CO .0001839 CA 113966. VT 100.0134103
In-Person Therapy in Capitol Hill Denver
Virtual therapy across Colorado, California and Vermont
How I Work with Clients:
Finding a therapist can be incredibly hard. Determining if a therapist might be a right fit for you can be even harder. So, I have outlined a few of the areas I work with brief descriptions to help you understand a bit more about me and my therapy practice.
If any of these descriptions are what you're looking for or if you have more questions please feel free to give me a call and set up a free 20 minute consultation!
My practice number is 213-538-8714 and my e-mail address is jesseproia@jesseproia.com
Or by clicking here
Please don't hesitate to reach out.
The one thing we can count on in life is change, and that can be hard. Life moves so fast that we rarely get adequate time and space to process the ongoing changes. Often, at this pace, it’s difficult to handle or even to understand how we got there. We lose motivation or a sense of self. Understandably, this can leave us in a crisis.
In times like these, we use therapy as a tool to slow down, reflect, and understand where we are in our own lives. We examine how we got where we are and determine what can make us happier in the future. We build the skills to realize those ideas tangibly and sustainably. Life is hard; you don’t have to navigate it alone.
I am passionate about supporting men in developing stronger mental and emotional awareness. I spent 3 years as part of a men’s therapy team working exclusively with men and collaborating with other men-centered therapists to address the unique barriers men face in seeking mental health support.
So often, as men, we feel stuck or trapped by social circumstances and expectations of “what it means to be a man.” Our value is dictated by how successful we are, how much money we make, and being perceived as tough. Isn’t that exhausting? These social pressures are toxic and cut us off from joy, purpose, and meaning in our lives, often leading to depression, loss of identity, and anger.
Men-centered therapy allows my male clients to examine how social and cultural expectations have hurt them, collaborate on how they want to heal, and envision a holistic and balanced life, honest to their passions and interests, not dictated by norms. I am skilled at sharing my natural curiosity and an outside perspective with all my clients. This helps those I work with see themselves in new ways and understand where change can occur for a happier and healthier quality of life.
I am an out, queer man and hold my identify as a fundamental part of my life experience and therapeutic perspective and methodology. I spent my first five years as a therapist at the Los Angeles LGBTQ Center's Mental Health Services. I worked exclusively with LGBTQ+ clients while engaging in in-depth LGBTQ+ cultural reflective training and queer centered mentorship.
Reflective of that fundamental experience, I provide LGBTQ+ clients with a safe, validating, and inclusive space to explore their emotions, identity, and worldview. So often, LGBTQ+ clients spend much of their therapy sessions explaining or contextualizing our culture to their therapist...not with me. I am fully comfortable and attuned to working in the complexities of queer identity.
After a series of personal losses, I became closely aware of how challenging grief can be.
End-of-life care is sacred. As a society, we are terrified of talking about death, planning for it, and making the most of the last months, weeks, days, and moments of life. It is understandably scary to navigate this process without resources. With the support of end-of-life focused therapy, we can collaborate on methods to increase joy and meaning in the final stages of life and make a detailed plan for before, during, and after one’s passing.
Caregiver fatigue is rarely talked about, but it is a reality of being responsible for a terminally ill person in your life. Often, as caregivers, we are pulled between our regular lives and our responsibilities to our loved ones. This polarity can bring up complex and conflicting feelings like exhaustion, grief, resentment, and anger. Therapy can help validate the stress you are experiencing and process those complicated feelings so you can refill your cup and continue caring for your loved one.
After moving to Denver and building my practice here, I noticed a common theme amongst my clients: trauma, guilt and shame, and anxiety stemming from often abusive or highly controlling religious upbringings. To attune to the needs of my client population, I received training specifically focused on Religious Trauma, Spiritual Abuse, and Cult Recovery.
I identify as agnostic and was not raised in a strict religious context, and my outside perspective is very helpful for clients who were raised with religion. I find it incredibly rewarding to support clients in deconstructing and examining the complexities of growing up within religious contexts and using therapy as a safe space to understand its impact on them and if they want to maintain a relationship to faith- or not.
I have a lot of experience working with high-achieving, successful clients and small business owners. Often, this population is troubled with a high degree of perfectionism, obsessive thinking, and harsh inner criticism. The way I work with clients like this is archetypal, helping clients see how the traits associated with achievement and drive are also connected with negative symptomology when those propensities turn inward in a negative way.
We can never change who we are, but we can change the very relationship to those parts of ourselves and create new balance and harmony through softening inner criticism and creating flexible expectations in our relationships and of ourselves
Developing our self-esteem can feel daunting or abstract. It’s no small task to identify and nurture how you perceive and value yourself. Therapy can help you identify those hard-to-name beliefs and feelings you have about who you are. It can feel impossible to alter the way we feel about ourselves, but therapy can increase awareness of our positive attributes and identify perceived failures or weaknesses as being just as important as our successes and strengths.
Together, we can cultivate a holistic understanding of your past, positive and negative, and increase self-esteem through clarifying your personal intrinsic values and where they originate from within your personal story. Through this growth-promoting perspective, clients become empowered to live honestly and authentically with less inner criticism, doubt, or shame.
Therapy with me always takes on a systemic lens. What do I mean by systemic? We exist within complex systems; no person is an island. We participate (often unconsciously) in endless systems that impact our sense of self and mental health. There are larger social and political systems that influence a country’s norms and expectations of all people. There are cultural and societal systems that act similarly and dictate the values and customs of our communities. These are often influenced by religion, industry, and regional norms.
Thinking smaller, we all participate in some sort of family system. In our family systems, we tend to play a role like caretaker, leader, peacekeeper, or scapegoat. These roles and systems inevitably become internalized, dictating our inner dialogues and narratives.
Often, the personal mental health issues we suffer are connected to how certain cultural or familial systems do not align with our truth or no longer serve us as we grow and evolve. Systemic-minded therapy facilitates an understanding of this incongruence and examines methods of how to make effective change in your life.
People pleasing and passivity negatively impact our self-worth and can leave us feeling dishonest or inauthentic. On the flip side, when we bottle up our true feelings, we increase the likelihood of hostile, aggressive, and sometimes abusive behavior. Finding the sweet spot of assertiveness and authenticity can feel daunting. When we can identify our boundaries, communicate effectively, and live assertively, we inherently increase the satisfaction with how we live our lives and the relationships we maintain.
Healthy communication skills should be taught in school, but they are not. Helping my clients move away from passive habits or aggressive tendencies to assertiveness is incredibly rewarding. That is why I am so passionate about sharing assertive skill-building tools like self-regulation strategies, I-statements, implementing time-outs, differentiating communication styles, defining intrinsic values, and boundary work. These tools can be the focus of treatment or peppered into sessions as reinforcing tools for all types of relational situations.
If any of these descriptions are what you're looking for or if you have more questions please feel free to give me a call and set up a free 20 minute consultation!
My practice number is 213-538-8714 and my e-mail address is jesseproia@jesseproia.com
Please don't hesitate to reach out.