Engage in an education of the human spirit
Lean into the suffering and pain you bring. The heart is a precious thing. The soul lies seeking to heal in the wings.
Many of us feel isolated and alone wrestling with uncertainty, struggle, and difficulties that bind. To learn with equals each day what is good and true seems the edge we strain to find.
Flex your mind and let the wisdom flow. Build on the past to reveal what you cannot see, chipping away at what’s not you to explore the frontier of what is and has always been you - a glorious legacy buried out of view.
Discover your way. Walking your line whatever that may be.
As sure as night is dark and day is light
You give me cause for love that I can't hide . . .
Because you’re mine, I walk the line.
— Johnny Cash
Tension and distress is who you may think you should be.
Relaxation and normal may be who you are.
Claiming inner strengths and resources to overcome adversity, challenge, and difficulty.
Developing disciplines and practices to embolden clarity of purpose, presence, direction, and self-realization.
Creating structures for relationships of accountability, solidarity and integrity.
To risk is to lose one's footing. To not risk is to lose one's self.
Soren Kierkegaard
Theologian, Philosopher (1813-1855)
Throughout my life, I have struggled with anxiety, depression, trauma and addiction. Hitting a bottom caused me to reach out for help. Thankfully, I found people willing to walk with me.The path has not always been easy. What felt like falling apart was a falling together.
Between mind, heart and body, I found greater awareness and integrity. The possibilities opened a vast, mysterious sea of being previously unknown to me.
Find the place you want to be together journeying the seas of uncertainty. I can help you overcome your struggles with experience, compassion and strength.
My LPCC license has been active since 2018 having been in private practice over the past 5 years, with an office now located in St. Paul, MN. I spent the previous five years (2014-18) at a non-profit working as a lead therapist in a domestic abuse program for men.
Quite an experience meeting men from all over the world who were court ordered for counseling. Many of them working class or working poor with no college and many of them never having graduated from high school. I quickly learned not all white men or men in general have cashed in on male privilege. We all experience suffering in our common humanity. Yet, we all seem to find a way to make sense of our reality and move to parts unknown.
Today, my client load consists of a broad spectrum of socioeconomic, gendered and ethnic backgrounds- mostly men and a few women with occasional couples. Some guys from the military and prison. My approach draws from psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, history, literature, drama, music and poetry - to name a few. We work together on finding purpose and meaning, self realization and deeper being, trauma, connection and attachment healing from the scars we incur on our journeys overcoming the human tragedy, imagination, transformation, potential and possibility through self discovery.
I am Ives Wittman
I had a real emotional moment today by myself which doesn’t really happen usually. It was hard but it felt honest.
I appreciate you and the work we’re doing.
— 28-YEAR OLD MAN
Today was eye-opening and the last couple weeks have been positive steps forward. I’ve been reading more and listening to more relaxing music.
It is relieving to feel feelings I don’t want to hide from.
— 28-YEAR OLD MAN
Every adult human being must learn to accept the contradictions in himself or herself which we all inevitably embody; and learn even to embrace them. This acceptance and embrace is not just good for us in the sense that, while it does not change anything, it brings us to a position of reconciliation with ourselves: it does really effect a change.
It helps us draw the venom of what Jung called the dark side. If we believe we must be only and always good and loving, paradoxically we give rise to the opposite of this in its ‘most unbridled and perverse forms.
— The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World by Iain McGilchrist
LET'S TALK
Let the past reveal what you cannot see. Explore the frontier of what is and what has always been you. Discover your way. Walk your line.