David Suguitan, LMHC
Feeling deeply makes us deeply human. When we ignore our feelings, we deny ourselves our own humanity. When we avoid our feelings, we do not solve mental health issues. We create them. Because symptoms such as anger, anxiety, and depression are often expressions of much deeper wounds, fears, conflicts, and angst, the task of therapy is to figure out what these symptoms are trying to say, not simply to make them go away.
My approach draws from a variety of therapeutic modalities, including narrative therapy, psychodynamic therapy, internal family systems therapy, person-centered therapy, trauma-informed therapy, cognitive therapy, Jungian analysis, existential therapy, and developmental psychology. The adults I work with are often struggling with feelings of uncertainty, dissatisfaction, unfulfillment, existential angst, anger, and fear related to childhood wounds, family dynamics, relationships, work demands, traumatic experiences, changes, losses, and separations. The young adults I work with are typically in their late teens or early/mid-twenties. Often, they are struggling with feelings of worry, despair, fear, isolation, loneliness, hopelessness, and anger related to identity, family, relationships, school, work, and the state of the world.
Before becoming a therapist, I taught high school English and ESL for nearly 10 years in the San Francisco Bay Area and in the Olympia area. I burned out in 2016 after realizing that I cared far, far more about my students as people than about their views on Macbeth. With this realization in mind, I decided to pursue a new career in counseling.
I was born and raised in San Francisco, CA. I grew up in a blended family system, which is the fancy way of saying my parents got divorced, my dad was an alcoholic, my uncle wasn’t actually my uncle, and my cousins aren’t actually my cousins. I am Filipino and Jewish and also the first in my family to graduate from college. In 2013, I moved to Washington with my wife, who is from Olympia. When I’m not working, I watch movies, read, and pretend to be famous while playing the guitar.