Today we’d like to introduce you to Greg Woodhill, LMFT, CSAT.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Greg. So, let’s start at the beginning, and we can move on from there.
I moved to Los Angeles after college to become a famous actor. During the next 12 years, I embarked upon a personal journey of healing and growth that helped me to see that there was so much more to life than pursuing outside validation. The more growth I experienced, the less I needed other people to tell me that I was wonderful in order to feel good about myself.
After 12 years of pursuing my dream and simultaneously realizing that time was slipping by without anything to show for it, I left the industry and decided to move forward in a career where my talents would actually be rewarded. On my first day of graduate school for Counseling Psychology at the University of Santa Monica, I knew I was in the right place.
I was passionate to learn all about the subjects of healing, misinterpretations of reality, cognitive restructuring, and loving the places inside of us that hurt. The graduate program was extremely experiential, so I was able to work on my own growth and healing while simultaneously learning how to help others. After graduate school, I became interested in the field of helping clients with sexual addiction or compulsivity, and I worked for five years at the Center for Healthy Sex in Los Angeles.
During these years, I learned more and more about treating that specific addiction and became very comfortable being “myself” in the therapist chair. In 2014, I opened my private practice and have had the career of my dreams ever since. My clientele has been about 90% male throughout the years, and it is my true joy to sit in the room and listen to people that I care about tell me the things that they have kept secret throughout their lives.
I have witnessed in real-time a man walking in the door with 1,000 pounds of shame and guilt on his shoulders, and walk out standing straight and tall with a new sense of self-love and acceptance. I love helping men see that they have used addiction as a coping mechanism to make themselves feel better and to see them flourish as they develop healthier ways to bring joy into their lives.
Since therapy is an emotionally intimate experience, my clients hone their skills of being able to bring true intimacy into their personal lives. Since the opposite of addiction is connection, I help my clients to re-train their brains to seek out true connection which will help them stay sober from their addiction.
Great, 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?
It has been a relatively smooth road, with some internal bumps along the way. When I began working as a therapist, I put a lot of pressure on myself to say the right thing, act the right way, or be more like what a “therapist” should be.
Part of my journey was realizing that the more of my own life, wisdom, humor, and humanity I bring into the room, the better the therapy is. As an MFT Intern, it was difficult for me to assert my boundaries around how many clients I should see in a day and which cases were “out of my league.” I felt as if I had to show up and be perfect, which is impossible for anyone to achieve.
As I began to be more of “myself” in the therapist chair, it became much more fun and much less stressful to do this work. Also, being more of myself in the therapist chair helped my clients and me to develop stronger interpersonal connections in the room.
We’d love to hear more about what you do.
My private psychotherapy practice is specialized in men who identify as sex or pornography addicts.
While I also treat men who do not have any sexual addiction issues, my clientele tends to be about 60-70% addiction clients. I am a very Client-Centered therapist, which means that I don’t serve as a moral authority to my clients, nor do I dictate to them what they should or should not do. Rather, I am authentic in the room with them, and we walk down the different paths together to see what steps they need to take that resonate the best inside of themselves.
They are the experts in their feelings and life experience, so I am there to walk through it with them and point out pitfalls along the way. We work deeply in the realm of previous childhood experiences to see how those early relationships shaped their personality and led them to turn to addiction to distract them from unpleasant feelings. What sets my practice apart from others is that I don’t rubber-stamp clients as “addicts.”
I see each client as an individual with a story. I tell them the honest truth about what I think is best for them, but I am not in the business of telling someone that my opinion is the only one that counts. Instead, using all of the most modern diagnostic criteria, we come to our conclusions together while I point them in the direction that I think is best for them. It’s truly collaborative, which is different from what some of them have experienced in past therapeutic relationships.
In March of 2019, I will be launching a new podcast called “A Brave New Man,” which will focus on toxic vs. healthy masculinity, relationships, healing, and love. It is for both men and women to hear stories that illuminate where men have gotten it right, where we’ve gotten it wrong, and how to fix it.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Humility. My clients are in the room with a therapist who does not think he is any better than them. I am human just like my clients, and I use my own life experiences to guide me in my work with them. Being humble as a person helps me to be empathetic toward my clients, which is one of the most healing factors in the relationship.
Pricing:
- 50-minute psychotherapy session – $195
Contact Info:
- Address: 10780 Santa Monica Blvd., #250
Los Angeles, CA 90025 - Website: www.gregwoodhill.com
- Phone: 3109271412
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @abravenewmanpod
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregwoodhill
Image Credit:
Jill Esplin
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