Josh Foster (he/him/his)

Depression wants to steal your joy and happiness and make you believe that it is in control of your life. It wants you to live in a place of negativity and hopelessness. Worst of all, it wants for you to isolate yourself, to feel lonely and believe that other people don’t care about you. We will work to restore hope and help you to learn new strategies to cope with depression.

Narrative therapy holds that you are not the problem, but that the problem (anxiety) is the problem. No problem holds 100% power in our lives. Working together, we will look for times when anxiety has held less power in your life. We will look for natural strengths that you have utilized in the past and present, the ways in which anxiety attempts to hold power in your life, and how it wants you to see yourself, others, and the world.

One of the basic tenants of narrative therapy is that people are not the problem. But, that the problem is the problem. We will work to separate you from your problems. I believe that people have relationships with their problems. Their problems do not need to define who they are as a person. Narrative therapy helps individuals to discover the meanings that they have internalized. These stories become the basis from which we see the world, ourselves, others, God, and more.

I worked as a coach for over 15 years, helping individuals with fundraising that they needed to do for themselves and their organization. Fundraising brings all kinds of fun things to the surface. It was here that I first saw my love for working with people and being a support, encouragement, cheerleader, while also offering training and helping them to develop a strategy and a realistic and manageable plan for how to achieve their goals.

Religious trauma is real. One of the reasons why I’m passionate about helping people who have suffered religious traumas is because of my own experiences with them. After having spent almost my whole life in a religious system I have worked with enough people to have seen the pain that religious people, systems, and beliefs can cause. Counselors who did not grow up being a part of religious systems may be unable to fully understand and really grasp this kind of trauma.