Welcome to Lighter Counseling

Founded by James Young (LPC-Associate #95321)

I’m dedicated to helping people live with more authenticity and compassion. My practice is grounded in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) practices, emphasizing the importance of being present, working with reality, and letting personal values guide behavior.

Life can be challenging and painful, and we all face uncertainties, disappointments, conflicts, heartbreaks, losses, traumas, and existential questions. At Lighter Counseling, I offer a safe, non-judgmental space where you can openly express your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Together, we'll explore your anxiety, depression, anger, grief, trauma, and self-doubt and work collaboratively to build skills to help you accept the realities of life, find joy in the present, identify how you want to show up in the world, and choose behaviors that reflect the real you.

I specialize in helping teens and their families. Adolescence can be a turbulent time where young individuals struggle to balance their need for support with their desire to be independent. My work focuses on generating understanding and big-picture perspective-taking while encouraging each person to live congruently with their true self.

I have added specialized trainings in Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) to help people suffering from past traumas reduce its impact on their present lives and in Discernment Counseling to help struggling life-long romantic partnerships decide if they can and should stay together or separate.

Before I became a counselor, I spent twenty-five years in the high-tech world leading product teams for companies as large as Microsoft and as small my own start-up. I spent my days understanding the people who used my software and their lives so I could then work with the amazing software engineers to build the right tools in the way that helped the most. I like to think these years trained me to be a therapist.