Ash Compton

I am a trauma-focused, Licensed Marriage and Family EMDR-Certified Therapist practicing in post-Jungian, psychodynamic, depth, and existential traditions. I love co-creating a curious container with clients to set goals and to commit to them rigorously. I work relationally and consider navigating the social context as part of this work. We will employ myriad methods together, including expressive, dreamwork, Gestalt, and somatic modalities to enhance coping skills, make meaning, and foster change. My approach is inquisitive, open, direct, and encouraging. You can anticipate a therapist that puts you at ease by using practical tools in a way that creates long-standing insight and movement. I believe in treating the roots, not the branches.

I am clinically interested in how family and cultural narratives shape experiences, and how the collective psyche shapes our inner worlds. I work with clients that have heightened attunements, sensitivities, and anxieties that may block how a person intends to show up. Therapy, at its best, aims to better integrate these anxieties, and encourages deeper engagement with your interior.

I am EMDR-Certified, which I use for acute and complex traumas, OCD/phobias, and chronic pain. I work with adult individuals, couples, teens/preteens, and full or partial families with focuses on attachment traumas (including religious trauma), anxiety, panic, obsessions, digital issues and addictions, creative and expressive ruts, and grief.

I work well with folks who are inquisitive about, and committed to, their psychic material, and with those who have been impacted by disaster trauma, the climate crisis, or fear that they will be. I incorporate intersectionality into the therapeutic space. You are met in the consulting room as a whole person. Outside of therapeutic work, I am engaged in radical ecopsychology writing and research, and have an active practice of arts and design-systems thinking around the environmental crises and related human-nature detachment. Inclusive and affirmative; I have experience working with queer, trans, BIPOC, poly individuals and couples.

A Little About Me

I graduated from Pacifica Graduate University in 2016, with a Masters of Counseling Psychology and an emphasis on post-Jungian/Depth Psychology. My first career was involved in the design of 3-dimensional spaces, in commercial interiors and television/film. This work set the stage for play with narrative and imagery–laying rich groundwork for expressive arts, play therapy, and mythic exploration. I completed my graduate clinical practicum at The High Frontier, an adolescent treatment center, focusing on behavioral issues, severe attachment disorders, and substance and internet addiction with adolescents 12-18 years old. Prior to expanding my practice to Austin, I worked in supervised private practice settings in both far West Texas and Dallas, focusing on relational issues and attachment, Sandplay and trauma with couples, adults, and adolescents.

It is a deep privilege and honor to witness and help facilitate clients becoming their truer and more vibrant selves. I look forward to connecting.