(he/him)
New to Grow
I'm Jason Fairweather, a Licensed Professional Counselor, Clinical Substance Abuse Counselor, Independent Clinical Supervisor, and Wisconsin board-approved LPC supervisor. I work with adults and teens navigating trauma, anxiety, shame, guilt, stress, substance use concerns, relationship struggles, and painful patterns that feel hard to break. My background includes more than 20 years of experience across military service, civil service, forensic work, crisis response, clinical supervision, and psychotherapy. That range of experience has shaped the way I sit with people: steady, direct, compassionate, and realistic. My approach is trauma-informed, strengths-based, and body-informed. That means I pay close attention to the connection between the brain, body, emotions, beliefs, relationships, and nervous system. I draw from Brainspotting, EMDR, Cognitive Processing Therapy, Polyvagal-informed therapy, psychodynamic therapy, DBT, CBT, and other approaches depending on each client's needs and goals. If you're ever in a session with me, you will likely hear me refer to "the condition of being human." That can mean many things. But most often it refers to how many of us carry experiences that fractured something — and how we often move forward in pieces. Many of us carry survival responses that once helped us get through difficult times but now interfere with peace, connection, confidence, and daily life. My goal is to help clients reduce shame and self-blame, understand and work through trauma responses, process what feels unresolved, and build healthier ways of relating to themselves, others, and the demands of daily life. That work looks different for everyone, but the intention is always the same: meaningful change at a pace that feels safe. Therapy with me is collaborative, grounded, and free of judgment.
In our first session, the main goal is to understand what brings you to therapy, what you are hoping will change, and what kind of support will feel most useful for you. I try to make the first session feel grounded, conversational, and human. Often, these first sessions can feel like interrogations because of the questions. I try to avoid that. Let's talk instead. You're neither a puzzle nor a diagnosis. We will start with where you are now, what has been difficult, and what you would like life to look like if therapy is helpful. We will talk about your current concerns, symptoms, stressors, relationships, coping patterns, strengths, and goals. Depending on what brings you in, I may ask about anxiety, mood, trauma history, substance use, sleep, safety, shame, guilt, anger, avoidance, major life changes, or experiences that still feel unresolved. You do not have to share every painful detail right away. If trauma is part of your story, you can say as much or as little about it as you like. Good trauma therapy never looks like recounting every detail. Respect for your nervous system and your boundaries matters from the very first conversation. Many clients come to therapy after spending a long time trying to push through, stay busy, take care of everyone else, or manage things privately. Some people know exactly what happened and why it still hurts. Others only know that they feel stuck, numb, overwhelmed, reactive, ashamed, anxious, or disconnected from themselves. In the first session, we begin making sense of that without blame. I might ask about what has helped before, what has not helped, and what you already know about yourself. Therapy should build on your strengths, not just your symptoms. Even if things feel messy or overwhelming, you have already developed ways to survive, adapt, and keep going. Part of our work is understanding which coping strategies are still serving you and which ones may now be keeping you stuck. My work is rooted in more than twenty years of clinical experience across corrections, community mental health, crisis intervention, and trauma care. I have spent years working with people navigating addiction, justice involvement, trauma histories, and complex life circumstances — populations that are often underserved and frequently misunderstood. I hold advanced credentials in clinical counseling and substance use treatment, provide clinical supervision to graduate-level therapists, and currently serve in a leadership role at a county health and human services agency. My private practice, Walk of Life Counseling, focuses on trauma therapy and accessible telehealth care. That combination of institutional experience and private practice work shapes how I see people; not as diagnoses to be managed, but as individuals with histories that make sense. Given that background, we might explore how your brain, body, emotions, beliefs, relationships, and nervous system interact. Sometimes anxiety is not just anxiety. Sometimes shutdown, avoidance, anger, people-pleasing, guilt, or self-criticism are survival patterns that developed for understandable reasons. We will work to understand those patterns while also identifying practical ways to begin changing them. The first session is also a chance for you to get a feel for me. You can ask questions about how I work, what therapy may look like, what approaches I use, and whether I seem like a good fit for you. I draw from several evidence-based approaches depending on each client's needs, goals, and readiness. Brainspotting and EMDR are body-based trauma therapies that work with the nervous system to help process stuck or unresolved experiences, often without requiring you to talk through every detail of what happened. Cognitive Processing Therapy helps identify how trauma has shaped the beliefs you hold about yourself, others, and the world, and works to update those beliefs in ways that are more accurate and less painful. Polyvagal-informed therapy focuses on understanding how your nervous system responds to stress and threat, and building your capacity to feel safe enough to heal. I also draw from DBT for emotion regulation and distress tolerance, CBT for patterns of thought and behavior, and psychodynamic approaches when understanding early relational patterns is part of the work. These are not competing methods. They are different tools, and the right combination depends entirely on you. The first session is not the place for deep trauma processing. Before doing that kind of work, I want to understand your history, current stability, supports, goals, and what helps you stay grounded. For some clients, the early work involves nervous system regulation, coping skills, safety planning, or reducing overwhelm. For others, we may begin identifying trauma-related beliefs, shame patterns, avoidance cycles, or relationship patterns that keep repeating. By the end of our first session, my hope is that you leave feeling clearer. Not necessarily resolved, but clearer. We will talk about what stood out to me, what I think may be most useful to focus on, and what therapy might look like going forward. If it makes sense, we will begin sketching out some initial goals and discuss a realistic pace. You will have a sense of what approach or approaches might fit your situation, and why. You will also know what I am thinking rather than leaving you to wonder. Sometimes the next step is structured trauma work. Sometimes it is stabilization, nervous system support, or emotional regulation. Sometimes it is beginning to understand the deeper roots of shame, guilt, anxiety, or the ways you have learned to protect yourself. Whatever that next step is, we will identify it together. You do not need to have everything figured out before we meet. You do not need to know the right thing to say. You do not need to tell your whole story all at once. You only need to show up as honestly as you can. We will start where you are and build from there.
