About Me

I'm a human, with a brain and a nervous system. Just like you.

That means I'm susceptible to chronic pain. Just like you.

People have called me sensitive. People are right.

I am sensitive.

I'm a faithful family member and I'm a loving friend.

I'm, as you know, a therapist. I'm a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in New York.

I'm a White cisgender man.

I’m capitalizing the word White because, as Nell Irvin Painter puts it, leaving the w lowercase falsely situates Whiteness as neutral and normal. It's not neutral and normal.

I question myself and my cultural assumptions. And you are welcome to question me too.

I grew up in an Irish Catholic community in St. Paul, Minnesota. I spent my childhood gay and closeted and alone in the Catholic Church. For years I told myself that it wasn't traumatic because "it could have been worse." I was right, it could have been worse. But I was wrong. It was traumatic.

To get through my childhood, I had to hide.

I hid myself from others and I hid myself from myself. Years and years later, I would learn that chronic pain is caused by emotional repression and misattunement with oneself.

I had no idea. But now it’s clear, that childhood set me up.

Today, though, here I am.

Still queer as ever.

I'm trained in many therapeutic modalities including psychodynamic psychotherapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, trauma-informed therapy, attachment-based therapy, and EMDR.

My training makes me a good therapist, but my humanity makes me a great therapist.

I, like you, have emotions. Sometimes I feel angry, sometimes I feel scared, sometimes I feel restless, lonely, sad, unfulfilled, desperate, self-loathing.

I feel a lot.

But my feelings don’t scare me.

And your feelings don't scare me either. Bring them on. It's therapy. In our work together, I'll help you learn to tolerate who you really are and what you really feel. I’m gonna gently challenge you - and we’re gonna go deep. Because, yes, doing this emotional work is a key part of the treatment plan that'll resolve your chronic pain.

And, of course, over the years I've had: a childhood of chronic headaches, years of chronic back pain, decades of chronic hip pain, severe (like, severe) chronic irritable bowel syndrome...

I've had a lot of issues.

And I was one of those people who tried everything. I went through the medical system - doctors, medications, alternative doctors, herbs, cleanses, elimination diets, acupuncture, chiropractors, back stretches, sacroiliac joint exercises, supplements, unconventional supplements, very unconventional supplements, you know the drill. And nothing worked.

My chronic pain took me to a place of absolute desperation. 

You probably get it - because you've been there too.

But here's the thing, all those treatments were based on the wrong paradigm. Finally, I learned about this: using mind-body treatment to target these mind-body conditions, the pain's true etiology.

That changed everything.

Using mind-body work, I'm finally experiencing true, deep symptom recovery.

After all the symptoms I’ve dealt with, feeling well feels like a miracle.

Let me be the first to tell you, my recovery's going great.

And, if you’re open, if you give yourself over to this process, I’m telling you that your recovery will go great too.