Quick clarification! I have an MS degree in counseling and a Ph.D. in Education with a focus in Counselor Education - what this means is that I do not provide "PhD-level therapy" but rather work as a counselor based on my master's degree!

My name is Andrew Wood! I'm glad you found me and are interested in potentially working together. I've been working in the mental health fields for over 15 years and it's a big passion of mine. I started as a counselor working with folks who had little or no insurance and that forced me to really focus on the intersection of mental health, class, and just the general issues of life. I've spent a lot of time as a counselor educator and researcher as well, teaching people how to be counselors and seeing how we can do it better.

My style has evolved over the years, starting with an existential approach to investigate meaning, then to utilizing mindfulness-based cognitive therapy to understand rumination and incorporate mindfulness practices into counseling. Then over time I became more attracted to narrative approaches to counseling to better understand the story we tell ourselves and how that story can be changed. Finally, liberation psychology has been a big influence on how we position the role of society, the state, capitalism, and any other concentration of power that can create oppressive forces and what folks can do about it. All in all, it boils down to understanding that you're a human facing issues both in and outside your control and I'm here to help you feel a little more adept at facing that and creating change.

Life has a way of getting us down as it’s not really designed in its current form to boost people up. This can affect some people more than others due to factors like systemic oppression, valuing certain types of bodies or abilities more than others, or just a general thirst for capital and power that others try to extract from us. As a mental health counselor, I am very much interested in those areas that we have been told to feel ashamed about, the areas wherein we are scared to ask for help. Those feelings of fear and anxiety, guilt and depression, traumatizing experiences, anger, or anything else we’ve been largely conditioned to “suck up” or ignore.  I’m here to talk about those things, to air out those wounds, and help folks come to a better sense of who they are. Along the way we can explore some evidenced-based methods to cope with life and our own stories that get repeated over and over. I’m very interested in helping you to come to a better sense of self-acceptance – it’s tough and we’re all on the journey together. But as an outside perspective, someone to take off some of the load at least momentarily, I’m eager to work with you and see how we can navigate this capitalist hellscape collaboratively, and maybe get some laughs in along the way.