Glenn Stott (Intern Therapist)

About Me

I am a master's-level counseling intern at The Center for Growth, where I will be completing my clinical internship from August 17, 2026 through August 17, 2027. I am currently pursuing my master's degree in Mental Health Counseling at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (PCOM).

Before entering the counseling field, my background was in the arts and teaching. Both experiences continue to shape the way I approach therapy.

The arts taught me to be curious, to tolerate uncertainty, and to look at experiences from more than one perspective. Teaching taught me that people learn, change, and grow in different ways — and that simply telling someone what they “should” do rarely creates meaningful change.

I bring those lessons into the therapy room.

My goal is to create a space that feels thoughtful, collaborative, compassionate, and, when appropriate, even playful. Therapy can involve difficult conversations, but I don't believe every moment of therapy has to feel heavy. Humor, creativity, curiosity, and genuine human connection can all have a place in meaningful therapeutic work.

Most importantly, I believe trust and emotional safety are the foundation of a successful counseling relationship.

You know your life better than I ever will. My role is not to tell you who to be or what decisions to make. I can be a guide, a sounding board, a listener, and someone who helps you notice patterns that may be difficult to see from inside your own experience. Ultimately, however, the choices you make — both in therapy and outside of it — belong to you.

Together, we can create a space where you feel safe enough to be honest, curious enough to explore, and supported enough to take risks, make changes, heal, and grow.

Areas I Am Interested in Exploring With Clients

People rarely come to therapy because everything fits neatly into one category. Anxiety can affect relationships. Relationship conflict can contribute to depression. A major life transition can make you question your identity. Difficulties with your body can influence sexuality, confidence, relationships, and the way you move through the world.

I am particularly interested in working with clients around:

• Anxiety, depression, and panic attacks
• Relationship dynamics, recurring conflict patterns, and communication
• Polyamory, open relationships, and consensual non-monogamy
• Alternative sexual lifestyles and relationship structures
• Life transitions and adjustment
• Identity, meaning, and questions about direction or purpose
• Body image and body dysmorphia
• Self-esteem and self-understanding
• Developing healthier patterns within relationships

You do not need to know exactly what is “wrong” before beginning therapy. Sometimes people come to counseling with a very specific concern. Other times, they simply know that something in their life isn't working the way they want it to.

Figuring out what is happening can be part of the work.

My Approach to Therapy

I primarily draw from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Systems Therapy, and Existential Therapy.

Each approach asks a somewhat different question.

CBT asks: What is happening inside you, and what patterns can you change?

Systems Therapy asks: What is happening around you, and how are your relationships and environments influencing your experience?

Existential Therapy asks: Who are you, what matters to you, and what kind of life do you want to create?

Together, these approaches allow us to look at your experience from multiple perspectives.

I don't believe therapy should require you to fit yourself into a particular theoretical model. Instead, we can use different therapeutic tools to better understand what is happening and determine what is actually useful to you.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): Because You Have You

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy focuses on the relationships among your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

Sometimes we become caught in loops.

You may have a thought that creates anxiety, respond to that anxiety by avoiding something, experience temporary relief from the avoidance, and unintentionally strengthen the anxiety that caused you to avoid it in the first place.

Or perhaps an interaction with someone triggers a familiar belief about yourself. That belief influences how you feel, which changes how you respond, which then affects how the other person responds to you. Before long, a pattern that feels inevitable has repeated itself again.

CBT helps us slow these processes down.

Together, we can identify the thoughts, behaviors, emotional reactions, and patterns that may be maintaining your distress. Once we can see a pattern more clearly, we have more opportunities to change it.

That might involve challenging an assumption, experimenting with a new behavior, learning to tolerate an uncomfortable feeling, developing coping skills, or responding differently when an old trigger appears.

CBT is also practical. The work does not have to remain inside the therapy room. Ideally, you develop tools that you can continue using independently.

