Sam Bernhofer, LPCC-S

"The pandemic of mental anguish that afflicts our time cannot be properly understood, or healed, if viewed as a private problem suffered by damaged individuals." -Mark Fisher

Hey, I’m Sam! Thanks for looking. My therapeutic process centers on you. I aim to be collaborative, nourishing, challenging, compassionate, non-judgmental, and very human. I believe that we tend to heal better together as a community, not just as isolated individuals. I don’t believe therapy ought to be a stuffy, hypercritical space. As a clinician, I aim to provide language and evidence-based tools to understand and manage your concerns. But as your compassionate collaborator, I aim to give space and understanding through a lens that doesn't make you feel alone.

One of my foundational beliefs is that therapy exists to explore, process, and heal what happened to you and who you had to become to survive it. I aim to provide this within a safe, secure, therapeutic relationship. My clients and I explore the science of what's happening within the different branches of their nervous systems and how we can increase its capacity to not just survive, but finally thrive. We also explore the art of the psyche, create new narratives and meanings, and find purpose without judgment.

I offer a unique background, ranging from a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Kent State, to a Master of Education in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Cleveland State. I have over a decade of experience helping teens and adults make profound changes to their relationships with partners, family, friends, substances, coworkers, community, and conflict. This journey always begins with their relationship to themselves.

Since joining this group practice, my approach has assisted folks with patterns of perfectionism, anxiety, intellectualization, over-thinking, people-pleasing, avoidance, hopelessness, anger, rumination, limerence, learned helplessness, executive dysfunction, intimacy, identity, attachment wounds, life transitions, abandonment, loss, infidelity, and the complexity of trauma experienced, which often leads to these learned ways of survival. Finding purpose in pain, achieving acceptance, and turning down the volume of big emotions and trauma responses has been incredibly gratifying as I work with clients here at PMA.

In this current season of my career, my approach is heavily influenced by existential therapist Irving Yalom, physicians Gabor Maté and Judith Herman, self-compassion experts like Tara Brach and Kristin Neff, and psychoanalysts Carl Jung, Jacques Lacan, and Wilfred Bion. I've found profound impact using EMDR, IFS, and somatic approaches. I'm deeply influenced by my former supervisors, mentors, and talented colleagues here at PMA. I'm always learning and always arriving.

So, wherever you are on your journey, whether you've been to many therapists before or are just starting out, whether you know all the acronyms and have read all the books or not, I thank you for taking the time to read. You belong.

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✅In-person appointments
✅ Virtual appointments