Meet Kevin
I've never had an easy day. That's not a complaint. It's my qualification.
I was born with cerebral palsy. Which means I have spent my whole life doing, on purpose and with effort, the things most people do without thinking about them. It also means I learned early that the world doesn't particularly care how hard something is for you. It only asks whether you're going to do it.
So when you tell me you're exhausted from holding it together, I am not going to be surprised, and I am not going to be impressed.
I'm going to ask you what it's costing you.
Thirty years of this
I'm a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor and a Licensed Independent Chemical Dependency Counselor. Dual licensed, which means when the anxiety and the drinking have grown into each other, you don't have to explain yourself twice to two different people.
I've worked with adolescents, executives, first responders, couples, families, and a lot of people who arrived certain that they were the exception, that their thing was too strange or too shameful or too far gone.
None of them were.
What I actually do
I use EMDR, CBT, ACT, and somatic work. Those are tools, and they matter, but they're not the reason you'd hire me.
The reason is the Clear Mind Framework. Your mind is a house. You've been living on the main floor your whole life, making decisions in a control room that's been quietly taking orders from a basement you've never been down to look at.
I'll take you down there. That's the work.
What I believe
You are not broken.
You learned, a long time ago, under conditions you didn't choose, that a certain way of moving through the world would keep you safe. It did. It worked. That's why you're still here.
It's also why you're exhausted.
The thing that saved you at nine is the thing that's costing you at forty-nine, and nobody ever told you that you were allowed to put it down.
Outside the room
I've been married to Christine for a long time. We have seven grown children and two grandchildren. My mother, Mary, is the reason I do any of this, and if she could, she'd tell you I was stubborn long before I was licensed.
I'm a man of faith. I pray every day. I will never bring that into your session unless you want it there, and if you don't, it changes nothing about how I work with you.
What working with me is actually like
I'm going to ask you about the worst parts of your life. Fairly early.
Not to be dramatic. Because that's where the fire is, and I'm not going to spend a year circling it with you while you narrate your week.
You'll know it's coming. I'll ask permission first. And you can say no, and it will not be a problem, and I will not think less of you. But I am going to ask, because nobody has, and because the thing you've never said out loud is running your inner life.
Here's what I won't do
- I won't nod. There's a kind of therapy that is essentially a very expensive person agreeing with you, and if that's what you're after, there are people who do it well and I am not one of them.
- I won't be impressed by your competence. You've had enough of that. It's part of the trap.
- I won't take you into the basement before you're ready to be down there. I will always ask your permission before we unpack things you've been carrying for years. We build the Calm Observer first. That is the part of you that can look at the worst thing that ever happened to you without being pulled under by it. It gets built before we go anywhere near the stairs, and it is the reason this is survivable.
What you will get
A map. That's the honest answer.
You'll leave understanding the architecture of your own reactions. Why the thing that keeps happening keeps happening. Which of the three legs in your basement is carrying the weight, and what it's been costing you to keep it standing.
Most people arrive believing they have a problem. They leave understanding they have a house, that it's been standing a long time, and that for the first time they can see the whole structure at once.
See the Clear Mind Framework →
And here is what I need from you
- You must show up. Not emotionally. Literally. Same time, every week, on the days when you'd rather not, especially those days.
- You must be willing to be wrong about yourself. That's the hard one for people who are good at things.
- You must do something between sessions. This is not a place you come to feel understood for fifty minutes and then return to your life unchanged. Open the door. Do the work. Both halves. The second one is yours.