A whale’s tail rising from the water at sunset, symbolizing depth, power, and the promise of resurfacing after the dive.

Recover what you never lost.

A different kind of therapy for a different kind of change.

At Descend-to-Ascend Psychotherapy & Counseling Services, I offer long-term, depth-oriented therapy for adult individuals and couples. My approach is rooted in psychodynamic theory and Control-Mastery Theory, and guided by the belief that insight, honesty, and sustained relationship can transform even the most entrenched patterns.

I offer sessions both in person — from my private, thoughtfully designed home office in the Westmoreland/Rome area — and via secure telehealth for adults across New York State. Local patients are welcome to utilize either format, or a blend of both, depending on preference and need.

This is not therapy as quick fix. It is not a place for trendy techniques or passive validation. It is a space for reckoning — and for return. For meeting the parts of yourself you had to exile to survive. For learning to live more truthfully, even when truth demands something of you.

Therapy here doesn’t bypass suffering. It seeks to understand it — because pain, when listened to carefully, becomes a guide.

Psychotherapy & Counseling Services

  • Silhouette of a man standing on a rock at sunset, representing individual therapy and the process of personal reflection and growth.

    Individual Therapy

    For adults seeking to make sense of persistent emotional struggles, relational patterns, or a vague but painful sense that they’re not fully living as themselves. Many of my patients arrive feeling stuck: intellectually capable but emotionally constrained. Some have prior therapy experience that felt supportive, but ultimately unsatisfying. Others are new to therapy altogether — and unsure of what they need.

    Together, we work to illuminate what has been buried, exiled, or distorted — and begin the slow, liberating work of integration. This is therapy as self-reclamation: not symptom suppression, but the pursuit of a more coherent and honest life.

  • Silhouettes of a man and woman at sunset, symbolizing couples therapy, relationship exploration, and reconnection.

    Couples Therapy

    For partners who feel out of sync, stuck in conflict, or caught in the same painful loop. I help couples move beyond surface disagreements to the deeper emotional truths beneath them — what each partner is protecting, fearing, or longing for.

    I am especially well-suited to work with couples who have only ever been able to describe their dissatisfaction in vague terms like “communication issues,” “trust issues,” or “we lost the spark.” These phrases often mask deeper dynamics that haven’t yet been named — patterns of avoidance, rupture, or emotional misattunement that can be understood and worked through in therapy.

    Couples therapy offers a chance not just to resolve problems, but to repair something more essential: the capacity to see and be seen with honesty, courage, and care.

Who I Work With

I specialize in working with reflective, searching adults who are willing to invest in a process that honors complexity and doesn’t promise shortcuts. Many of my patients:

  • Have histories of relational trauma or emotional misattunement

  • Struggle with authenticity, shame, or inner conflict

  • Feel emotionally numb, overly reactive, or both

  • Are outwardly successful but inwardly disconnected

  • Want more from therapy than tools or coping strategies

I also work with many men seeking help for the first time — drawn to a therapeutic relationship that honors their intelligence, respects (but does not collude with) their defenses, and meets them where they are without condescension.

Here, masculinity is not pathologized. I understand how many men have been made to feel defective simply for being male — especially in therapeutic settings that view their struggles through a narrow or ideological lens. My approach is different. I don’t ask you to disown your masculinity; I help you explore how it has been shaped, where it protects you, and where it may be keeping you from the fuller emotional range that’s possible.

My Approach

I don’t offer easy answers. I don’t rush to reassure. And I don’t reduce your suffering to a set of symptoms to be managed. Instead, I help you turn toward what hurts — not to dwell there, but to find out what it’s trying to tell you.

My work is informed by psychodynamic theory in general and by Control-Mastery Theory more specifically — frameworks that understand symptoms not as random malfunctions, but as meaningful signals. Even our most self-defeating patterns often reflect unconscious efforts to stay safe, preserve loyalty, or avoid anticipated harm. Therapy helps bring these strategies into awareness, so they can be examined and — when they no longer serve — relinquished.

Insight matters — but only as a threshold. What matters most is what you do with it. I’ll help you go deeper, not for its own sake, but so you can live with greater clarity, integrity, and emotional freedom.

The work can be difficult. But it is also sacred. Like the orca — which must dive into the dark depths to gather the momentum for its breach — we descend to gather power.

To recover what we never lost.

No results found

Contact Jonathan

I welcome your outreach.

Whether for yourself, your relationship, or simply to explore the possibility, reaching out is just a first step toward conversation — not a commitment.

Click below to complete my secure, HIPAA-compliant form, and I’ll be in touch within one business day.

You can also reach me directly at:
jonathan@descendtoascend.com
(315) 828-8494

Start secure form
A stylized silhouette of a whale breaching out of water with splashes and waves around it, representing Descend-to-Ascend Psychotherapy & Counseling Services.