David (he/him/his) is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor based in our Waterloo office with experience working with people from diverse backgrounds and life challenges. In addition to individual and couples counseling with adults and adolescents dealing with a wide range of issues (from trauma & depression to life transitions and relationships), David has extensive experience as a counselor on a hospital mental health unit working with those who struggle with suicidal thoughts and attempts, with the impacts of long-term trauma and abuse experiences, with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, with self-harming behaviors, and with dual substance abuse and mental health struggles. He also has experience working with adults and older adolescents on the Autism Spectrum care for their mental health issues.
 

For David, therapy is a place and time where a person with struggles comes for non- judgmental and honest but empathetic care. It is also, ultimately a collaboration in which you are the driving force behind where you want therapy to take you. We work together to identify goals for our therapy and then a therapeutic plan to move towards those goals. This is a dynamic process of working on your issues, assessing progress, and adapting the approach where needed. When working with David, you can expect that there will be Importantly, the work done in therapy sessions needs to translate into positive outcomes outside of therapy.
 

David’s therapeutic approach is person-centered, strength-based, informed by interpersonal neuropsychology, non-touch somatic psychotherapies, Gestalt therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and mindfulness-based approaches. It focuses on how distress is experienced as thoughts, emotions, and physical experiences, and the interconnection between these. It also borrows heavily from the insights and techniques of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, (ACT), Motivational Interviewing, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). Foremost, it requires collaboration, respect for every person’s lived experience, thoughtful and informed efforts to move from where you came to therapy towards thriving, and compassionate care tempered by knowledge.