Hi, I'm Noé (they/them)
I'm Seattle therapy intern who's queer, Buddhist, and relationship anarchist. Scroll down to get to know me and whether I'm a good fit to support you or your relationship.
I'm a therapist Seattle clients can see as a clinical intern at Connection Therapy Center. Sessions are $60/hour.
I believe therapy is less about fixing what's wrong and more about reconnecting with the healing wisdom you already have.
I hold all identities with care. As a nonbinary, poly, kinky, neurodivergent, Buddhist, I aim to create a space that honors your uniqueness.
My approach is systemic, which means I consider how the levels of psyche, body, relationships, family, and society all impact your mental health.
My story
My path to becoming a therapist started in college, when I picked up a book on Buddhism, started meditating, and discovered my inner world was a lot more interesting than my computer science degree. Still, I graduated and went to work at Microsoft as a software engineer. Around that time, a close friend introduced me to Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks, a psychotherapist and dance movement therapist couple who taught relationship skills through play. Something clicked so much that I trained with them for two and a half years, then left my software job to become a life coach.
What I learned from the Hendricks boiled down to this: relationships don't have to be hard and grueling. They can run on curiosity, honesty, and play, even when working through conflict, hurt, and past trauma. And the skills to get there are learnable, not something you're born with. So I spent years coaching individuals and couples and testing everything on my own life, until I realized that to do this work professionally, I needed more clinical training.
Grad school, my own therapy (individual, relationship, and family), and over fifteen years of meditation helped me understand my deepest patterns and learn to face them with self-compassion. My relationships went from confusing and painful to honest, secure, and genuinely joyful.
Along the way, Seattle's queer, poly, and dance communities helped me understand other parts of my identity: being nonbinary, a relationship anarchist, a movement enthusiast, and a neurodivergent person with ADHD. Over the last decade, I've facilitated non-monogamy groups and intimacy retreats, taught meditation and yoga, run ecstatic dances, and built a trauma-informed consent program for a local dance community.
My own winding path has made me deeply curious about other people's stories. If something here resonates with you, reach out. I'd love to hear yours.
My approach to therapy
My approach is collaborative, engaged, embodied and hopefully sometimes we'll laugh together at the absurdity of life. I'm not like those old cartoon images of therapists diagnosing Freudian theories from an armchair. In therapy I work intimately together with you on your life, relationships, and anything you bring in.
I draw on Internal Family Systems (IFS), somatic therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Gottman method, and play therapy. For example we might use IFS to explore what parts of you carry anxiety or hurt; or EFT to slow down and locate the feeling or attachment wound underneath; or play therapy to turn your relationship work into a collaborative team exercise rather than slogging through the mud. I might invite you to move your body, draw out the issue, or sit with a feeling longer than you're used to. Getting your body and both brain hemispheres involved creates more lasting change than working through something purely conceptually.
So make yourself at home in my office. Sit, stand, move around, play with a fidget, bring a stuffie. If you want to go for a walk we can do that too. Your whole self is welcome.
Credentials & Training
I'm currently completing my Master of Arts in Couples and Family Therapy at Antioch University Seattle, with a focus on relationship therapy, sex therapy, queer identities, and conscious non-monogamy (I'm working to become the kind of polyamory therapist Seattle needs more of). All sessions are conducted under clinical supervision, meaning my work is regularly reviewed by a fully licensed therapist while I'm an intern.
Clinical Training
MFT Intern, Connection Therapy Center, Seattle
MA in Couples and Family Therapy, Antioch University Seattle (in progress, 2024-2027)
Gottman Method Level 1 Certified
Prior Training and Certifications
Certified Life and Relationship Coach, Hendricks Institute (2015) — two-year somatic relationship coaching training with Gay Hendricks PhD and Kathlyn Hendricks PhD
Shambhala Buddhist Meditation Instructor (2023) — practicing since 2010 in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition
Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT), Yogalife Seattle (2014)
Additional Training
Substance Use: SBIRT Certificate (Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment)
Neurodiversity and Disability Justice
OCD (Exposure and Response Prevention)
Get to know me
I've been practicing Tibetan Buddhism for 17 years, and through dozens of retreats and thousands of hours of sitting doing nothing, I've actually learned a thing or two, which, in true Buddhist fashion, I'll share as a list:
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Our painful emotions (fear, sadness, hurt, anger) just want us to sit and listen to them, not try to get rid of them.
