About Jared
I came to this work through my own search for a way to live. Long before I became a therapist, I knew what it was like to feel outside of things. As a young person, I struggled with anxiety, insecurity, and a persistent feeling that I didn't quite belong. Eventually, I found belonging in the north Jersey punk rock scene, countercultural perspectives, a close group of friends, and a life that was often wild and fueled by alcohol and drugs. Those friendships gave me some of my first experiences of feeling recognized, accepted, and at home in the world. They also became intertwined with addiction, grief, and loss.
I have now been sober for 17 years, and recovery has profoundly shaped both the person and therapist I have become. Alcoholics Anonymous gave me much more than sobriety. It introduced me to a way of living grounded in honesty, accountability, relationship, service, humility, and the willingness to keep showing up. My own healing has also been deeply influenced by Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families and its understanding of the ways our earliest environments continue to live within us long after we leave them.
Along the way, I have been fortunate to have had extraordinary teachers, therapists, mentors, and elders in my life. One of the most important was my sponsor and friend, Arnold. Arnold showed me what it felt like to be deeply recognized by another person. In his presence, I felt safe, respected, and chosen. I didn't have to impress him or earn my place beside him. I could simply be myself, and somehow that was enough. A feeling that has stayed with me long after his death.
Arnold also taught me something I carry into my work today. Loving someone well doesn't mean holding onto them or deciding who they should become. Sometimes it means seeing something in another person that they cannot yet see in themselves and encouraging them toward their own life. Arnold's advice to me was often very simple: "Keep going. Don't stop." Eventually, he encouraged me to leave Prescott, Arizona and continue my education. That journey brought me to Naropa University, where I earned my Master's degree in Counseling Psychology through the Contemplative Psychotherapy and Buddhist Psychology program.
My clinical work has since been shaped by Gestalt therapy, relational psychotherapy, attachment theory, trauma informed and body based approaches, contemplative psychology, and many years of meditation and spiritual practice. But much of what has taught me how to sit with another human being did not happen in a classroom. It happened in recovery rooms, in therapy, in friendships, in grief, in the wilderness, in meditation and ceremony, beside mentors and elders, through marriage and parenthood, and through the ongoing and humbling work of trying to live what I ask of the people who sit across from me.
I tend to connect especially well with people who have lived complicated lives. People in recovery, adult children of alcoholic or dysfunctional families, outsiders, seekers, and people who have experienced grief, loss, addiction, adversity, or family histories that required them to become strong long before they should have needed to be. I connect with people who became very good at surviving but have reached a point where they don't want to spend the rest of their lives doing it.
I don't believe therapy is about turning people into more acceptable or better adjusted versions of themselves. I believe there is something deeply healing about sitting across from another person and discovering that you don't have to perform, that your story can be told without being cleaned up first, and that someone can know the things you carry and still respect the person sitting in front of them. From there, we can become curious about who you had to become, what you have been carrying, what still belongs to you, and what you may finally be ready to set aside.
My job isn't to tell you what you should do or who you should become. It is to meet you honestly, take your life seriously, and help create the conditions in which you can recognize more fully who you already are. From there, we can begin to discover what it might mean to live with greater freedom, connection, belonging, and choice, and to keep going toward a life that feels increasingly like your own.
Recovery • Adult Children of Alcoholic or Dysfunctional Families • Grief & Adversity • Men's Therapy. Relationships • Belonging & Identity
Telephone: (828) 575-3066