Marshall Kirkpatrick

Trauma can leave its mark long after an experience has ended, affecting how you see yourself, connect with others, and navigate everyday life. You may find yourself struggling with anxiety, depression, difficult memories, or relationships that feel more complicated than they should. Perhaps childhood abuse or adverse experiences have shaped how safe you feel with others, or sexual trauma has made trust, intimacy, and connection particularly difficult. You might also be dealing with sexual concerns or problematic pornography use that feels uncomfortable or embarrassing to discuss. Whatever has brought you here, I want you to know that your experiences do not have to define your future. I'm Marshall Kirkpatrick, a Licensed Professional Counselor with 38 years of experience in social services and mental health. My background spans community mental health, crisis intervention, child protection, forensic mental health, correctional settings, and private practice. Through this work, I've developed a particular interest in understanding the lasting effects of trauma, especially sexual trauma and military sexual trauma. I'm also a published author and co-author of Unjustly Served: The Brutal Reality of Military Sexual Trauma, a book exploring the psychological impact of sexual trauma. Although this book identifies issues specific to the military, it’s emphasis on the effects of sexual trauma are universal to all sexual trauma. My goal is to help you better understand what you've experienced, recognize how it may still be affecting you, and discover that your past does not have to determine what comes next.

Our work will make room for the person you are today and the experiences, relationships, and circumstances that have shaped you along the way. Whether you're navigating trauma and PTSD, sexual trauma, childhood abuse and adverse experiences, anxiety and depression, or challenges involving relationships, intimacy, and connection, we'll work together to understand what's happening beneath the surface. My style is warm, laid-back, and collaborative, with humor when appropriate and honest, straightforward feedback when it's helpful. I believe therapy should be a place where you can talk openly about difficult or uncomfortable subjects without worrying about being judged.

My approach is grounded in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which focuses on the relationship between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and helps identify patterns that may be contributing to distress or keeping you stuck. For trauma-related concerns, I use Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), an evidence-based treatment for PTSD that helps identify and challenge unhelpful beliefs that can develop after trauma, particularly beliefs related to safety, trust, power and control, esteem, and intimacy.

I also work from a trauma-informed perspective, emphasizing safety, collaboration, choice, and an understanding of how traumatic experiences can affect the way people think, feel, relate to others, and respond to stress. When working with children and adolescents, I incorporate Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), an evidence-based treatment specifically developed for young people who have experienced trauma An important part of the model is strengthening the survivor’s social support system by helping caregivers better understand trauma reactions, respond supportively, reinforce skills outside of therapy, improve communication, and participate in the young person’s recovery.

Our first sessions will be about getting to know you, not simply identifying symptoms or assigning labels. I want to understand where you came from, what you've experienced, the relationships and circumstances that have shaped you, and what you would like to be different in your life. We'll take the time to explore how past experiences may be influencing your thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and relationships today, while identifying goals that feel meaningful and realistic to you. You can expect compassion, curiosity, occasional humor, and honest conversations, including direct feedback when I believe it can help you move forward. I'll bring my clinical experience, perspective, and practical tools to our work, but I won't tell you what your life should look like. Those decisions belong to you. Together, we'll work on understanding patterns that may have developed as ways of coping or surviving, recognizing which ones are no longer helping, and building healthier ways of responding to life's challenges. Progress may look like feeling less controlled by traumatic memories, developing greater emotional stability, building trust in relationships, becoming more comfortable with intimacy, or simply feeling more confident in your ability to make decisions about your future. We cannot change what happened in the past, but we can work toward changing how much influence those experiences continue to have over your life.