PTC

Michael Running

Licensed Professional Counselor Intern

I offer relationally-oriented counseling for individuals, relationships, and groups. Bringing curiosity to your experience, we can explore the beliefs that may hold you back. Using experiential and emotion-focused approaches, our work together will nurture contentment, belonging, and fulfillment.

Services

Couples Therapy
Group Therapy
Individual Therapy
Family Therapy
Adolescent/Teen Therapy

Couples Therapy
Group Therapy
Individual Therapy
Family Therapy
Adolescent/Teen Therapy

My Approach

Counseling is relational: your relationship with yourself in your world, my own relationship to my self, and the relationship we form together. My person-centered and existential orientation to counseling sprouts from the rich soil of Gestalt Therapy, which brings curiosity, exploration, and present-process into the healing you wish to see. From this ground, I also utilize mindful somatic psychotherapy in understanding the wisdom your body and felt experience hold. To help transform painful emotions or traumatic experiences, I also use Emotion-Focused Therapy to access emotions that promote well-being which often lie underneath more painful ones. Bringing mindfulness into our relationship can also be an effective support to access and understand your experience. Curiosity and acceptance are the two pillars my counseling approach rests upon. Most of all, I trust in and rely upon your holistic experience and organic wish for well-being.

My Background

I am a Licensed Professional Counseling Intern and a Nationally Certified Counselor in private practice. Much of what I bring to therapy is informed by the near-decade I spent as a Buddhist monk both in the U.S. and overseas in Taiwan. This transformative and dedicated experience continues to unfold in meaning and purpose today. I was born here in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, falling in deep connection with the lands and waters that make this home so special. Before and after my time in the monastery, I worked for a decade with land conservation nonprofits throughout the state. I graduated from Portland State University in 2020 with a master’s degree in counseling for relationships and individuals. Concurrent with the accredited counseling program at PSU, I also received extensive training in Gestalt therapy, somatic psychotherapy (Hakomi), Emotion-Focused therapy, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. I also serve on the board of the Oregon Counseling Association.