Ex-professor, ex-monk, and ex-ex-pat with over 10 years of clinical experience licensed in both Washington (LMHC) and California (LPCC) but living in Sacramento where I provide mental health counseling, group psychotherapy, couples counseling, psychedelic integration, consultations, mindfulness coaching, and personalized intensive residential retreats or rehab. After 4 years of international experience, over 10 years of graduate school, and another 10 years teaching at SJSU in Psychology and Comparative Religious Studies, I have returned now to my original professional practice to work with individuals (13 years and older), with couples married, unmarried, or non-traditional; psychotherapy groups, work groups, and skill building groups -- anyone sincerely seeking help to achieve personal goals and to live a better life.

What can clients expect to take away from sessions with you?

First sessions are ideally a friendly and casual exploration of the issues or problems that you are seeking assistance with. Acknowledging the inevitable strangeness and riskiness that anyone works through just to get to that first session -- because it takes courage to trust a stranger, right? It takes courage to do self-work, to look inside; it takes courage to change. So my job is to listen to you, to attend, to pay attention, and maybe to inquire, wonder together, reflect on what I hear, summarize, and keep listening, reflecting, summarizing until you are convinced that I get you -- at least get enough to get to the next session, because I will also need to understand some broad contours of your background, your life, and the circumstances within which we will both be working, and that usually takes longer than just one session.

What treatment methods and tools do you utilize?

While I specialize in existential psychotherapy, personal meaning and motivation, and the integration of psycho-spiritual practice with clients' lived and felt sense of self, and with one's own worldview or personal theology, I use brief psychodynamic or solution-focused techniques along with CBT, DBT, ACT, hypno-behavioral therapy, gestalt, and some forms of art therapy to help my clients reach their goals.

Explain to clients what areas you feel are your biggest strengths.

Having lived and travelled around the world, I am comfortable with a wide variety of people and faith traditions, and want anyone in need to feel completely at ease and comfortable in my care and practice. Having been around a few blocks, you can count on my empathetic and honest dialogue within a broadly humanistic and person-centered framework.

About Jeff Danese