Licensed Professional Counselor · VA & CO
Matthew Barber LPC
My specialty is helping individuals struggling with anxiety, including generalized anxiety, medical anxiety, panic attacks, OCD, phobias, and social anxiety.
My approach is based in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which works by changing your relationship with anxiety itself rather than trying to reduce or control it. Anxiety is pretty hard to directly control, but more importantly, you don’t need to control or reduce it to start living a more meaningful life. In fact, focusing on reducing anxiety often just means you are focusing more on your anxiety. Let’s try something different.
During our first session, we will explore what brought you to therapy, what you are looking for in it, and begin to identify some actionable goals based more on your values. We will learn how anxiety and attempts to control it (avoidance, perfectionism, obsession, compulsions) may have impacted your life, and begin to explore evidence-based strategies to make peace with discomfort, while simultaneously moving towards the life you want to live. At the same time, our sessions will be organic, creative, and collaborative, with plenty of flexibility to spend time talking about other issues and feelings that come up as you live life while in therapy. While I provide structure and tools, you will always been in charge of your treatment goals and therapy will feel like a collaboration.
Outside of therapy, I love hiking, skateboarding, tinkering with projects, and making coffee.
Background and Experience
I earned both my undergraduate and graduate degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University with a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Psychology and a Master of Science (MS) in Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling. I am a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Virginia and Colorado. My training and background emphasized “holism", which is a philosophy that emphasizes the individual in their entirety rather than categorizing or using reductionist logic. This approach emphasizes personal growth and self-actualization as the primary goals as opposed to symptom-reduction or diagnosis.
During college, I volunteered in research labs studying the effects of mindfulness, meditation, and openness on metrics of psychological wellbeing. I’ve always been fascinated by drugs. I have worked in a variety of treatment settings with experience in general mental health counseling, addiction counseling, facilitating group therapy, and working with individuals and couples in an outpatient group practice.