Aaron Altman
Professional Counselor, Intern
Aaron is a Professional Counselor practicum student in the state of Oregon. He has a bachelor’s degree in Math and Computer Science from Portland State University, and will be graduating with a master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Edinboro University in the spring of 2023. He has spent over 300 hours volunteering with Oregon’s affiliate of #988, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
Aaron’s focus is on Rogerian therapy. This therapy gives you a chance to explain your struggles on your own terms, and to have positive impulses and strengths that exist alongside these struggles recognized.
When you feel this reflected back with basic care, you may begin to feel your own solutions bubble up into awareness and take shape in your life outside of therapy.
This work takes processes like attachment, co-regulation and the social neurobiology of emotions seriously as foundations of mental health that have existed before they had names – or science to back them up. It can help improve friendships or romantic relationships and ease tensions with work and family life. With the help of other trauma-specific techniques, it can also contribute to peace and fulfillment in the aftermath of trauma, whether single-incident or chronic and complex.
In the first session, you will work together to co-create a process tailored to you. If you prefer more concrete direction, initial work may focus on skills like goal-setting, boundary-setting, emotion naming and regulation, mindfulness, and compassion towards others and towards yourself. Having developed confidence in the process and any skills that resonate, you may also find deeper satisfaction in longer term work to address difficult states like chronic anger, shame, or recurring emotionally activating situations in daily life.
You can get better, and Aaron has the confidence in the science, his own experience, and training with difficult conversations to help you with the goals that matter most.
Aaron is supervised by Kelle DeBruin.