One of the things I bring to therapy that most clinicians simply cannot is range. My background spans military service as an infantryman and close-quarters battle instructor, nearly two decades in corrections and forensic work, crisis intervention, clinical supervision, international practice, and trauma-focused psychotherapy. That is not a credential list; it is a life shaped by sitting with people in some of the most difficult, high-stakes, and underserved circumstances that exist. That experience changes how you show up in a room. It makes you harder to rattle, more realistic about what people actually face, and less likely to pathologize the ways people have learned to survive. I have worked with people who were court-ordered and did not want to be there. People carrying moral injury, shame, and histories they had never told anyone. People who had been failed by systems, dismissed by clinicians, or told their experiences were not serious enough to warrant real help. That background shapes how I approach every client, with steadiness, directness, and a deep respect for the protective reasons people develop the patterns they do. Clinically, my greatest strength is the ability to work across the full depth of trauma treatment. I am trained and experienced in Brainspotting, EMDR, Cognitive Processing Therapy, Polyvagal-informed therapy, Clinical Hypnosis, and a range of other evidence-based approaches. In practice, that means I am not limited to one tool. When one approach is not the right fit for a particular client or moment in treatment, I can adjust. Therapy with me is tailored, not templated. I also bring a genuine understanding of the nervous system and how trauma lives in the body, not just in memory or thought. Many people have spent years in therapy that helped them understand their experiences intellectually without ever shifting how those experiences feel. I work at both levels — the cognitive and the somatic — because lasting change usually requires both. Another strength is my work with populations that are often harder to reach or less well-served. I have extensive experience with justice-involved individuals, people navigating substance use, clients from immigrant and bicultural backgrounds, veterans, and people in rural communities with limited access to specialized care. I understand the systemic pressures, cultural dynamics, and practical barriers that shape those clients' lives, and I know how to provide clinically sound care without being culturally tone-deaf or disconnected from reality. Finally, I am a clinical supervisor, a doctoral candidate, and a researcher. That means the work I do in therapy is grounded not just in experience but in ongoing engagement with the science of how people heal. I am not coasting on what I learned ten years ago. I am actively working at the edges of the field, developing new assessment tools, training other clinicians, and staying close to the research on trauma, avoidance, and recovery. What all of that adds up to, I hope, is a therapist who is genuinely hard to surprise, deeply committed to doing this work well, and capable of meeting clients wherever they actually are, not wherever it would be convenient for them to be.
I work best with clients who feel stuck. Not because they lack insight or effort, but because understanding something has not been enough to change how it feels. Many of the people I work with have spent years trying to push through, reason their way out of pain, or hold everything together for everyone else. They are often self-aware, capable, and exhausted. They may struggle with trauma, anxiety, shame, guilt, moral injury, grief, relationship wounds, performance pressure, or a persistent sense that something inside them is still unresolved. My ideal client does not need to arrive with a clear diagnosis or a polished explanation of what went wrong. They may only know that their nervous system feels perpetually on edge, that old patterns keep surfacing in their relationships, work, or sense of self, or that something from the past still carries more weight than it should. What matters most is a willingness to look honestly at what is happening and a readiness to do something different. Not perfectly, and not all at once. But genuinely. I am especially well-suited to work with people who want therapy to go deeper than coping skills and surface-level strategies, while staying grounded, practical, and focused on real life. People who are tired of managing symptoms and ready to understand what is actually driving them. People who want to carry less shame, trust themselves more, and move forward with steadiness rather than just survival. If that sounds like where you are, we are probably a good fit.
Other specialties
I identify as
Brainspotting
Brainspotting is a brain-body approach to processing trauma, shame, guilt, anxiety, emotional overwhelm, and performance-related blocks. Many people understand what happened to them intellectually but still feel stuck — in their bodies, their nervous systems, or their emotional reactions. Brainspotting works beneath the level of conversation to help access and process those deeper stuck points. In practice, we start by building safety and stabilization before doing any deeper work. During processing sessions, I help you identify what you want to work on, notice where you feel it in your body, and use focused eye positions to support the brain's natural capacity to heal. You do not have to describe every detail of what happened. For many people carrying trauma, shame, grief, or performance anxiety, that is exactly what makes this work feel manageable. Brainspotting tends to be especially useful for people who feel stuck despite years of insight, talk therapy, or effort. The goal is not to force anything. It is to help your brain and body finish processing what they were not able to finish before — so you can feel more present, less reactive, and more able to move forward.
