Miles Joyce, Marriage and Family Therapist Associate EXT: 2989
Miles is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist whose heart is devoted to working with adult individuals, couples, families, teens and communities to feel more fully connected to a life of richness and authenticity. His relational and systemic approach holds that problems exist between people, rather than within people. As a clinician, Miles is primarily oriented by Internal Family Systems (‘Parts Work’) and Depth Psychology while drawing heavily from Existential Therapy, Narrative Therapy, Emotion Focused Therapy, Interpersonal Neurobiology, Focusing Oriented Psychotherapy and other mindfulness-based experiential modalities. Miles has been trained in EMDR by the EMDR Institute founded by Dr. Francine Shapiro and utilizes this approach to assist clients in reclaiming a sense of wholeness after the fracturing of traumatic experiences. Miles has special interests and additional training in men’s work, grief and loss, navigating transitions in identity, parenting, boundary issues or violations, sexuality, and religious trauma. Miles has humbly apprenticed himself to the lineage of Bill Plotkin, Francis Weller, the School of Lost Borders, and others who have prioritized finding the therapeutic intersection of initiatory practices, contemporary rites of passage, and soul-centric work. In this vein, he has been personally and professionally inspired by the mythopoetic tradition and those willing to carry its torch into the troubled times that we find ourselves within for the sake of cultivating greater response-ability and belonging.
Miles’ life project of “living the questions now” was professionally set in motion in 2012 when he first began working with the unhoused population of East Los Angeles. This formative experience set the groundwork for later years spent working with similar populations in Portland via p:ear and New Avenues for Youth, where he facilitated music and culinary programming and managed a transitional housing program for young adults aging out of foster care. Miles additionally spent several years working in wilderness therapy as both a wilderness guide and manager at a program that specialized in leveraging the healing potential of nature to treat complex developmental trauma via an individualized approach. Miles holds a master’s degree in Marriage, Couple and Family Therapy from Lewis & Clark College and a bachelor’s degree in psychology and behavioral neuroscience from the University of Portland. In a brief hiatus in his undergraduate trajectory, he moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland to undergo a political immersion program that focused on conflict resolution within systems of terrorism and urban violence. Together, these experiences have established an ethic of nuance in Miles’ practice, integrating the sometimes conflicting confluence of political, environmental, and interpersonal demands. In his down time, Miles enjoys tending to his small homestead, writing music, climbing on rocks, surfing the cold coasts of the Pacific Northwest, cooking elaborate meals, and discussing compelling books with loved ones
