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, create effortlessly, and communicate effectively

Client Status

accepting clients

Contact

3434 S Kelly Ave

Ste 310

Portland, OR 97239

At a Glance

Me

Rate: $160-$200

Provides free initial consultation

Practicing Since: 2020

Languages: English

Services

  • Individual
  • Group

Insurances Accepted

  • Out of Pocket
  • Out of Network
  • OHP Single Case Agreement

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.

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 I help you revise outdated patterns and repair old wounds that break through coping mechanisms and defenses into symptoms such as anxiety, depression, uncontrollable anger, toxic shame,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

  • 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.

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

Issues I Treat

Specialties

  • 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.

  • Self-Esteem 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.

  • Personal Growth External link

Contact Gregory

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