Anthony Verdino (He/Him)

I'm a Queer person and my practice has always focused on working with Queer communities across diverse settings. My PhD work focused on the ways that Queer people pursue joy and healing. In my work with people, we think expansively about sex, sexuality, and relationships as well as emotional health and the ways we navigate life.

Working on our relationship may involve improving communication/other dynamics, exploring struggles with initiating/maintaining, and navigating non-monogamy or openness and sexual discrepancies. I have done a lot of clinical work, supervision, and presentations on relationships and exploring and actualizing authentic needs, desires, and worries.

Sex includes forms of sex and pleasure (what you like, what you're into, including kink), sexuality, relationship structures (poly, ENM), and gender roles/expression. All of these involve imagining, exploring, and practicing to understand and embrace our full authentic selves and what this means for our everyday lives and relationships.

As humans, much of our lives are centered on relationships. How we’ve been impacted by and how we show up in them is influenced by many factors. My work with people is about reflecting on and responding to relationship dynamics both past and present. This may involve healing, grief, repair, limit-setting, restructuring, and connection. Additionally, many of us are trying to show up authentically and confidently while forming new and varied relationships to meet different needs.

A humanist approach keeps us grounded in the present so as to reflect on the past without focusing all of our energy there. Our intention is both self-awareness and self-actualization toward living a life that works for you. For awareness, we can't affect change without recognizing what is no longer working and why. For actualization, it helps to connect with our genuine selves and act accordingly. And we all have that potential in us.

Psychodynamic practice sounds like psychoanalysis, but they are very different. Psychodynamic therapy looks to, acknowledges, and processes the past while intentionally centering our present emotional functioning,relationships, and ways of navigating your life. Part of this is about attachment and how you've learned to form relationships with others and the form and purpose of them. We focus on your interactions with (perceptions of or response to) the world around you.