Because wherever you go, you have you.

Learning how your own mind works — and learning how to work with yourself rather than constantly fighting yourself — can give you greater flexibility when life becomes difficult.

But none of us exists entirely on our own.

Systems Therapy: Because You Are Not Alone

You exist in relationships.

You have been shaped by families, friendships, romantic relationships, schools, workplaces, communities, cultures, and countless other systems.

Those systems influence what you learned about yourself and other people. They can affect how you communicate, how you handle conflict, what you expect from relationships, what feels safe, and what roles you automatically assume when you are with other people.

Systems Therapy helps us look beyond the question, “What's wrong with me?” and ask another important question:

“What is happening between me and the people and systems around me?”

Maybe you find yourself becoming the caretaker in every relationship. Maybe conflict makes you withdraw. Maybe you learned that keeping other people happy was the safest way to maintain connection. Perhaps you and your partner keep having different versions of the same argument regardless of what originally started it.

Sometimes the problem isn't located entirely within one person. It lives in the pattern between people.

In therapy, we can explore the family system, relationship system, workplace system, cultural system, or other environments influencing your experience. We can identify where those systems support you, where they create pressure, and how you respond within them.

We can then explore what happens when you change your part of the pattern.

Sometimes even a relatively small change — communicating more directly, setting a boundary, asking for what you need, tolerating someone else's disappointment, or responding differently during conflict — can shift an entire relationship dynamic.

Where CBT gives you tools for working with yourself, Systems Therapy helps you understand yourself in context.

Existential Therapy: Because Sometimes You Feel Lost

Not every problem can be solved with a coping skill.

Sometimes nothing is obviously “wrong,” yet something still doesn't feel right.

You may find yourself wondering:

What am I doing with my life?

Is this relationship still right for me?

Who am I becoming?

What actually matters to me?

Why am I doing everything I'm supposed to do and still feeling unfulfilled?

These questions often become especially powerful during periods of transition — leaving school, changing careers, ending or beginning relationships, becoming a parent, getting divorced, aging, experiencing loss, or realizing that the life you created no longer feels like the life you want.

Existential Therapy creates room for those questions.

Rather than trying to eliminate uncertainty, we can become curious about it. We can explore your values, choices, relationships, responsibilities, fears, and the meaning you want your life to have.

You may not always be able to control what happens to you. But you can develop greater awareness of how you want to respond and what you want to create from the circumstances you have been given.

Sometimes therapy is about reducing symptoms.

Sometimes it is about changing a relationship.

And sometimes it is about figuring out who you are now and where you want to go next.

Putting It All Together

I don't see CBT, Systems Therapy, and Existential Therapy as competing approaches. I see them as different lenses for understanding the same person.

CBT helps you understand and change patterns within yourself.

Systems Therapy helps you understand and change patterns between yourself and others.

Existential Therapy helps you understand what matters to you and where you want your life to go.

Depending on what brings you into counseling, we may spend more time using one approach than another. We may also incorporate tools and ideas from other therapeutic models when they better fit your needs.

Therapy should be flexible enough to respond to the person sitting in the room.

What You Can Expect From Working With Me

You can expect me to be curious.

I will want to understand not only what isn't working, but also what is. I will ask questions, help you notice patterns, challenge you when appropriate, and work with you to explore possibilities you may not have considered.

You can also expect therapy to be collaborative.

I don't believe that being a therapist means having all the answers. My role is to bring therapeutic knowledge, curiosity, and another perspective into the room. You bring expertise that I cannot have: your lived experience of being you.

Our work happens where those two forms of knowledge meet.

Ultimately, my hope is that therapy helps you develop a deeper understanding of yourself, greater flexibility in how you respond to life's challenges, healthier and more satisfying relationships, and greater confidence in your ability to make choices that reflect who you genuinely want to be.

You don't need to arrive at therapy already knowing where you are going.

Sometimes discovering the direction is the work.