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, and deep, connected relationships. I don't think those are separate from the work. I think they're precisely what it's about.