About Dr. Joel Frazer
Post-Doctoral Fellow
|
I have always been the curious and intuitive type, wondering what emotions and feelings compel those around me to do what they do. I have an immense love of the arts: visual, written and music, and my goal from an early age has been to create beautiful things and help those around me in doing so as well. My combined study of the arts and psychology allows me to do just that. In my free time, I might be cooking up an impromptu meal, watching movies and debating them with my friends, wandering through Chicago with my camera in hand, or drinking an obscene amount of coffee.
|
|
EDucation and Training
I attended the University of Central Missouri for my undergraduate, where I double majored in music and fine arts. After a couple of years in college ministry, I moved to Seattle, WA to pursue a Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. An itch to relocate closer to family and friends brought me back to the Midwest, where I decided my favorite road-trip destination of Chicago would be my new home. For the next three years, I worked as a mental health counselor in both a psychological ward and in an Alzheimer’s unit of a retirement facility. Because of my love for therapy, I decided to gain additional training. I graduated with a doctorate from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology in 2019. Currently, I am a post-doctorate clinician here at Renew You Counseling Center.
my treatment approach
I believe therapy enables us to explore the inner world of ourselves and share it with another, without the fear of rejection from the judgmental world we live in. This type of therapy can produce a path of understanding who we are, how we interact with others, and how our interaction defines the way we see ourselves. I also believe that my position to clients is “other”,
and as informed by my training and careful attention to my clients, I will provide suggestions I believe might be helpful to reaching clients’ stated desires. Providing these suggestions feels like the crux of therapy; I have the responsibility of paying careful attention to how clients process my suggestion: they may outright oppose, say my suggestion “makes sense” but say
differently with their bodies, or they may fully agree. I provide a safe, encouraging place to be creative in thinking about these new possibilities, keep post for them as they try them out, and assist clients in inhabiting the new direction they feel just “works”.
Yet because I am “other”, I will repeatedly remind them of what they have told me who they long to be. I feel that there’s already enough struggle within each of ourselves to be courageous enough to step out of our old patterns. Gently reminding clients of their desires is enough to keep them striving in the work of therapy. Life is dynamic—we must remain open to see what direction works best. As a therapist, my desire is to walk along with my clients as new paths are developed and hopefully, taken.
and as informed by my training and careful attention to my clients, I will provide suggestions I believe might be helpful to reaching clients’ stated desires. Providing these suggestions feels like the crux of therapy; I have the responsibility of paying careful attention to how clients process my suggestion: they may outright oppose, say my suggestion “makes sense” but say
differently with their bodies, or they may fully agree. I provide a safe, encouraging place to be creative in thinking about these new possibilities, keep post for them as they try them out, and assist clients in inhabiting the new direction they feel just “works”.
Yet because I am “other”, I will repeatedly remind them of what they have told me who they long to be. I feel that there’s already enough struggle within each of ourselves to be courageous enough to step out of our old patterns. Gently reminding clients of their desires is enough to keep them striving in the work of therapy. Life is dynamic—we must remain open to see what direction works best. As a therapist, my desire is to walk along with my clients as new paths are developed and hopefully, taken.
