Brian C. Kennedy

01 / About

Meeting you with warmth and curiosity.

Brian works with couples and families experiencing relationship distress, including emotional or sexual intimacy concerns, and with adults facing depression, anxiety, grief, trauma, spiritual questions, and significant life transitions.

He is known for warmth, compassion, and an ability to create a safe, deeply engaged therapeutic relationship. He believes that connection—to oneself, to the people we love, and to the larger world around us—is central to healing.

Before becoming a therapist, Brian spent several years as an Outward Bound instructor, guiding adults and young people through transformative experiences in remote wilderness settings. That history continues to inform his respect for courage, vulnerability, and the human capacity to change.

02 / Therapeutic approach

Understanding the whole person.

Brian’s work is attachment-based, experiential, relational, and informed by affective neuroscience. Rather than treating symptoms as isolated problems, he listens for the history, relationships, bodily responses, and protective strategies that make those symptoms understandable.

Therapy begins by establishing trust: the experience of being listened to carefully, understood accurately, and met without judgment. From there, the work becomes a collaboration—slowing experience down, contacting the emotions beneath familiar defenses, and allowing new possibilities to emerge.

His training includes family systems therapy, Internal Family Systems, Bowen family-of-origin work, and PACT couples therapy. His present work also draws from AEDP, attachment theory, interpersonal neurobiology, and body-aware experiential psychotherapy.

03 / Education & experience

Training grounded in relationship.

Education and credentials

• Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy — Pacific Lutheran University
• Bachelor of Science in Developmental Psychology — Eastern Washington University
• Bachelor of Arts in Applied Psychology — Eastern Washington University
• Advanced training from CIIS CPTR — Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy (PAT)
• Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Washington State — LF00000884

Selected experience

• More than 30 years in the mental-health profession and private practice
• Former lead trainer and Northwest program administrator for Internal Family Systems training
• Advanced clinical training in PACT couples therapy
• Former chair, Washington State Department of Health Mental Health Advisory Commission
• Former board member and legislative committee chair, Washington Association for Marriage and Family Therapy
• Clinical consultation, professional training, conference presentations, and published clinical writing

04 / Areas of focus

Ways we may work together.