Shayan Salar, LCSW, LCADC
Psychotherapist
Philadelphia PA
We start by getting clear on what you actually want, not what a program says you should want. In harm reduction the goal is not set in advance by an outside standard. If you want to cut back, we work on cutting back. If you want to stop, we work on that. If you do not know yet, that is a real place to begin and we start there.
Sessions are not mostly advice. Depending on what is present, we might work directly with the parts of you that are in conflict about changing, slow down and track what your nervous system does when the urge arrives, or look at the history sitting underneath the pattern. I work integratively because people are not one thing.
The relationship we build will matter more than any single modality. I am not trying to treat a label. I am interested in what is actually happening in your life and what it is costing you.
I am a first-generation Iranian-American, born and raised in New Jersey by parents who left Iran during the 1979 revolution. Growing up between two cultural worlds created its own internal and external conflicts, and earlier stressful and traumatic experiences meant I had to undergo my own healing process before I ever guided anyone through theirs.
That work is why I do this work. It is also why I do not ask people to arrive sorted out, certain, or ready to give something up before we begin.
Most of the people I see are functioning well on the outside. Employed, credentialed, meeting their obligations, and privately managing something that has become more than recreational. Drinking or substance use that has not produced an obvious crisis but has started to cost them something.
Outside the room I stay in my own process through continued education, training, and consultation, and by guiding meditative experiences, facilitating integration circles, time in nature, and having a life of my own outside the role.