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Harmful actions are caused by confused minds - no one in their right mind would harm another human.
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We hold all the wisdom, healing, and love we could ever need inside us, but like an iceberg, we are usually only aware of a small amount of what we're capable. Therapy and meditation help us uncover more of the iceberg.
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Radical and compassionate self-honesty is the path to healing the relationship with our self. And the same is true for our relationships.
If you want to geek out about Buddhism I practice in the Shambhala and Kagyu-Nyingma traditions, primarily under these teachers: Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Mingyur Rinpoche, and Dzongsar Kyentse Rinpoche.
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Identifying as a Relationship Anarchist doesn't mean I'm smashing windows and burning relationships to the ground. Little known fact: the whole smashing windows image is actually the opposite of what anarchism proposes!
A little background on anarchy: Anarchist thinkers like Emma Goldman and Peter Kropotkin pushed back on the idea that people are inherently chaotic and selfish and need oppressively heavy governance to keep order. Their view was that humans are naturally cooperative. Disagreements still happen, but we tend to move toward solutions, kindness, and collaboration.
So in a relationship context it's the idea that we can collaborate on what kind of relationships we want, and that we're not limited to just the 2 categories of "partner" or "friend." In Andie Nordgren's Relationship Anarchy Manifesto, they encourage us to challenge the idea that love is reserved to couples, and that we can only love one person. Instead, they pose that "love is abundant, and every relationship is unique." Since each relationship is unique, as anarchy offers, we cancollaboratively customize our relationship agreements and live out richer, fuller relationships than were limited by the 2 normative categories.
I find these principles beautiful and aspirational. I practice them in my own life and support RA clients in working with them. What I respect most about Relationship Anarchy is that it's inclusive of every relationship style, from monogamy to polyamory as long as it's intentional and consensual. Instead of claiming there's one "natural" way to love, RA makes room for how folks authentically connect when they get to choose it for themselves.
I believe that when we honor each relationship's unique flavor, and bring in excellent communication and consent, we build connections based on safety, trust, and celebration.
I know, bold claim. But hear me out. Most of us grew up absorbing a very specific, grim playlist of relationship rules played on repeat.
"Old Relationship Rules Playlist"
Track 1: Relationships are constant, grueling work.
Track 2: True love requires sacrifice.
Track 3: If they really loved you, they'd intuitively read your mind.
Track 4: Long-term partnership means slowly giving up who you are to merge into a couple.
Track 5: Sex naturally loses its thrill over time.
Track 6: Conflict is a sign that something is broken.
At some point, I realized these depressing societal rules were causing tons of relationship problems. So after a particularly painful breakup, I threw up my hands and had a slightly dramatic conversation with the universe.
I said: "I give up! I've tried to make relationships work with these rules, but they aren't working. So I'm letting them go and if that means I'll be single forever, I accept it. But if romance is still in the cards for me, I want relationships that follow the exact opposite:
"New Relationship Possibility Playlist"
Track 1: Relationships are fun and easeful.
Track 2: True love requires collaboration.
Track 3: We communicate clearly instead of expecting mind-reading.
Track 4: Long-term partnership means championing each other's autonomy.
Track 5: Sex naturally increases in thrill and depth over time.
Track 6: Conflict is a sign that new growth is about to happen.
I didn't actually know if this was possible. But once I made that shift, my relationships stopped feeling like grueling work and started feeling gentle, honest, collaborative, and deeply playful.
Don't get me wrong, disagreements still happen. But they can either be fought from two defensive stances or playacted as a dramatic scene between posh mice in top hats. One leads to hurt, and the other is hilarious.
Ultimately I believe beautiful, deeply connected relationships are entirely possible, and I love helping people write their own new rules to get there.
