Gary Grant

Gary Grant brings five decades of professional experience as a teacher and educator, a probation officer, and a mental health therapist. He is a member of the National Board for Certified Counselors and is licensed to practice in Washington State as a Licensed Mental Health Counselor.

He provides psychotherapy for individuals across the lifespan - children, adolescents, and adults - as well as couples and family therapy. His clinical orientation began with Rogers and client-centered therapy and evolved into an integrative, recovery-focused approach that emphasizes client strengths and the development of resilient mental health.

Grant’s practice is informed by a multi- and cross-cultural perspective rooted in his Native American and African heritage. He has extensive experience working with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and same-sex clients, and with the distinctive psychological issues present within Native and African American communities. He spent six years on the Salish/Kootenai Reservation in Montana and four years working with Alaskan Natives in Fairbanks, Alaska.

His work with adolescents includes residential programs that emphasized a positive peer orientation and incorporated individual, group, and family therapies across cultural settings. Over the years he has also served as a group therapist teaching mindfulness techniques for emotional regulation to diverse groups, including people experiencing depression and anxiety linked to PTSD from violence and severe abuse, and he has addressed anger management in contexts of domestic violence and bipolar disorder.

Grant’s formal training encompasses a Bachelor of Arts from Western State College of Colorado with majors in psychology and sociology plus studies in education, theatre, and fine arts, including research in suicidality. He earned a Master’s Degree in Education with emphasis in psychology, guidance, and counseling from the University of Northern Colorado, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Montana with coursework in theatre and group psychotherapy, including two independent studies with Robert Ammons Senior, a psychological test specialist and publisher of the KTSA. He became a certified clinical hypnotherapist after training with Jack and Helen Watkins in Ego-State Therapy, and he completed major coursework in clinical psychology toward a PsyD at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon.

Earlier in his career he held licenses in Montana, Oregon, and Alaska before his current Washington license. He also gained hands-on experience providing cognitive therapy for people with schizophrenia over a five-year period in collaboration with a unit psychiatrist.