A Bit About Me
From an early age, therapy has been an important part of Paul's development in his relentless quest for curiosity and a sense of understanding. As a second-generation St. Thomian from the Virgin Islands, Paul has lived and experienced both a multicultural and multiracial sense of community that has helped me embrace differences and diversity. These influences helped pave a path to mentoring at-risk and marginalized youth while in high school, and onward to university to study how society's invisible influences affect our daily lives.
So why is Paul a therapist? Through his own lived and learned experiences, Paul sees the importance of listening to unique stories and helping to uncover how they shape the fabric of our being. It is the process of unraveling these stories to sketch a clearer picture of how anxiety, depression, uncertainty, and even happiness is interwoven throughout a circumstance – or maybe even our lifetime. It is not stopping to settle for thin conclusions by uncovering the rich descriptions of our lives and our relationships. For Paul, the basis of therapy is about understanding the relationship with a “problem,” rather than trying to fix it. Problems only survive and thrive when they are supported and backed up by particular ideas, beliefs, and principles and can feel like a relentless need to escape a moment that never ends. Exploring the details and effects of these obstacles will help lead to the discovery of different outcomes yet not thought of or discovered.
Paul is interested in the collaborative journey of discovering, acknowledging, and 'taking apart' these hardened ideas and habitual beliefs that saturate our daily lives. Once these dominant ideas and beliefs that support the problem are exposed and discussed, we can find alternative stories to reduce the influence and create new possibilities for living.
Paul is experienced in working with the LGBTQ+ community, Trans youth, young adults, addiction, grief, couples, parents, and families. Some of my specializations include anxiety, depression, addiction and substance abuse, grief, peer conflict, transitioning, interpersonal relationship issues, and phase of life adjustments.