James M. Seabrook III

"I grew up in South Jersey. I was a competitive athlete, strong student, involved in everything — and completely falling apart underneath it."

My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 13. I didn't have words for what that did to me, so I found other ways to manage it. By 17, I was using drugs and alcohol badly enough that my parents sent me to a wilderness program in Utah. Three months in the high desert. Then a therapeutic boarding school in Park City for my senior year.

That experience saved my life. It also showed me, in a way nothing else could, what it looks like when someone genuinely sees you — not as a project, not as a problem to be fixed, but as a person worth being present for. I decided I wanted to spend my career doing that for other kids and families.

After graduating from Syracuse with a degree in psychology, I moved back to Utah to pursue work in wilderness therapy while snowboarding competitively. I spent three years on staff before applying to the M.S.Ed. Clinical Mental Health Counseling program at the University of Pennsylvania.

During my master's I was an assistant therapist at a wilderness program and worked in private practice under a psychiatrist. After graduating, I worked as a wilderness therapist for another year and a half before joining a residential treatment program for teenage boys in Utah as a full therapist — five years there.

I now work in private practice, providing telehealth counseling in Delaware, Maine, and Utah, with virtual telehealth services available nationwide. I'm most interested in philosophy, art, music, nature, and deep, connected relationships. I don't think those are separate from the work. I think they're precisely what it's about.