Jon-David Settell

As therapist I aim to cultivate wonder and awe as modes and methods of surviving the pain of contemporary life. I use your past and your present as a lens first for knowing, then for understanding, and finally for imagining a life worth living. Along the way we marvel together at the wonder and awe of you and the poetics of everyday life. I engage the wonderment of early and middle childhood to help you find new ways to survive today's terrors and heartaches and learn to thrive again.

I invite patients to put their deep history into words. Telling your story generates insight into how you became the person you are. That same insight can help you find new forms of being, living, and loving. As a form of self-knowing through the free exploration of your internal life, I carefully attend to language and to what escapes. By attending to dreams, slips of the tongue, and repetition, we can uncover forgotten desires, identify patterns, and give you new tools for healing and growth.

I start out by accepting that we cannot live lives worth living if we don’t first remember how to love ourselves and the world. By inviting you to tell me the story of you minute by minute, I seek to cultivate an environment of deep listening adjacent to the nurture and wonderment of early childhood. Unconditionally positive regard and deep, genuine curiosity about you are the fundaments of care.