About Me

hope clients in Snohomish County and Pierce County will know Matt is available to work with them, as well.

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Diverse Clientele

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Matt specializes in treating trauma and PTSD in adolescents and adults from diverse backgrounds including the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, people of color, as well as people who identify as Alaska Native, American Indian, Native American, and Pacific Islander, also known as members of the BIPOC community.

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Matt is also adept at helping clients with generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, major depression, and bipolar disorder, among other mental health issues. "Gender dysphoria" is also an issue Matt has helped kids and adults navigate as they explore their true identities, but Matt does not consider this a mental health issue, per se. It is usually the reactions or anticipated reactions from family, friends, and society to the client's potential transition that causes mental health issues for the client, such as anxiety and depression, in Matt's clinical experience.

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Life as a Journalist

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Matt comes to the world of brain science and mental health treatment after an award-winning career in broadcast journalism that spanned stops in television markets from Anchorage, Alaska, to Cincinnati, Ohio, to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He's also reported from Europe and China. A couple of the highlights of Matt's career included appearing on the BBC to provide an American journalist's analysis of the news of the day as well as freelance reporting for ABC News Radio and CBS Radio in the United States. Matt's work has been honored with an Edward R. Murrow Award, numerous awards from the Associated Press, and three Emmy nominations, among others.

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With his 40th birthday soon on the horizon and realizing that his bookshelves were already full of psychology books, Matt felt a yearning to get more personally involved in the recovery of the subjects of traumatic stories and the journalists who cover them. 

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He was also facing the reality that local TV news stations in the United States were largely biased against LGBTQ+ journalists. As Matt puts it, the more he went to therapy and became comfortable with his authentic self, the more those in powerful positions in television news at the time seemed to become uncomfortable with him. He made a plan to apply for grad school and become a therapist. 

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Grad School: Preparing to be a Helper

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But if Matt was going to become a helper, he didn't want to "screw anybody up," as he told one of the professors in an early therapy class. He wanted to learn from the best. That led Matt to enroll at the top-ranked Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, where the community was still trying to understand how to move forward after the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson when he arrived. It caused most in Matt's cohort to carefully look at themselves, the findings of blatant racism within the justice system in the area, and to acknowledge that as we serve people of different backgrounds in our careers we must not only be antiracist but culturally humble.

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What this means for you...

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And that is what Matt tries to be with every client, humble. Nonjudgmental. Present. A witness to what you've been through. Matt realizes therapists don't know you as well as you know yourself. We don't know what it's like to walk in your shoes. But once a week, we get to metaphorically walk beside you. As fellow travelers, as master therapist Irvin Yalom would call us, Matt sees us as equals sharing time together and forming a relationship that will hopefully be therapeutic for you.

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Please use the contact form below, or leave a voicemail, to schedule a free 15-minute "get to know you" session to see if you and Matt are a good fit for each other.