Daniel Sapoznick, LCSW

I became a therapist because I kept noticing the same thing: people are usually far more reasonable than their behavior looks from the outside, once you understand what they've been carrying and how they learned to carry it. That is close to the whole of my clinical philosophy, and everything else is method.

I work with young adults trying to work out what their life is supposed to be, teenagers who would rather do anything than sit in a room with a therapist, and new and young parents in the middle of the biggest role change most people go through. A lot of the people I see are hesitant about therapy for reasons that make sense, a previous therapist who didn't listen, early relationships that made trust expensive, or a general suspicion of anyone who speaks in a soothing voice.

Walking sessions came out of that. Not as a gimmick, but because for many people the office format is the barrier rather than the therapy. Outdoors, side by side, moving at your own pace, most of the awkward machinery falls away. People say things they hadn't planned to say. Silence stops being a test.

In the room, or on the trail, I'm direct and non-confrontational at the same time. I won't push you somewhere you haven't agreed to go, and I also won't pretend a hard thing is fine. There is usually laughing. That's not a lapse in professionalism; it's often the first evidence that the conversation is real.

And I'm outcome-oriented, which for me means paying attention to whether anything is actually changing rather than settling into a comfortable weekly recap. If the work isn't moving, that becomes the subject rather than an unspoken problem.