Jesse McIntosh (He/Him)

I've always loved helping adolescents through a stage of life that can be overwhelming, exciting, terrifying, and formative all at the same time. That love fueled my decade as a high school and middle school educator, and continues to inform my therapeutic interests, framework, and practice. My background in gender- and sexuality-affirming educational and therapeutic work is also often useful in helping adolescents through challenging development stages.

Carl Rogers and the person-centered tradition are my "home" as a therapist. My master's thesis in Counseling Psychology was on ways in which Rogers' psychotherapeutic theory overlaps with or nuances current claims within psychology, neuroscience, and the humanities about "affect theory." I identify as a person-centered therapist, and view Rogers' claims as being a helpful starting point for psychotherapeutic practice.

My training at Pacifica Graduate Institute, as well as my personal experience as a client of psychodynamic therapy for the last 15 years, informs my use of the psychodynamic framework with clients. I view the basic clams of the psychodynamic tradition--including claims about the unconscious, transference, attachment, and childhood experience-- to be essential principles for ethical and effective psychotherapeutic work.

The work of Aaron Beck and his followers in the CBT tradition is often caricatured as being impersonal or turning a blind eye to deeper issues of the psyche, but my reading of CBT sources suggests otherwise. Their insights about the causes of and solutions for issues of depression, anxiety, and addictive behavior can be extremely useful for certain clients' needs, and Schema Therapy--which I see myself as often utilizing--fuses these insights with psychodynamic theory in helpful ways.

I have a steadfast interest in and commitment to helping individuals escape from under the silent weight of depression. People suffering with depression often suffer a double injury: not simply depression's debilitating symptoms, but then having those symptoms be dismissed by others as a "choice" or "bad attitude," used as examples of personal failure or character defects, or metastasizing into sources of shame. I often combine schema therapy with person-centered care to help depressed clients.

I have a steadfast interest in and commitment to helping individuals escape from under the silent weight of depression. People suffering with depression often suffer a double injury: not simply depression's debilitating symptoms, but then having those symptoms be dismissed by others as a "choice" or "bad attitude," used as examples of personal failure or character defects, or metastasizing into sources of shame. I often combine schema therapy with person-centered care to help depressed clients.

I have a steadfast interest in and commitment to helping individuals escape from under the silent weight of depression. People suffering with depression often suffer a double injury: not simply depression's debilitating symptoms, but then having those symptoms be dismissed by others as a "choice" or "bad attitude," used as examples of personal failure or character defects, or metastasizing into sources of shame. I often combine schema therapy with person-centered care to help depressed clients.

I have a steadfast interest in and commitment to helping individuals escape from under the silent weight of depression. People suffering with depression often suffer a double injury: not simply depression's debilitating symptoms, but then having those symptoms be dismissed by others as a "choice" or "bad attitude," used as examples of personal failure or character defects, or metastasizing into sources of shame. I often combine schema therapy with person-centered care to help depressed clients.

I've worked extensively with cis, non-binary, trans, and gender diverse clients from the LGBTQ+ community. I'm passionate about providing this population with competent, informed, and supportive care that's aware of the aggressions--the micro and macro, the externalized and internalized--that community members face on a daily basis. Having previously taught queer history, my practice also understands the historical scars this community often carries, including ones left by therapists themselves.

The field-defining work of Michael White and David Epston broadened my therapeutic toolkit and has greatly influenced my approach with clients. In addition to appreciating the democratic, participatory approach between client and therapist within narrative therapy, I also align with narrative therapy's emphasis on how realities are shaped by the stories we tell, by the explanations we give, and by the themes and plots we choose. My practice reflects this emphasis upon language as a "way in."