MATTHEW SORG, LMHC

Trauma Therapist | Seattle, Washington

Therapy that reconnects what trauma has fractured

IF YOU'VE FOUND YOUR WAY HERE

You're probably looking for something different from what you've tried before.

Maybe you've done therapy that helped you understand your trauma intellectually—but your body still reacts in ways you can't control. Maybe you're tired of surface-level interventions that don't touch the deeper patterns. Maybe you sense that healing requires someone who can work with both the immediate felt sense of a moment and the larger systems shaping it.

You want a therapist who takes you seriously. Who won't pathologize your complexity or try to reduce you to a diagnosis. Who can hold both philosophical depth and clinical precision.

You're in the right place.

WHO I AM

I'm a gay therapist practicing in Seattle, specializing in trauma, EMDR, Brainspotting, and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. I work with adults—especially men and LGBTQ+ individuals—who want more than symptom management. People who sense their healing requires attention to both their inner world and the larger patterns that shape it.

My work centers on how trauma, shame, and disconnection shape your relationship to yourself and others—and how awareness, embodiment, and meaning-making create pathways toward healing.

That gay-therapist part shapes my work in ways both obvious and subtle: how I understand shame, embodiment, the particular weight of performing normalcy, the long aftermath of living edited. It also means I've done my own excavation around identity, desire, and belonging. For queer clients especially, this matters. But it informs how I sit with anyone whose sense of self has required negotiation.

Therapy with me isn't about "fixing" what's broken. It's about reconnecting with what's already alive within you.

WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO WORK WITH ME

The room feels unhurried. There's space for silence. For not knowing. For the thing you can't quite name yet but sense is important.

You can show up fragmented, shut down, or flooded—and we slow down together. We don't push past what your system can hold. We work at the pace of your nervous system, not a treatment protocol.

In the room with me, you can expect: steadiness—even when things get intense. I don't rush. I don't fill silence. I track what's happening between us without making it weird. If you shut down, we slow down together.

Clients describe our work as:

  • Grounding

  • Emotionally safe

  • Clear

  • Slow enough to stay regulated

  • Deep enough to create real change

  • Validating without coddling

  • Challenging without pushing

  • Steady

  • Human

HOW I THINK AND WORK

I can attune closely to the felt sense of a single moment—a freeze response, a flash of shame, a protective shutdown—while simultaneously tracking the larger systems shaping it:

  • Attachment history

  • Nervous system patterns

  • Identity formation

  • Cultural and relational context

  • Meaning-making

  • Trauma and developmental experiences

I hold both the immediate and the systemic, the body and the mind, the micro and the macro.

Depth and structure. Feeling and thinking. Presence and pattern.

This is integration—and it's the core of how I work with trauma.

HOW I CAME TO THIS WORK

My path into therapy reflects the integration I now bring to clinical practice.

I began at Reed College studying literature and film through psychoanalysis, gender studies, and queer theory—exploring fragmentation, performance, and the crisis of authentic selfhood—alongside continental philosophy, especially phenomenology.

After Reed, I spent over a decade in education technology and scholarly publishing, working at companies like ProQuest and Scribd in increasingly senior roles focused on information architecture and product development. I led teams designing systems to help researchers and students navigate overwhelming amounts of complex information—essentially, organizing chaos into something navigable and meaningful. Looking back, those years were unwitting preparation for trauma therapy: tracking multiple layers of complexity simultaneously, finding patterns in fragmentation, holding both granular detail and systemic context, and helping people translate overwhelm into coherence.

When I returned to graduate school for my Master's in Existential-Phenomenological Psychology at Seattle University, everything clicked into place. Phenomenology gave me a language for the interior world—the textures of moments, emotions, and embodied experience.

During and after graduate school, I provided care at community agencies like Valley Cities Behavioral Health and Crisis Connections—working with adults facing severe mental illness, complex trauma, addiction, housing instability, and systemic barriers. Holding space in those intense settings—managing high caseloads, coordinating care across systems, and sitting with people in their most vulnerable moments—deepened my respect for resilience and grounded my theoretical training in the lived realities of suffering.

This combination is now at the heart of my therapy practice. I also teach courses in research writing, counseling theory, and crisis intervention at Seattle University, where I bring these same integrative principles to training the next generation of clinicians.

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.

— Gwendolyn Brooks, "Paul Robeson"

WHO I WORK WITH

My clients are often thoughtful, intuitive, and intellectually oriented—people who want more than symptom management. People who sense their healing requires attention to both their inner world and the larger patterns that shape it.

I work with:

  • Adults navigating trauma, PTSD, or complex grief—whether it happened last year or in childhood

  • Men exploring identity, emotional literacy, and authentic connection—from first relationships in their 20s to rebuilding in their 40s and beyond

  • Young adults (20s-early 30s) navigating identity, meaning, and life transitions after trauma or family rupture

  • LGBTQ+ individuals and couples seeking attuned, embodied, affirming care—at any stage of the coming-out process or identity integration

  • People interested in depth work that integrates philosophy, trauma therapy, and neuroscience

  • Other therapists and helping professionals doing their own inner work

  • Clients pursuing trauma intensives or ketamine-assisted psychotherapy

Many of the people I work with are systems-thinkers themselves—academics, educators, writers, artists, engineers, designers—people who value both emotional attunement and big-picture insight.

MY SPECIALTIES

MY PHILOSOPHY

Healing happens where presence and meaning converge.

The goal isn't to erase the past but to complete what it left unfinished—so the past can become past, no longer intruding on the present, and you can live with awareness, agency, and choice.

Good therapy works on multiple levels at once:

  • The immediate felt sense of a moment

  • The patterns that repeat across moments

  • How the body stores trauma

  • The meanings you've learned to make

  • The relationships that shaped you

  • The cultural systems that influence you

Integration isn't about repair—it's about reconnection. Body and mind. Past and present. Self and relationship. Meaning and survival.

TRAINING & CREDENTIALS

This philosophy is grounded in ongoing training and clinical development:

Core Credentials:

  • Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC), Washington State

  • Master's in Existential-Phenomenological Psychology, Seattle University

  • Master's in Library and Information Science (MLIS)

  • Teaching Faculty, Seattle University Psychology Department

Trauma Modalities:

  • EMDR - EMDRIA Certified Therapist™

  • Ketamine Assisted EMDR Therapy™: Enhancing Trauma Treatment with Low Dose Ketamine

  • Brainspotting Phase 1 & 2

  • Flash Technique 1 & 2

  • Four Blinks

Psychedelic & Consciousness Work:

  • Essentials of Psychedelic Therapy (Fluence)

  • Journey Clinical Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy Training (didactic, therapeutic protocols, medical foundations, and experiential)

  • EMBARK Psychedelic-assisted Therapy for Major Depression

Relational, Somatic & Contextual Approaches:

  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) Intensive (PESI, with Steven C. Hayes)

  • EFCT Externship (ICEEFT)

  • Somatic Experiencing Beginning 1 (2025)

  • Hakomi Personhood Series: Quieting the Mind, Loving Presence

Crisis Intervention:

  • ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training)

If you're looking for therapy that is deep, attuned, and meaning-centered, I may be a good fit

Let's talk and see what feels right.

Schedule a Consultation