Colin Christman

My name is Colin Christman, and I am licensed in Connecticut as an LCSW. I completed my undergraduate education at Yale University in Political Science and Applied Mathematics. I completed my graduate education at the University of Connecticut.

The bulk of my prior work experience is in intensive care settings (largely inpatient or residential) for severe issues in behavioral health (substance use disorders, self-harm, suicidality, complex trauma, eating disorders, and other behavioral health problems such as gambling disorder, sex addiction, compulsive dishonesty, and kleptomania).

I have significant experience working with co-occurring trauma, behavioral health disorders, personality disorders, and mood or anxiety disorders. Given the complex, florid, and grave nature of many of these disorders, I have experience working within a family context with partners, parents, children, and siblings.

For whom it may be interesting, I have training in Internal Family Systems (IFS) and trauma-specific interventions. I would describe my overall therapeutic approach as psychodynamic, and most consistent with the ideas of Alfred Adler and Eric Berne. At times we may be joined by Emma, a certified emotional support dog.

I believe that most mental illnesses are diseases of absence, not diseases of presence. If you imagine influenza, it’s a disease of presence. There’s a bad thing present (the viral infection) that produces disease. By contrast, scurvy is a disease of absence. Lacking vitamin C for a prolonged period, the body cannot maintain healthy function.

I believe the role of therapy is to identify what’s missing in terms of emotional nutrition (safety, interpersonal connection, a sense of identity, a sense of community, a sense of purpose, a sense of capability, and structure are core examples, though there are others and biomedical possibilities as well).

From there, our goal is to determine why those psychological needs are persistently unmet, and how those unmet needs motivate self-destructive or maladaptive patterns in your life. Often in psychology we discuss cognition and emotion (thoughts and feelings). In truth, thoughts and feelings are only the mechanism by which the brain turns its understanding of what’s happening into a behavioral response. Our goal is to use those thoughts and feelings, in the context of your life, to discover underlying beliefs that produce too much negative emotion, too little positive emotion, or behavior that isn’t consistent with your values, your goals, or your wellbeing.

But where we start is a lot simpler: Who are you? What matters to you? What’s wrong in your life, and what would it mean for things to be right? We’re all in the process of trying to become a better version of ourselves. Therapy is the process of challenging and changing beliefs to progress toward a better relationship with others and, most importantly, ourselves.