EMDR
EMDR is a structured, research-supported approach to processing traumatic memories, distressing experiences, shame, guilt, anxiety, panic, grief, and the negative beliefs those experiences leave behind. Sometimes people know logically that something is over, but their bodies and emotions still react as if the threat, failure, rejection, or danger is happening right now. EMDR is designed to help the brain and nervous system finish processing what got stuck, so those experiences become less emotionally charged and less disruptive in daily life. Before beginning any deeper work, I focus on preparation, stability, and trust. You will understand the process, feel grounded, and have tools for managing distress before we move into trauma processing. EMDR does not require you to describe every detail of what happened. We identify what feels stuck — a memory, a belief, an emotion, a body response — and use bilateral stimulation to support the brain's natural capacity to process and integrate difficult experiences. EMDR is often a good fit for people navigating PTSD, anxiety, shame, guilt, moral injury, relationship trauma, or painful beliefs like I'm not safe, it was my fault, I'm not good enough, or I should have done more. I frequently integrate EMDR with Brainspotting, CPT, and Polyvagal-informed work depending on what each client needs. The goal is not to erase the past. It is to help you relate to painful experiences differently — with less reactivity, more clarity, and a steadier sense of yourself.
Cognitive Processing (CPT)
Cognitive Processing Therapy is a structured, evidence-based approach to working through the beliefs trauma leaves behind. After difficult experiences, people often carry painful conclusions about themselves, others, or the world; for example, it was my fault, I should have done more, I can't trust anyone, I'm permanently damaged. Those beliefs feel true. CPT gives you a clear, grounded way to examine where they came from, whether they are accurate, and how to begin relating to yourself and your experience with more fairness and less pain. The work focuses on what CPT calls stuck points — the places where meaning froze around the trauma. These often cluster around themes of safety, trust, control, self-esteem, intimacy, responsibility, and blame. Together we slow down the automatic conclusions your mind attached to what happened and look at them carefully, not to minimize what you went through or pressure you to move on, but to evaluate whether those beliefs reflect the full picture or whether trauma shaped them in ways that are still costing you. CPT is often a strong fit for people navigating PTSD, moral injury, guilt, shame, anxiety, depression, avoidance, or a persistent sense that what happened was somehow their fault. I approach this work with directness and respect, including respect for why those beliefs developed in the first place. They made sense once. The goal is simply to loosen their grip on your life now and help you reclaim a clearer, less self-blaming understanding of yourself and what you survived.
Polyvagal Therapy
Polyvagal-informed therapy starts with a simple but often relieving idea: the reactions you may have blamed yourself for are not character flaws. Shutting down, going numb, becoming anxious or defensive, people-pleasing, avoiding conflict, feeling constantly on edge...these are not signs that something is wrong with you. They are your nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do to keep you safe. Understanding that changes things. In practice, this work involves learning to recognize the difference between states of safety, activation, and shutdown, and in understanding what moves you between them. We look at how trauma can keep the nervous system scanning for threat long after the danger has passed, and how certain relationships, environments, memories, or responsibilities can pull old survival responses back to the surface. The goal is not to pathologize your reactions but to help you understand what your body is trying to do, and gradually build more choice in how you respond. I integrate Polyvagal-informed work throughout therapy, not just as a standalone approach, because before deeper trauma processing, it often forms the foundation of neurosomatic regulation; that is, helping you stay grounded, regulate distress, and work within a range that feels manageable rather than overwhelming. Over time, clients develop the ability to recognize their patterns earlier, return to steadiness more reliably, and carry less shame about the ways they have learned to survive. Healing does not come from forcing yourself through distress. It comes from understanding your protective responses, building a stronger internal sense of safety, and moving gradually toward connection, confidence, and meaningful change.
Psychodynamic
The methods described here represent the approaches I use most often, but they do not capture everything. I am trained in a range of therapeutic models and do not believe therapy should be one-size-fits-all. Each person brings a different history, a different nervous system, different strengths, and a different reason for seeking help. Because of that, I tailor therapy to the person in front of me rather than fitting every client into the same model. In practice, sessions may include trauma reprocessing, nervous system regulation, exploring shame and self-blame, understanding relationship patterns, building coping skills, identifying trauma-related beliefs, or taking concrete steps toward the life you want. Some clients need deeper trauma work. Some need stabilization and practical tools first. Some need help understanding why old patterns keep repeating. Many need a thoughtful combination of all of these, shifting as the work evolves. What stays consistent is the orientation. Therapy with me is trauma-informed, strengths-based, and body-informed. I pay close attention to the connection between your brain, body, emotions, beliefs, relationships, and survival responses, and I work to help you understand those connections without judgment. The goal is to help you feel less controlled by trauma, anxiety, guilt, shame, or overwhelm, and more able to move forward with clarity, steadiness, and self-trust. Therapy with me is steady, collaborative, and focused on meaningful change at a pace that respects where you are.