Men's therapy & counseling in Seattle
For men who feel overwhelmed, disconnected, stuck, or ashamed—whether you're navigating your first real relationship in your 20s or rebuilding in your 40s after a divorce or a collapse.
Practice details
You're carrying more than you let on
The men who end up here are usually in one of a few places. Some are in their 20s and can't explain why nothing feels right when it's supposed to be all ahead of them. Others have built what they were supposed to build and found it empty. A few are starting over after everything fell apart.
Most of them look fine from the outside. What they describe on the inside is different: overwhelmed, tired, angry at how fast the reaction comes — or how completely it shuts down. Lonely in ways that are hard to explain to anyone who only sees the surface.
If any of that is close to home, nothing has to be "falling apart" for this to be real.
What brings men to therapy and counseling
The emotional stuff — anger, depression, anxiety in men:
- They're snapping at their partner, kids, or coworkers
- They feel numb or quiet on the inside
- They can't enjoy anything anymore
- They feel ashamed of their reactions
- They don't know how to talk about feelings
The identity, transition, and survival stuff:
- They're stuck between who they were told to be and who they actually are
- They're a gay, bi, or queer man trying to locate some authentic version of masculinity when none of the available scripts ever fit
- Successful on paper but miserable in their life
- A breakup, divorce, or loss that broke something open
- Childhood trauma they've never talked about
- They've been holding it together for so long they forgot what "not holding it together" even means
Men are taught to be strong, handle it, keep it together, not burden anyone. Those rules worked—until they didn't.
What men I work with notice changing
The rules you absorbed about being a man don't get rewritten in therapy. You'll still know them. You'll still feel the pull of them. What changes is how much they're the only available script, and how much of your daily life is spent enforcing them on yourself.
Most of the men I work with notice it first in the small places. A conflict where they didn't immediately go quiet, or didn't immediately go sharp. Being actually present with their kid instead of three sentences ahead, managing. Or a morning that starts without the scan — without the inventory of who they might be letting down today. The thing they used to be able to feel only as irritation arrives, one afternoon, as sadness, and they recognize what it is.
None of this looks like a different person. It looks like the same person, carrying less.
Anger is the place this work most often surprises people. Most men I see don't have an anger problem in the sense they think they do. They have a no-room-for-anything-else problem; anger is what's allowed through, so it's what shows up. When the other channels open back up, the anger usually doesn't go away — it just stops being the only thing speaking. That's a different result from being told to manage it.
What men I see are usually looking for
Most of the men who come in haven't been avoiding therapy out of disbelief. They've been avoiding it because the version they've heard about — the version where you sit and narrate feelings in a vocabulary you don't have, while someone nods — isn't what they're looking for. What they tend to want is more concrete: clarity, steadiness, honesty. Someone who gets how overwhelming it can feel, doesn't judge, and helps them understand what's actually going on inside.
How men's counseling works in my practice
Existential–Phenomenological Therapy — We talk about your actual lived experience, not labels. We explore what's happening in your body, emotions, and relationships—not just what you think about it.
Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) — For men stuck between who they think they should be and who they actually are. ACT builds psychological flexibility: the ability to feel difficult emotions without being controlled by them, and to act from your values instead of your defenses.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) — For men carrying shame, trauma, or stuck emotional patterns. EMDR helps your brain process what's been overwhelming without having to narrate every detail.
Brainspotting — For men who struggle to "talk about it" or feel everything "just shuts off." Brainspotting accesses trauma stored beneath words. Learn more about Brainspotting →
Flash Technique — A gentle method for reducing emotional intensity. Effective for men who fear being flooded or overwhelmed by feelings.
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (when appropriate) — For men approved by a medical prescriber, KAP can help access emotions that feel walled off. Learn about KA-EMDR for stuck trauma or traditional KAP for deeper work.
Relational Trauma Work — We build trust slowly. You don't need to open up all at once. We work moment-by-moment with anger, shame, shutdown, and the patterns that keep you isolated.
What it feels like to work together
The pace is slower than most men expect, which sometimes lands as a relief and sometimes lands as friction. Some of you will be ready to get to it and want to move faster than I'll move; that's worth saying out loud when it happens, and we'll talk about why. The slowness isn't precious. It's that the parts of you that have been holding everything together for years didn't learn to do that overnight, and they don't unlearn it because someone in a room asks them to.
You can show up angry, shut down, confused, or numb. We start where you actually are, not where the script says you should be. If you can't find words, we work with what your body and your reactions are telling us until words show up. They usually do.
I'm a gay therapist for men in Seattle. Nothing you bring about desire, sexuality, shame, or the fear that being fully yourself will cost you belonging is going to unsettle me. That lived experience shapes how I work with any man for whom being himself hasn't been simple — queer or straight, whether it's about sexuality, masculinity, or just the basic human struggle of feeling fundamentally misunderstood. I also offer specialized LGBTQ+ affirming therapy.