One of my biggest joys in life is contact improvisation dance. It's a mindful movement form that's essentialy a mix of dancing, falling, rolling, and wrestling.
It's a delightfully fun improvisational dance form focused on a shared point of physical contact with one or more partners.
I dance a few times a week because it's a great complement to meditation and helps me practice being deeply present with others. It's also an art form where you also have to be open to surprises and willing to look goofy (ex: when you think you're performing a graceful turn but find your partner suddenly melting into the floor like a stick of warm butter, you have to go with it).
And as a somatic therapist, contact improv is also a masterclass in tracking body sensations. In our culture, we spend so much time trapped in our heads, analyzing that recent conflict or intellectualizing our feelings. We can spend months stuck in our brain theorizing about what happened. But when we drop into the body and feel the physical sensations directly, we can often beeline straight to the deepest layer where the actual healing happens.
I was never supposed to have a guitar. But when I moved into my first shared house in college, the guy whose room I took over had about ten guitars. He said if I bought his bed, desk, and chest of drawers, he'd throw a guitar in for free. I didn't play, but I said sure, why not!
For the first few weeks in that house, my eight housemates and I had no furniture and no internet. So we'd sit around on camping chairs in the living room, talking, playing board games, and singing songs while I attempted to play very bad guitar. Nobody cared, and it was one of my favorite times.
The fact that no one cared totally challenged my perfectionist tendencies and so I made a deal with myself that I'd never make guitar a stressful-perfectionist activity. Instead I would just play around and have fun.
The result is I haven't improved much in the last couple decades, but I know just enough to lead a fun community singing night.
When I walk into a coffee shop my order is: peppermint hot chocolate with oat milk. I usually get a couple raised eyebrows when they shout it out, which used to make me feel embarrassed living in Seattle.
But it turns out I'm just a CareBear at heart, and CareBears drink peppermint hot chocolate. You can only resist being yourself for so long.
Oh, also I like ginger tea with lemon and honey. I contain multitudes.
I had never watched Star Trek until the pandemic, but on a friend’s recommendation I started Star Trek: The Next Generation. It completely reshaped how I see the possible future. The show is filled with thoughtful ethical dilemmas, reflecting on humanity’s virtues and pitfalls. The thing that really struck me was the show’s radical vision of a post-scarcity utopia, a future where humanity finally moved past survival mode, united as a planet, and chose to look out for one another.
At my core, I am an unshakeable optimist. It’s very easy to look at human behavior and see only the damage, pain, and conflict. But TNG helped give me a larger vision for what could be possible if we don’t all blow each other up. Even though as humans we have plagued ourselves with traumatic wars for thousands of years, I genuinely believe that beneath our trauma and protective armor lies an immense capacity for goodness, evolution, and collaboration, and that we are all capable of building a kinder, more easeful future.
My specialities
Non-Monogamous & Open Relationships
Build secure, joyful relationships beyond the monogamy escalator. As a polyamory therapist, I support relationship anarchy and all consensual non-monogamy structures.
Identity Queer & Trans
Find an affirming space for queer couples therapy and identity exploration. Your gender, sexuality, and romantic identities all belong here. The intersections of identity, family, and belonging can be complex. This is a move-at-your-speed exploration process.
Sex & Intimacy Therapy
Cultivate a more honest and fulfilling relationship with your desire, intimacy, and whole erotic self. This often includes working through relational traumas and wounds.
Kink & BDSM Therapy
A genuinely judgment-free space to explore your sexual identity, process experiences, and deepen your relationships within kink and BDSM communities.
Somatic Therapy
I offer somatic therapy Seattle clients seeking to move beyond overly cognitive talk therapy. Use the body's wisdom to process unresolved trauma, shift nervous system patterns, and create lasting, tangible change.
Neurodivergence
Affirming support for ADHD, autistic, and neurodivergent folks — shifting from pathologizing your brain to embracing your unique wiring and navigating a world built for neurotypical people.
Exploring Spirituality
Explore where spirituality and therapy meet for profound healing. Whether you're Buddhist, witchy, a believer of any faith, questioning, or building your own path entirely.