Portland Therapy Center
Gregory Kaplan

Gregory Kaplan (he/him)

Professional Counselor Associate

MA, PhD

Supervisor: Dr. Margaret Eichler, PhD LPC NCC ACS Oregon C2058

You can: grow after abuse or neglect, temper anger, navigate conflict, grieve loss, communicate better--as an individual, family, or group.

Client Status

accepting clients

Contact

1110 SE Alder St #301

Portland, 97202

Email Website Schedule Now

At a Glance

Me

Rate: $130-$175

Practicing Since: 2021

Languages: English

Services

  • Individual
  • Family
  • Group
  • Relationship
  • Teen

Insurances Accepted

  • Out of Pocket
  • Out of Network

My Ideal Client

My clients have experienced childhood or transgenerational trauma, abuse, neglect, and/or systemic oppression; cannot control anger or verbalize feelings; suffer shame; experience religious/spiritual/political change or conflict; and explore creative expression. I connect with students, activists, writers, teachers, techies, and entrepreneurs. I work well with introverted, highly sensitive people and people relating to someone with a personality disorder. I enjoy working with families.

My Approach to Helping

We will go beyond relieving symptoms to unpack the sources of your life's pain and purpose. I listen attentively, with curiosity and no judgment, allowing your experience to unfold so we can sense into its uniqueness. I help you revise outdated patterns and repair old wounds that break through coping mechanisms and defenses into symptoms such as anxiety, depression, uncontrollable anger, toxic shame, unresolved grief, mood swings, and insecure attachments. You can adjust behaviors, feelings, and thoughts that were once adaptive and are no longer. You will rediscover flexibility and adaptability, resilience and grace—appreciating how to track and shift emotional states, what to say to a loved one, why to connect more deeply with or cut someone off (e.g., an abusive relationship), etc. I help adults, adolescents, families, and groups. By dismantling oppression together, we can hear ancestral voices and unpack intergenerational trauma that resonates in us all collectively.

My Values as a Therapist

My orientation to counseling is psychodynamic, feminist, multicultural, anti-oppression, neuroscience-aware, and trauma-informed. Before counseling, I had careers in academia and book publishing that prepared me to nurture people's growth in an adaptive way. My academic focus on philosophy of religion encouraged me to explore how people have made very different senses of their lives in the world. I experience my own privilege as a White upper-middle-class assigned-male-at-birth. I identify as a member of non-Zionist Jewish ethnicity and the LGBTQIA+ community. I am educated in psychodynamic psychotherapy and trained in EMDR, somatic therapy, group work, trauma recovery, anger management, White anti-racism, and Internal Family Systems. I earned a PhD in Comparative Religious Studies from Stanford University and a MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from the Family Institute at Northwestern University. I serve as adjunct faculty at Lewis & Clark.

Techniques I Use

Specialties

  • EMDR External link

    I completed Level I Training in EMDR. I am qualified to use EMDR in sessions to treat issues such as anxiety, PTSD, complex trauma, attachment wounds, and damage from microaggressions. I use EMDR in the context of an eclectic treatment plan. I will also honor the wishes of a client who asks for EMDR treatment specifically to address the repercussions of an acute traumatic experience.

  • Psychodynamic  External link

    My education at Northwestern University was centered on psychodynamic psychotherapy. It was incorporated into multiple skills courses. In addition, I have trained extensively in psychodynamic group therapy. My practice centers around insight-based therapy, which means we are trying to uncover the roots of feelings, behaviors, and beliefs that are fed by unconscious sources, not exclusively memories but also fantasies and, most of all, unmet or over-met needs.

  • Anger Management Therapy External link

    Anger Management Therapy is a treatment orientation I have done numerous trainings in and use often for my treatment specialties.

  • Family Therapy External link
  • Internal Family Systems (IFS) External link

Issues I Treat

Specialties

  • Anger Management External link

    I have had enormous success working with anger issues in individuals of all ages. Managing anger means using anger in an adaptive way, when it is constructive in setting boundaries, and not extinguishing it. More important, anger management involves tolerating uncomfortable feelings such as fear and sadness that anger tries to supress. I have trained in anger management from perspectives including EMDR, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Internal Family Systems, and somatic psychotherapy.

  • PTSD External link

    Trauma is an over-adaption to an overwhelming event (e.g. assault, abuse). PTSD disrupts our capacity to regulate thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and puts us into survival mode. It can leave our relationships and nervous systems in need of repair. Symptoms include intrusive thoughts of harm and distressing memories, being. Yet with adaptation and resilience, most of us are able to grow stronger from the most grievous wounds. I am a Level I Trained EMDR therapist.

  • Family Conflict External link

    Families have a special place in my practice. They can be the most complex units and also the most generative because of their historical trajectory and their emotional and behavioral malleability. I am currently training more extensively in family systems and family structural therapy. I have worked effectively with teenagers and young adults (ages 12-26) as well as parents and grandparents.

  • Men's Issues External link
  • Spirituality External link

    Religion & spirituality are potentially helpful or harmful, sources of distress or sustenance. They can restrict us or foster resilience. Broad and open, religion/spirituality can nurture value and connection to other beings and a greater power; narrow and rigid, it can induce anxiety and shame. Interventions will develop internal and external support systems, explore beliefs that induce suffering, enhance joyful feeling, or strengthen social connection. I am versed in Psychedelic Integration.

Contact Gregory

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