What men's therapy can help you do
Through this work, men often begin to:
- Understand your emotions instead of fearing them
- Regulate anger without suppressing everything else
- Stay present in conflict
- Say what you're actually feeling
- Feel closer to your partner and kids
- Access the full range of emotions
- Soften shame and develop self-compassion
- Know who you are underneath the performance
- Ask for help without feeling weak
If you're in your 20s or early 30s
You don't need to wait until you've "really fucked up your life" to deserve help.
Younger men usually arrive mid-pattern rather than after the wreckage: repeating something they watched growing up, a first serious relationship surfacing everything they'd avoided, a coming-out their family didn't survive, or the discovery that smart, capable, and functional can coexist with completely numb inside.
The patterns you came in carrying aren't done forming yet. That's actually the reason to do this work now rather than waiting fifteen years and trying to undo more of them.
The work is the same whether you're 25 or 55: understanding what happened, feeling what you've been avoiding, and building a life that actually feels like yours.
What begins to shift
Often the people around you register it before you do. Your partner says you're easier to be around lately, and you didn't notice anything had changed. Your kid asks something they wouldn't usually ask, or a coworker stops walking carefully around you. The reaction that used to take a whole day to come down from takes an hour, then ten minutes, then doesn't fully land in the first place.
Internally what eases is harder to describe. The closest most men get to naming it is some version of: there's more room in here. The pressure that was constant isn't constant anymore. Things still happen. Hard things still hit hard. But you're not bracing against your own life as the default state.
Common Questions
Do I have to talk about feelings the whole time?
No. We might talk about situations, relationships, decisions, or patterns—and feelings show up naturally in that context. You don't need to perform emotional fluency. We build that capacity together over time, at a pace that doesn't feel forced.
What if I don't know how to put this stuff into words?
Many men come in not knowing how to name what they're feeling—just that something's wrong. We work with what's happening in your body, your reactions, your relationships. The words come later.
How long does therapy take?
It depends on what you're working on. Some men come for a few months during a crisis or transition. Others stay longer to work through trauma, relationship patterns, or identity questions. We'll figure out together what makes sense for you.
What if I'm not sure this is "bad enough" to need therapy?
If something in your life isn't working—if you're overwhelmed, reactive, shut down, or just tired of pushing through everything—that's enough. You don't need a diagnosis or a crisis for this to be worth doing.
Will you tell me I'm doing everything wrong?
No. This isn't about judgment or lectures. It's about understanding what's actually happening inside you and building new options. I'm direct, but I'm not here to make you feel worse about yourself.
What if I've tried therapy before and it didn't work?
A lot of men have. Maybe it felt too slow, too vague, or too focused on talking without anything changing. This work is different—we use EMDR, Brainspotting, and somatic approaches that don't require you to narrate your entire history. If previous therapy didn't land, we can talk about why and try something different.
I saw you're a gay therapist. What's it like working with straight men?
A big part of my practice is straight men. Sessions are direct, grounded, and practical—we talk about anger, relationships, work stress, sex, whatever's actually on the table. Your concerns get taken seriously, not filtered through someone else's framework.
Do you do men's group therapy?
No. I only do individual therapy—1:1 sessions, not groups. Men's group therapy in Seattle is offered through several practices and organizations (Mankind Project I-Groups, various therapy-run process groups); a search for "men's group therapy seattle" will surface current options. Group work and 1:1 therapy do different things—some men benefit from both.
I keep snapping at my wife/kids—can therapy help me stop?
Yes. Anger that's leaking onto the people you love is one of the most common reasons men come in. The work isn't about clamping down on the reaction—it's about understanding what's underneath. Most men who snap aren't just angry; they're overwhelmed, exhausted, or carrying old material that's never been processed. When we work with the root, the reactions get smaller. We also build practical skills for the moments you can feel it building.
I feel numb or nothing inside—is that depression?
Maybe—but probably not the way you're thinking. Depression in men often doesn't look like sadness. It can look like numbness, flatness, going through the motions, finding nothing enjoyable anymore, or staying just busy enough to not have to feel anything. Sometimes there's a clinical depression underneath; sometimes it's the shutdown pattern that comes from years of suppressing emotion. We figure out which is which, and the work is different for each.
Do you work with men dealing with trauma?
Yes—and many of the men I see don't initially call it trauma. They come in for anger, for relationship problems, for not being able to sleep, for feeling stuck. Underneath, there's often unprocessed material: childhood material, a divorce, a death, an injury, things that happened in adolescence and got pushed down. I'm EMDRIA Certified in EMDR and trained in Brainspotting and Flash Technique—these are the methods I use when trauma is part of what we're working with.
How I think about this work → Approach
I'm not taking new clients right now. If you're searching, the availability page lists good places to start →