For Therapists: Referrals & Collaboration

Referrals to coaches are increasingly being made by therapists for clients who may benefit from secondary support. Not therapy – you provide that – but also not just some well-meaning person who lacks the perspective and tools to actually be helpful.

Coaching is an unregulated field, with the predictable result that many coaches are doing nothing more than pressing untested ideas onto their clients, giving pep talks, and making people feel bad when they don't do what they said they would do. Unlike many coaches, I will not waste your client's time or embarrass you with a bunch of malarkey about "aligning their vibration with the universe so it will 'manifest' what they desire". I won't impose external goals on them, or make them feel bad about the variability we all encounter in our progress on our own goals.

I have a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A. in Counseling Psychology, and worked in the field for 6 years before my life took another direction. I ended up spending most of my vocational life in management up to the VP of Engineering level in a number of startup and Fortune 500 companies in the software industry. More importantly, I have my own, deeply examined life as a son, brother, friend, spouse, divorced person, parent, stepparent, and chronic pain sufferer. If you look at my About page, you will see that I have an unusually diverse background that allows me to relate to people in a wide variety of circumstances.

I know where coaching ends and therapy begins. You do the deep diving, the work of keeping monsters of the past from defining the present. I am an applied philosopher, not a therapist. I help people use well-recognized ideas, primarily from secular Buddhism and Stoicism, to reframe and more productively interact with their challenges. If you want to pre-vet me before talking, you can get a good idea of my thinking from my book, Eat The Strawberries. If that requires time you don't have, this website itself will give you a good idea of how I think about things, and how I communicate.

If you want to talk, please use my contact form, and fill out the "What are you ready to work on?" field accordingly.