Robert Pitman

Are you living your life the way you'd like? Are there things holding you back — anxiety, depression, family problems, or trauma — that you can't quite get past on your own? I'm Robert, a counselor who came to this work at age 50 after decades in another career. The reason: therapy helped me, profoundly, and I wanted to spend the second half of my working life helping other people the way someone once helped me.

I earned my Master's at Western Illinois University with additional graduate training from Walden University. Over the years I've worked with a wide range of clients — women and men, teens and adults — drawing from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Person-Centered Therapy, and EMDR depending on what fits the person sitting across from me.

If you've been carrying something for a while and wondering whether therapy could actually help — that's exactly how I felt before I started, and I can tell you the answer was yes

My approach starts with you, not a textbook. Before I reach for any technique, I want to understand who you are, what you've been carrying, and what you're hoping will change. From there, we figure out what fits.

I draw from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy when we're working on thought patterns that get stuck on repeat. From Person-Centered Therapy when what you most need is to be heard and understood without judgment. From EMDR when there's trauma in the body that hasn't had a chance to settle.

What stays constant across all of it: I'll meet you with respect, listen carefully, and never pretend I have answers I don't have. The goal isn't to fix you — you're not broken. The goal is to help you get unstuck and start building real momentum toward the life you actually want.

I know reaching out for help can be hard — and choosing a counselor can feel like one more decision you don't have the energy for. The first session isn't about having everything figured out. It's about getting a real sense of each other.

We'll spend the time talking about what brought you in, what's been hardest, and what you'd like to feel differently. I'll listen, ask questions, and start to understand both what's happening on the surface and what may be moving underneath.

By the end, we'll have an early sense of what we'd work on together and whether the fit feels right. There's no commitment beyond that first conversation. What I've seen again and again: once someone takes that first small step toward change, momentum starts to build — and the things that felt stuck don't feel so stuck anymore.