Fishtown Wellness Center helps individuals and families create, cultivate, and sustain the life they want to live.
Alex Mays Bryson (he/him) is a Licensed Social Worker (LSW) practicing in Pennsylvania. Alex uses a non-judgmental, humanist lens to support clients’ inherent ability to heal. Alex believes that healing happens at a meeting place between 1) accepting and deeply feeling your feelings, 2) reprocessing your painful experiences into new stories/lessons, and 3) creating a compassionate internal voice to guide you forward.
Using humor, insight, and caring questioning, Alex helps clients reconnect with their aliveness, vitality, and purpose. Alex has experience in mindfulness training and Buddhist psychology, and encourages clients to become aware of (and accept!) the present moment with all attendant thoughts and feelings. He is also trained in Non-violent Communication and supports clients with challenges in their relationships and communicating their feelings and needs to others.
More practically, we will meet to discover what your goals are and take a careful assessment of your needs, strengths, and challenges. Then our time together will focus on gently exploring the structures, thoughts, and stuck feelings that are in the way of your healing and growth. Sometimes that may look like accepting yourself just as you are (and perhaps the problem is actually with the world!); other times we’ll focus on transforming a behavior that you’d like to change.
Alex’s modalities of interest include humanistic psychology, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and relationship theories like Gottman and Emotionally Focused Therapy. Alex is LGBTQIA+ affirming and seeks to uplift and support people with unique gender identities and expressions.
Alex has extensively traveled the United States with his longtime partner and their Labrador-Husky, Leon. When not diving into psychological and political theory, Alex spends his free time reading sci-fi and fantasy, shopping for vintage clothing, cooking meals for friends (or maybe just bundt cakes for himself), playing video games a little too much, and running in the Wissahickon Valley park.
Focus Areas:
Commitment to Social Justice
I believe that therapy should be a liberatory act. The work of today’s therapist is no longer about “treating” a person who is “ill”, but instead working alongside clients to uncover and disrupt oppressive systems of thought and power. I acknowledge that the mental health field was built on medicalized structures of patriarchy, white supremacy, and a belief in the supremacy of individualistic, secular enlightenment thinking. I believe in the legitimacy of indigenous healing practices that my history has suppressed. Through training, supervision, and academic study, I work to continually address my privilege as a white, straight, able-bodied man; I seek ways to give my power/trust/voice to others when possible, or to use my power to echo the voices of the oppressed.