Sam Krehel (they/them)

LH61022687

Before You Step Outside: Therapy for the Heart. I only work virtually, most often from the unceded lands of the Coast Salish peoples.

Mental Health Counselor in , WA

Services
  • Individual
  • Adolescent/Teen

About My Clients

My clients benefit from exploring the roots of low self-esteem, relationship challenges, anxiety, depression, post traumatic stress disorder, and complex relational traumas. This work often includes identity work surrounding race, ethnicity, nationality, indigenousness, dis/ability, neurodivergence, fatness, age, life cycle stage, socioeconomic status, gender, religion, spirituality, sexuality, sexual orientation, and relationship orientation.

My Background and Approach

My private practice is called Before You Step Outside, a title inspired by the work of Travis Alabanza, a black nonbinary transfeminine performance artist, poet, and writer from the UK. In their chapbook "Before I Step Outside [You Love Me]," Travis wrote: "It is not me who is the problem, more the world that cannot hold me." This quote defines much of how I approach therapy -- in a way that honors your majesty, strengths, and unique lived experiences while noticing the ways the world does not. I work from a relational perspective that values and utilizes Black, Indigenous, trans, queer, disabled, and feminist ideologies, and I strive to decolonize my practice in all the ways possible. Client support systems are welcome in the room to build from our collective wisdom in the face of systemic, structural, and internalized oppression. Let's reconnect you to your strengths, inherent goodness, and sense of community by working to be in safe and healing relationship Before You Step Outside.

My Personal Beliefs and Interests

Clients of **ALL** backgrounds are welcome at Before You Step Outside, and I do mean all backgrounds. By preparing myself to work with the most marginalized among us, I have simultaneously become equipped to work with clients who experience many places of privilege. My framework includes enormous compassion for the harm that occurs to all people, and I strive to work from a place of sensitivity and care with all of my clients, no matter their background. I am body, trans*, queer, kink, sex work, nonmonogamy, polyamory, and relationship anarchy affirming. And I come to this place of affirmation partly through my own lived experience. You may recognize me from shared mixed, BIPOC, 2Spirit, trans*, polyam/ra, kink, dis/ability, and neuroqueer community spaces. If we have overlap in our communities, this sense of shared identity can offer some built-in safety and security. At the same time, I will always seek to understand your unique perspective as we begin our work together.

I offer online counseling in the following states:

At A Glance

  • Experience: 6 years of practice
  • Rate: $165 - 165/session

Reach out to Sam