Counseling

I am a licensed professional clinical counselor and addiction specialist at a university in Los Angeles, where I direct the Center for Collegiate Recovery. My work focuses on substance use prevention, early intervention, harm reduction, education, and mental health advocacy. In addition to teaching and research, I operate a private practice and lead the classic rock band, Leo Clarus - The Clear Lion.

With two decades of counseling and teaching experience, a reimagining of "mental health" - often a code word for "mental illness" - has emerged as the centerpiece of my approach to wellness. By emphasizing a non-pathologizing posture, rather than psychiatric models and their cold clusters of symptoms and disorders, this evolution embraces the many personal, community, and system levels of our experience.

The intersections of family history, work and career, culture, politics, and personal justice - among other influences, are considered with gentleness and curiosity. Clients are "caught doing something right," strengths are emphasized, and together we collaborate to reimagine our experience and present new skills upon the wider systems that still must be navigated when our session has ended.

This emphasis upon gentleness and curiosity - and the acknowledging of the epidemic of diagnoses and the harms of labeling people who are simply responding to the conditions of their lives, is understood as "compassionate pragmatism."
 

I am profoundly curious about what it is like to be you. I do not race to diagnose and typically seek consultation with at least two other licensed professionals before I do provide a diagnosis. I will never provide a placeholder diagnosis just so an insurer will authorize a payout. I enjoy a wide referral network to guide you to a more appropriate professional. 

I do a lot of referring; twenty years in the Los Angeles helping community has cast me as something of an air traffic controller, guiding brave souls to optimal runways and service gates. In short, I believe most people are doing what they know to do to try and make sense of - or simply endure - their experience. This is often NOT mental illness. And when they know better, they do better.

Bound by professional standards as a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, and as a Licensed Advanced Alcohol and Other Drug Counselor, among other credentials, our 50-minute telehealth sessions rarely exceed ten sessions in total, and are supplemented by several 75-minute, in-person walking sessions along beaches, trails, parks, and bluffs.
 

I hold a special fondness for "emerging adults": those approximately 17 to 28 years old. Drawing from my two-decade background in higher education and a decade in private practice, I have come to recognize that addiction is largely an affliction of the young, and prevention and early intervention begin here. Further, I know believe "recovery" is no longer limited to just alcohol and other drugs, but encompasses a spectrum of wellness beyond substance misuse, including trauma, self-injury, relationship transitions, partner violence, emotional well-being, and even environmental and social justice. 

There is a new truth: Getting better is no longer a mystery.