Adrian Waller,

Questions

1. What attracted you to being a psychotherapist?

Mental health advocacy has been part of my life since I was young due to witnessing many loved ones’ experiences with mental health, therapy, and interpersonal trauma. Once I embarked on a healing journey of my own, my passion for trauma treatment was rooted. Studying and working with individuals that have experienced a variety of difficult situations and mental health struggles has watered and fed my belief in every individual’s capacity to heal, feel, and grow. Paying forward the support I have received, witnessing the resilience and human-ness of one another, and fostering space for individual and communal healing are what attract and fuel my love of being a psychotherapist. 

2. How would you describe your approach with your clients? 

I would describe my approach as authentic, compassionate, and flexible. I strongly believe in working together to create treatment plans and apply modalities that are aligned with the individual’s goals, resources, and personality. I also am committed to therapy being a flexible process - throughout our work together, your primary concerns may shift, or one modality may not resonate in the same way it did at the beginning. I view this as a natural dynamic of the process, so I prioritize meeting each other where we are now, as opposed to sticking to where we were at the beginning, or where we thought we would be. 

3. What's your favorite quote about mental health? 

“Here’s a theory: Maybe I had not really been broken this whole time. Maybe I had been a human - flawed and still growing but full of light nonetheless.” —Stephanie Foo 

4. What has surprised you the most about being a psychotherapist?

What has surprised me the most is how unique and (at the same time) universal human life is. Many themes that have brought my clients to therapy are shared - loss, grief, anxiety, concern about current events, experiences of violence, trauma, a feeling of being lost/untethered, etc. At the same time, two people who have gone through what seems to be the same instigating event on paper - even two individuals from the same family - will have a unique perspective and experience unique impacts of those events. This juxtaposition of universal human experience and individual experience ignites my curiosity and excitement in getting to build a therapeutic relationship with every client I have the blessing of meeting.