Portland Therapy Center
Garrison Cox

Garrison Cox (he/him)

Marriage and Family Therapist Associate

Master of Arts in Marriage, Couple, and Family Therapy

Supervisor: Carly Rubin, LMFT

I want my clients to feel deeply and honestly cared for inside and outside of therapy. Everybody has their own unique path toward healing.

Client Status

accepting clients

Contact

503-714-6286

917 SW Oak St

Portland, 97205

Email Website

At a Glance

Me

Rate: $150-$190

Provides free initial consultation

Practicing Since: 2023

Services

  • Individual
  • Relationship

Insurances Accepted

  • OHP CareOregon/HealthShare

My Ideal Client

I work with individuals and couples to explore and weed through the moral ambiguity of life. Together, we can explore your emotional experience, anxiety, depression, past traumatic experiences, relationships, and interpersonal patterns with depth, gentleness, and honesty. I have a special place in my heart and my practice for overfunctioners, overcarers, overthinkers, people who have a hard time getting their brain to quiet down.

My Approach to Helping

All beings have their own pathways toward transformation and integration. Sometimes, the result of transformation can feel like a broken bone calcified, or a lopped-off branch scarred over. Mentally and emotionally, these wounds and raw spots revisit us, make us feel vulnerable, anxious, angry, unable to connect or belong. I draw on somatic, systemic, experiential, and existential traditions of therapy and philosophy to support clients in exploring their personal obstacles and wounds in order to clear the way for self-agency and self-resonance. In session, this looks like slowing down and examining all the information available in the present - thoughts, memories, images, emotions, bodily sensations. I believe it is not enough to just gain mental insight in order to effect change; we also have to experience life and all its joys and tribulations differently in order to recruit our entire selves into the change process.

My Personal Beliefs and Interests

I believe every person is deserving of dignity. As an existential-humanistic therapist, I also believe that addressing the symptoms of our mental health struggles is not always enough to reconnect us with ourselves. Rather than isolate and eliminate, our work together (in therapy and in life as a whole) is to connect and embrace. Common wisdom and statistical study both show that life is about the quality of our relationships - and we're all in luck; the practice of therapy happens through relationship! Through the work of therapy, we can create opportunities to experience life differently. I identify as a gay man, and enjoy working with members of the queer community. I am passionate about helping people reconnect with their emotional experience in a world that prioritizes rationalization.

Techniques I Use

Issues I Treat

Specialties

  • Anxiety External link

    Anxiety is a primary driving force of our nervous systems. It's a necessary survival mechanism, but one that all too often feels like it's overflowing past its usefulness. I've experienced that kind of anxiety, and I had the benefit of somatic and Polyvagal Theory-focused therapy to help me adapt. Now I offer that same kind of therapy.

  • LGBTQ Issues External link

    As a gay man with a background in sex therapy, I am well-suited to personally understand the challenges that gay men face. I am an ally to the rest of the LGBTQ+ community and feel deep connection to the history of queer marginalization and its ties to racism, heterosexism, and transphobia.

  • Compassion Fatigue External link

    Compassion fatigue is a particular type of burnout that often affects those who spend a lot of their time caring for others. In this current world of near-instant global information and constant exposure to crisis - whether experienced personally or through the news - it can be hard to maintain a sense of compassion and empathy for others. For most caretaking people I know, this often results in self-judgment, shame, and irritation.

  • PTSD External link

    I have experience working with adult survivors of both childhood and adult trauma. I use a slow-paced framework that emphasizes somatic exploration as well as deep attention to any moments of trauma exposure within or without the therapy. I believe working with trauma is the core of the field of therapy, and that many experiences of anxiety, depression, or other forms of emotional disruption are often due to our bodies' attempts to manage un-integrated traumatic experience.

  • Relationship / Marriage Issues External link

    Relationships are often hard, and yet they're also so often the core facets of our lives. Relational therapy is a great place to untwist what often feels like an unsolvable puzzle. Through direct emotional experience in therapy, you can work toward making space in your relationship for love and connection and learning how to walk together through challenging experiences.

Contact Garrison

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