Community Highlights: Meet Astin Wangel-Brown

Today we’d like to introduce you to Astin Wangel-Brown.

Astin, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I moved back to Los Angeles from NYC fall of 2018. With the help of a minimalism expert and coach, I had clarified in the year prior to my move that I would go directly into full-time private practice when got here. This was so scary for me but also so exciting. It was the fruition of my biggest most consistent career dreams- to be a Psychotherapist in Private Practice and center the work I loved doing most. Fall 2018, I did just that. With the help of communities like the Los Angeles Gender Center, my network of colleagues in NYC from Ackerman Institute for the Family and all of the many find-a-therapist listing websites that aligned with my areas of expertise and passion, I slowly but surely found my footing as a full-time private practitioner in Los Angeles (and New York via teletherapy). Since then, I have been able to work with folks with expansive identities, relationships and emotional experiences. I now practice in Echo Park on Sunset BLVD and I couldn’t be happier or more fulfilled with my work.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
One of the reasons for my decision to return to LA was that my father was diagnosed with dementia a number of years prior. I had promised myself that when it seemed too difficult to be away, my partner and I would move back to LA. Summer 2017, when preparing to move to a new apartment in Brooklyn, I surprised myself with adamantly expressing to my partner that I could only sign a one-year lease because “I HAD TO GO HOME!” Thankfully my partner and I had already envisioned landing in LA and I was fully supported with a move end-of-summer 2018. I was able to see my dad as often as I wanted and help with his care from fall 2018 to last spring 2022 when he died. I realize now that this period of manifesting my dream, as magical as it has felt at times, has never been apart from grief or my father’s inability to cheer me on, as he surely would have.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I identify as an “identity and relationship therapist” -these are the experiences of human existence and functioning that intrigue me the most. How we see ourselves to ourselves and in relationship to the world is so central to our existence and wellness. It’s also essential to our ways of being in relationships with others. I am so energized by supporting folks’ clarity and empowerment in how they move through the world as themselves- from navigating social identities like race, gender, and ability to navigating more personal identities/roles related to profession, family role/position, or location. I am often telling my clients I believe them. My relational/narrative/critically consciousness therapy background allows me to center liberation in my work in a way the resonates with me deeply and what I want to embody as a support to clients seeking my support. I am actively advocating for my clients to advocate for themselves.

I can be heard asking what my client thinks after they ask what I think, affirming what I hear them affirming for themselves and helping them notice negative, unhelpful thoughts keeping them from empowered decision-making. I can be heard educating clients on boundaries and effective communication with anyone from passersby to their parents. I’m excited as I write this even-I’m so excited to help people hear themselves, believe themselves and trust themselves to make the decisions that will create the life and functioning they long for. It’s so wonderful to see this over time. I have seen my clients transform their thinking and behaviors with tools including self-compassion, thought-stopping, reframing and curiosity practices that affirm their best beliefs about themselves. My current learning and desired practice expansion is in areas of trauma, sex, dual-diagnosis and grief. I provide individual, couple and family talk therapy. I offer teletherapy and in-person meeting options for California and New York-based clients.

What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
I believe myself. I didn’t always. I think being encouraged to believe what I wanted was possible from the coach I mentioned earlier changed everything for me. I am still floored by the reality that if I didn’t believe it was possible, I wouldn’t be living any of the dreams I’m living out now. And the belief has to be dogged! Like you have to know what you know and go because negative self-talk and external negativity is at the ready to sit you down.

Honesty and self-compassion. I have had to meet myself where I am over and over again. Often a realistic look at what my goals are and what my capacity is to accomplish those goals can really clarify for me what I am able to do when. More often than not, I am more ambitious than what I have the capacity for in that moment -this honest and compassionate check-in can allow me to get aligned with what I can do, do that and then move to the next thing I have capacity for.

Contact Info:

• Other: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/astin-c-wangel-brown-los-angeles-ca/218261