About Me

Hi, I'm Joshua

I see the world a little differently, literally. I've spent my life learning to work with that.

One Eye in this World, One Eye in the Other

I was born with a disability - I’m partially blind in one eye and my eyes point in two different directions. As a child, I desperately wanted to look normal. My parents took me to faith healers and exorcists. Surgeons performed three different operations to straighten my gaze. But none of it worked - my left eye always wandered away, as if it were tracking a different reality than my right eye.

Growing up, I was labeled strange, distracted, too sensitive. I was always somewhere else, even when I was in the room. What I didn't understand yet was that I was receiving visions, impressions, feelings, messages from the people and spirits around me, and I had no framework to understand what was happening.

It took decades to understand what my eyes were telling me all along. The wandering eye was never a flaw to be corrected. It was a sign: the same sign that seers and spirit workers have carried across cultures for thousands of years. I have one eye in this world, and one eye in the other.

My Story

I survived a dangerous childhood: sexual abuse, incest, neglect, poverty, bullying, homophobia, religious trauma. For much of my life, I was in a "living death" of avoidance and disconnection.

I sought help through the mental health system: At six years old, I started therapy. I have tried it all: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Somatic Experiencing (SE), Family Constellations, talk therapy, play therapy, animal therapy, group therapy, support groups, psychodrama. I've tried medication, supplements, and light therapy. Some of it helped, but I always felt that there was a deeper, unhealed wound.

I sought help through spiritual practices: I was raised in the evangelical church, but left at age 12. I have 25 years of serious Buddhist meditation practice across eight different countries. I am a frequent participant in several ecstatic pagan spiritual traditions. I have maintained a lifelong ritual and magical practice. Again, I was able to find some relief through these practices, but there was always something missing. Something big.

My true healing began in 2017, at a Buddhist meditation retreat. I was sitting silently when something unexpected broke through - several spirits appeared to me as vivid, living presences. What I saw was intense, strange, and detailed. I spent two years trying to understand what had happened.

In 2019, I learned about "parts" from Internal Family Systems and I started to piece together what I had witnessed. With the framework of parts, I was able to understand how these spirits were connected to me. However, I knew that the visions I had seen weren't just "in my head". I had seen the living world of spirits. I had experienced the animist nature of reality.

Since then, I have been working with these spiritual beings, and the experience has given me more than I could have imagined. What I needed all those years ago was not clinical or religious. What I needed was spiritual. I needed to connect with the spirits of my spiritual ecosystem, so that the entire ecosystem could heal together.

My Education, Training, and Experience

My deepest training has been experiential. I have completed approximately 300 hours of Internal Family System therapy. I have meditated for 25 years, studying my own mind and emotions. I have worked extensively with the spiritual beings that make up my own spiritual ecosystem. I have found my own path to healing, I have been able to help other people do the same.

My academic background shapes how I work in other ways. A Masters in Linguistics gave me a deep sensitivity to language - how words and metaphors shape our reality. A Bachelors in Anthropology grounded my understanding of animism and the cross-cultural history of spiritual practice.

My parts work training includes:

IFS Online Circle: Foundations of the IFS Model - IFS Institute, 2022

IFS Basics and Exiles - Bonnie Weiss, 2022

Advanced IFS Professionals Group - Jay Earley, 2023–2024

Interactive IFS Group Leader Training - Jay Earley, 2024