Adam Shaw

I became a therapist because I believe the most important thing in a session is actually connecting with the person in front of you — and that's hard to do when everything feels clinical and scripted.

My style is casual and direct. I have a sense of humor, I'll call things what they are, and I'm not going to just nod along. At the same time, I know when to slow down and when to push. Clients who've worked with me tend to say it doesn't feel like typical therapy — and they mean that as a compliment.

I work with adolescents through seniors on addiction, anxiety, depression, trauma, grief, relationship issues, and men's mental health. I'm a male therapist in a field where that's less common — and for a lot of the men I work with, that matters.

I pull from a range of approaches — CBT, Psychodynamic therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Motivational Interviewing, and Gestalt — not because I use them all at once, but because different people need different things, and I've learned to read which approach fits which moment.

For substance use, I lean on Motivational Interviewing and strengths-based frameworks — meeting you where you are without judgment. For deeper patterns — the recurring relationship dynamics, the stuff that keeps coming back — I bring in Psychodynamic and IFS work to understand what's actually driving things, not just the surface behavior.

The through-line is always the same: honest, practical, and in your corner.

Our first session is a conversation. I'll ask what's been going on and what's feeling hard, and we'll start to get a sense of each other. By the end, we'll look at your goals — and the subtleties and nuances of you — so we can figure out how to actually reach them.

No intake-form energy. Just two people talking.