. Living in Florida has shown me what a real storm is and whether our emotions and relationships feel like a light drizzle or a category 5 hurricane, it's nice to have a place to get out of the wind and rain, pause, get some warm food, and patch up our rain gear before heading back out. I can give my clients that experience for at least a little while each week.