ABOUT MATTHEW SORG, LMHC

Therapy that reconnects what trauma has fractured

I help adults make sense of what feels fragmented, overwhelming, or unspeakable.

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.

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

HOW I CAME TO THIS WORK

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

I began in literary studies at Reed College, immersed in modernist poetry and continental philosophy—especially phenomenology, the study of how experience shows up moment by moment. I earned an MLIS and spent over a decade in scholarly publishing and information architecture.

That work taught me to think in structures and connections: how people find meaning, how systems influence understanding, how overwhelming information can be organized 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.

This combination is now at the heart of my therapy practice.

We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.

— W.H. Auden

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.

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 PHILOSOPHY

Healing happens where presence and meaning converge.

The goal isn't to erase the past but to live fully within it—with awareness, agency, and the capacity to choose how you relate to your experience.

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 is not fixing what's broken. It's reconnecting what's been fragmented—body and mind, past and present, self and relationship, meaning and survival.

TRAINING & CREDENTIALS

  • Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC), Washington State

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

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

  • EMDR Trained (EMDRIA certification in progress)

  • Brainspotting, Phase 1 & 2

  • Flash Technique 1 & 2

  • Four Blinks

  • EMBARK

  • Hakomi Personhood Series: Quieting the Mind, Nonverbal Communication, Loving Presence

  • Teaching Faculty, Seattle University Psychology Department

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