What to expect with Doc Brian

I began working in the mental health field in 1994. The next year I also started a small business called Diverse Adventures which provided trips to West Virginia for whitewater rafting, rock climbing, hiking, and camping. My time in the Army gave me a deep love and appreciation for the outdoors. In graduate school I focused my studies on Wilderness, Adventure, and Experiential Therapies. I also believe life is a grand adventure and should be treated as such. I am a non-traditional counselor; I prefer working in a T-shirt, shorts, and flipflops to a suit and dress shoes. If it were plausible, I would provide most of my counsel next to a river, on a mountain, or near the ocean. Often, people come to therapy feeling apprehensive and nervous about the process. There truly is no reason to be fearful. I'm here to respect, support, and provide skilled feedback and tools to effectively address the challenges in your life.  

Reality Therapy is a client-centered form of cognitive-behavioral therapy that focuses on improving present relationships and circumstances, with less concern and discussion of past events. This approach is based on the idea that our most important need is to be loved, to feel that we belong and that all other basic needs can be satisfied only by building strong connections with others. Reality therapy sees behavior as choices, and it teaches us that while we cannot control how we feel, we can control how we think and behave. We choose to behave in certain ways and these choices can help or hamper the ability to satisfy essential needs and reach individual goals. This therapy also uses choice theory, the behaviors we choose are key to our accountability and who we are. This therapy is less concerned with actual mental health diagnoses; the goal of this type of therapy is to help people take control of improving their own lives by learning to make better choices.

I provide counseling, psychotherapy, life coaching, crisis intervention, and educational services, to individuals, couples, focus groups, first responders, military, civic and faith-based organizations. it is my responsibility to assess your needs quickly and collaborate with you to develop and execute a course of treatment for those needs. Additionally, I provide Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) Debrief for Trauma Response e.g., First Responders, Military, and others.