About
I'm
James Hamrick (he/they), MSW, Dr. des., LICSW. I am a clinical social
worker independently licensed in Minnesota and living in the Twin Cities. I started Fish Out of Water, LLC to increase
access to individual and group therapies for ADHD adults, for people who
are healing from religious trauma, and for those who want to integrate
mental health with their spirituality. I am trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
(EMDR) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). I have also participated in trainings in Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) and Prolonged Grief Disorder Therapy.
ADHD
I take a neuroaffirming, strengths-based, and social-model-of-disability approach to ADHD. In short, that means: (1) what we call "ADHD" is part of natural human diversity; (2) many of the challenges ADHD people face are because you're fish out of water, living in social contexts that aren't a good fit for ADHD; (3) we have to work to both challenge and change our systems/environments and figure out how to live skillfully in the world as it is in this moment.
My current focus is on offering ADHD groups. In the near future I hope to offer more in-person individual EMDR therapy for ADHD people, to help you adaptively reprocess the traumas and chronic invalidations many "neurodivergent" people experience growing up and adulting in this world.
Integrating mental health and spirituality
My first background is in the academic study of religion and the ancient world (BA, MA, Dr. des.), with a lengthy stint selling furnaces and some time doing pastoral things (the spiritual kind, not the farming kind). After experiencing some of my own mental health challenges, I went back to school (again) to become a clinical social worker so I could better support others in their own mental health journeys. I like to bring my background in religious studies into my therapeutic work, and believe that those parts of our cultures and experiences we often label “spiritual” or “religious” are usually inseparable from our mental health. I work with people from any or no religious or spiritual tradition, including religious humanists and spiritual atheists.