Charles Thompson-Shealy (he/they)

Meeting people where they are is the heart of Rogerian and other Person-Centered therapeutic approaches. I don't start out trying to understand how a person's experiences can be understood as a disease or a disorder, instead, I try to humbly understand their experiences and then reflect on how they can be viewed through various psychological lenses.

One of the best tools in the therapeutic session is noticing what is happening in the moment. Mindfulness-based therapy has helped many of my clients increase and awareness their insight into their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors; and on many occasions awareness alone has lead to deep relational and behavioral changes.

With my psychodynamic background, I am able to help my clients understand their relational patterns from a historic perspective, identify their origins in early childhood experiences, see them as survival strategies to manage the relationships they had at the time, and to identify how they want to relate to people in their lives moving forward.

Therapy isn't just for disorders. In fact, there is a lot of personal growth one can achieve without navigating a disordered life. Understanding the dynamics that emerge between two people is the core of deepening your understanding of your own psyche. This happens in a session and can be applied to all of your relationships in your life.

I bring my analysis and work from organizing to fight systemic oppression and the anti-violence field to bear on my psychodynamic work. I have developed an anti-oppression approach to my treatment that helps me and my clients understand how Complex PTSD and intergenerational trauma and ongoing experiences of oppression are connected.

From counseling Queer and Trans youth battling family rejection and homelessness to working at a domestic violence agency for Queer and Trans survivors whose relationships have gone misunderstood by mainstream services, I have always worked to support my community members.