John Carleton

Healing For Life

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Hello! I’m John, a compassionate and grounded therapist. I practice psychodynamic therapy, drawing on narrative, somatic, and EMDR approaches to meet you where you are and tailor sessions to your needs. I spent the last five years working with teens, young adults, and parents at a local community health organization, and I’m excited to bring that experience to my own practice.

I see change as a marathon, not a sprint. We’ll start by focusing on immediate symptom reduction — helping you move out of constant fight-or-flight reactions. Once you’re not in that reactive state so often, we can work toward deeper, lasting change. It took years for you to get where you are, so established patterns won’t shift overnight. Part of our work together will be helping you build compassion for yourself along the way. You’re human, and you won’t be perfect. Real change happens when you make the same old mistake, remember you’re on a healing journey, extend yourself some grace, do the necessary repair work, and try again.

I especially love working with parents at every stage of life. Parenting is a hard job — nobody can push our buttons quite like our own kids. As a parent myself, I understand how difficult it can be to stay grounded and offer loving, consistent boundaries when our kids — whether babies, toddlers, teens, or adults — are testing us. My approach is tailored to your needs: I use somatic tools to help your body learn what calm and safety feel like, cognitive tools to help shift how you think about and approach situations, and pattern-recognition work to help you identify habits formed early in life — so you can notice your reactions in the moment and choose to respond differently.

Primary Address:

8681 NE Fox Den Ln.
Bainbridge Island, WA 98110

Phone: 360-207-1997

Email: john@healingfor.life

Website: healingfor.life

Membership: Clinical

Licensures/Certifications: LMHC

License #: MHC.LH.61619958

Populations: Adolescents, Adults

Issues and Concerns: Adult Survivors of Child Trauma / Abuse, Dissociative Disorders, Family Issues, Family of Origin, Grief and Loss, Parenting - Includes Parent-Child Conflicts, Trauma and PTSD

Treatment Modalities: EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization), Meditation and Mindfulness (includes MBSR - Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction), Narrative Therapy, Psychoanalytic / Psychodynamic Therapy

Insurance: Preferred provider for many insurances.  Aetna, Cigna, Kaiser Permanente