Phillip Hanson MA, LMHCA

Sometimes life can feel overwhelming and difficult, not smooth or straightforward. Perhaps you feel stuck, depressed, frustrated, burdened, and full of doubts and questions. Whatever has brought you here, I’m glad you have come. It takes courage and trust to reach out and to receive the invitation to healing and growth. I don’t take that for granted and I respect your bravery in considering counseling. In therapy, I seek to invite my clients into deeper healing and growth. Therapy can sometimes be a slow process as trust builds. I treat what you don’t share with as much honor as what you do share. I consider it a privilege to partner in the journey of healing with you and to witness the growth and newness waiting to come forth.

I approach counseling from a relational psychodynamic lens. I see therapy as a unique kind of relationship, one where we engage past and present tensions and experiences in the context of a safe, attentive relationship. I especially privilege the immediate feelings you're having in the counseling room. Sharing your thoughts and feelings about the therapy and the relationship are so important to the work we do and can lead to very meaningful moments. A full range of emotions and experiences can and do arise in therapy. I seek to be a compassionate witness and sharer in those experiences and to foster a safe, supportive setting with helpful boundaries and guardrails which can hold those experiences.

Therapy can offer a place where freedom, healing and a deeper and more compassionate self-understanding can occur. I compare my approach to therapy to music. Beautiful music includes melody, harmony, dissonance and consonance, not just one or the other. Similarly, life and living involve both surprise and confusion, fear and wonder, tension and resolution. In therapy, resolution and healing are discovered as client and therapist share in painful tensions. A space is created in which we can bring curious and compassionate attention to in-between places; to places of joy and pain, grief and desire. Growth happens not by avoiding or exiling pain, but, paradoxically, by graciously allowing yourself to experience the tensions in your life slowly as they unfold.

Outside of my work as a therapist, I enjoy listening and playing music. I love learning and reading when I can make the time. I have always loved exploring. Journeying through Seattle and our beautiful region on foot, skis or bicycle is one of my favorite activities.

Education and Training:

Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology.
Bachelor of Arts in Pre-Counseling from Moody Bible Institute

schedule with phillip